TEACHER’S GUIDE
• Get the class to generate a list of all of the foods that Native
Americans taught colonists to grow and that were unknown in
Europe until the discovery of America.Then ask each student to
bring one recipe from home that includes corn as an ingredient
to see how many differing recipes emerge from the class.
Students can each write their recipe on a piece of paper, which
they decorate. The class then assembles a recipe book.
• Have students make a map of the colonies along the Atlantic
coast, and ask them to locate and label the several colonies, and
to do the same for the towns and cities that existed at the time.
An excellent colorful map can be found on this site:
www.socialstudiesforkids.com/graphics/13mapnew.htm
TEACHER’S GUIDE
Suggested Print Resources
• Doak, Robin Santos. Smith: John Smith and the Settlement of
Jamestown. Compass Point Books, Minneapolis, MN; 2003.
• Erickson, Paul. Daily Life in the Pilgrim Colony, 1636. Clarion
Books, New York, NY; 2001.
• O’Neill Grace, Catherine, et al. Mayflower 1620: A New Look at a
Pilgrim Voyage. National Geographic,Washington, D.C.; 2003.
• Sateren, Shelley Swanson. Going to School in Colonial America.
Blue Earth Books, Mankato, MN.; 2001.
• Whitcraft, Melissa. Mayflower Compact. Children’s Press, New
York, NY; 2003.
Suggested Internet Resources
Periodically, Internet Resources are updated on our web site at
www.LibraryVideo.com
• www.mayflowerhistory.com
Created and maintained by a descendant of a Mayflower passenger, this web site contains a depth of information about the ship
and its passengers, including passenger biographies and links to
other sites of interest.
• www.mce.k12tn.net/colonial_times/
colonial_america.htm
Maintained by the Mountain City Elementary School, this site
contains extensive information on the early colonies, including
time lines, lessons and class activities.
• www.rootsweb.com/~mosmd/
This study guide includes links to an extensive variety of information on the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony.
• www.baccalieu.com/squantum/
This site contains interesting information about Squanto and
links to several episodes of his life.
• www.nnp.org/newvtour/regions/Manhattan/
new-amsterdam.html#
An excellent site for a virtual tour of New Amsterdam with links
to Wall Street and other neighborhoods.
Early Settlers
Grades K–4
Emily Cruse, M.Ed.
Curriculum Specialist, Schlessinger Media
Rudolph Lea
Historian
TITLES
• NATIVE AMERICAN LIFE
• EARLY SETTLERS
• AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
• UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION
• AFRICAN AMERICAN LIFE
• EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL
Teacher’s Guides Included
and Available Online at:
5
• UNITED STATES FLAG
• UNITED STATES EXPANSION
• IMMIGRATION TO THE U.S.
• WASHINGTON, D.C.
• NATIONAL OBSERVANCES
• U.S. SONGS AND POEMS
800-843-3620
Teacher’s Guide Copyright 2004 by Schlessinger Media,
a division of Library Video Company
P.O. Box 580,Wynnewood, PA 19096 • 800-843-3620
Executive Producer:Andrew Schlessinger
Programs produced and directed by Fabian-Baber Communication, Inc.
All rights reserved
tudying history is an essential part of understanding the
world we live in today.The history of the United States
includes the experiences and accomplishments of diverse
peoples, from Native Americans and immigrants to the
descendants of European settlers and of Africans brought
here by force. Key events such as the Revolutionary War, the
writing of the Constitution and the Emancipation
Proclamation influenced how the nation developed. The
study of history also involves facing painful aspects of the
country’s past, such as slavery and the treatment of Native
Americans. Over time, songs, holidays and other observances have shaped and reflected how Americans see themselves and their country. History provides a framework for
interpreting and living in the ever-changing present.
S
TEACHER’S GUIDE
K6632
V7162
Program Overview
In the early 1600s, the Pilgrims left England seeking a place where
they could practice their Puritan religion freely. Before arriving in the
New World, they wrote the Mayflower Compact that set up a government for their colony. In their colony, the Pilgrims experienced severe
hardships, learned from Indians about growing corn and other foods,
and celebrated their survival with the first Thanksgiving feast. Later
colonists continued to come to America for many reasons, from freedom to practice their religions to the desire to become wealthy.
Vocabulary
Pilgrim — An English Puritan who sailed from Holland to America
to found Plymouth Colony.A pilgrim is also a person who goes on a
very long journey for religious reasons.
The New World — The words people in Europe used to refer to
North and South America during the colonial period.
