Make a Martin Luther King, Jr. Timeline

What You Need:

• Three pieces of colored construction paper or card stock
• Markers
• White paper
• Scissors
• Glue
• Age-appropriate reference material on Martin Luther King, Jr. (Suggested reading: MLK: Journey of a King by Tonya Bolden, ages 9-12)

What You Do:

1. Overlap the sheets of paper to create an accordion. To connect the pages, have your child fold a ½” flap along the edge of the shorter side of one piece of paper and glue it onto the shorter side of the second piece of paper.
2. Repeat this so that the second and third pieces of paper have a ½” overlap, too. Fold each sheet of paper in half so that each piece of paper has two halves that are each roughly 5 1/2" x 8 1/2".
3. Have your child trim the white paper so that it is a little bit smaller than the faces of the construction paper accordion. They should have a sheet of paper for each section of their accordion.
4. Have your child read a biography about Martin Luther King and then ask them to select six major milestones during Dr. King’s life.
5. Ask your child to draw pictures for each milestone and write a caption underneath each picture that explains the event.
6. Glue the pictures onto the construction paper in the order that the events occurred and stand the accordion up for everyone to admire.

As an extension, your child can even make the timeline two-sided so that they have 12 sections total, each with their own white sheet of paper to depict an event in Dr. King's life.