Happy Birthday Dr. King!

How nice it was to have a day off today! On Friday my husband and I decided on a very last minute trip to Vegas! Let's put it this way- I was booking our hotel room as we were on the 15 freeway in the middle of nowhere! It was so nice to get away and having that extra day made it possible! Stopping at the outlets on the way home was also fab-u-lous!!  The last time I was in Vegas was July for the Kindergarten Conference.

Okay... let's focus here....On Friday my class and I read books about about Dr. King. We had a long discussion about him and his message.  "The Catch of the Day" (in my ocean themed classroom this is the person who is my helper for the day) got to make arbitrary rules when dismissing the others to recess. She announced, "anyone wearing blue can go to recess." (Don't worry- I promise everyone got a recess that day!) But we talked afterwards about how unfair that would be if differences allowed some people to have more rights than others. I still have trouble understanding how any of this actually happened, but the kids just go into shock when they hear about segregation.

We then made the TLC Dr. King. This is one of my favorites!!! I love how all the kids do the yarn hair in a different way and it is just "so kindergarten" for lack of a better term.

Kaye Espinosa from TLC Lessons does some great work. The MLK project comes from her Winter Book. Click {HERE} to go to her site.

Tomorrow we will be writing, "I have a dream...." and later in the week we will be reading Todd Parr's book, "It's Okay to be Different." He says, "It's okay to dance by yourself" which is good news for me. Another quote from this fun book is, "it's okay to wear glasses" which I think hits home for many of the little ones in class.

I found this free writing page on Kelley's blog, Teacher Idea Factory. Sorry I only have my sample to share..... but my little guys haven't completed theirs yet. (What I wanted to write is: "It's okay to watch The Bachelor" ..... which is what I will be doing any second now... but really, is it okay?) What I actually wrote is "It's okay to talk to yourself" because I DO IT every day and my little ones hear me. So I think they will get a kick out of it.

Have a great short week!