One Room Schoolhouse Lesson Plans for Pioneer Day

As a teacher and home schooler, I have created a complete unit of pioneer and early American history lesson plans and activities. Here is a DIY guide to create your own "One Room School House" experience for  your students or homeschool group. 

I was fortunate to be able to rent a one room schoolhouse from our local Blandford Nature Center Interpretive history facility in Grand Rapids, MI, for our home school group. However I have also taught this unit as an in-school field trip using just my classroom. 

-Choose a time period and compile a workbook of information and activities. Familiarize yourself with that time period and be sure your activities are period correct. 

  -Create a flyer to get parents onboard with your "day in a one room schoolhouse" activity. Request volunteers to help you create an environment, share artifacts and prepare an Early America picnic lunch. Lunch should be simple: hard-boiled eggs, cheese and cornbread, pickles, apples, clam chowder, water with dipper. Serve on cloth napkin, checked tablecloth, mason jar glasses.

  -Each student should be encouraged to create an early American costume. This may be simply overalls, flannel shirts or skirt and blouse.

  -Each child should create quill a pen and a "parchment" journal to write in. Make simple journals using brown paper grocery bags for a cover. Insert several sheets of plain paper, punch holes and tie with twine. In times past, vellum was used but vellum is freakishly expensive. You can also assign students to make a hornbook. Slates were commonly used, too. Make slates by spray-painting chalkboard paint (available from any paint dealer) on square pieces of wood. Here are instructions to make natural homemade ink. Make quill pens, ink and hornbooks or journals as social studies craft projects.

-Contact local high school history classes. Request volunteer high school girl students to teach. In early American schools teachers were generally very young and female. Laura Ingalls Wilder was 15 when she earned her teaching certificate and began teaching.

-Assign each girl a subject and time slot that she will teach that subject. Popular early American school subjects included: penmanship, spelling, nature study, drawing, geography, arithmetic, civics, dictation, recitation and reading. Lesson should be simple and last no longer than 20-30 minutes. Some ideas we've used include:

--copy a proverb from from Poor Richard's Almanac

--trace one of these free printable early American maps appropriate to the time you are setting your one room school house. 

--figure sums (arithmetic

--make butter

--explore natural objects: seeds, leaves, fur pelt (natural science)

--draw a tree

--recite a poem (Samuel Taylor Coleridge "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "The Wreck of the Hesperus" were commonly used.

--Read from McGuffey Readers

--Use early American textbooks. Common textbooks included, the McGuffey Readers series. McGuffey Readers are available online for 1836, 1869 and 1889. Spencerian Handwriting/Penmanship (1848 and 1874). Ray's Arithmetic 1834, Harvey's Grammar 1868) and History/Civics Under God. You don't need to purchase textbooks if you can borrow from your local library or historical society. 

Teachers should create a simple historical costume for the day. Local history museums or community theater guilds may have costumes to rent or borrow. The costume can be as simple as a long skirt, blouse, bonnet and shawl. The girls who participated in my one room schoolhouse events had a wonderful time preparing their lesson plans and creating their costumes. It was a great experience for all of us.

Write the schedule on a chalkboard. Begin the day with the pledge of allegiance, prayer and a song. "Good Morning to You" was a popular one. At recess children can play jump rope or one of these group games. Assign follow up social studies activities to your one room schoolhouse. Here are free printable one room schoolhouse lesson plans. 

  

Living History Wax Museum Lesson Plans

History is about more than dead people long past. It's a medium for learning new ideas and processes. It's a vehicle for change. History lesson plans should include historical reenactment, cultural immersion and student-directed, hands-on history activities. Students should experience history activities through all five senses. They should engage in interactive history activities. Then they begin to see the big picture. Here are cross-curricular history activities that teach reading, writing, speaking, research, art and drama. Students will create tableaux for historical reenactment in the Living History Wax Museum.

How to create a living history wax museum: Have students choose figure for historical reenactment from whatever social studies content you're studying: exploration, colonial period, a country, inventions, mythology. Kids should research their person, her life, work and lifestyle. Another living history variation is a cultural diversity wax museum, where students represent famous people who share their ancestry. Students might choose literary figures or famous characters of their heritage for historical reenactment. Then students will create a living history tableaux with a costume, props, artifacts and an appropriate backdrop for historical reenactment of their chosen figure.

Individual tableaux will be set up like wax museum exhibits that guests will visit. Arrange living history exhibits in a multipurpose room, series of smaller classrooms, along a hallway or outdoors. Divide tableaux with portable partitions or use large cardboard pieces to create individual niches for each students tableaux. Each student should have a table to display props. Organize work days for students to construct props/backdrops. Provide paper, recycled materials and large cardboard boxes.

Next, students should write a 1-2 minute first-person script in the character's voice. Encourage them to include interesting biographical details and vignettes. Their historical reenactment should end with a quote from their chosen person. Have students practice their narratives with each other and provide each other with feedback. Students should memorize their monologue and recite it to guests who come to the wax museum.

Have students write a transcript of their speech. Assemble narratives into a printed booklet for guests to take home. Attach a map noting where each child is located. Encourage younger guests to collect "autographs" on their programs. Save programs for student portfolios. Have students invite guests and create promotional advertising for their living history project and wax museum. During the performance, guests travel from character to character. It could be done onstage as a pageant, but booths where guests can circulate is more informal and comfortable for families with small children or senior grandparents.

Encourage kids to be prepared for questions from guests. Place a notebook at each booth so visitors can leave responses. Consider using feedback to determine overall living history project grade. Grades should reflect creativity and participation. Extend lesson plans by having students create foods from their time period or country to to serve as refreshments.