"I have a dream" introducing race and equality

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's famous "I have a dream" speech, so I decided today to talk a bit about race equality with Arthur.  Obviously this is a very deep subject for a toddler, so I literally just talked about there being lots of people in the world and we all have different colour skin but we are the same.

Activity wise, whilst listening to the speech revisited here on Radio 4  by various notorious speakers, I drew around Arthur's hand a number of times, which he loved, and let him colour them in using various colours.  Whilst he was doing this I made a simple Dove out of paper, which he loved trying to make also, and told him the Dove was a symbol of peace.  He then enjoyed flying the Dove around the room for a bit.

I then thought a simple way of showing him different types of people would be for me to cut out a number of faces from magazines and get him to glue together a collage, especially as he enjoys sticking.  Well 20 minutes and various catelogues,  super market magazines and junk mail from the recycling bin later, lots of white people, no Chinese people, and a very limited number of Black and Asian people later we have a not very diverse collage!  It amazed me really, and made me realise that I've never really noticed the lack of diversity in advertising.

Our last activity was another hand print and sticking activity seeing as Arthur enjoys them so much, I drew round his hand and cut it out in various colours of paper and together we stuck them down in a circle. 

Apart from books on various feasts and festivals, gods and legends, I also realised I don't really own any children's books containing different colour children, they generally contain monsters, caterpillars, and Gruffalos.  Although I have read Handa's Suprise to Arthur from the library before and definitely recommend it as a great story, I realised I definitely need to invest in some more books!

A definite eye opener of a day for me, although probably not really for the children, but Arthur had fun and Alyssa was playing with her toys and listening too.

Colouring the handprints

"Folding" paper

Paper dove

Sticking the pictures down

Almost done

Some added colouring

 

 

 

 

Circle of hands

P.S. You may notice Arthur has a black eye on his left eye in the pics, my poor little man ran into the bathroom, slipped and headbutted the toilet!! I would say that was the worst moment of my life, but honestly, that was the day I slipped down a set of concrete steps whilst he was a baby and he went flying out of my arms!! Daddy has taught him to say "check out my shiner!" boys will be boys!!