Ask each child to study a lemon, put it in a basket with other children's lemons, and retrieve their respective lemons. Children usually report using their lemon's outward characteristics to retrieve their lemons. Collect all the lemons, peel them, put them all back in the basket, and ask each child to find their lemons again. Children invariably report they cannot find their lemons because "they all look the same." Discuss how lemons, like people, may vary on the outside but be similar on the inside. Ask students whether they think the diversity in lemons and people has value.
Ask each child to draw a picture of a playground using just one crayon. After several minutes, give each child an entire box of crayons, and ask them each to draw another picture of a playground using as many crayons as they want. Ask the children which picture they like best and why. Children invariably say they prefer the multicolored pictures, and that the pictures drawn with just one crayon are boring. Discuss how each crayon contributes to the picture, and how characteristics that distinguish people and crayons enable each of them to contribute to a situation.
Give each child a puppet with unique strengths and weaknesses to demonstrate how diversity is useful. For example, you might have a rabbit that has well-tuned hearing, but is blind in one eye; a monkey that has sharp eyesight, but has difficulty climbing trees because he has only one arm; and a giraffe that can reach things high up in trees, but does not talk much. Make sure that each child understands his respective character's strengths and weaknesses. Present a situation where the rabbit needs help, and ask the rabbit's owner what his character should do. If the child does not know, ask the other children who can help the rabbit. If nobody knows, remind the children the monkey has keen eyesight, so it can help the rabbit. Repeat the exercise with the other animals.
Talk with the children about how individual differences make it difficult to make judgments about groups. For example, in the exercise from step three, children see that not all monkeys climb trees well. Tell the children that before they can reach any conclusions about someone, they need to get to know the individual's strengths and weaknesses, how other people react to those strengths and weaknesses and how those reactions make the individual feel.