Diversity and Inclusion Activities for Kids

Quick answer: The best diversity activities for kids go past food and festivals. They help children see themselves, understand difference across culture, ability, language and family, and then practice including someone. Below are 18 activities grouped by what they actually build. Start with identity work, move to perspective, and finish with behaviour — because belonging is something kids do, not something they are told.

Why teach diversity and inclusion to kids?

Because the classroom already is diverse, and the data moves fast. Between fall 2012 and fall 2022, the share of U.S. public school students who were Hispanic rose from 24% to 29%, while the share who were White fell from 51% to 44% (NCES). Difference is not a special topic to visit in February. It is the room.

And difference runs wider than culture. In 2022–23, 7.5 million students — about 15% of public school enrollment — were served under IDEA, up from 13% a decade earlier. Add multilingual learners, varied family structures, and neurodivergent kids, and "inclusion" stops being abstract. It is the child who eats lunch alone on Tuesday.

The payoff is well documented. CDC data from its 2021 adolescent survey found students who felt close to people at school reported far lower rates of poor mental health (28.4% versus 45.2%) and of persistent sadness or hopelessness (35.4% versus 52.9%) than peers who did not. Belonging is not a soft extra. It is protective.

18 diversity and inclusion activities for kids

Start here: seeing yourself (identity comes before difference).

1. Identity Web. Each child maps the parts of who they are — family, language, what they love, what they are good at. It shows everyone is many things at once.

2. My Name Story. Kids interview a grown-up about why they were named what they were, then share. Names carry history, and mispronouncing one is a small exclusion.

3. Skin-Tone Self-Portraits. Use a full range of skin-tone crayons or paints so every child can actually draw themselves accurately.

4. All About Me Bag. Three objects from home that explain you. Low prep, high reveal, works from pre-K up.

5. Family Portraits. Draw your household as it really is. Normalises every shape a family comes in without a lecture about it.

Then: understanding difference beyond culture.

1. Same and Different Sort. Pairs find five things they share and five that differ. The point: difference and connection coexist.

2. Mirrors and Windows Bookshelf. Audit your books. Which are mirrors (a child sees themselves) and which are windows (a child sees someone else)? Kids do the sorting and notice the gaps.

3. Fairness Is Not Sameness. Give the class one shoe size for everyone, then discuss. The fastest way to teach why equal and fair differ — and why a classmate's supports are not "special treatment".

4. Language Swap. Everyone learns a greeting in a classmate's home language. The multilingual child becomes the expert for ten minutes.

5. How Do You Read This? Try reading a page with letters scrambled or through smeared glasses. A brief, honest taste of why a task easy for you may be hard for someone else.

Now the important part: practising inclusion as a behaviour.

1. Mix-It-Up Lunch. One day a week, seats are randomised. The simplest structural fix for the lunch-table problem.

2. The Invite Rule. A standing class norm: if someone asks to join, the answer is yes. Practise it in low-stakes games first.

3. Two-Minute Interview. Rotating pairs, one question. Kids discover things in common with classmates they never speak to.

4. Spot the Left-Out. Students scan a photo or scene and name who is on the edge, then say what they would do. Trains noticing, which is the hard half.

5. Kindness Missions. Each child gets a small, specific inclusion task for the week and reports back.

Finally: make it visible school-wide.

1. Belonging Wall. A shared display where students post what makes them feel included here. It doubles as free data for your staff.

2. Family Story Night. Invite families to share a story, a skill, or a recipe — on their terms, not as a performance of their culture.

3. A Live Assembly Kickoff. One shared moment where the whole building hears the same message, so the classroom work has something to build on.

How do you avoid the "tourist" trap?

This is where well-meaning programmes go wrong. If diversity shows up only as food, flags, and festivals — a week in November, a poster in February — children learn that difference is a novelty you visit, not a normal feature of the people beside them. Worse, the child from that culture becomes an exhibit for a day and invisible the rest of the year.

Three habits keep you out of it. Run this work year-round rather than in themed bursts. Never appoint a child as spokesperson for their whole background; let them speak as themselves. And always pair celebration with behaviour — a heritage display is lovely, but it changes nothing if the same kids are still alone at recess. For the cultural strand done properly, see our companion piece on cultural diversity activities for elementary classrooms, and our multicultural assembly ideas for the whole-school version.

What does age-appropriate look like?

Younger children are concrete and, frankly, blunt — a five-year-old will announce that someone’s skin is a different colour. That is curiosity, not prejudice, and shutting it down ("we don’t talk about that") teaches that difference is shameful. Answer plainly instead: yes, people come in different shades, here is why. For K–2, stay with identity, names, feelings, and the simple rule that everyone gets to play.

By grades 3–5, kids can handle nuance and are ready for the harder idea: fairness is not sameness. This is the age to introduce perspective-taking, to talk about why a classmate has supports others do not, and to name exclusion when they see it. They are also acutely social, which cuts both ways — the cliques are forming, and so is the capacity to do something about them.

How do you make it stick?

Pick one norm and hold it. "If someone asks to join, the answer is yes" beats a term of assemblies if the adults enforce it every day. Repeat the language, name it when you see it, and let students catch you failing at it too — modelling repair matters more than modelling perfection.

It also helps to ask the kids. A two-question exit ticket — do you feel like you belong here, and who would you sit with at lunch — tells you more about your school’s climate than any display on the wall. If the same names keep going unpicked, you have found your work for the term.

Whole-school moments help the message land everywhere at once. A live assembly built around belonging gives every class the same vocabulary on the same morning, which is exactly what a classroom norm needs to survive contact with the hallway. When you want that shared launch, you can book a school assembly and we will help you line it up with what teachers are already doing.

Frequently asked questions

What ages are these for? Most work K–5 with small tweaks. Identity work suits the youngest; the fairness and perspective activities land best in grades 3–5.

Isn't this just a lesson about race? No. Race is part of it, but so are ability, language, family structure, and neurodiversity. The skill — noticing who is left out and doing something — transfers across all of them.

What if our school isn't very diverse? Then it matters more, not less. Every classroom contains difference in ability, family, and language, and children in homogeneous schools get the least practice at including people unlike them.

How much time does this take? Ten to fifteen minutes per activity. Frequency beats length — a weekly habit outperforms an annual event.

References

• National Center for Education Statistics. Racial/Ethnic Enrollment in Public Schools, Condition of Education — nces.ed.gov (fall 2012–2022 shifts).

• National Center for Education Statistics. Students With Disabilities, Condition of Education — nces.ed.gov (7.5 million / 15% served under IDEA, 2022–23).

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey, 2021 — cdc.gov (school connectedness and mental health).

About the author: Andre is a presenter with Coast to Coast School Assemblies. Honest disclosure: Coast to Coast sells live assemblies, so treat our enthusiasm for the assembly item on that list accordingly — the classroom activities above need no budget and no vendor, and every statistic is drawn from independent, publicly available research you can verify at the sources listed.