What did children do in the colonies?

Girls would grind corn, spin, and weave. Many poorer children did not go to school. They learned to farm, hunt, cook, and sew from their families. Even though colonial kids worked hard, they still found time for outdoor fun, like swimming, fishing, and flying kites.

What did kids do in the colonies?

Boys helped their fathers and girls did chores at home. By a time a girl was four she could knit stockings! Even with all the work they did, colonial children still found time to have fun. They cared for their pets, played with dolls, shot marbles, pitched pennies, and went fishing.

What role did children play in colonial society?

Girls were expected to help their mothers sew, spin materials, cook, and clean. Boys would hunt, tend the farm, feed the farm animals, and chop wood for the fire. Although life was busy, colonial kids still found time to play. Like children today, colonial kids played with dolls, took care of pets, and went fishing.

What chores did kids do in colonial times?

The chores children had to do were often the simplest and most boring ones. Children might have to carry wood or water, husk corn, gather berries, lead oxen, card wool, gather eggs or churn butter. When children weren't doing chores, their parents often sent them to school.

What jobs did colonial children do?

Working. Since most of the colonists lived in rural areas or country areas, they would have to help take care of the farms and take care of the animals. Children were in charge of doing things like taking the animal's food and water, milking the cows, and gathering eggs from chickens.

Colonial Times for Kids | Learn about the colonial America

What chores did colonial girls do?

Women trained girls to be wives and mothers by having them help around the house. Girls helped with cooking, preserving food, caring for children, cleaning the house, washing clothes and gardening. They milked cows, churned butter, and made cheese. Girls' work was important to cloth making.

What are the 13 colonies for kids?

In 1776 the 13 colonies declared their independence from Great Britain. The names of the colonies were Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia.

What toys did kids play with in colonial times?

They made dolls from cornhusks and rags. Leftover wood and string could be used to make spinning tops. Hoops from barrels could be used in races and other games. Many times the children made up their games and needed no equipment at all – they improvised with what was around the farm they lived on.

What toys did colonial children play with?

Whirligigs, whirlijigs, whizzers, or buzzer toys were made and enjoyed by colonial children and indigenous children alike. They featured a weighted centerpiece or whirligig made from tanned animal hide, paper, coins, buttons, stones, bone, or pieces of lead carved into a pinwheel shape.

How were colonial children treated?

Colonial children were viewed as miniature adults; and boys and girls were dressed alike until the age of 7. The infant^1,7 wore a long linen smock; was covered with a woolen blanket; and a wooden or wicker cradle, hooded to protect from cold draughts, much like those in which Indian babies slept, was its bed.

Did colonial children go to school?

How much education a child received depended on a person's social and family status. Families did most of the educating, and boys were favored. Educational opportunities were much sparser in the rural South. The New England Primer was the first and most popular primer designed to teach reading in the colonies.

What age did colonial children start working?

Children were expected to contribute to their families in the form of working. Children began working as early as age four or five.

What did kids in the southern colonies do for fun?

In all the colonies, kids played with balls and bats and marbles and dolls. They played tag. In the south they played lawn bowling. In the north, they played shuffleboard.

What was life like in the 1700s for kids?

The children of average or poor families began working very early on in life, sometimes even as early as age seven. They worked mostly on farms as shepherds, cowherds, or apprentices and often left home to do so.

What school was like 100 years ago?

Rural areas made the one room schoolhouse famous—in many of these, the grades studied together in a single room, and were taught by one teacher. In urban areas, of course, schools were larger and students worked in separate classrooms according to their grade level.

What did colonists do for fun?

Shooting and woodchopping competitions were popular, and, making the most of two important forms of colonial transport, boat races and horse races became common forms of entertainment. However, indoor activities relied more on things the settlers had done back in Britain.

What was life like in the 13 colonies?

Much of colonial life was hard work, even preparing food. But colonists found ways to mix work with play. They also enjoyed sports and games. For most of the 1700s, the colonists were content to be ruled by English laws.

What would colonists do if they were sick?

Most sick people turned to local healers, and used folk remedies. Others relied upon the minister-physicians, barber-surgeons, apothecaries, midwives, and ministers; a few used colonial physicians trained either in Britain, or an apprenticeship in the colonies.

What did kids play with in the 1600s?

Seventeenth-century depictions of children playing show us a wide variety of toys, ranging from dolls and toy soldiers, through hoops, jump-ropes, whirligigs, hobby-horses, tops, toy drums, and balls. Tobacco pipes were borrowed from smokers for blowing soap bubbles.

What did kids used to play with?

Often, children would play with balls made from rags or inflated pigs' bladders and use the ankle bones of sheep to play various catching games. Many toy factories during the Second World War were required to make guns, plane parts and other pieces of equipment needed for the country's war effort.

What are 5 facts about the colonies?

Are there 12 or 13 colonies?

The Thirteen Colonies in their traditional groupings were: the New England Colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut); the Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware); and the Southern Colonies (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia).

What are the 13 colonies called now?

The 13 original states were New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.