Decorate the Black Child’s Shirt: A Simple Digraph Activity For kindergarteners

by learningstepbystep | Dec 29, 2023 | DIY Crafts & Activities | 0 comments

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As a mother of colour raising littles of colour, one of my goals is to help my little ones understand that our world is sometimes very cold. I have to teach my children that people might not like them because of the colour of their skin. The beautiful chocolate skin they live in. The beautiful chocolate skin that God made them in!

I make it clear to them that they have not done anything wrong, and it is not their fault why others are uncomfortable with the colour of their skin being different.

With every opportunity I get, I remind my children that they are made by God the way they are and that He made no mistakes. They are fearfully and wonderfully made by a Loving God who fashioned and created them in perfect love. So they must love themselves in all seasons of this life they have been blessed with.

One way I am constantly reminding my little ones of their uniqueness is by intentionally creating learning activities with characters of colour or allowing them to do activities which require them to draw their faces and colour their skin with the right colour crayons. When my little ones are doing these activities, they open the door to so many meaningful and intentional conversations around the topic of racism.

These activities are not just done at the beginning of the school year when the All About Me themed activities are being focused on, but at home, we focus on diversity all year round. My little ones see themselves, family members and friends represented through these simple yet intentional and fun activities.

Here is a simple activity the girls and I did to work on reviewing Consonant Digraphs.

Decorate the Black Child’s Shirt: A Simple Digraph Activity For kindergarteners

What are Digraphs?

Digraphs are two letters combined to make one sound or phoneme. For example, the ph in the word photo. The Ph in the word photo together makes the phoneme /f/.

Did you know:

When the letters in a digraph are both consonants, are they called consonant digraphs?

When the letters are vowels, they are called vowel digraphs or vowel teams.

Examples of consonant diagraphs are:

Sh, wh, th, ph, ch ph, ng, ck

Please note: On our activity, you will see the letters’ Qu’ included as a digraph. QU is taught as a digraph to young readers even though it does not have two consonants or vowels. Qu is a combination of the phonemes /k/ and /w/, but Q and U are usually together, so Qu is taught as a digraph.

Materials you will need to recreate this activity:

Learning journal
White paint marker pen
Brown and black construction paper
Brown circular stickers (You can also use construction paper to draw circles or whatever shape you choose and have your little ones glue them onto the black child’s shirt.)
Crayons
Glue
Scissors

How to put this simple activity together:

I am always looking for or creating activities that are really simple and easy to put together because I know as moms and teachers, we are pressed for time but do our best to make learning fun for our little ones. So here are the five simple steps I followed to create this activity.

Step 1: Draw a circle on light brown construction paper for the face of the child and place it on a darker shade of brown paper. ( You can choose any colour to glue your circle onto.)

Step 2: Place the face in the middle of a piece of black construction paper and draw out the style/shape of the child’s hair. Use your scissors to cut out the hair and glue the face down onto the hair.

Step 3: Work at securing all the parts together with glue.

Step 4: Use your white paint marker to write the digraphs onto the black child’s shirt and circle them. ( I traced one of the stickers, I wrote the words on, cut it out, and used it to draw the circles onto the shirt. That way, the stickers would fit neatly into the spaces provided.)

Step 5: Use a brown paint marker to write the words you want to teach or review on the stickers.

There you have it! In five simple steps, your little one will have some learning fun!

This activity is also great for:

Spatial awareness
Fine motor skills
Cognitive skills
Organizational skills
Focus and concentration
Hand-eye Coordination
Pincer grasp
Visual Scanning
Biliteral hand coordination

How this simple activity was presented:

Each child was given an activity sheet with the digraphs written on it and a set of stickers with the words containing the digraphs written on them.

I made the sound of each digraph, and since we were reviewing, the girls had to find the letters making the sound they were hearing.

After we identified all the digraphs, we read all of them together, making the sound, then talking about the individual letters, and then the sounds they make when they are together.

We then read the words on all the stickers.

I then called each word, and they had to tell what digraph they could hear, point it out on the sticker, then peel it and match it to the correct digraph on the shirt/activity base. This step was repeated until all the stickers were on the activity base.

We then reread the words, made the sound of the digraph in each word and underlined the digraph in each word using crayons.

The girls then worked on their own to draw in the eyes, noses and mouths.

This Simple yet fun activity can be used to teach or practice other skills.

Some examples are:

Letter matching
Number name recognition
One-to-one correspondence
Short Vowel words (CVC words)
Shape recognition

How would you use this simple activity?

We do hope you find this simple activity useful.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us by sending us a message or visiting us @learning.stepbystep on Instagram, Learning Step By Step on Facebook and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for educational resources that will help you and your littles on their learning journey as they continue to Learn Step By Step!

Thank you for being here!

Kimberlee and the Learning Step By Step Team.