Black History Month---revisited!

I LOVE being able to use Google+ on my phone to take pictures in the classroom. However, I hate that I have to remember to click share so that I can edit them later and if I don't---they are GONE! That's what happened Friday. We did a cute activity and I got home and I had nothing to prove to you that we did it!

So I retook some pictures today of their projects that were hanging up.

We finished up Black History Month on Friday discussing what color skin that we had. I always tell my students that although I'm white---I'm not WHITE! Like paper white. They laugh. But seriously---we are all different. Each one of us is a different color and each color is very important.


To show how important each of us is, regardless of color, here are a few books that we use within the classroom:

 

  

We used the book Shades of Black for this activity. This book went perfectly with my kiddos because it represented everyone in the class. We talked about everyone has a particular skin color, NOT just black and white. As we were reading, we would stop and find someone in the classroom who represented that particular page. You can see the inside of the book here on Amazon. 

I've always seen tons of activities where you compare their skin color to paint samples. I wanted to do that this year (with a smaller class this year---it's sooo much easier to do so much more! :) 

I started the lesson by matching up a paint sample to my skin and naming that sample--I think it was something like Natural Nutmeg Frost. They LOVED it. Then I talked about how that makes me feel. I used words such as beautiful, radiant, happy, excited, etc. And I'm a little---over dramatic shall we say! and this seems to help aid in their thought process and picture drawing.

 

***I had a picture of all the paint samples BEFORE the activity---but it's gone too. I went and found as many "skin tone" colors as I could. Then I asked the art teacher for her skin tone markers and I dug out as many crayons as I could find***

 

After we matched each kid up, they were given their sample and off they went! 

 

Here's what we did! (I LOVE these!!!!)

And I didn't take a picture of every one of them....but they were all amazing! We did help them by writing some of the words on the board, but you can also see some inventive spelling throughout. 

They wrote the name of the sample (glued onto the page) in the top line and how it made them feel in the next line. (Don't you just love the Scrappy Kids from Graphics from the Pond??)

 betitl--beautiful!!!

 hesum---handsome! (love it!)

 

Here's your freebie!