Anti-Racism Resources for 5 Year Olds: Simple, Parent-Tested Ideas That Work
Last month, my 5-year-old Mia came barreling home from preschool, crumpled drawing clutched in her overalls pocket. She’d drawn her and her new best friend, Javi, who’d just moved here from Nigeria. Mia colored her own skin peach, Javi’s a deep chestnut, and then stopped when I asked why her crayon box was still spread out on the kitchen table. “Javi says his skin is the color of the iced coffee Dad drinks in the morning,” she said, frowning at the half-used brown crayon. “This isn’t the right one. Am I doing it wrong?”
That night, after I’d wiped the crayon marks off the table and got Mia into bed, I sat on the couch with a cold slice of leftover pizza and typed exactly what I was thinking into Google: “anti-racism resources for 5 year old.” I’d known I wanted to talk about difference and fairness with Mia from the time she was tiny, but I’d hit a wall. Most of what popped up was either long thinkpieces for parents about systemic inequality, which I agree with but can’t exactly read to a kid who still thinks the moon follows her home, or preachy board books that felt like they were talking at her instead of with her. I spent 45 minutes scrolling, closing tab after tab, wondering if I was overthinking this or underpreparing.
Turns out, the best resources for 5 year olds aren’t fancy curriculums or expensive workbooks. They’re small, simple things that fit into the ordinary days we already have. The first win I had was a picture book called The Skin You Live In by Michael Tyler. I picked it up from the library on my way home from work the next day, and I wasn’t expecting much, but it’s written like a silly rhyme for little kids, comparing different skin tones to everything from coffee to cookie dough to sunset. Mia sat in my lap the whole time, pointing at the pages and yelling out when she saw a color that matched Javi’s arm. After we finished, we went through her crayon box together and pulled out every shade that could be a skin color—mixing peach and brown on scrap paper to get Javi’s iced coffee shade, just like she wanted. That’s a whole lesson that didn’t require any prep, just a book and a box of old crayons.
Another book that worked way better than I expected is Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña. It’s not just about skin color, which is actually why I like it for 5 year olds. It’s about a kid riding the bus with his grandma, noticing all the different people on the bus, and learning to see the good in what you have. It normalizes different families, different skin colors, different ways of life without stopping to give a speech. Mia just likes the part where the kids play in the band at the end of the line. I don’t need her to grasp structural inequality at 5; I just need her to get used to seeing people who look different than her as main characters in stories, not afterthoughts.
After I started looking, I realized one of the easiest anti-racism resources I could add to our house was just swapping out a few books on Mia’s shelf. I counted one day, and out of the 20 board books and picture books she read most often, only one had a main character who wasn’t white. I didn’t throw all the old books away or anything—she still loves her Goodnight Moon. I just took three that she’d outgrown or read a hundred times and swapped them for three new ones with BIPOC main characters. It’s a tiny change, but now when she grabs a book before bed, half the time she’s picking one with a kid who looks like Javi or her babysitter, which normalizes difference without me having to say a word.
I also used to panic when Mia pointed out someone’s difference in public, like the time we were at the grocery store and she yelled, “Mommy, why does that lady have hair on her face?” I used to shush her really fast and look away, which I realized later made it seem like difference was something bad or embarrassing to talk about. Now, I just answer simply, quiet enough that we don’t draw too much attention, and keep going. I’ll say something like “Some people grow more hair than others, just like how you have bigger feet than me. It’s just how people are.” No big lecture, no awkward apology, just answering her question honestly. That’s a resource in itself, right? Giving kids permission to ask questions instead of making them hide curiosity.
I tried one fancy activity workbook I saw advertised, and it was a total flop. It had all these worksheets about being kind that Mia thought were boring, and she lost interest after five minutes. That’s when I realized 5 year olds don’t learn from worksheets. They learn from doing small things every day. We do a super simple activity sometimes when it rains and we’re stuck inside: I pull out all our skin-colored crayons, and we match them to the arms of everyone in the house, then any friends who come over. It’s just a game to Mia, but it lets us talk about how every single person has a different skin color, and all of them are good. You don’t need anything extra for it, just whatever crayons you already have.
Last week, Javi came over for a playdate, and the two of them got out the crayon matching sheet we made. They drew a picture of the two of them riding bikes, and Mia colored Javi’s skin with the mixed brown-peach shade we made together. “See?” she said to him, holding it up. “That’s exactly your coffee color. Perfect.” I was washing apples for their snack at the sink, watching them, and I didn’t feel like I’d done some big perfect parenting thing. I still don’t have all the answers, and I know as Mia gets older, we’ll have harder conversations and need different resources. But right now, these small, simple things are working. They don’t take hours of prep, they don’t cost a lot of money, and they meet my 5 year old where she is. That’s enough for right now.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Anti-Racism Resources for 5 Year Olds: Simple, Parent-Tested Ideas That Work