Early Pride Matters

Step 1: Gather materials.

• Books about the colors of Pride (see this activity's Suggested Books list below)
• This activity can be incorporated into any process-oriented art project that involves exploring and creating with materials such as paint, Play-Doh, collage materials, markers, or Crayola Slick Stix.

Step 2: Introduce activity.

• Share books about the colors of Pride.
• After your book share, distribute the art materials for your Colors of Pride art project. As the children examine their materials, initiate a conversation about colors and how the children might choose to use them.
• Ask questions such as:
  • “What is something else that is yellow?"
  • “What is your favorite color?”

Step 3: Engage children in activity.

• Encourage the children to reflect on the colors of Pride by asking questions about their feelings, ideas and processes as they create their art.
• Notice, introduce and talk about the feelings and ideas that arise as the children work with different colors. For instance:
  • Ask the children how a specific color makes them feel.
  • Introduce the concept that colors can represent ideas. As you do so, consider the concepts that each Pride color represents. Some of the concepts, such as sunlight, are concrete. However, others, such as serenity, are more abstract and may be harder for younger children to grasp.
  • For reference (and to stimulate discussion), you may want to create a Pride flag poster/display with the following key and add photos, illustrations or symbols to represent the meaning of each color.
    • Yellow = Sunlight
    • Green = Nature
    • Orange = Healing
    • Blue = Peace/Harmony
    • Red = Life
    • Purple = Spirit/Serenity
• Make connections to the Colors of Pride books from your book share.
• If the color meanings are too abstract for the children, don't worry! Focus on a conversation that builds self-awareness and social interaction around their creative choices.

Adaptations by age

Infants and toddlers

• Very young children are not yet creating representational art, but it's not too early to mirror and describe the emotions that they experience as they explore painting.
• Initiate a discussion with an observation such as: "Painting with those colors makes you happy."
• Share a simple board book such as Pride Colors.

Two-year-olds

• With this age group, you can begin to connect emotional vocabulary with the colors that the children are choosing for their art.
• At this age, children often request colors to work with and prefer to engage in specific creative processes.
• While asking two-year-olds what they are making/painting may open a useful window into their creative intentions, many two-year-olds will still be exploring the act of creating and enjoying the changes that they see taking place as they work.
• During this developmental stage, initiate a conversation by noticing and narrating what the children doing, pointing out some of the details in their artwork, and encouraging them to discuss their creative process and intentions.
• As opportunities arise, comment on the colors that the children are using to express themselves or ask them why they chose those colors.
• Ask: "How do different colors make you feel?" (Keep in mind that a child's emotional vocabulary is still emerging at this stage.)

Preschoolers

• Share a variety of books that feature color as a key part of the storyline or use color to represent various emotions.
• Explore books about the colors of different Pride flags and discuss the ideas/concepts that each color represents.
• As the children engage in their art activities, ask them how different colors make them feel or what the different colors symbolize.
• To stimulate discussion, ask open-ended questions such as: “What does that color make you think of?”
• Some children might answer such questions literally (e.g., by saying that green makes them think of grass). Others may have more abstract or reflective responses. Encourage both types of responses in your conversations.
• Introduce the concepts represented by the colors of Pride throughout the day as developmentally appropriate opportunities arise.

Suggested books

• Our Rainbow  by Little Bee Books 
• Pride Colors  by Robin Stevenson
• Rainbow: A First Book of Pride  by Michael Genhart
• We Are the Rainbow: The Colors of Pride  by Claire Winslow