Teacher Instructions

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune in: Exploring diversity

15 minutes

Find out: Let's explore colour

25 minutes

Take action: What are my colours?

10 minutes

Reflection

Tune In: Exploring Diversity

Step 1. Begin by inviting children to sit in a discussion circle. Explain to them that they will be exploring a world of colour. Looking around the room, we can see many different colours - in the furniture, carpet, pictures on the wall and in the people! We are all different and have different coloured hair, eyes and skin. These differences are known as diversity! Explain that Harmony Week is a week celebrated every year and is about celebrating all the diverse cultures that make up Australia, including our First Nations peoples - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples - and all those who live in Australia.

In this activity, children will be exploring diversity through colour. The first thing they will be doing will be to imagine a world without colour. You could share the following image - also available here.

Invite children to share their thoughts about this picture. For example,

I wonder what is happening in this picture.
I wonder what you notice about this picture?

Step 2. Now share this picture - also available here:

You can then pose some of the following questions:

I wonder if this is the same picture as the one before.
I wonder what is different about it?
I wonder what you think of this picture? I wonder if having colour in the picture makes it more interesting.
I wonder what colours can you see in this picture?
I wonder what else you notice about this picture?

Find Out: Let's Explore Colour

Step 1. Time to stand up and move! You can do this activity in the classroom or the playground. Some of the colours may be tricky to find outside!

You will call out a colour, and the students will need to move around the space and find something in that colour. Start with simple colours:

red
blue
green
yellow
orange
purple
pink

And if your students need extension move on to trickier colours:

light blue
dark blue
forest green
maroon
teal

When the students start to have difficulty finding the colours bring them back as a group. Ask the students:

were there any colours they didn’t know?
how many colours do they know?

Record all their answers in a word cloud. If students start to get stuck, you can prompt them to add a noun (e.g. apple green, sky blue, mandarin orange, lemon yellow, strawberry red), or an adjective (e.g. sunny yellow, cool blue, stormy grey, bright pink). You could use this colour chart to help inspire your children.

Lead children to the idea that there are so many different colours in the world!

Step 2. Explain to children that this is the same for people, we come in so many different colours! Take a look at these pictures, you will see lots of different skin colours, eye colours and hair colours - having all these differences is what makes the world a more interesting and colourful place.

Direct children to the different hair colours in the pictures:

I wonder what names you might give the different hair colours? Remind children of how we can use nouns and adjectives to help us explain colours (or refer to the colour chart). For example, lemon yellow, fiery orange, chocolate brown, licorice black.
I wonder if you can find someone in these pictures with the same hair colour as you?
I wonder if you can find anyone in your room with the same hair colour as you?

What about our eye colour? Ask students to work with a partner and look at each other’s eye colour.

What colour are your partner’s eyes?
Can you add a noun or an adjective to that colour to be more descriptive?
Are they all one colour? What colours can you see?

Take action: What Are My Colours?

Step 1. Ask students to move to a drawing station with your selection of Faber-Castell World Colours art materials (or provide children with a range of pencils or crayons in the colours discussed in the previous activities). Using the ‘My Colours’ worksheet students will explore the colours that make up their bodies. You might like to provide them with a colour wheel to help in choosing lighter/darker, or warmer/cooler colours.

Ask students to look closely at their arm and choose a colour from the table that most closely matches their colour. Use this colour to fill the big box and box 1 on their worksheet.

Ask them to put their arm next to the paper. Is it the same? Is their arm lighter (white, light grey, cream, light brown) or darker (black, dark brown, brown, tan) than the box? Ask them to find a lighter or dark colour and add a little bit of colour to the big box, and colour in box 2

Put their arm next to the paper again. Is it closer? Is their arm warmer (red, orange, yellow, pink), or cooler (blue, purple, green) than the box? Ask them to find a warm or a cool colour and add a very little bit of colour to the big box.

Lastly, are there any other colours on their arm? Do they have freckles, birthmarks, hairs, or splotches? Find the right colours and add in some details to your big box, and colour in box 4.

Underneath the big box have the student write down the colour name they would like to give their skin.

