Schools
Learning About the Past Can Be Fun
A recent in-school field trip taught young students what life was like back in colonial times, from making food to making toys.
At my school, instead of two regular field trips we have one that takes place out of school and one in school.
We recently had one in school that taught us about colonial times and we got to do a lot of fun activities, such as making wool into yarn, grinding corn into corn meal and making tops with our bare hands.
Turning wool into yarn was really hard in colonial times as you had to clean the wool, brush through it and then sit somewhere for hours just turn it into string. It's lucky we only made one strand because we did everything the colonials did.
We cleaned it, brushed it, and spun the wool into yarn. (with a tool that was sort of like a spinning wheel).
In the 1700s there were no factory brand corn meal. Everyday you would go outside and grind up your own and that's exactly what we did. We took a large rock and put corn on it. Then we took another large rock and flattened the corn.
You might be thinking did colonial children ever have time to play? The answer is yes! Colonial children made a lot of their own toys like corn husk dolls and tops. Well we made our own toys too. We made tops out of wood just like them.
"A great man once said "A man who knows about his past is ready for the future". (That wasTheodore Roosevelt ). And now we are ready too.
