Anti-Racism Resources for 5 Year Olds: What Actually Works For Little Kids
It was a humid Tuesday after library story time, and I was crumpling up an empty Goldfish bag when my 5-year-old, Javi, stopped mid-run to the water fountain and pointed. “Mom,” he said, loud enough for the Black woman standing next to us adjusting her toddler’s hat to hear, “why is her skin brown like my chocolate pudding and mine is peachy like the ice cream we got last weekend?” I froze. I’d fumbled through small questions before, but that day I realized I’d been putting off finding real, age-appropriate material to talk about this—because all the searches I’d done turned up resources for middle schoolers, or long lists of books that didn’t tell me if a 5-year-old would actually understand them. I went home that night and started digging, testing everything I could find over the last month, to see what sticks.
The first thing I ordered was the viral board book everyone talks about for little kids. I thought, perfect, it’s marketed for babies, so it’ll work for Javi. We read it once, he laughed at the rhymes, asked for a second snack, and never asked to read it again. He didn’t get any of the points; it was all just silly wordplay that didn’t connect to anything he’s experienced. Then I checked out another popular book from the library, which was better, but still felt like it was trying too hard to hit a big message, and Javi lost interest halfway. I mentioned my frustration to my friend who teaches pre-K, and she said something that stuck: 5-year-olds don’t care about big, abstract terms. They care about fairness. They know what it feels like when someone won’t let them play tag. That’s the entry point. Any resource that doesn’t meet them where they are, talking about things they actually experience, is going to bounce right off.
The first resource that actually landed was The Colors of Us by Karen Katz. It’s just a story of a little girl painting portraits of her friends and neighbors, naming all the different shades of skin: cinnamon, honey, peanut butter, chocolate. When we finished reading, Javi got up and grabbed his own crayon box and a stack of construction paper, and drew every kid in his preschool class, matching each skin tone to a crayon he thought fit. He didn’t do it because I told him to—he just thought it was cool that there were that many different colors. That’s the whole point, right? I didn’t have to give a lecture. He just got it that difference is normal, not something we don’t talk about.
Next, I found a free printable matching game on the National Education Association’s early childhood anti-bias page. It’s 20 cards: 10 of kids’ faces and 10 of their favorite activities. There’s a Korean-American kid who likes building with blocks, a disabled Black kid who likes painting, a Latinx kid who likes soccer. It’s just a normal matching game, no big preachy message. Javi plays it when his cousin comes over, and half the time he doesn’t even notice we’re doing anything different than his dinosaur puzzle. It just normalizes seeing all kinds of kids as regular kids who like regular things. For $0 and 10 minutes of printing time, it’s one of the most useful resources I found.
Two weeks ago, a new little girl joined Javi’s preschool. She’s from Somalia, and she wears a light blue hijab every day. The first day, one of the boys in class said she looked weird and wouldn’t let her join their princess castle game. I got a note from his teacher later that day that Javi walked right over, grabbed the new girl’s hand, and said “She can be queen. I read a book about hijabs, they’re just pretty headscarves her mom helps her pick out.” The book he was talking about is My Little Hijab, a short board book I checked out from the library for two dollars. It’s just a little girl talking about her day, picking out her hijab to match her shoes, going to the park. That’s it. No big speech, just a normal kid living a normal life. That’s all Javi needed to know to stand up for her.
I’ve learned that most of the best anti-racism resources for 5 year olds aren’t fancy or expensive. You don’t need a $30 curriculum or a 10-part online course. The best stuff is the stuff that doesn’t even feel like a lesson. The worst stuff I found was the stuff that tried to cram big, heavy history into a 30-page book—5 year olds can’t wrap their heads around that yet, and it just makes the whole topic feel scary or confusing. You don’t have to talk about slavery or mass protest with a 5 year old, not in depth anyway. You just have to give them words for the differences they already see, and show them that all people deserve to be included, and that unfairness is something you can say something about.
It’s not all perfect. Last week, Javi asked me why some kids don’t get to go to big playgrounds like the one we go to, and I told him it’s because some grown-ups a long time ago made unfair rules, and we’re still working to fix that. He thought about that for ten seconds, then said “that’s dumb, can we get popsicles?” I didn’t push for a longer conversation. I don’t need him to have all the answers right now. I’m still testing new things—last week I checked out a board book about a Native American kid going to a powwow with his grandma, and we haven’t read it yet. I still don’t have it all figured out. But so far, the small, simple, ordinary resources are the ones that work. They don’t make a big deal out of difference, they just show it as part of normal life. That’s enough for right now.
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