American Revolution, Part I: Prelude to Revolution

This week I decided to start our history lesson by showing the episode of Andy Griffith (Andy Discovers America) in with there is a discussion about history. Here is the part of the episode where Andy ignites the children' interest in American history.

After this fun introduction, we read this version of Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride.

I copied the map on the inside cover of the book, and they colored the routes, Revere, Dawes and Prescott took.

They took turns building the Old North Church and putting lanterns in them.

And then we decided to have our own Tea Party Teatime.

My youngest decided to make placecards.

 Another decided to make a game to play.

Suddenly they were all caught up in the excitement and happily working on their own projects, needing no direction from me.

For the teatime, I poured the hot water into a bowl instead of a teapot (If you do this, be careful not to have the water boiling, or it might break a glass bowl. Our kids don't like their tea too hot, so it worked out well for this.) I floated a (washed) plastic boat with teabags in it. The steam coming off the water lent to the atmosphere.

 One by one we became Sons of Liberty and dumped the tea from the boat into the water.

And once the tea was dumped, we shared the teatime snack Katie had made for us...

homemade caramel popcorn, or sweetened parched corn, as they would have called it.

I ladled out cups of tea from the bowl...

 and we played games..

My youngest and I had worked on making a game, too. In ours, you picked different cards depending on whether you were a loyalist, patriot or neutralist.

We also, of course, watched the first seven episodes of Liberty's Kids.

Boston Tea Party

Intolerable Acts

First Continental Congress

Give me Liberty, or give me Death!

Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

The Shot Heard Round the World

Green Mountain Boys & The Capture of Fort Ticonderoga

And, by the way, when they were having the tea party in Boston, my hometown of Chestertown was having its own tea party, which the town celebrates every year in May, where they have a reenactment of the tea being dumped in the Chester river. This is a cute little book we read every year about it.

We can't wait to see what we learn about next week!