Have students share their colours with their neighbours. Did anyone use any of the same colours as you? (even very different final colours may use some of the same colours to get there!)

Step 2. Ask students to look at their hair. Some students may need a mirror to help them with this! Again, ask students to work through finding their hair colour

Find the colour on the table closest to your hair colour (box 1)
does it need to be a little bit lighter (white, light grey, cream, light brown, pale pink) or darker (black, brown, tan, maroon, dark grey, navy)? (box 2)
does it need to be a very little bit warmer (yellow, orange, red, pink) or cooler (blue, green, purple)? (box 3)
does it have any highlights or colour changes? (box 4)
what name will you give your hair colour?

Step 3. Finally, ask students to use a mirror to look at the iris(the coloured part) of their eyes. Repeat the same steps to find their eye colour.

Through this process, reiterate to children that although we all look different to each other, we are similar when compared to other things, like cats or bananas or trees. Sometimes our differences can mean we come from different cultures, speak different languages at home, wear different clothes, have different types of families and have different experiences. But we are all people! We can celebrate our differences while knowing that we are all the same inside; we all like laughing and being happy, we all feel sad or angry sometimes, we all feel pain when we hurt ourselves, and we all like playing.

Remind children about Harmony Week and how it is a day for celebrating all the diverse cultures that make up Australia. In the next activity, children will be creating a picture as a way of celebrating Harmony Week.

Part B: Self-Portraits

Step 1. Explain to children that they are now going to think about how we are different to other people and how we are the same as other people by creating a self-portrait. A self-portrait is a picture that you create of yourself that shows how you think of yourself. (You could share some of these examples of self-portraits with children.)

Create two lists with the students:

what will be the same on all of our portraits? (e.g. you will have a head, mouth, nose, chin, ears, eyes, cheeks etc.)
what will be different about our portraits? (colours, clothes, shapes, sizes, glasses, hairstyles etc.)

Step 2. Share your selection of Faber Castell World Colours art materials (or provide children with a range of pencils or crayons in the colours used in the previous activities). Make sure children can refer to their ‘My Colours’ worksheet to see what colours they used before.

Using the ‘This is Me’ worksheet ask students to draw a self-portrait using all of the colours they identified previously. You could also invite children to consider what they’d like to include in the background of their artwork:

Are they in a place where they love spending time?
Are they doing something they love?
Are they with their family?

As the children draw, ask them to colour in the boxes around their picture, one for every colour they use in their drawing. Provide children with time to complete their self-portraits.

Reflection

Explore the self-portraits and the colours used with the children. You could

Ask students to move around the room and find someone else who used one of the same colours in their portrait. Students could then write their name in the box with the same colour (e.g. Mia and Alex both used ‘Toast Brown’ so Alex can write Mia in that colour box on his portrait and vice versa.)

OR

Create a display of your students' artwork on a pin board. Using pins and string, connect colours from different portraits together to show where they have been used throughout the class.

Create a display for your children’s self-portraits where they can be viewed and enjoyed by other children, educators and parents visiting your centre. Include information about Harmony Week and the activities that children participated in (such as exploring and celebrating diversity).

Differentiated Learning

Children may have their own ideas about how to extend this activity with the materials used in this activity, or you could consider the following:

Work as a group to identify other differences and similarities with the way children look and with the things that they like. For each question, children could form a group of people who are the same as them. For example:
- Can you find someone with the same hair length or hairstyle as you?
- Can you find someone wearing the same coloured clothes as you?
- Can you find someone who likes the same ice cream flavour as you?
Suggest the prompt ‘World Colours’ to children and Invite them to make a drawing of a place that they love (e.g. the park or the beach or someone's home) and to make their drawing as colourful as they can
Read children some stories that include diversity, for example here, here, here and here, or find a book through the National Centre for Australian Childrens Literature Cultural Diversity Database. This book - The Colours of Us by Karen Katz - explicitly discusses skin colour and although is an American book may still be useful and enjoyable for children.
Invite children to draw and colour faces with this colouring-in sheet

More information about Faber-Castell and their range of art materials for young children can be found here.

Faber-Castell: World Colours

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