A Revolutionary Skit

This is something I wrote up so the kids would have fun summarizing the contributing factors leading to the American Revolution.  We performed it impromptu, with no props or preparation.  Use it as you wish.

portrait by Allan Ramsay, 1762,
courtesey of Wikipedia

Prelude to Revolution

Purpose: To summarize the rising conflict between Britain and the English Colonies that led to the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. It contains the primary laws that Parliament passed for the colonies and possibly how King George and Parliament viewed the colonists.  Put the King and Parliament on one side of the room and the Colonists on the other side of the room.

King: OK, colonists, we have sent part of our army to protect you from the big, bad Frenchman during the wars we were waging with France. We won the wars....

Colonists: (doing a happy dance)  Yay!

Parliament: But now we need to keep those soldiers there to protect you in case those big, bad Frenchman attack you again.

King: Or in case the Indians attack you.

Parliament: Or in case the Spaniards attack you. And by the way, you need to provide food and shelter for the soldiers and give us money to pay them in the form of Taxes.

Colonist 1: But we don't want the soldiers. We can protect ourselves from Indians.

(King and Parliament laugh)

King: (To Parliament) Isn't that cute, how they think they can take care of themselves. (To the Colonists): I know that you THINK you are big enough and strong enough to handle things for yourselves. However, if it wasn't for us, you would be speaking French!

Colonist 2 (speaking low): If it wasn't for you, there wouldn't have BEEN any wars

King: What was that?

Colonists: Nothing

Parliament: By the way, we need more money from you. Your king and your country have spent all our money on the wars. So we are going to tax 3 cents on every gallon of molasses that you buy from us.

Colonist 1: Wha???

Colonist 2: We hardly make any money on selling rum as it is!

Parliament: OK, we will make it one cent.

Colonist 1: That is still unfair!

Parliament: (grumbling). Fine. Have it your way. Instead, we are passing a law that says that you HAVE to entertain soldiers and pay for them to protect you. AND We are making you buy stamps in order to get newspapers, playing cards, diplomas, wills and some other legal documents.

Colonist 2: Wha??? We don't even want the soldiers here. If you can't afford them, send them home!

Colonist 1: You are trying to trick us. This Stamp Act is nothing more than another way to tax us.

Colonist 2: You know, you keep making rules for us. We are Englishmen. We deserve to be represented in Parliament if you are going to start making laws for us.

Colonist 1: That's right!

Parliament: (laughing). Oh, they are so CUTE when they are mad, aren't they, your Highness?

King: Yes, yes. But, too soon, they grow up and if we don't show them who is boss now, they will grow from little tyrants to big ones.

Colonist 1: We think we can govern ourselves, thank you very much. Please restore our home legislatures.
King (to Parliment):  See what I mean

Parliament: Well, instead, we are going to write laws for you. We will be your legislature.

Colonist 2: Then let us have representation in Parliament, please.

Parliament: Maybe when you get older. But right now, Daddy will take care of you and tell you what to do.

Colonist 1: You forget that we have been taking care of ourselves for quite a while now. You have no right to take representation away from us.

King: You are subject to your King and you will do as we say.

Parliament: And what we say is that you will pay duties on imports. We are sending our customs agents to you now to make sure you pay for everything that comes into your ports. We are calling it the Townsend Act.

Colonists: That is taxation without representation! We protest!

Parliament: You know, you are being quite a pain. But I will make a deal: you will only have to pay an duty on tea.

Colonist 1: (to Colonist 2): Let's buy tea from somewhere else.

Colonist 2: (to Colonist 1): Great idea.

King: Oh Colonists. You have to buy tea from us. We are sending ships loaded with tea for you and are cutting the price. But you MUST buy tea from your daddy.

Colonist 1: (to Colonist 2): Are you thinking what I am thinking?

Colonist 2: (to Colonist 1): To have a tea party and dump all the tea into the harbor?

Colonist 1: Yes!

(Colonists pretend to dump the tea into the harbor)

King: That does it. You have REALLY made me mad now. Close Boston Harbor until they pay for all the tea they have ruined! Do not let the Massachusetts legislature make any rules. Give the governor full power. And fire the current governor who let this happen and make one of the generals there the new governor!

Parliament: Aye, aye, Captain!

Colonist 1: Those acts are intolerable!

Colonist 2: Now we are really angry. We are going to get together and form the 1^st Continental Congress to come up with a list of grievances.

(Colonists huddle together and whisper)

To the king:

Colonist 1: We will not do any more business with you.

