MLK and Peace
15 January 2012
We began our peace unit on Friday which was kicked off with a study of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There are so many wonderful resources to use that are based on this great man's life. One of my favorites is the Directed Art Lesson from TLC Lessons by Kaye Espinosa. She posted this as a free lesson a few years ago and I have used it ever since. The pieces are easy to cut and glue and go together pretty easily. The children glue the pieces onto a 12 inch x 18 inch piece of construction paper and fold it like a book so that Dr. King's face is on the front cover. Inside they write some sentences about peace. I did not scan their cute stories, but what they wrote brought happy smiles to my heart. If I get a chance, I will scan some of them when we return to school on Tuesday. As part of our peace unit, we talked about acceptance of people around the world. The bulletin board that we did is similar to many teacher's bulletin boards. But the little twist on this idea was that the children painted tiny little tie dye t-shirts to glue onto their paper person. I cut the person shape from our Ellison machine and then used this shape to make a pattern for a shirt. I traced the pattern onto a coffee filter and then the children painted their shirt with watercolor paints. They then used construction paper to make pants and hair and used their crayons to add details. It turned out cute! Our unit on "I'm a Peaceful Kid!" will continue through next week.