ML(N)K

I've said Alice is a little repetition machine, but even so, sometimes she stuns us. She's really getting into letters and is throwing around the word "spell," since I think she's heard the rest of us using it frequently with Edith. Mom-mom gave her a Little People zoo for Christmas, one animal for each letter, and it's among her favorite gifts. This evening she and Tom were playing with it while Edith and I read, and from the other room I heard her say, "G...G is for giraffe...What letter for rhinoceros? R!" and so on.

But then at dinner she really got me. Edith was wearing her Boger Elementary School T-shirt (a few years ago a school was named for my great-great-grandfather, one of the first superintendents of schools in his North Carolina county), and Alice wanted to know what Edith's shirt said. I told her.

"Boger! Boger Mommy!" she said. Just this morning we'd been going over who had what last name in our family.

Then she asked, "Daddy...What spell Daddy?"

I guessed that she meant,"What's Daddy's last name?" and told her: Lank.

"Daddy Lank! L-N-K, Lank!" she shouted. While my mouth hung open.

***

As far as I can tell, Martin Luther King has not been mentioned at Edith's school. This week they're studying penguins, and next week they're focusing on Jan Brett's The Mitten. Last weekend a friend from my childhood hometown visited us with her fiance. She's also a transplant to Colorado, and she was talking about her efforts to find something to do for MLK Day, as we agreed that growing up in the school system and town we did, singing "We Shall Overcome" regularly at school assemblies and participating in MLK and black history plays and activities from age four onward, we found it odd not to have any celebration.

Now that Edith attends an overwhelmingly white school, I especially want to do something to celebrate the day with her. I've combed the local events listings, and the best I can find--actually, the only thing I can find appropriate for a young child (i.e. not a scholarly address to a university community)--is a big MLK march in Denver. But to be honest, getting our crew up to Denver at the crack of dawn would be a bit of a feat for us, and I'm not sure a march in the cold on too little sleep is going to inspire our kiddos.

Does anyone have suggestions for ways to honor the day meaningfully with a kindergartner, in a predominantly white city, without public events in which to participate?