Martin Luther King Jr. and President's Day Activities for Speech and Language

I hope you all had a great holiday weekend.  I wanted to give you some ideas of what you can do help your speech and language kids learn about and understand the significance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Day and President’s Day.  So here you go. Better late than never, right? Wink.

I  like incorporating Martin Luther King Jr. day and President’s day activities, books, and games into my speech sessions.  It is so important that we support what is going on in the classrooms in regards to these holidays. All our students, but especially our language kids, can benefit from small group discussion and activities that help them understand what these holidays are all about.  As speech pathologists, we can explain and use visuals to help bring to life these necessary topics.
Here are some of my recommendations for books that are very simple and easy to read and understand.  Some books may use vocabulary words like “murder” which I don’t feel is appropriate for younger ages, but you could use those for older kids.  Other books contain Dr. King’s speech which is great for older kids to hear.  There are tons of vocabulary lessons that can be used as you read through his speech.  You can define words that are unknown or have very abstract meaning (freedom, equality, etc.), name synonyms and antonyms for words, and find and discuss figurative language.
You can take a look through these excellent Martin Luther King Jr. books and President’s Day games on Amazon and see if they would work for your students! I think they are so great! These games help with recall and memory and are just fun and an easy way to help our kids understand these holidays and target speech goals at the same time.