Dream Tree

You will have to excuse my attempt at being artistic.  I was laying in bed early the Monday morning of Martin Luther King, Jr. day and I wanted to do some kind of activity as a family before Justin left for his business trip that afternoon.  I was trying to think of something that tied in the holiday that we were honoring that day and I remembered something that the "Friends of Rachel" club at our school are planning to do--make a dream tree.  I thought that was such a great idea, and a way to teach our kids about MLK's "I have a Dream..." speech.  The "Friends of Rachel" club was put together after we had the Rachel's Challenge assembly at our school.  If you haven't heard about Rachel's Challenge you need to check out the link.  Rachel's story will make you cry and it will inspire you to be a better version of yourself.  It's amazing.  Her challenge has 5 parts to it:  1). Eliminate Prejudice in your life; 2) Keep a journal--have dreams for yourself, set goals; 3) Be Aware of the influences in your life--look for positive influences in your life; 4) The little things can do so much--do the little things; 5) Go find 5 people in your lives and tell them how much you appreciate them.

Of course, it was the second part of Rachel's Challenge that inspired the tree.  We talked about goals, and dreams for ourselves.  We all know that a dream or goal not written down is just a wish.  So here are some of our dreams.

I wanted to use green paper for the leaves, but the paper I had was too big.  At first I wanted everyone to just color their leaves green, but then I thougt that just as individual as their dreams are, so their leaves will be.  You can see that some used whatever colors they wanted and Kevin had no desire to color his at all.  Oh well.  I think it still looks great.  When we did this activity it took a few minutes for our kids to grasp the concept, but once they did we quickly ran out of leaves.  I've printed off some more and hope that we will keep adding to our tree as the year goes on.

These are a few of my favorites.  Being nice to people was important to Kate--she did that one twice. :)