Colonist 2: And we will start organizing militias.

King: Who do you think you are?!!! Without my help, you would have all starved or become subjects of France. I am the only one who can make decision for you and if you don't obey me by choice, you WILL obey my soldiers!!!!!

Have a child read the Declaration of Independence. Stop them every few sentences to rephrase or ask another student to rephrase what was just said. The child who reads can be a younger student and then the older children can interpret it, if they can. Help them.

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The Good:  This didn't take a lot of time and the kids had fun hamming it up.

The Bad:  I found errors as we read through it.  Feel free to make some changes and improvements.

The Ugly:  Nothing ugly that I can see.  You might have a different opinion.

Mad Scientist Moment

This idea comes to you from "The King of Random", a Youtube personality.  Don't ask me how I stumbled onto his site, I can't remember.  I was inspired by my youngest, who wants to be an inventor to look up cool experiments to do at home. And yes, we used potatoes to make the starch. The technical term for this is a non-newtonian liquid.  An alternative fun name for it is "oobleck."




The Good:  You can talk to your kids about starch and its uses.  You can dig deeper for the older kids and look up the elements that compose starch, view the molecule and dig into its properties. Making starch with potatoes is a patience-building exercise, which is always a good thing.  Also, hash browns for lunch was a nice change of pace.  We could also talk about how the potatoes changed color over time due to oxidation.  The kids loved bringing in the bottle of tonic water into the laundry room with our UV flashlight to see it glow.  Scorpions also glow under UV light, by the way, which is why we have one.  Summertime nights in Arizona mean hunting scorpions.

The Bad:  This experiment uses a LOT of dishes, which meant a lot of cleanup.  However, you can also buy potato starch if you don't want the clean up or, as he mentions, use corn starch for the same effect.  The amount of starch produced by slightly less than five pounds of potatoes is really small.  In fact, I poured too much tonic water and had to add corn starch to the mixture, which foiled my desire to make a second batch using tonic water and corn starch to compare the texture of the two.  Drat!

The Ugly:  The pan used to fry the potatoes was super ugly to clean up afterwards.  I need to learn how to make hash browns without getting the potato to chemically bond to the bottom of the pan.  If you have any suggestions, please put them in the comments.

Crab Grab game

I am teaching at our co-op today with older elementary students about crustaceans and developed a game you can play to show how a crustacean's chelipads (claws) make really bad hands.

Materials needed:

• a mitten for a hand for each team (or each person has one mittened hand)
• a bag of small items for each team.  
• a cup for each team

How to play:

• Divide the group into even teams (if possible).  
• Place the bag of items near each team member and a cup on the opposite side of the room.
• The bag of small items should have as many small items for each team member to go through at least once.
• Give each team a mitten (Optional:  you can have each team member wear a mitten).  The mitten should be worn so that the pointer finger goes into each glove to mimick a crab's claw or chelipads.
• Have the teams start at the same time.  The team member with the mitten on has to pick up one small item and carry it over to the cup and drop it into the cup.  Once the item is in the cup, the child runs back and gives the mitten to the next person in line to put on the same way.
• Repeat until all the items are place in the cup

I used quarters in a sandwhich bag for the small items.  Pencils or maybe pick-up sticks (wooden shish-ka-bob skewers) might also work.  I live in the desert, where it doesn't snow, so I limited the number of mittens needed.   Fortunately, I haven't yet thrown out all the mittens with missing partners we gathered when we lived in the Chicago area, where mittens and gloves are a necessity from November to at least February, sometimes March or April.

The Good:  It will bring home the fact that chelipads are used mainly for cutting, not grabbing and help kids to see how useful opposable thumbs really are.

The Bad:  The sandwich bags into which I put the quarters broke pretty easily as the kids frantically grabbed for quarters.  Frustration levels for kids who are less coordinated are rather high.  I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for younger elementary kids, unless you find some bigger items, like maybe blocks.  

The Ugly:  Some mittens, like the one pictured are pretty ugly.  The worst, though, was a small, filthy, pink mitten with stars made for 5-year old hands.  It is a solo mitten and will be tossed at the end.  

