Multicultural Emoji Puzzle Friends

It is multicultural play day so I hope you enjoy this DIY matching activity! I am challenging myself (I would be fooling myself if I said the activities are easy to think of) to do one multicultural activity a week with my children because I want them to understand the differences among us and how each and every one of us bring something wonderful to this world.

I want them to be kind to others in school no matter their differences. I want them to be the ones who find someone who may be “bullied” and befriend them. I want them to compliment and congratulate others regardless of their skin color. I want them to have friends that are different from them. I want them to be a part of the change we so desperately need. To do this, I need to educate them.

Just by involving skin color materials in our classroom or in your play, kids are seeing that WE as adults are accepting of all colors and kids follow us (their role models).” If we have unknown biases or make every person “white” they will begin to question differences. Today when we were doing the matching game I asked Max (6) why people have different colored skin? His response was, “so everyone can be different colors.” I loved his response. There was no judgment, no bias, no negativity about it..it was simply to make this world more beautiful.

TO DO: I used a recycled puzzle (see in next photos) that was missing pieces. We put two pieces together and they were to be “friends.” Then I flipped over the pieces (to their back) and my kids and I colored the pieces different colors using the multicultural markers from Crayola. Then we put eyeball stickers on them (puzzle pairs have to have the same eyes/faces to turn it into a matching game). Instead of stickers you could create your own and glue them on. Lastly, we added emoji faces to make it fun:) Now my kids were free to find the matching pairs all while unknowingly “celebrating diversity.”