Frontier Unit - Week One

This week we started our konos frontier unit.  We read about Davie Crockett, and we learned about the Louisiana purchase, and  Sacajawea.

 

To tie things together we went on a hike pretending we were frontiersmen.  We took:

 

A peanut butter sandwich - and I explained they would have flour to make their bread and beef jerky for protein

water - we talked about how frontiersmen got their water

Cheetos - that was the closest we had to dried fruit in the house.  But I explained they had to take things that would not rot easily.

 

As we went on our hike they took pictures to "shoot" any animals or food (plant life) they saw.  When we got home we were going to "trade" animal skins etc.

 

 

We saw a lot of fruit

and one dead fish.  There was a lot of trash in the creek behind our neighborhood, it was a perfect opportunity to talk about pollution and the differences of back in the frontier days and today.

 

So, as you can see we had no furs to trade.

 

So this lead to lots of questions.  What would that mean for a frontiersman?  What would they eat?  What would the trade?  Would you try again tomorrow?

 

I think the actual hands on hike cemented in what we had read about and learned through out the week.