The purpose of debate: Bill Nye vs. Ken Hamm

When I heard that there was going to be a debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, I was pretty excited.  I was not under any delusion that either group would be declared a winner and that the question of evolution or creation be decided once and for all.  After all, people who have already made up their minds about something usually don't change them easily.  In fact, I was pretty sure that most people who walk away thinking the opposing side represented the "idiots" though I had already determined that I would not be one of them. Unfortunately, I was not disappointed.  And in this God reminded me of a passage in Acts 17:16-34 where Paul is called to give a presentation before philosophers in Athens.  At the end, they all walked away and only a few people immediately made a decision for Jesus, but the ideas were planted.  There is no other mention of Athens in the rest of Acts, though Paul does travel through Greece at a later time.

Watching the debate was a requirement, even for my youngest, even though he is not of the age where he can really reason well.  I required it because I do not want my kids to be ignorant of the issues surrounding the debate of origins or on the views and evidence provided by both sides.  Most of my kids are at an age where they can understand reason and logic and I want them to develop that skill, especially since the vast majority of arguments in all arenas seems to be based on emotions rather than reasoning.  So the next day I asked my kids some questions and made them think through their answers.  It was difficult initially for them to get over their anger at Bill Nye for his attitude toward Biblical Creationists and didn't want to give him credit for anything.  However, when I pushed them, we had a great discussion about the debate and they were able to acknowledge the good and bad points of each presentation.  I would encourage all families, regardless of where you stand on evolution, young earth creation or old earth creation to watch the video and ask your kids the following questions to encourage critical thinking:

1.  What points did Bill Nye make did you consider to be valid points supported by evidence?

2.  What fallacies or assumptions in Bill Nye's arguments did you find?

3.  What points did Ken Ham make did you consider to be valid points supported by evidence?

4.  What fallacies or assumptions in Ken Ham's arguments did you find?

5.  Who had the better organized presentation?

6.  Who provided the most evidence for their position?

7.  Who handled the rebuttal better?

8.  Who had the best, most convincing answers to the questions?

9.  Did anything said during the debate change your mind?

This debate also helped us put in practice the grace that God gives us to share with others who don't believe what we believe and even put us down for our beliefs by seeing the good in people.  After all, even though Bill Nye has a harsh opinion towards Christians and considers me, my husband who works in engineering, and my kids anti-science, he still has produced an excellent science program that we can enjoy despite our disagreements over origins-based science.  And for the record, I am still a fan of Bill Nye even if we disagree on how the earth was created, because there are a lot of scientific facts that have nothing to do with origin's based science and because Bill Nye "Science Guy" program does such a great job of explaining science to kids.

The Good:  Exposing kids to opposing beliefs so that they can think through their own beliefs;  Seeing the debate process and analyzing it; identifying and discussing underlying assumptions made by both sides of the debate, even if they were not explicitly stated; showing kids that you can still admire someone for the positive contributions they have made to your life (in this case the "Bill Nye The Science Guy" programs which do such an excellent job of teaching scientific concepts) even if you disagree with a position that they are taking and even if they insult you.
The Bad:  Watching your children's reaction when a man they admire greatly calls them an idiot.
The Ugly:  Bill Nye's inability to acknowledge the fact that scientists and technologists who believe in the Biblical creation account exist despite several direct examples provided by Ken Hamm.  His adherence to this form of evolutionist propaganda was only slightly worse than his attempt to prove his "Creationists are anti-science idiots who will ruin America's technological advantage over the world".  In my opinion, he not only failed to provide any evidence that anti-science sentiment only comes from Christians but also failed to provide evidence that America is technologically advanced over the rest of the world.  That did not keep him from repeating the sentiment, however in the hope that repeating a lie will make it true.  

Gift from Jesus

When we only had two kids, a two-year old and baby, my husband got the idea to pray and ask God for Bible verses for each child.  It might have been inspired by a Focus on the Family broadcast or just an idea from God.  I bought a couple of small scrapbooks to make the verse look "pretty".  It is the only form of scrapbooking I have ever done.  There have been only two years that he missed in the twelve years since that first Christmas.  And we have added two other kids to our house since then.  When we started, we wrapped them and put them under the Christmas tree and the kids opened them before any other gifts.  But somehow, God's word couldn't compete against toys.  Eventually, I realized that there is another holiday near Christmas called Epiphany or Three Kings Day on which some churches commemorate the day that the wise men gave baby Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  It is the twelfth day after Christmas, January 6th.  And it gives my husband an extra week to get verses.  Score!  My first attempts to be creative were quite pitiful before I got Hallmark Card Studio and was able to create "masterpieces".  This year, however, Hallmark kept crashing when I wanted to use the art studio function, so I decided quickly to create the display with just paper, scissors, a glue stick and different markers/pens.  Below are the results of my work:

To make the castle, I drew out what I wanted on the backside of the paper so pencil lines wouldn't show.  I had to "wing it" with the writing because pencil lines would not show up at all against the brown.  The markers I used are above the book

This was a LONG verse, so Sharpies couldn't be used.  Good thing I had felt tip pens, too!  I used the cookie cutter above the book and I outlined on the yellow paper and put it against some red paper with the idea of cutting out the yellow and red simultaneously and then cutting out a heart shape out of the yellow so that the red would show through.  Eventually, I decided to have the red paper peeping out on one side.  I drew writing lines in pencil before writing the verse.

