The Third Grade Social Studies Curriculum centers on American History from the Colonial Period to the present. Our class set out to learn how life was different in the late 1700's and early 1800's from life today in 2000. There were two components to our project: the research and the designing and building structures using a software program called Community Construction Kit by Tom Snyder Productions.
Third grade partners researched one aspect of life in the late 1700's and early 1800's. Topics included jobs, school, houses, furniture, the harbor, laws and punishment, clothes, girls fun, boys fun, Sunday/church, travel, and doctors/medicine. Each partnership wrote paragraphs about the similarities and differences between their topic in the late 1700's/early 1800's and the present. Final drafts were done on index cards which were placed in the village as signs on straws anchored by clay.
 Sturbridge Village, 1830's |
 Lexington, 2000 |
Students first designed their own houses using Community Construction Kit. They tried to be as accurate as possible. They then made another building-- either from Lexington or from Old Sturbridge Village, a village from the 1820's that we had visited. Once the buildings were printed on card stock, children colored them, cut them out, and built them. Then small groups figured out how to lay out the Sturbridge buildings based on a map of Old Sturbridge Village while others figured out how to design the Lexington of today, placing buildings in the correct general area and drawing in some of the main roads.
Some of the knowledge and skills that were reinforced during this project included:
Last update: 12-27-00/mgl
