A Way to Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

This year, we wanted to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. and celebrate by learning how we too can make a difference in this world. We started off with reading about Martin Luther King, Jr. and his accomplishments. Then, we talked about our country and the Civil Rights Movement. We talked a lot about how we can still continue to make changes and help.

Children reaching across a table with shoe prints. Some shoe prints with quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. and others with sayings of I can change the world by:

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

We started off with a read aloud. We listened to the story of Martin Luther King, Jr. written and read by Brad Meltzer. Here is a link the video that we watched: “I Am Martin Luther King, Jr.” This story is part of a series of books called: Ordinary People Change the World. We really enjoy this series. The goal of the series is to give children role models to look up to and to empower them to see the potential within themselves. There is a moral to every story with lessons in justice, compassion, and kindness.

After learning more specifically about Martin Luther King, Jr and the civil rights movement. We talked about the people in our life and how our lives would be different if we still lived during the time frame of segregation. We also talked about recent events and how we still have a long way to go.

Challenging Our Children

In order to continue the hard work set forth by those before us, we must also continue their work. The goal of today was to empower my children to find a way that they can continue to push forward his work and change our world today. We continued our discussion on how we can continue to make change. To start, I will admit, my children did not believe they could in any way create change. So we brought the focus back down to smaller things. How could they help to change each other’s day? Great, how can you help to make your teacher’s day a little better? Okay, now how do you think you could help in your community? It took some coaxing and a little bit of hard work but everyone came around and thought of some ideas.