Boston Tea Party

Today marks the 238th Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party!  This is one of my favorite lessons that I taught.  I taught it with the Boston Massacre.  I started off by dressing up as different people who witnessed the Boston Massacre.  We talk about how the story changes depending on who is actually telling the story.
I showed this picture and then talk about the details from the picture and talk about which side it is from.  Which side do you think it is from... why?  

We then go on to the Boston Tea Party.  We read a little play that is just fabulous.  I showed a clip from Johnny Tremaine (classic!) We talked about how the colonists aka the Sons of Liberty dressed up as Mohawk Indians and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor in order to protest the tea act of 1773.  The amount of tea they destroyed was worth close to $18,000.  The British were outraged at what they saw at the Boston Tea Party.  King George III decided to punish Massachusetts for the Tea Party.  Those Laws were known as the Intolerable Acts.

We then talked about protesting.  I then had the students create a protest poster on one of the laws that the British passed.  Those 8th graders came up with some real "classy" protests such as, "No more taxes on Molasses or will kick your... " Oh 8th graders.  This lesson just makes me a little bit giddy to think about it! 

My cousin Ashley and niece Celeste share their birthday with the Boston Tea Party Anniversary.  So a big shout out to them.  Ashley and I even went to see the sight of the Boston Tea Party.  Too bad it was closed for renovation.  You see what it says, "open year round,"  yeah well, not so much.