Imaginary play allows children to take on different roles and to learn to view situations from other perspectives. Boys and girls can participate in imaginary play, such as pretending to be doctors, using stuffed animals and dolls, or pretending to be chefs, playing with cooking utensils. This not only teaches them that they can be equal even if they're different genders, but they also can learn about empathy, because kids begin to understand the feelings of others through cooperative play.
Creating an equality collage allows children to express or represent the feeling or value of equality. Provide kids with magazines or ask them to bring their own. They can cut out images showing equality -- such as religious images, scales, people of different races or identical pairs of images -- and use glue to paste the images on paper. Children can also use colored pencils, pens, pastels, crayons and markers to illustrate the theme of equality by drawing their own images. When the kids are finished creating the collage, each one can stand in front of the class and explain the images that they chose to represent equality.
Read a story about equality to help the children learn more about themselves and others. Some books about equality are "Whoever You Are" by Mem Fox, "A School Like Mine" by DK Publishing and "We Are Alike, We are Different" by Janice Behrens. After reading the book, engage the children in a discussion about things that happened in the book. Additionally, ask children to define equality in their own words and why it's important that everyone is treated the same. Ask the kids to site examples of times when they were not treated equally and how they felt about it. Also discuss the importance or treating others the way they would want to be treated.
Children can play a game that teaches them about equality in which they all have an equal turn. The object of the game is for children to do equal things. Kids stand in a circle and use their bodies to create mirror images. One child enters and stands in the center of the circle and makes an action of his choice while the kids sing the song, "Punchinello." Everyone copies the action such as turning around as they sing. The child in the middle then chooses another child to be in the center of circle who makes up his or her own action. This is repeated until all the children have a chance to be in the middle.