Communication in the 18th Century

When you sit on the porch on the Garner Rix Farm you see the hay field and the flower beds, the hillside covered in trees and swallows swooping back and forth searching for insects on a warm summer day.

There are no houses in sight.

Though this may see isolated, the cell phone tower across the way provides excellent service, the mailbox is at the end of the five and a satellite dish points to the sky from the back of the woodshed.

But what was it like for Garner Rix when he was first clearing the land? I had always imagined that communication was difficult to impossible but when I took a second look I found evidence to the contrary.

My first hint was when I was talking with my next door neighbor. We were discussing what life was like before the Interstate came through. You see, the mountains form a valley that makes sounds easily carry. My neighbor says that at one time you could be working out in the hay field and listen to voices down in the village. You might not be able to understand what they were saying but you could hear them.

Intrigued, I listened for breads in the traffic to see if that was still possible.

Once a year the Royalton Town Band plays down in the village. I had planned to go down but was running late when there was a break in the traffic and all of a sudden I heard the band playing. Then there was the sound of clapping.This tells me that Garner Rix too was able to hear his neighbors.

He must have been able to hear his neighbors chopping down trees, splitting wood, calling to their oxen or the women calling the men in to dinner.

Another day I began reading a wonderful book, Look to the Mountain, by LeGrand Canon. This is a book about a young couple,k Whit and Melissa, who got married and moved from Connecticut to New Hampshire in about 1767 or around 20 years before Garner Rix's family moved up to the Grants, later know as Vermont.

Whit and his neighbors often walked 20 miles or more to help eachother during the pioneering process. By working together they got to know eachother's ways while exchanging news from the neighbors or from distant places such as Boston or England.

One day Whit could hear someone cutting trees. He knew form the direction of the sound which place it came from. By paying attention to the rhythm of the chopping he determined which of the three men living on that homestead we doing the chopping, another form of communication.

There was a time when letters traveled quickly in this country. Around 1900 you could put a letter in the mail with a message that you would be up to visit in the afternoon. What amazed me when I read postcards from this time period was that these messages traveled so quickly that the people who you planned to visit received it in time to prepare before the visitor arrived.

The mail system is now reverting back to what it was like in Garner Rix's time. A first class letter now takes 7-10 business days. The difference is that now it costs much more. In Garner Rix's time, anyone who traveled expected to carry letters that were going in his general direction. They would be passed from person to person, left at houses or stores when the traveler took a different direction and be picked up by the next person headed in the right direction.

If the message was urgent, neighbors might make a special trip to get the message through. Many forms of communication have changed since Garner Rix's time. Compare and contrast the various form of communication. Which time would you prefer to live in?

To learn more about Garner Rix, be sure to check out Garner Rix and the Royalton Raid.

This photo, Looking Across the Field can also be seen on RedGage

The Teapot Dragon

There is a poem about The Teapot Dragon with a crinkly tail and pincer claws. It sticks out it's tongue and keeps the tea piping hot.

The Teapot Dragon is a poem that takes a child from reality to imagination. Start with The Teapot Dragon poem and explore imagery through words. Use those words to describe experiments with temperature and the tastes of various teas.

Pour out the tea from the Dragon's Teapot and write some dragon poetry.

Ride the Bus

I love to think up ideas for teaching young children. While I was playing with my four year old nephew it occurred to me that the Fisher Price Little People cars and buses could help teach a valuable lesson in why we need to take the bus instead of individual cars.

First we parked five cars in front of five houses and had a person get in each one and drive on the road. That was a lot of cars on the road.

Then we pretended that it was the next day and had the bus stop for each of these people. They could all ride together, using only one vehicle.

Buses can transport more people at a time than cars.

We also talked about the number of people getting on and off, using addition and subtraction in a very concrete way. His older cousin, 6 years old, loved being the Supervisor who got to keep a record of the people getting on and off. She wrote the number sentences 1+1=2. 2-1=3 etc.

Playtime is a great time for teaching.

Hands-on Learning

There are so many things for a young child to learn in school. Children come with eager faces all ready to learn how to read, count and discover the world. Those activities don't have to be separated into separate subjects. In fact when we embark on a new unit of study I like to brainstorm all the things we know about a subject, gather materials, games and activities, write down ideas and ask for suggestions from children, parents and librarians. By bringing the community together everyone is involved in the learning process. I try utilize activities that address all the Multiple Intelligences.




When I began my research for my Frog Unit Study, the children asked to have a frog in the classroom. Someone had an aquarium. Johnny's uncle had raised frogs from eggs and might be willing to come in and talk with the class about the experience. The librarian knew of lots of beginning readers both fiction like Frog and Toad but also non-fiction like Gail Gibbon's Frog Book.

Over the years I gathered games from yard sales, thrift stores and donations. I have been lucky to have some dedicated parents and grandparents come in to help make http://www.squidoo.com/edugames, workjobs, charts and class books.

The children I have taught as well as their parents have loved this way of learning and I hope that more teachers will find ways to make their classroom come alive with games, pets, plants, sensory tables and cuddly reading nooks.

Recently I discovered wordwalls as a way to help children write and learn to spell more independently. I combine such new methods with old fun ones like writing spelling words in salt trays or with paint brushes and water.