MLK Day

AMBITIOUS PLANS: I know that most kids in the United States had today off from school in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Well, we here at Magnolia Preparatory Academy certainly honored King today, but it didn't mean a break from the books for CJ and Annabelle!

We started by reading a trio of books I'd scored at the library last week. Together, they gave the kids a good foundation of knowledge about who King was and why we still talk about him (his legacy).

Next stop: BookFlix, a Website from the people at Scholastic. I knew we'd find a great read along book ("Martin Luther King, Jr." by Wil Mara) as well as a great video, "Martin's Big Words" by Doreen Rappaport. (I also found the "Big Words" video on YouTube. It's recommended viewing - really well done.)

(Note to interested parties: BookFlix is great - once you get in. It's intended for schools, libraries and other institutions and you need a username and password to use it. I get in by using the Seattle Public Libraries portal. Anyone who wanted to could get in by going straight to the BookFlix site and logging in directly. All you have to do is search the Internet using "BookFlix" and "password" as your search terms and some will pop up. Interestingly, the first one I found by searching was Magnolia [small world!] Trace Elementary [mtes = username, bookflix = password].)

TRACING TIME: Armed with lots of information, we were finally ready for our combination creative art-math-language art project. We'd be constructing a timeline of milestones in Martin Luther King Jr.'s life. I explained to the kids that timelines are really handy when you're studying history - they help you remember what happened when.

First, we stretched a roll of paper the length of the table. Next, we drew a long, horizontal line down the middle of it. Next, the kids wrote the years we'd be highlighting onto little rectangles, and glued those in order on the timeline. They also took into account how close those year rectangles should be together - right next to each other for consecutive years, further apart for dates more spaced out

Our next step was writing down the important event that happened in the highlighted years, ranging from Martin's birth in Alabama in 1928 to MLK Day becoming a national holiday in 1983. This step took the longest, as it involved a fair amount of writing, often words unfamiliar to the kids. ...

For instance, as Annabelle was penning the 1957 fact box to read: "Elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference," she said (with a completely straight face), "Daddy's not a southern Christian, he's a northern Christian!"

With the fact boxes in place, it was time for some flair! :) We found a couple of photos of MLK we all liked online and printed them out and glued them on. For our final step, I had the kids each trace their hand five times on different colored paper. They cut them out and then on each hand they wrote a descriptive word (leader, minister, teacher, protester, author, hero, peaceful, dreamer, and so on) about Martin Luther King Jr. We glued them on and (five hours later!) voila! a colorful, factual timeline of an American icon's life. Pretty cool.
SOLEMN SOUNDTRACK: While the kids were working on the timeline, I played a variety of songs for them, one being the beautiful "Up to the Mountain," a tribute to King Jr. by Patty Griffin. It begins, "I went up to the mountain, Because you asked me to, Up over the clouds, To where the sky was blue, I could see all around me, Everywhere I could see all around me, Everywhere."

I had to play U2's "Pride (In the Name of Love)," which is also about King Jr. The video I chose included quotes, videos and images of MLK. "Early morning, April 4, Shot rings out in the Memphis sky, Free at last they took your life, They could not take your pride." Powerful stuff.

Next up was "We Shall Overcome" (by Joan Baez, of course!), because it was such an anthem of the civil rights movement.

And, of course, I played King's "I Have a Dream" speech. After that, I made the mistake of watching Walter Cronkite's broadcast the night of MLK's assassination. That about rips your heart right out of your ribcage. ...

FALLOUT: Not a bit surprisingly, the kids' brains were spinning with all of the information they'd been given about Martin Luther King Jr., his life - and his death. CJ seemed especially affected.

Around lunchtime CJ said he wanted "to find the man who shot (MLK) and beat him up so he can never shoot Martin Luther King Jr. again."

Annabelle quickly countered, " Well, he can't (shoot him again) because Martin Luther King Junior has already died."

Though it didn't sit well, that made sense to CJ. His workaround: "I'll keep an eye on (James Earl Ray), and if I see him about to shoot somebody, I'll punch him in the back and call the police."

I told him I appreciated the sentiment, but he didn't have to worry about that. Ray died in prison in 1999.

Later in the afternoon, while playing with his Ninja Turtles, CJ asked, "Is (sic) there any more 'white only' signs?" I told him that I hoped not.

And later still CJ said, "I wish I could go back in time and change history. It'd take a shield to stop (the bullet) from hitting (MLK) and then he wouldn't die."

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: When taking a shower today, CJ was shampoo and soap resistant. I told him it wasn't negotiable. His counter, "When I'm a man, my soap-washin' days are over!"