Spring Creek students step back in time to 1600s

Gustavo Marin, 10, and his mom, Elizabeth, write on hornbooks at the Ye Ol’ School House as part of the fifth-graders Colonial Craft Fair.

Students at Spring Creek Elementary School recently invited the community to spend time in the 1600s with an old-style colonial fair, complete with pumpkins, haystacks, crafts and garb reminiscent of the early days in Williamsburg and Yorktown.

The fifth-graders, with the help of volunteers, brought the 17th century to life with orange string lights along the portables, fresh corn bread and apple juice or cider.

“The kids love this,” said Terri Mancuso as she served up cider and directed students and parents into classrooms offering a variety of crafts from doll-making to hornbook writing.

The fifth grade teachers worked together to re-create the time period by having students dress in black bottoms and white tops and wear colonial headwear.

“The children love the experience they get with this because they get to see what life was like and they get to teach it to others as well,” said Karen Leonardi, the school’s principal.

As part of their curriculum, fifth-graders are in charge of creating a lesson including a colonial-type craft that can be taught to younger children. The idea is to get kids excited about the time period and express that to students in lower grade levels.

“They teach the other kids for two days so they get the real experience of colonial america,” said Leonardi, whose children used to do all the crafts in one day but the school’s population has grown.

Some of the crafts at the fair showed children and parents how to create handmade dolls, braid yarn and write using ink and a feather-writing instrument.

“We had to create something the kids could do like writing in hornbooks that were used for studying,” said Kathy Clase, the fifth-grade resource teacher.

In colonial times, hornbooks were made from hide and students wore them around their necks as a reference tool. The books included bible verses, letters, numbers and other information the teachers might ask.

Fifth-grade teachers put the colonial project together seven years ago to take the colonial experience out of the classroom and give students a different way to see what the world was like in the old times.