IRVINE : 5th-Graders Settle Into Colonial Life

Life was hard for English settlers colonizing the new world, Briana Gordon said as she pounded an awl to create decorative patterns on a sheet of tin.

Her life today is much easier than what residents of Williamsburg, Va., faced in the early 18th Century, the 10-year-old said Wednesday while simulating Colonial life with other fifth-graders at Meadow Park School.

“It’s not as hard work,” Briana said. “You don’t have to make your own butter and your own food. You can just go to the market.”

The students spent the day learning firsthand some of the crafts and games common during a time when everything was handmade, before electricity and Nintendo. The activities, arranged by fifth-grade teachers and several dozen volunteer parents, topped off six weeks of classroom study of pre-Revolutionary America.

The students, teachers and parents came to school dressed in knickers, tri-cornered hats, ruffles and other period garb. Teachers held an assembly earlier to show students how to turn everyday clothing into Colonial dress, for instance, by wearing white knee socks with rolled-up sweat pants and putting a white shirt on backward to simulate a yoke collar.

And, for a day, students were addressed as “master” and “mistress.” Lutes and flutes played in the background, courtesy of a decidedly post-Colonial cassette stereo.

The purpose behind the weeks of planning, sewing, sign making and cooking was to pull the Colonial days out from the pages of the history books and let students experience it, said Julie Ho, one of the fifth-grade teachers.

“We’re studying the colonies and getting ready for the American Revolution,” Ho said. “We want to bring it alive rather than just reading it in a book.”

Students had been studying the life and times of English settlers in the New World in their social studies and English classes by reading “Johnny Tremain” by Esther Forbes. The book details the life of a young boy just before the founding of the United States.

Some of the activities taught Wednesday were quilting, calligraphy, stenciling to make wall decorations, toy making and learning manners for a proper English tea.

As Monica Thames presented a tray of sandwiches for the students seated at two tables, she offered this important lesson:

“When asked whether you want some, you say, ‘Yes, please’ or ‘Thank you, no.’ One does not say, ‘Yeah.’ ”

Acting as the Colonial Miss Manners, Thames, the mother of one of the students, mixed a fake English accent along with her tea.

“You have to act the part and pretend you’re in Colonial Williamsburg and not a multipurpose room somewhere,” Thames said.

To prepare for the day’s events, each student researched the life of a tradesman, such as a silversmith, and had to write a letter back to relatives in England detailing life in the New World. They also had to write a help-wanted notice in search of an apprentice.

Carol Dore, a fifth-grade teacher at Meadow Park, came up with the idea for the Colonial day.

“We want to make the instruction more authentic, more meaningful and to put things in a different perspective,” she said.

Making toys from simple pieces of wood and string reinforces the notion that everything was handmade in those days, Dore said. The school got enough parents to volunteer to make the day a success by buying supplies and arranging the activities, she said.

“This is our first year,” she said. “I hope to make it a tradition.”