Our groups are exploring what it would be like to live in the Levering neighborhood around the 1750s.

We started our inquiry by asking what we wanted to know about life in these times. We wrote many, many questions and so far we only answered some.

We started to read stories about colonial life. One book that we read is "Felicity Learns a Lessson" from the "American Girls" series. We also read "George Washington's Breakfast" by Jean Fritz. These books gave us a feeling of some aspects of a child's daily life.

Our activities so far have been practicing colonial penmanship, making Hornbooks, creating dioramas of inside a colonial home, and making butter. We also discussed and worked on pictures showing colonial dress and the trades or occupations of these times.

To celebrate Benjamin Franklin's birthday in January, we read about his life and learned about his inventions and famous sayings. We viewed the film "Ben and Me," a cartoon narration of Franklin's inventions.

We plany many activities for the future. We hope to answer most of our questions with such activities involving: colonial history, the clothes, foods, games, music, occupations, etc. We hope to gain a sense of a timeline and a feeling for the history of our neighborhoods. We certainly may have enough questions to take us to the year 2000.

For one activity, we investigated how Colonial Philadelphians used simple science. One way was to churn butter. We decided to make butter from scratch, but, since we have electricity, we used a mixer to help. The basic science ideas are the same.

Our QuickTime Movie (2500k) shows how we did it.