ML King day

[momofsix]

My school-agers that don't have school today don't even know why they're off My own kids have school, but the whole day is a celebration of different cultures and a day of community service both in the school and at outside venues, which is a great way to celebrate the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.!
Here in our daycare today we will be talking about this poem, and celebrating differences in us all!

http://www.kinderteacher.com/ABoxOfCrayons.htm

Have a great Monday!

[Lilbutterflie]

That's a great poem! I had a simple discussion this morning with my DD (in kindergarten) about who MLK Jr was and why he was so important. Last week was supposedly an "MLK theme" in her classroom, but I don't think they really discussed the reason for the holiday one bit!

I also wanted to point out that the story of Dr Suess's The Sneetches is a great one too! The star-belly sneetches exclude the sneetches without stars. Here's how the story ends:
"I'm quite happy to say...
That the Sneetches got really quite smart on that day,
The day they decided that Sneetches are Sneetches
And no kind of Sneetch is the best on the beaches.
That day, all the Sneetches forgot about stars
And whether they had one, or not, upon thars."

[QualiTcare]

i was shocked when i worked with a group of school age children who had no clue who he was - including african american and bi-racial children. i didn't expect K students to understand, but 3rd and 4th graders surprised me. when i was in school, we had to do "reports" on people like rosa parks, MLK, etc.

i agree the sneetches is a great book to get the concept across. if you REALLY want to make it meaningful, you can do a mini-version of an experiment jane elliot did back in the day.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/

an easy way to do it is to tie it in with the sneetches. give half of the kids stars (pinned to their shirts) and give those kids who have stars special priveleges. if you can do it over two days or even longer, you can switch so each kid gets a chance to be a have and have not. it's really not hard to do (except when the first group of have nots are saying that's not fair, etc, etc.) and it makes for one heck of a discussion. they'll never forget it.