Anti-Racism Resources for 5 Year Olds: Parent Tested Tips and Picks
Last month, I was folding laundry on the couch while my 5 year old, Javi, flipped through a tattered picture book I’d kept since my own childhood. Halfway through, he looked up, pointed at a panel full of smiling, all-white characters, and asked, “Why doesn’t anyone here look like Grandpa?” Grandpa is my husband’s dad, a Mexican American man with warm bronze skin who Javi adores. I froze mid-fold, a crumpled sock in my hand. I knew I wanted to talk about race and anti-racism with Javi, but I suddenly realized I had no idea what resources were actually appropriate for his age.
That night, after Javi was asleep, snoring with his stuffed otter tucked under his arm, I typed “anti-racism resources for 5 year old” into Google. What came back was a mess. There were endless lists of $20 hardcover books, workshops held on weekday nights when I’m already in the thick of bath and bedtime, and think pieces that repeated that I “needed to start early” but never told me how to start with a kid who still celebrates when he puts his shoes on the correct feet. One list included a graphic children’s book about the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, and I closed that tab immediately. That’s way too much for a kid who still has nightmares about the vacuum cleaner “eating” his lost Lego.
I texted my neighbor, a preschool teacher with 12 years of experience under her belt, and asked what she uses in her classroom. She sent over three quick suggestions, and warned me away from the most common mistake I’d already almost made: resources that pretend we’re all the same, which 5 year olds see right through. I’d already bought a cute “all are welcome” poster that said “we’re all the same on the inside!” and when I showed it to Javi, he just frowned and said “No we’re not. My arm is browner than yours. That’s okay, right?” He was right. Shrugging off difference doesn’t stop racism, it just teaches kids that asking about difference is rude or taboo, which is the opposite of what we want.
The first resource she suggested was The Skin You Live In, a short rhyming picture book by Michael Tyler. I ordered a used copy for $4, and it’s been a hit. The book doesn’t dive into heavy history or abstract policies. It just talks about skin as the thing that holds your hands, your hugs, your smiles, and celebrates all the different shades people can have. Javi’s favorite part is pointing out which shade matches my arm, his arm, Grandpa’s arm, and his best friend’s deep brown skin. It’s simple, it’s fun, and it normalizes difference instead of ignoring it.
The second big win is a low-cost activity I already had all the supplies for: mixing paint to match your own skin. I pulled out the bottles of acrylic craft paint I keep in the closet for rainy days, got out a piece of poster board, and had Javi press his hand down first. Then we mixed drops of white, brown, and a tiny bit of black until we got a shade that matched his hand almost exactly. We did the same for my hand, my husband’s, and Grandpa’s when he came over for dinner that weekend. Javi spent almost 30 minutes mixing tiny batches, pointing out how no two shades were exactly the same, even for people in the same family. It’s hands-on, it’s playful, and it teaches the core anti-racism lesson 5 year olds can actually grasp: difference is normal, difference is good.
That’s the big insight I’ve landed on, after a month of searching and testing: anti-racism for 5 year olds doesn’t need to be about teaching systemic inequality or complicated history. That stuff comes later, when they’re old enough to think abstractly about groups and systems. Right now, it’s about teaching them that noticing difference is okay, that they can ask questions politely instead of being told to be quiet, and that it’s wrong to exclude someone because of what they look like. That’s all they can process, and that’s enough for this age.
I used to panic when Javi pointed at someone different than him in the grocery store, which all 5 year olds do. Now I just keep it calm and simple. Last week, he pointed at a woman with a bright blue hijab and said, loud enough for the whole aisle to hear, “Mom! That’s a hijab like in The Proudest Blue, right? It’s so pretty!” I just nodded and said “It is really pretty, isn’t it?” The woman smiled at us and kept going. Before I had these resources, I would have shushed him and rushed away, which would have told him that difference is something to be awkward or ashamed of. That small, calm interaction told him it’s okay to notice, and okay to say something kind.
Another small shift I made, after testing what works, is to reach for books that have diverse main characters for regular story time, not just “race story time.” Javi loves Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña, which follows a Black boy on a bus ride with his grandma through the city. It never stops to give a lecture about racism, it just tells a warm story about a kid and his family, and that’s what makes it work. It lets Javi see people who look different than him as whole people, not just a teachable moment.
I still don’t have it all figured out. Last week, I realized halfway through a cartoon we were watching that the only Black character was the silly, mean villain, and I missed the chance to talk about that in the moment. Sometimes I pick a book that’s too boring, or Javi gets distracted mid-paint-mix and wants to go play dinosaurs. It’s not a perfect, linear process. The resources that work aren’t the fancy, expensive ones that show up at the top of Google searches. They’re the small, simple things that meet Javi where he is, as the curious 5 year old he is. I’m still looking for new things, still messing up, and that’s okay. This work doesn’t have to be done all at once. Right now, it’s enough that he knows it’s okay to ask questions, and that all kinds of people belong. That’s the base we can build on later.
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