El Morro Elementary students shared a hands-on experience learning about the colonial era this week as parent volunteers transformed the school’s multipurpose room into a colonial village for two days of crafts, activities, and games.
The village included 10 crafting stations, a Native American camp and colonial kitchen. Parent volunteers in period costume provided storytelling experiences to each classroom prior to their Colonial Days “visit” to the village. New this year was a bead-trading project for fourth and fifth grade students, which gave them an opportunity to earn trading beads when demonstrating Character Counts values of trustworthiness, citizenship, respect, fairness, caring, and responsibility. Beads could be traded with friends and worn on a necklace to demonstrate character value.
“I like to think of it as an authentic, colonial days on-campus field trip that takes children back in time,” said event
director, Kelly Boyd. “The opportunity to teach children about this time period is special because it offers an alternative to traditional learning.”
While visiting the village, children learn by using a variety of different senses including, seeing, feeling, touching, and doing, she said.
