Kid's Activity: Paul Revere's Ride

by Melissa Jaramillo and Julie Snyder

"The British are coming! The British are coming!"

Paul Revere rode through the wee hours of the night 16 miles from the Olde North Church in Boston to Lexington on April 19, 1775. It was there that the Patriots or 'Minutemen' and British faced one other "the shot heard round the world" was fired. This was the beginning of the American Revolutionary War and eventually led to the founding of the United States of America!

This moment was captured in one of the most famous poems ever written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow titled the "Paul Revere's Ride", but often referred to as "The Midnight Ride". Read it to your child below. For dramatic effect, wait and read this at night with the lights down low by candlelight -- or better yet, by lantern! You can almost feel the tension and the pounding of the beating hooves in the darkness!

Also, did you know that Paul Revere and his wife had a large family? That's right! 16 kids in all -- although 5 passed away young and the youngest was born when the oldest was already 30! We've included a game played by kids in this time period (1700s). There weren't the video games, televisions, or computers in those days. Kids used their imaginations and still had fun!

Paul Revere's Ride                 
LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower, as a signal light, --
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the somber rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade, --
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay, --
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.