Sip Juice & Color History / Summer of Black History

Sip Juice & Color History, a kids’ online painting party, is centered around empowering stories of Black history. Each party starts with a discussion that sets the context for the day’s story. It might include discussing the social norms, laws, or various art styles of the story’s time. Next, we read one of the empowering short biographies or stories from one of the Untold Stories Black history activity and coloring book series. The interactivity continues as we read, so we’ll ask questions, and allow kids to share information related to the subject matter, geographic area, and more. These stories of resilience, ingenuity, and perseverance inspire kids and teach them that ordinary people can do great things.

Before we move on to art, we examine our Word-for-the-day. We define the word, look at the root word, and use the word in sentences. These exercises help kids build vocabulary and literacy skills, important to overall academic success.

Learning should be fun, and we think that coloring fills that role. Kids are led in creative expression and learn art tips and tricks as they color the selected illustration from one of the Untold Stories Black history activity and coloring book series. Kids choose to color the illustration using crayons, paint, markers, colored pencils, or any combination.

Often, we close out our time together with Black history drama. That’s where we take our non-fiction story and ask the kids to add details as they imagine it. For example, after we read the story, and colored the illustration of Zora Neale Hurston, we imagined that as she sat at her desk, she fell into a brief rut and was unsure how to start her next story. We imagined that a friend dropped by and invited her out for a meal. She ate something delicious, and an idea was born based on the new food item she had tried for the first time. We acted the scene out, and the kids loved being free to add their ideas to create something new – historical fiction.

It’s a fun-packed hour, sometimes a little more. I’ve never seen a kid say they didn’t have fun, and the most often asked question is, “When is the next painting party?”