This was originally posted November 2, 2008.  The reading was added for the podcast later.

I took my kids on a field trip to a place where folks dress up like the Gold Rush era and act out that the students are in the 1800’s. They learned history that applies to real life, of course the best kind there is to study! They learned not to whine, how to budget miner bucks, how to pan for real gold, how to budget and preserve food, how to work with others for a common good and a little about what a once mysterious 1800’s life was all about.

One of my students started to gripe and whine when they said it was time to do chores. The docent’s response was,

Well, you know what happens to kids here in the 1800’s who don’t do their chores? They don’t eat!

This was a quite effective approach made more so by the fact that it was an hour past our normal lunchtime and all the kids were starving.

They learned that people didn’t always take showers and they got to imagine what the trail might have smelled like. They also earned the prices for things were high. They were given $80 to start with and by the end they realized they barely had enough to make it through a week.

They got to pan for gold. They put actual gold nuggets into the riverbank and the kids were thrilled to find them one after the other. One thought provoking thing was how hard it was panning for the hour we did and realizing that some men back then panned all day and often had NOTHING to bring back to feed his family!

It was hot on the dusty trail and the kids learned what it was like before SpongeBob. Most were surprised to find out how much work 9 year olds were expected to do. If you ran out of food, you had to barter what you had for flour or other food staple items.

Walking through the ghost town and doing real projects as crafts really made the experience vivid for the kids. I think considering history this way is an invaluable experience for your formative minds these days. And the benefit for the teachers? Hiking around Mojave Narrows there’s no needs to take any fat burners the whole week ;) They keep you busy.