MLK and Crayons

I am so excited about how this lesson turned out that I had to post (during the week, no less!). We are studying Famous Americans and we began with Martin Luther King, Jr. After a great introduction yesterday using Brain Pop Jr. and our class wiki page which contains video of this great man, we read The Crayon Box That Talked today. If you haven't read this book before, it's great for diversity lessons!

After reading the story, I asked the students why we would read a book like this while we were talking about Martin Luther King, Jr. Those smarties of course answered that he wanted equal rights for everyone, no matter the color of their skin. Of course the same applied to the crayons! One of my students even commented on how when the crayons got together, they made a beautiful picture....and don't we as well?

Each child then got to create their own crayon and we made a classroom crayon box. I thought it turned out very cute! (I used bulletin board paper to make the box). The quote on there is from the "I Have a Dream" speech. If you'd like a copy, please let me know and I'll either post it or email it to you!

I'm excited to post my whole Famous Americans unit, but my kids are giving me that look as if we're never getting out of this school tonight, so it'll have to wait until later! :)