One scene in Tom Sawyer involves Aunt Polly giving Tom the latest and greatest in the way of patent medicine: Pain Killer; which Tom promptly gives to Peter, the cat.
Needless to say, this was one of the children's favorite parts.
The Mark Twain book suggested an activity that complemented this scene well. The children were to make and market their own patent medicines. We started by talking about the bygone days of medicine men, the FDA and our current safety regulations today. We scoured the Farmer's Almanac for advertisements to get an idea of all the sorts of ailments that are in need of curing and then the kids began to brainstorm.
Over the weekend, a kind pharmacist gave me three free cough syrup bottles and the children began to do the activity in parts. They were to design a medicine, describe what maladies their concoction would cure,and make a 'commercial' touting their wares to Aunt Polly (and viewers everywhere!)
Most ironically, while watching I Love Lucy during the weekend, one episode just happened to be about Lucy's commercial for Vitameatavegamin,
(in which Lucy promptly gets as lit as Peter the cat):
This made the activity all the more appealing to them and you may notice some similarities between their commercials and Lucy's stemming from their inspiration... namely the "and it tastes delicious!" bit.
Posts following this one will include the children's projects-- they were so anxious to taste their medicines, having to refrigerate them over the weekend and wait until the "commercial shoot" on Monday was almost unbearable.
My favorite aspect of all the many fun elements in this project is that they have completely sold themselves on their own medicines. Sugar water, some drops of candy flavoring and food coloring-- they know and mixed all the ingredients themselves but have sincerely suggested that Clay or I use their own brand of elixir at various times this week, when it seemed we may need to be cured.
(ex. Clay forgot something, Fisher recommended his medicine which is good for memory loss- amongst many other things.)
I hope the following posts will prove to be as entertaining to you as they have been for me!