Martin Luther King Jr.

One of the fun things about teaching kindergarten is presenting concepts that are "tough" to understand. Today we spent half the afternoon learning about Martin Luther King Jr. One of the big ideas that we explored was tolerance. Breaking it down to a level that they could understand, I told them that tolerance is being okay with the things that make us different. You can't avoid how some people judge others by the color of their skin (or really any odd thing as well). We played a game where the kids moved either to the "Yes' side of the room or then "No" side of the room. I asked a lot of fun questions / statements;

"Are you the oldest kid in the family? (or youngest?)

"I love grilled cheese."

It was a fun activity for the kids to see that their are differences between each of them. I also told them "only the brown haired kids will get to have an afternoon snack." I did this to see what type of reaction I would get. Some of the kids were obviously very excited and some of them were a little upset. I told them that since I had brown hair that brown hair was the best and that they would be getting a snack. Too bad for those of you that don't have brown hair. After some whining from the lighter haired kids, I let the brown haired kids vote whether we should let everyone have the snack or not. Fortunately there were more votes for letting all have a snack than were opposed. I know that a few of the brown haired kids voted no at first only as a joke.

My hope is that these kids never have to deal with the type of injustice that Martin Luther King Jr. faced, but I know that it is possible that they might.