Martin Luther King Jr. Day falls on the third Monday in January. Schools celebrate Martin Luther King Day by recognizing his work and the work of others toward equality within the United States. Activities for kindergartners can pose some challenges. This age group is not ready for in-depth analysis of King's speeches and impact. For a kindergarten classroom, general discussion, poems, coloring and music are age-appropriate activities.
Coloring Activities
Find printable resources for coloring activities. Website such as Apples 4 The Teacher and Teacher Vision have multiple resources for printable coloring activities for your students. Kindergartners like making books. Have students color multiple pages and make a book. Teacher Vision offers an "I Have A Dream" Little Book that students can cut, color and glue together. This book allows children to tie in to the works of Dr. King with dreams that they have for their lives and the people of the world.
Books
Reading to children is a large part of kindergarten. Students want to be read to. Find age-appropriate books to read to your class. Books like the Scholastic paperback "What Is Martin Luther King Jr. Day?" describe who Martin Luther King Jr. was, his works and why he is important. Other books include "Happy Birthday Martin Luther King, Jr." by Jean Marzollo and J. Brian Pinkney. Ask trusted experienced teachers or local librarians for other books that are appropriate for a kindergarten classroom.
Music
Kindergartners like to listen to and move to music. It is also an effective way to tie the coloring or book activities together with songs about Martin Luther King Jr. Web sites like Songs For Teaching offer a number of offerings for Martin Luther King Day. The songs can either be taught to the students or played while completing other activities. Make up a simple dance that can be completed by the students to the music.
Creative Activities
Provide the students with a picture of a person dreaming. Have the students draw a picture of what their dreams are about. Have the students write a simple sentence to state what their dream is about. Have the students work on sounding out words. The sentence should start with a capital letter, the words need to be properly spaced and the sentence needs to end with a period. Spelling at this age is not as important as structure of the sentence.
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