Again, I created the shield by drawing it on the backside of the paper.  I made the cross by cutting a strip of red paper that was 1/4" thick and cutting it down to size.  Originally, I was going to have the entire verse on the shield, but there was so much room that I decided to have some of the verse surround the shield.  

I used a bigger cookie cutout of a man for this because the book is bigger.  I cut out a red heart from the same paper I used to make the cross on the shield and the paper man for the other verse.  I wrote everything out in pencil first to correctly place the heart and didn't use guidelines for the writing, which is why it might look a little messy.

As you can see, I am not VERY gifted artistically, but I try to make it look interesting and get a theme based on the verse.  I really love the gold, silver and bronze Sharpie markers, which I picked up when we were doing an illumination project as part of our Middle Ages studies.  

The Good:  Our children will work on memorizing the scripture and I will encourage them to ask God why He gave them that particular verse.  This will go with them when they become adults so that they have a tangible way of seeing how God has been working in their lives and how well He knows them.

The Bad:  Bad artwork, oh wait, I should put that in the "ugly" section.  The kids would tell you that memorizing scripture is a pain and this makes it bad, but seriously, I can't think of anything bad about this other than the many little mistakes I made that you probably wouldn't notice but I would because I know what I wanted it to look like.  

The Ugly:  My mood when Hallmark Card Studio refused to let me do ANYTHING.  It soon passed as God quickly gave me other ideas and blessed the work of my hands so that I didn't make any mistakes copying the verse.  (Mistakes are what make my work uniquely mine, but I am glad the mistakes were very tiny this year as opposed to the years where I got the date wrong or put a verse on the wrong page).

I published this too late for anyone to implement it for this Christmas, but it could also be done for first days of school, birthday present or as an Easter present.  

Etiquette Matters follow up

We have been working on ways to encourage the people in our family to stay focused rather than being bossy, which is coming from a position of superiority.  I had looked up encouraging phrases on the internet which we reviewed with very  little success.   Then, of course, I prayed about it and asked God to give us a good example to follow.  Last week, we finished reading 2 Timothy and the question of what book to study next was presented.  I like getting input from the kids and two of them had suggestions.  The next morning, as I was praying about which one to use, God told me to study Philemon for a day.  As soon as I read it, I knew why:

"Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love."  
Philemon 1:8-9

This is a beautiful picture of how to encourage people rather than be bossy.  Then I realized that I had some apologizing to do to my kids, because my example is NOT to appeal to them, but to use and abuse my God-given authority over them to get them to do what I want.  What a change I have seen since, both in myself and in my kids.

On a side note, I heard an interesting statistic this week regarding new habits that reminds me of how much grace is needed when trying to change:  It takes three YEARS before a new habit truly replaces the old habit and become an unconscious act.  So if we work diligently to treat others with respect, it will probably take three years before we stop having to think so much about it.

God bless!
Kris

Etiquette Matters

As I have seen my oldest become a bit uncertain in social situations, the thought occurred that some of what is lacking is training in social graces.  And as I considered and prayed, I realized that, as a family, we would all benefit from learning these skills. My parents taught me basic manners, but it has been a long time since getting that education, so I decided to get a book about it and come up with a plan for teaching it to my kids.  The book I decided to get is called Protocol Matters by Sandra Boswell.  If you want a pre-packaged etiquette curriculum, this isn't it, but it is a great background book and has brought a Christian perspective to the idea of etiquette.  It also has verses in the Bible that back up the rules.  My favorite line in the book so far is this:

"Christian protocol is one of God's lovely means of grace.  We all need much help in learning how to behave graciously towards one another, and protocol provides a simple means to that end--rules that demonstrate respect, kindness and brotherly love."

