Fake Smiles; The Lie Game

During our discussion of the limbic system and emotions, we talked about body language and facial expressions, and we took pictures of each child giving a "real" (tried to get real ones, by making them laugh, but I'm not sure it always worked too well) and a fake smile. Then we mixed up the pictures to see if we could tell the difference. It's all in the eyes, apparently. They should be squinched, but not too squinched. :)

Curse those "scented markers" that smell like fruit or whatever! My children always have marker on their noses now.

Seb expounds upon a (probably false) point

I also, and it's possible I may regret this, taught the children what I have always called "the Lie Game," but maybe it's has another name? Here is how you play:

1. Each person writes down, in just one sentence, a true thing they've done or experience they've had---preferably something kind of unique or strange or memorable, and something that no one else knows about. Usually you want each person to write down 3-4 of these experiences, each on a separate strip of paper. Then gather all the strips, folded, in a bowl so no one except the moderator can see them. Some examples are things like, "I saw Steve Young" or "I broke a drinking fountain" or "I found $10" or "I got hit by a bird."

(Note: When you're all in the same family, and everyone is young and so no one ever does anything without anyone else knowing about it, it's a bit tricky finding experiences to use. But it can be done. The older boys could use things they'd done in scouts or choir, for example, and you can also use things that are kind of small and generic, like "I lost my CTR ring.")

2. The moderator (that would be me) pulls one of the strips out of the hat and calls up three people ("the liars?" I guess I'll call them "the talkers," since one of them isn't lying), one of whom is the person who REALLY WROTE the experience. The moderator reads the experience out loud.

3. The guessers (everyone BESIDES the three talkers) then ask questions of the three talkers, about the experience. "When did this happen?" "How did you do it?" "Where were you?" The three talkers all answer the questions AS IF THEY WERE THE PERSON WHO HAD THE EXPERIENCE. Two, of them, in other words, are lying. They have to talk convincingly about what happened, and the object of the game is to make the guessers believe YOU are the real person who wrote down the experience.

It's a game, in other words, that teaches you to be a good and convincing liar. Hmm. But I love this game! And the children really liked it too. Sebby and Abe were quite unnervingly good at it. Daisy was really funny---she kept saying things like "It was when I went to Cub Scouts" that were totally not believable, but were cute. :)

Malachi looks skeptical

One more thing we did on this subject was learn the names and talk about different phobias---very entertaining. You can find a large list of phobias (phobiae?) here.