George Washington | Annie Fox's Blog

Presidents’ Day Acts of Kindness Challenge

February 16, 2014

Acts of kindness create a chain reaction

UPDATE: When it comes to kids learning kindness, we’re not looking for perfection, only progress. We’d love to hear about your kids’ progress. Tweet, FB, Instagram or Pinterest, posts, photos or videos related to kindness, it could be a great story, a photo of your kindness chain, a video of someone in your family being kind to a family member, the sky is the limit! Then on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week (Feb 18-20), use hashtags #OlympicMoms #OlympicDads to share your acts of kindness and we’ll find your post with our super cool TINT content curation tool. We’ll gift one mom/family per day a My Growing Up Chart. As my pal, Dr. Lynne Kenney says, “Being kind wins the GOLD!”

Tomorrow is a school holiday here in the States (Happy Birthday General Washington. You too, Mr. Lincoln!) And today wraps up National Random Acts of Kindness Week. In case you missed it, no worries. I’ve officially declared an extension of] RAK. Why? Because without kindness, a day with the kids home from school can be a very loooooong snarky day indeed… especially if the cold keeps the younguns inside and at each others’ throats. Also, it seems fitting to stretch out this kindness thing because we’ve got another week of the Olympic Games, which are as much about cooperation and respect as they are about competition.

In honor of all of this, I hereby challenge you to challenge yourself and your kids to spend the next week being especially kind to people in your family, friends, neighbors and whomever you meet (online or off).

A Chain of Kindness (mini-art project to prevent spikes in cabin fever)

Here’s a fun way for kids to become aware of opportunities to be kind and helpful. It will also give them a visual experience of how acts of kindness “add up” and make all of us feel happier and more connected.

What you’ll need:

Colored paper (plain white paper works too)
Scissors
Tape or glue (staples work as well)
Pens, markers or crayons

How: Talk to your kids about kindness.

Conversations that Count: Questions for you and your kids to ponder together: What are some examples of being kind? What might happen if there was more kindness in the world? What do you think gets in the way of people being kinder to each other?

Discussion drivers: Think about a recent time you were kind to someone without being asked to do it. How did you feel? What response did you get from the other person? How did that feel? Now think about a time someone was kind to you. How did you feel? How did you express that?

The Kindness Challenge: As a family, let’s challenge ourselves to increase our acts of kindness over the next 7 days.

Choose a piece of colored paper and cut a strip about 11 X 2 inches.
Write a sentence about what you did in the past week, that was kind – one act of kindness per strip. Sign your name.
Connect your strip with someone else’s, etc. and create “links” using the glue.
Got more than one recent act of kindness? Make another link!
Add to the chain any time you want.

To help the chain grow faster (and the family actively looking for opportunities to be kind) hang the chain in a place where everyone can see it and keep the art materials readily available.

Enjoy… in kindness and let me know how it goes! We can create a chain of kindness story comments right here!

Filed under: OlympicMoms,Parenting,Teaching Kids To Be Good People — Tags: #OlympicDads, 2014 Olympic Games, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, OlympicMoms, Presidents' Day, RAK, Random Acts of Kindness, Random Acts of Kindness Week — Annie @ 6:34 pm

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#18: Mount Vernon – Welcome home, President Washington

February 1, 2009

President George Washington, age 57 from a forensic reconstruction

My fascination with old houses probably began one day when I was 9 and wandered through a wooded area at the end of my street. The trail led into a clearing where I discovered the remains of an abandoned old mansion. Pretty cool find! Ever since, I’ve been hooked on the challenge of what could be pieced together about a life from the clues people leave behind.

Over the years I’ve gone out of my way to check out the former dwellings of the likes of Elvis Presley, William Shakespeare, President Franklin Roosevelt, Russian Czar Peter the Great, and Anne Frank.

That’s why, on our last day in DC, I was eager to visit Mount Vernon, home of George Washington. Turns out the Father of our Country never spent a whole lot of time at home. OK, so he didn’t much help Martha around the house, but let’s give the man his due respect. He was very busy serving his country, pretty much continuously from 1752-1797, without a lot of down time. He fought with the British in the French and Indian War (1754–1763). Then he fought against the British as Commander of the Continental Army in the American Revolution (1775-1783).

With American independence won, Washington figured he’d retire to his working farm on the Potomac River. But in less than four years, he was off to Philadelphia to preside over the Constitutional Convention that drafted the U.S. Constitution. And two years after that, in 1789, he was inaugurated as our first President. He served excellently for 2 terms – refusing to extend it to a third and thus setting a very wise precedent that two consecutive terms is all any US President gets. By all accounts, Washington was one of the top three of all times.

Done with public service in 1797, GW happily returned to Martha at Mount Vernon with the idea that he’d finally get to enjoy his home, his family, and his gardens. Unfortunately, just 2 years later, he died of pneumonia at the age of 67.

Inside the slave quarters at Mt. Vernon

Yes, Washington was a great man and as a nation we are incredibly fortunate to have had him as our first leader. But he wasn’t perfect. It might surprise you to know that Washington owned slaves. Probably not the way you want to think about him, but it’s true. And facts need to be remembered and factored into the mix for history to create a complete picture of the way things really were.

Here are some of the other sights from the wonderful and highly recommended Mount Vernon…

Mt. Vernon, as it is today

Not a bad view of the Potomac from the back porch of Mt. Vernon.

Annie gets needlepoint lessons from Lady Martha Washington, Oscar-worthy reenactor.

Recreation of General Washington at age 45

45 year old General Washington from a forensic reconstruction

George Washington, taking the Oath of Office, New York, 1789

Ella from San Francisco

While we waited in line to get inside the house, we met a 9 year old girl and her mom. They were from San Francisco and pretty much like everyone else we’d talked to all week, they’d come for the Inauguration. I asked the girl why Obama’s election was important to her. Here’s what she told me:

Ella (age 9, San Francisco): I think it will be part of the future. If there is a first black American President… who knows? We could be president too one day.

Annie: You mean women too?

Ella (smiling broadly): Yeah!

Yes we can.

Filed under: Inauguration,Politics,Teens — Tags: Father of our Country, George Washington, Martha Washington, Mount Vernon, slaves — Annie @ 9:09 pm

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