Please enjoy this guest post by Daria, a fabulous musician with lots of great free resources to share!
Monday, January 16th is celebrated as MLK Day. Will you be doing some act of service, large or small on that day? If so, here are some great ways you can involve your kids and bring the experience home, share it with your school classroom or enjoy it with your homeschool group.
First of all, I’d like to share the song I wrote a few years ago that I’m proud to say is being used in classrooms across the USA and even in South Africa and Australia. It’s called I HAVE A DREAM and it’s the free mp3 on my monthly song page (link below). I wrote it because I wanted to find a way to share the life and legacy of MLK with children. But how do you do that? How do you explain things like civil rights, prejudice and racism to young children? I decided to focus on the ideas from MLK’s most famous I HAVE A DREAM speech and include ideas like “being fair,” “thinking of others” and what’s its like to have a mountaintop moment – to see things clearly and in a very positive light. I hope you enjoy the song and feel free to download it and share with others.
In addition to the I HAVE A DREAM song, I’ve worked with a friend who is an artist, and we created some special coloring pages for MLK Day. There are versions for younger kids and one for older children that share great lines from a variety of the most popular MLK speeches. These words are still incredibly inspiring even decades after they’ve been spoken! You can find the link to the coloring pages below.
Along with those items, there are also full color mini-posters of our rainbow of quotes and free sheet music as we have had dozens of requests to perform this song at schools throughout the year.
Additionally, I wanted to include a great link in case you want to get involved in a service project and don’t know where to begin. The government site for MLK day is a wonderful resource as well. It has lots of valuable information plus a special locater where you can enter the name of your city or town and it will share projects on file that you might like to get involved with.
What Does Service Mean To You?
Lastly, I’d love to encourage you to think about what service means to you and your family. Remember, the act of caring and service can be a deceptively small thing. It can involve prayer for the lonely, the hungry or those in need of material goods. It can involve very simple acts of kindness or uplifting words. It can start small but make a huge difference to someone in need of kindness, consideration, help or an expression of compassion or love.
If you take a moment to consider what this can mean to your family, you’ll probably be surprised at how enriching and inspiring this one simple day can be. So go ahead – become a part of a rainbow of kindness, fairness and peace. I know you’ll be great. Remember:
“Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve.”
LINKS:
DARIA’s monthly song page contains free mp3 to the song I HAVE A DREAM, coloring pages, posters and sheet music. Located at:
Find a service project near you: