hand banner for martin luther king jr. day

We made this multi-colored hand banner to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I have some books suggestions for you tomorrow, but I thought you might like to see how this turned out.

I saw this on another site and they had used various shades of browns to make a nice variety of different skin tones. Unfortunately, my supplies were limited--we had construction paper, scrapbook paper, and some craft paper. Not exactly true to skin-tone on ANY of the hands, but it was the best we could do.

We traced Juliet's hand (she liked this part.) And I cut them all out. (She proceeded to empty out ALL her toys from the toy baskets in the five minutes it took for me to complete this task.)

We strung up a brown ribbon over our fireplace and clipped the hands with mini clothespins.

As we surveyed our handiwork, Juliet asked me, "Hey Mom? Why did we make these?"

And I said, "To celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day."

Juliet: "It's a king day?"

Me: "It's a day that celebrates a man whose name was King."

Juliet: "Oh. Why are we celebrating him?"

Me: "He's a man who worked hard to make sure all people were treated equally."

I was waiting for her to ask me what "equally" meant, but instead she said, "Well, Fluffy needs to do his hands." (Fluffy is her stuffed puppy dog--her "best buddy" in the whole wide world.)

So we traced puppy's hands, er, paws...

And hung up some multi-colored paw prints right under our hand banner to celebrate the beauty of all peoples and puppies living together in unity.