Here's an activity that can help children talk about and appreciate diversity in the world.

Materials:

• Pictures of different people
• Pictures of people and wheelchairs from magazines

Directions:

Ask the children to talk about ways they are just like their friends. To get the conversation going, you could ask questions such as,

Do you:

• like to do some things that are the same? What things?
• live in the same neighborhood?
• have some of the same toys?

Then have the children tell you how they are different from their friends. Ask questions such as, Do you:

• like the same foods?
• wear the same clothes?
• live in the same house?
• look the same as your friends?
• play with the same toys?
• have the same ideas or feelings?

Ask the children to look carefully at the person sitting next to them and tell you how they are like that person and how they are different. Remind the children that people can have a lot in common and can still be unique and different in their own way.

Helping our children feel comfortable with people who have disabilities begins with helping our children feel good about their own uniqueness. When we show them that we love them for all of who they are, regardless of what they can and cannot do, they're more likely to grow up to be adults who accept others just as they are.

This would be an opportunity to talk to children about wheelchairs. If possible, find pictures of people in wheelchairs -- magazines and advertisements can be good places to look. Talk with the children about a time when you or someone you know used a wheelchair -- when leaving a hospital, for instance. Show them the pictures of the people in the wheelchairs, and let the children ask questions about what they see. Do the children know anyone who uses a wheelchair on a regular basis? How do they know that person? Ask the children to tell you more about that person. Maybe they'd like to make up a story about people who are in wheelchairs -- from the pictures you've cut out or from their imagination.

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