Martin Luther King, Jr. New years and the 100th day of school OH MY!

After a two week birthday celebration it's back to blogging! We completed the Martin Luther King, Jr. bulletin board! I read "Martin's Big Words" to my students and we played a fun vocabulary game thanks to this MLK mini unit I found on teachers pay teachers. I had a student sit in a seat and showed the word to the other students and in turn they would act out the vocabulary word and the person seated would have to guess the word. After this fun game there wasn't much time left to  work on the art project. So throughout the next week I slowly collected a dove made from their foot and hands and their idea of what peace means. Some I have to say really got the concept while others took their own literal interpretation.

Martin's Big Words, great book for K-3rd to learn about him!

Another great picture book "I Have a Dream" and it comes with a CD of his original speech, but I think it's a little over a K-3rd grade level. Perfect for middle school  though!

Peace means to be friends with everyone. (K)

Peace means to have freedom of speech. (4th)

Peace means no one is attacking you. (2nd)

Peace means happiness. (3rd)

Peace means I like being a school with my friends. (K)

Peace means to have freedom and everyone should be respected! (5th)

The final result, still missing two but it looks great!

I found so many great picture books all on the civil rights movement and I can't wait to share them next month for Black History month. The next major holiday we will be celebrating is the Chinese New Year. We used to have a computer tech who would come in and give his personal accounts of how his family celebrated the day. To keep diversity in the classroom I like introducing my students to different cultures and celebrations. I read picture books that inform students about that culture and include an art project. This year I did my research on good Chinese New Year picture books and hit my local library in search of them. Luckily our bookmobile had a wide selection of picture books. Here's a picture of the ones I chose to use in my classroom:

The Runaway Wok, My First Chinese New Year, Paper Crafts for Chinese New Year...

Chinatown and Ruby's Wish

Their favorite one is "The Runaway Wok". On Thursday, I plan to make lion masks with the kids and cook some healthy fried rice. After making an example of the lion my kinders couldn't help but try it on and it looks AWESOME!!

RAWWRR!!

They loved seeing their picture after!

Last but not least, our 100th day of school is just around the corner!! On February 3rd we will be celebrating this milestone. This means that our school year is in the home stretch and more then half way over. Each year I try to change it up and because of TPT and Pinterest I have even more ideas of what I want to do with the kiddos!

Every year my husband and I blow up 100 balloons and they get a little free play with them in the morning

We also built these fun towers with 100 red cups!

The past few years I had students decorate shirts that say "I Survived 100 days of..." and their grade. They continue to wear them throughout the year.

We had fun keeping the balloons contained when we had to work. 

One 100th day freebie I found has nineteen pages of entertainment and I can't wait to use it in the classroom. If your looking for something quick and easy, this is it! So glad I found it so I can add it to our day!

Happy Tuesday!