And honestly, I need a lot of help in this area.  In most things regarding homeschooling, I feel like the blind leading the blind, or, to put it another way, learning with my kids as we go.  Also, with most things, when we try to do something that involves discipline and character improvement, we have many instances of complete failure and sometimes, I am the one leading my kids to the failure point.  As DC Talk said so eloquently:  "It only serves to confirm my suspicion that I am still a (wo)man in need of a Savior."  It is also a good way to show the kids that when "we lose our way, we get back up again, never too late to get back up again." (TobyMac).

I decided to start on a topic that involves family's weak point in conversation--how to converse respectfully in all circumstances, especially to each other.   Since we are together so much, familiarity can breed contempt, as they say and what I am working VERY hard for myself and my kids is to talk respectfully even when the other person is driving us crazy or being unkind.  And I am trying to focus on the heart issues, not just on the behavior.  The heart issue I think in our family is to show respect to people even when they are not acting like they deserve respect or acting respectfully to others, because all humans are made in the image of God and because God not only shows us respect but LOVE to all humans, even though, by our actions, we don't deserve it.  And I illustrated the heart of etiquette as a house:

Grace is the foundation of etiquette, as this book discusses.  Love is the roof because "...love covers over a multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:8).  One of the pillars of etiquette is respect, not just in speech, but in attitude, which is found in 1 Peter 2:17.   Our church is encouraging its members to fulfill God's mission of bringing the gospel to the world by B.L.E.S.S.ing God, family and neighbors, and I thought it would be another good pillar for etiquette because the purpose of etiquette is to bless others.  A long time ago, someone taught me the acronym T.H.I.N.K before you speak:  Before saying something ask yourself if what you are about to say is True, Helpful, Interesting, Necessary (this is the "gotcha") or Kind.  If it fails any of these things, reword it or be silent.  I still need to THINK more. I linked it to love and blessings because it is a verbal way to bless and show love to others.  And basic trust is, in some respects, necessary in all human interactions, though our ability to trust deepens as we get to know people better.  And of course, trust is developed when we show respect.  The verses written in house will be our memory verses for the year.  

To encourage respectful dialogue, we have implemented a money-based reward system which is linked to electronic media privileges.  They get money by making a respectful request the first time or by reporting a respectful request made to them by someone else.  They can lose money by  being disrespectful UNLESS, when their disrespectful behavior is highlighted, they apologize repentantly.  Money is used to get electronics privileges (TV, video games, etc.).  I am rewarding them when they bring to my attention something good that a sibling did because I want them to learn how to encourage others to do good works.  When I am consistent, this is a good reward system.  But take the idea and create your own reward system that works for your family.  I also take time out to ask the kids to re-word what sounds like a demand into a respectful request, whether they are speaking to me or to a sibling.  If they don't know how to say it (or are unwilling to think on their own), I "help" them by giving them a respectfully worded request and ask them to repeat it, which they do with gritted teeth.

It seems as I have been trying to deal with my heart and those of my kids, many things have come up which have made it difficult to live out this ideal.  And many of us are using muscles that have atrophied from disuse and are groaning and complaining at us for making them work so hard, so the grace I am trying to show my kids is to forgive them when they are having difficulty, encourage them to keep trying, and keep showing them how even making an effort has made the house a more pleasant place to live.  The key to making this work better is not only be a good example and to confess when you become a horrible warning, but also to be consistent and quick with the rewards and to keep your attention focused on catching them doing something right.

As I have been working on this for a few weeks my evaluation in terms of my blog title is as follows:

The good:  Our house is generally more peaceful, even during times of extreme stress and even with hormonal women.  Progress is slowly being made.  Philippians 4:3-8 has been memorized and some kids are even applying it.  

The bad:  I am not consistent with giving money.  To help this problem, I just tell the kids when to get money and how much to take.  Sometimes, when I try to teach kids a more respectful way to make a request, they sulk, refuse to think for themselves and even try to refuse to say it "my way."  Or they will say it my way with gritted teeth and glaring at the person or at me or at both of us.  This has created discussions about how showing respect involves words, tone and body language.  I have had very few kids tell me of a sibling's respectful request, even though I am sure that respectful requests are being made.

The ugly:  The strong willed ones would rather lose money than apologize/admit that they were wrong.  The kids have gone through a period of time erroneously thinking that they can ignore my requests at times, prompting a family meeting to review how requests should be handled so that momma no longer turns into Mt. Vesuvius when she has had to make a request for the third time.  Mt. Vesuvius is not very respectful.

If you have any suggestions for improvement, leave a comment.