Last week my friend Jennifer had a fabulous history field trip and lesson planned for the kids! Her family has a large amount of land and on the back of their property is an old slave cabin from the 1800’s. We took a lovely nature walk/hike out to the cabin and had our history lesson there!
For our lesson time, Jennifer told the kids that they were a group of colonists and amongst themselves they had to decide WHO would get to go to the New World!
Jennifer and Linda acted out 16 different characters, telling a bit about each person, and the children had to vote on each person to decide if they should go or not.
The boys had mustaches. 🙂 the girls had aprons and bonnets.
Some examples of characters were:
- a wife with 5 children who was good at cooking
- a doctor
- a 10 year old boy
- a 6 year old deaf girl
- a young man who was wealthy with many servants
- a seamstress
- a 40 year old experienced sailor
We discussed with the kids the pros and cons of taking such characters. Would they be hard workers? Would they be able to help with building houses, sailing the ship, cooking meals? Or were they used to having servants and not doing any of the work? Were they sickly? Were they healthy?
The children voted for each person and decided who would be going to the New World and who would be staying behind. It was very interesting to hear the different opinions of each child.
All in all, this was a fabulous field trip, visual, discussion and lesson activity all in one!! The cabin added the perfect touch to our lesson as well, and we discussed the lack of electricity, we walked to the creek to collect drinking water, we noticed the candles around the house that would keep it lit up at night.
We are certainly enjoying our american history this year!! Fun times!
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