I recently spoke at my daughter's Girl Scouts troop about America's 250th birthday. I brought a box of tea bags, and hid them in the students' backpacks. I then had the girls search through everyone's bags to illustrate the dangers of the writs of assistance. We then threw all the tea bags into a bucket of water to simulate the Boston Tea Party. (I wanted to simulate the Boston Massacre with nerf guns, but I was overruled.) My daughter often complains that no women signed the Declaration of Independence, so I brought a huge parchment copy of the Declaration, and had all the girls sign them with ballpoint quills. They really felt part of the movement.
At the end of the session, I showed them the classic Schoolhouse Rock video, "The Shot Heard Round The World." I wondered how these young kinds would react to such an old school video from 1975. The animation is crude but the narrative is timeless. The music is still entertaining and the lyrics are clear. The Scouts were enraptured and understood exactly what happened. Plus they connected my lesson earlier about the Revolutionary War with the video. They all booed at the Red Coats and King George.
