Martin Luther King, Jr. (Free Printables!)

Wow, sorry I am so behind on updating! Do you ever find that when you have more time to do something, somehow you end up more behind schedule? I knew I had Monday off this week, so I kept thinking "Oh, I'll do that on my day off..." until Monday arrived and I realized just how much I had put off for my "day off." 

Anyway, to introduce the concept of Martin Luther King, Jr. and what he did for our country, we conduct an "eggsperiment." I ask students to decide between eating two almost identical eggs.  I don't label the eggs other than saying "Would you rather eat the egg on the left for breakfast, or the egg on the right?"

 As you can see, 15 students chose the egg on the left while only 4 chose the egg on the right.  When I asked students why they didn't choose the egg on the right, I got responses such as "it's dirty," "it fell on the ground," "it looks nasty," "it was in the mud," and "it's gross." At no point did I say anything about the egg falling or being dirty. It never touched the ground. It came from the same fridge as the egg on the left.  But students said of the egg on the left "I've had that kind of egg before and it tastes good. It's clean." They used their prior knowledge of when their hands have gotten dirty in the mud and turned brown.

Surprisingly, no students had seen a brown egg before.  Or if they have, they didn't remember it. They were certain that it didn't come from a hen that way! After the discussion about which egg we would eat, I cracked the eggs into a bag:

I asked the students if they could tell any difference now. No one could. They tried to, but when I took the bags and mixed them around/squished the eggs, the consensus from the class was that they were identical despite what they looked like on the outside. Just like all of us!

We also made posters that opened up to our dreams:

I loved Dougie's dream: "I have a dream that one day the dogs and the cats will get along." Hahaha!

To get your own FREE copy of the MLK writing paper (and an additional MLK bubble map), click here!

Last week we also highlighted the letter F by making fish, flowers and a farm map (not pictured):

Creative fish designed by students after reading the story Hooray For Fish!

Tissue paper flowers: students draw a flower and then go back
over each part using torn tissue paper pieces. Great fine motor
skill development activity!

Update on Literacy Bags: Activity pieces are getting laminated this Friday so bags will begin circulation NEXT THURSDAY (the 100th day of school!)

Owl be teaching you more tomorrow!