Plymouth Rock — A large boulder at Plymouth, Massachusetts,
where the Pilgrims probably landed.
heritage — Traditions and customs handed down from one’s ancestors.
Mayflower Compact — The agreement for self-government made
by the Pilgrims on the Mayflower.
colony — A community of settlers on a distant land, or simply the
territory itself, that is owned and ruled by the country from which
they came.
majority — More than half of a group.
harvest — The gathering in of crops.
Squanto — The Native American who taught the Pilgrims how to
grow corn, fish and hunt.
Anglicans — People belonging to the Church of England
Puritans — Former Anglicans who wanted to purify and change the
Church of England, and who separated from it to form their own
religion.
trade — Any skilled work done by a skilled craftsman.
silversmith — A skilled craftsman who makes things out of silver.
apprentice — A person who works with a skilled craftsman to learn
a trade.
blacksmith — A skilled craftsman who works with iron, especially
to make horseshoes and to attach them.
tobacco — An American plant that grows the leaves that are used to
make cigars and cigarettes.
merchant — A business person who buys and sells products for
profit.
slave — A person who is forced against their will to work for no
money.
plantation — A large farm where many slaves lived and worked to
farm the land.
Powhatan Confederacy — A group of Native American nations in
Virginia united for a common purpose.
town stock — A framework used as punishment by the Puritans in
Massachusetts to lock in a person’s ankles and wrists and exhibit
him in the town square.
Pre-viewing Discussion
• Ask students what places come to mind when they hear the words
“American colonies.” Do they know who was in America before
European settlers came? What do they know about how these
people lived? How was life was different then from now?
• Ask students to imagine a first encounter between Native
Americans and European settlers, and to imagine what each group
thought when it first saw the other.
• Discuss with students what the reasons could have been to cause
families in Europe to leave their homes and to take the huge risks
of sailing to and settling in an unknown land.
• Challenge your students to imagine what they would have to do to
survive if they had to leave their homeland with their families and
settle down on a strange shore in a relatively wild place.
• Ask your students what they eat on Thanksgiving and if they know
why these food items are chosen for the traditional holiday meal.
Focus Questions
1. What was the route that the Pilgrims took from England to America?
2.What did Pilgrims bring with them to the New World?
3.Why did the Pilgrims make the Mayflower Compact, and what did
it do?
4. How did Squanto and Samoset help the settlers?
5.What foods were included in the first Thanksgiving?
6.What was life like for children in colonial Williamsburg?
7.What crops made some Virginians very rich?
8.Why were Africans brought as enslaved people to the New World?
9.What were some of the countries people left to settle in America?
How were the groups from these countries similar and different?
Follow-up Discussion
• Challenge your students to understand why sailing across the
Atlantic Ocean in 1620 required great courage and great risk.What
made it so dangerous?
• Discuss with your students the practical reasons why the
Pilgrim leaders on the Mayflower acted to write the Mayflower
Compact before landing, and why they wrote it the way they
did.What is in it that made it a very important document in
American history?
• Both the Puritans and the Quakers came to the New World for
freedom of religion. Compare how they carried out their religions in their colonies.Whose approach would students prefer
today and why?
• Discuss with students how differently boys and girls were raised
in colonial Williamsburg, and have them compare games they
play today with games Williamsburg children played, and clothes
they wear today with the clothes children wore then.
• Ask your students to name as many different countries or continents they can think of from which colonists came to the New
World. How do they think this variety affected the later growth
of the United States?
Follow-up Activities
• Have students make lists of items they would choose to pack
into one single suitcase if they had to accompany their parents
on a trip to a new home in a far-off country.Then ask them to
make lists of the items the Pilgrims were allowed to take with
them on the voyage to the New World. Have them share the lists
and come to an agreement to identify the ten most important
items.
• Ask students to pretend that they were experts of life in the
American colonies, sent back to England in 1700 to help a group
of people who are about to move permanently to the New
World. Students can develop an advertisement encouraging
people to move to the colonies.
• Divide the class in half and assign one half to prepare a “Survival
Guide” for settlers about to embark on a ship to settle for good
in Jamestown,Virginia, in 1607, and the other half to do the
same for passengers about to blast off on the space shuttle for a
month’s visit to the International Space Station.Afterward, have
them compare the guides and then vote for which trip they
would prefer.
• Ask students to pair off and to imagine they are two persons of
the same age, one growing up as the child of a tobacco plantation owner in the town of Williamsburg, and the other as the
child of an enslaved person working on a plantation in the
Virginia countryside.Write a script for a mini-play that describes
their contrasting lives during the course of one day.
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