Have your students help you create a bulletin board that celebrates Dr. King and his "I Have a Dream" speech. After discussing the famous speech, ask students what their dreams are for the world and write them down on individual pieces of paper. Provide children with white construction paper and instruct them to cut out a cloud shape. Glue each child's dream in the center of their clouds and have them glue cotton balls around them. Take a photo of each student and staple it beneath the cloud. Hang a picture of Dr. King in the center of the bulletin board and hang your students' dreams around it. Discuss the dreams of classmates and how they can make the dreams come true.
Read a story to your students that promotes multicultural awareness. Titles to consider include: "Whoever You Are," by Mem Fox; "The Colors of Us," by Karen Katz; and "We're Different, We're the Same," by Bobbi Jane Kates. After reading the story and discussing things that make us different and the same, have children illustrate a page for a class book. Instruct children to think about something that unifies people, despite how they look or where they live. For example, a student may choose to draw a picture of people eating, or people sleeping, things that everyone does. After they've drawn their pictures, ask artists to describe their picture and write down what they say on a sentence strip and glue it to the picture. Assemble all pictures and bind them to create a class book.
Your students will gain a real understanding of how unfair discrimination is with this activity. As you transition to different activities throughout the day, instruct students wearing only a specific color or with a specific hair color to do something. For example, during snack or play time, you may say, "Only children wearing the color red may have a snack," or "Only children with blonde hair may play." Listen to the reactions of your students and ask them how they feel. Discuss discrimination and explain that it is what Dr. King worked toward ending.
Use food coloring to dye eggs different colors. Set the eggs out and have children examine them. Let them hold the eggs and look at them with magnifying glasses. Discuss the differences on the outside of the eggs. Invite children to break the eggs open over a bowl and look at what was inside each egg. Explain that even though the eggs look different on the outside, on the inside they are all the same.