Be the Change: Diverse Toys to Raise Compassionate Children
Every day, wherever I go, I am a teacher. I am a teacher in my classroom with my high school students, I am a teacher at home with my son, and I am a teacher on the sideline with my athletes. I think right now it can feel overwhelming to find a meaningful way to go beyond posting a black square and actually do the work required of all of us to end racism and show support of, acceptance of, and love for, the Black community. For me personally, I feel that teaching is my way of helping. I feel it is my duty to try harder to raise children who will do and be better.
I am sure many parents, teachers, daycare providers, and friends out there want to do the same and are looking for tools and resources to help get started. I want to help us accomplish this so I curated a selection of books and toys that aim to support parents and teachers as they work to have conversations about race, and raise compassionate kids. These books and toys are best suited for babies and young children. I will be making another post dedicated to sharing books best for teenagers and adults.
Children learn through play. The types of toys they play with and the books they read do have a big impact on the type of person they will become. If we provide multicultural books and toys, we can start shaping their young minds early on to celebrate all cultures and races. They can relate to stories about people who look like them and that is a good thing, but they should also be learning about people who don’t look like them. Acceptance comes from understanding. Leaning about similarities and differences of others is a great way to start at home and in the classroom in teaching tolerance, diversity, and inclusion! Representation matters, so the books chosen are all meant to showcase representation of different races and ethnicities in the characters and/or authors.
If you have additional books or toys that you think I should know about, or a way that I can improve upon this post, please let me know! I am learning too, and I am sure there is plenty more out there that I don’t know about.
This post contains affiliate links at no cost to you. I will make a small commission from products purchased through the links in this post. I will be donating those proceeds to NAACP.org
Diverse Play:
Diverse Reading:
