January means back to school, starting our winter vocabulary and celebrating Martin Luther King Day with our students by teaching them about hope, kindness, peace, dreams, and public speaking.
I got a cute bulletin board idea from THIS PIN by Michelle at Just Wild About Teaching.
Although the bulletin board turned out adorable, the activity that we did to decorate it was even more precious. Latoya Reed at Flying Into First has an amazing free download in her TpT Store that was PERFECT for my kiddos. One of my goals this year is to incorporate writing into my groups. It takes longer for activities, but the benefit is huge. I love to watch the kids sound out their words and spell phonetically using their emerging writing skills. It's fascinating to me!
Before we began writing and drawing, we talked about what a dream is. Of course the subject of scary dreams came up and we had to talk about the difference in dreams when we sleep and dreams such that are life goals. I tried to explain this in a way as "something you can't even imagine that you would like to do or be one day." This was a difficult task to comprehend for my littles. I watched their eyes and faces transform from confused to silly to HOPEFUL.
After much consideration and self reflection...as much as a five year old can do in less than 30 minutes, I was just amazed at the responses that were given. My first Kinder kiddo had the idea that he would want to ride on the back of a dinosaur! We talked about fiction and reality for a minute and he decided that in REAL life, the best thing he could even imagine would be digging for dinosaur bones. His condition was, they all needed to be pretty close together and not spread apart. As he began to illustrate his sentence, he included his boots, his hat and of course his "vest with lots of pockets." My favorite part of this conversation was when I asked him if he needed tools in his picture. He said, "No. I'm the boss. The boss just walks around and looks!" At this point I just smiled and thought to myself, "Well little buddy, you might be onto something and of course you will be the boss!" He reluctantly added some tools... Isn't it amazing?
Once they completed their masterpiece, we all went into the hall and made a huge production out of placing their dream alongside the dreams of their peers. I had them recite their dream aloud for the whole group to hear. It was just an amazing day! I have never been more proud of a bulletin board...
Now I would like to share the other dreams from that day and share their illustrations below:
My students now dream and can one day...
...go to the park with my family.
...be like Batman.
...be a Dallas Cowboy.
...live in a castle.
...take my brother to the beach.
...sail in the ocean.
...be a policeman.
...be a fireman.
What are your dreams?
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. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.