Fourth Graders Go Back in Time
by Emily B., Sarah K. and Marce V.
November 16, 2009
Have you ever traveled back in time to the 1880s in a time machine that turns out to be your school bus? On Tuesday, November 3rd we did, and we'll tell you about our adventure. Did you know that the fourth grade students from Bridgeport Elementary school had to wear authentic clothes of the 1880s? The girls wore long dresses with bonnets. The boys wore plaid shirts, jeans and boots. The boys were the lucky ones.
During the 1990s, the boys and girls didn't have many of the foods we have to eat today. We had to take foods that were authentic to that era. Many of the students ate sandwiches. We could eat dried or fresh fruits, apples were a pioneer staple and we had to drink water out of a tin cup. At least we could eat jerky.
We studied many of the same subjects, writing was the most difficult. We had to use small bottles of ink and quills to write with on small penmanship booklets. The penmanship class took place in a small, cold log cabin.
Arithmetic was the easiest subject we studied because we already knew our addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts. During spelling, we wrote a list of words five times each on our slates. This was followed by a spelling bee. Emily Baxter was the winner. During reading, we read out of our McGuffey Reader, we also memorized and recited poetry. We finished the day with art class; we drew a secret bird on our slates.
That afternoon, we visited the museum. We saw many exhibits of things the pioneers used during the 1880s. We saw many guns, including twenty gauge, sixteen gauge, and ten gauge shotguns. There were also different models of twenty-two caliber rifles.
There was an iron lung used to help a person who had trouble breathing because of a disease called polio. Polio affects the muscles and breathing. Jonas Salk found a cure for polio. On display were ice saws used to cut ice for their ice box coolers. These saws were long and had large teeth. There was also a picture made of human hair.
We toured four interesting buildings at Flowerfield. The first building we visited was a soddy. A soddy is a house built with layers of sod. The walls were very thick. The soddy has a bird, a bed and a tub in it. Next, we visited the museum which was packed with artifacts from the 1880s. Then we went through the general store filled with clothing, medicine and food that pioneers purchased. We also saw an authentic log cabin. It had a cooking stove, a heating stove, a quilt maker, a record player, and a bedroom full of useful items.
We learned many things and had a lot of fun. As you can see, riding back in time to experience the school day of boys and girls from the 1880s was quite an adventure!
