Early Pride Matters

Step 1: Gather materials.

• Familiar objects with multiple attributes (such as multiple shapes and colors)
• People figures (if desired)

Step 2: Introduce activity.

• Provide a variety of small objects (such as animals, vehicles and people figures) that can be sorted and categorized.

Step 3: Engage children in activity.

• Encourage the children to explore the objects.
• Model categorizing the items by attributes.
• Your categories or groups can include concepts such as:
  • Size (big/small)
  • Color
  • Types of vehicles (cars/trucks/buses)
• If you include figures, encourage the children to group the figures by observable features such as hair (long/short), age (kids/grownups), texture (hard/soft), or clothing by color rather than gender.
• When the children begin to identify the genders of the figures, encourage them to talk about how they arrived at their conclusions about gender. This is a natural opportunity to help them understand that: "We learn about gender by asking."

Adaptations by age

Infants and toddlers

• As the youngest children explore interesting objects, introduce similarities and differences. For example, you can say: “They’re BOTH purple” to foster an understanding of the emerging concept of categories.
• You might also model “asking” a people figure about their gender by inquiring: “Are you a boy, girl or neither?”

Two-year-olds

• Build on the children's interest in grouping their objects and figures by physical properties.
• As they begin to categorize by physical properties, point out and emphasize exceptions to a category. For example, you might say: “That is not red or blue. It’s neither.”

Preschoolers

• Guide and support the older children as they group items by multiple attributes.
• You can also introduce a pretend-play component by suggesting that the preschoolers pretend to “ask” the people figures about their gender identities.