Mrs. Straight's Kindergarten Korner: Martin Luther King Day

I always LOVE this lesson that revolves around this very special day. What is most amazing to me is that most kids at this age are not aware of skin color and certainly not religion or culture. To them kids are kids!!!! My focus on this day centers around kindness and bullying which is what kiddos this age DO understand. We spent our entire afternoon with activities focusing on this theme.

I started out by showing the class a video depicting the life of Dr. King as a boy and how he grew up. The kiddos immediately were saying things out loud like; "That's mean!" That's not fair!" "I would play with him!" I am so proud of my boys and girls. We had a very interesting discussion on how times used to be and the boys and girls were glad they weren't alive back then!!!

I then presented the kiddos with two boxes. One gift wrapped in fancy paper with a beautiful bow and the other in torn wrinkled newspaper.

I asked the class which gift they would choose and of course they choose the pretty box. So I unwrapped each box and showed them what was inside.

Inside the pretty box ---- rocks!!!!

Inside the plain box ---- M&M's!!!!!

I explained to the class, that it doesn't matter what you look like on the outside it is what is in the side that counts. The kind of person you are --- hopefully sweet and nice. We then talked about the M&M's and how each looked different of the outside they were all the same on the inside...just like people. We all have feelings that can get hurt. So remember to treat people with kindness ALWAYS!

Another favorite activity and book I love to share with the boys and girls goes along with The Crayon Box That Talked. Each student was then given their own copy of the book and we made our own crayon box!

Finally each student wrote about his or her own dream. Many of them were hard to read so I did try to write a caption for each. I decided the world would be a pretty good place if their dreams did come true!