racism is a grown-up disease and we must stop using our children to spread it

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
Today we learned about Martin Luther King Jr. and how he helped our country become a place that treats people equally.
We talked a bit about Martin Luther King Jr. and what life was like for dark skinned people a long time ago. The children were very surprised to find out that in those days children with dark skin and children with light skin did not play together or go to the same schools, they didn't even go to the same stores or restaurants or drink out of the same drinking fountains. We read a story about Ruby Bridges, a young African American girl that was chosen to be one of the first African American students in an all-white school in the south in the year 1960. Each day as she walked to school white people taunted her and called her names and threw things at her. She had to walk to school with two marshals sent by the President for protection. She was very brave and never gave up, she knew that she was doing something great for all African American children.
Eventually the people gave up trying to scare Ruby and by the time she was in second grade she was able to walk peacefully to school and enjoy playing and learning with white and black friends.

Our group activity was to think about the ways that each of the students in our class are different and which ways we are the same. We made a classroom chart about our similarities and differences and read the book "We are all alike, we are different". To show the children what words like racism, or prejudice means I passed out two m&m's to the boys of the class but left the girls out. Pretty quickly the all of the children were wondering why things were not equal. I explained that that was how people lived back then, the white children and the dark skinned children did not have the same education, schools, or opportunities. I asked them if that was fair and they said "NO!" Of course I passed the rest of the m&m's out to every ones relief! We are so lucky to live in a place that allows people of all skin colors to grow, learn and play together.

Before nap time we read the book "The Color Of Us" and we compared all of our skin colors. Each and every one of us has slightly different skin colors and different hair and eyes and each of those things makes us wonderfully unique. We wouldn't want it any other way.

Our group was very small today with some kids out for the holiday and a couple out with colds so we were not able to make our vegetable soup with such few veggies so we had quesadillas again with apple and cauliflower and broccoli and veggie dip.

After nap we traced and colored our hand prints using multicultural crayons to represent all of the colors of the children that are in our class. We colored in the hands and matched them up with our own skin colors and then colored the background of the paper a different color. The pictures turned out very sweet.