Martin Luther King Day is celebrated on the third Monday of every year, a day before the civil rights leader was officially born. Click here to see how we did it in 2017. It's a day to not only celebrate the life and legacy of a great leader but also to teach his ideas of freedom and racial equality to a whole new generation.

Check out the following ideas to make every third Monday an MLK Day.

Prepare an Interactive Presentation

Keep this unofficial MLK Monday simple by informing young kids about King, but make it interactive through a colorful presentation and lots of opportunities for input.

Treat the quiz part of your presentation as a pop-up book. For instance, blank out the "dream" in "I have a dream" and follow it with a slide depicting the blanked word. Sprinkle these small quizzes throughout the presentation to retain their attention from start to end.

Encourage Mixed Interaction

MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech defined his entire struggle. It spoke of a world where people of all races would unite and create a just and equal world. Unfortunately, a large part of his dream remains unrealized due to a racist system that promotes modern-day segregation.

If you know what we're talking about, you know what we mean by encouraging mixed interactions. Don't let the different experiences of these kids stop them from mingling. You can get your students to sit with someone else for a change if you're a teacher. You can do this during lunch, homeroom, or class. Do this every month for long enough, and you'll see a level of comfort between students.

Speak on Equal Civil Rights

Take this chance to mold your kids into future leaders. King is best known for "I Have a Dream," a speech he gave during the March on Washington. Make your children read the transcript of that speech, and sit with them to write an equally riveting piece of text about equal civil rights.

Encourage your children to write exactly how they want to see the US one day. You can create a bullet point sheet of their ideal future and then ask them to use these points and turn them into a speech, emulating MLK's style.

Assign a Reading Task

You don't have to be a teacher to assign your kids a reading task, not with Kennedys and King at your disposal. Suppose you want your children to learn nothing but the truth behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King. In that case, we suggest taking excerpts from our archives, preparing multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions, and assigning them as an individual, pair-or group-based reading comprehension activity.

Follow suit with the other political figures covered by our platform. Browse our website to take a closer look at the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X.

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