Level
One
- Learning Goals and
Objectives--Grades 3 - 5
- Voices and Choices--Antoine Bienvenue
- Voices and Choices--Ambroise Moreau
- Livre's Worth Activity
- Side by Side Activity
Note: It is a good idea to print this section for
easy reference.
Antoine Bienvenue is now 12 years old and needs
to decide if he will participate in the New Year's celebration like
a man or pursue more "boyish" pursuits.
These themes can be explored with either a social studies or
language arts curriculum. Use these themes to tie in other
resources to your class discussion, i.e., other books, other
cultures, students' own lives.
- Growing up and taking on new roles and responsibilities
in the family and community
- Festivities during the French Period
Use these questions to
start class discussions.
Have you taken on new responsibilities in your family since
your last birthday?
Explore the idea of family responsibilities with your students.
Does each birthday bring new jobs within the family? How do
different cultures view the roles and responsibilities of children
within the family?
What new responsibilities does Antoine have now that he is 12?
How are they the same or different from yours?
At the age of 12, Antoine was growing up. He was now considered
man enough to carry a gun and protect the village. His sisters
expected him to join in the festivities surrounding New Year's
eve.
Why did Antoine ask St. Nicholas (Santa Claus) for a gun?
As much as he feels himself a child, Antoine wants to become a
man. A gun was a symbol of manhood in French colonial society, plus
he will be able to show it off to his Indian friends.
What do you look forward to doing when you turn 12?
Find out if your students regard the age of 12 as a time of
coming of age. Will they be able to do "adult" things like having
their ears pierced or being able to go places by themselves?
Do you and your family celebrate New Year's Eve in the same way
that Antoine and his family did?
The French celebrated New Year's Eve by going to church for a
midnight mass and preparing for the Twelfth Night Ball held on
January 5th. Everyone in the community would have participated.
Before the ball, young men dressed in costume would go from door to
door begging food for the ball and entertaining each household by
singing the Guignolee and dancing the rag dance.
Why are Antoine's Indian friends important to him? In what ways
are your friends important to you?
His Indian friends have taught him to hunt with a bow and arrow.
Explore the idea of friendship with your students. What do we do
with our friends that we don't do with members of our family?
for
suggested activities.
- Diary Activity:
Pretend to be Antoine or one of his sisters and write a diary
entry about what took place New Year's Eve. Begin your diary like
this:
January 1, 1743, Kaskaskia
Dear Diary,
- Neighborhood Map:
On a piece of paper, draw a map of your neighborhood. You might
want to show where you live, where your friends live, where your
school is located, where your family buys their groceries.
How does your neighborhood compare with a French village in the
1700s?
Go to Maps and find out
- Create a mask for a masked ball.
You can design your own mask out of thick paper or cardboard or
buy premade paper masks at the store. Use scraps of construction
paper, fabric, tinfoil, tissue paper, and bits of string or tinsel
to glue onto your mask as decoration.
- How might your mask differ from a Halloween mask?
- How might masks made in the 1700s differ from masks made today?
- the materials used to make masks
- the purpose of/or ideas expressed by masks
- the cultural influences upon masks
- Make a diagram comparing life in French Colonial Kaskaskia to
life in British Colonial Williamsburg.
Ambroise Moreau needs a table for his household.
He has 10 bushels of wheat--the only surplus food that his farm
produced this year--to trade for a table. What kind of table will
he be able to afford--used, custom made, or homemade?
These themes can be explored with either a social studies or
language arts curriculum. Use these themes to tie in other
resources to your class discussion, i.e., other books, other
cultures, students' own lives.
- Scarcity and surplus--what do these terms mean and how
do they apply to Ambroise Moreau's situation?
- Self-sufficiency--to survive on the frontier families
had to be able to build their own house, make household furniture,
and grow their own food.
Use these questions to
start class discussions.
Are all of the things you own brand new? Have you ever traded
something you owned for something you wanted?
Have your students bought used things from garage sales or
thrift shops? Maybe students have older siblings who give them
"hand-me-downs." Have students traded cards or objects with each
other?
How do you purchase things that you need? How did the colonists
purchase things?
Money was scarce in the colonies. Instead, colonists would trade
goods that had the same relative monetary value. This is known as
barter economics.
Where did their household objects come from? Where do yours
come from?
Household objects were scarce in the colonies. Most people had
to make their own furniture. Some of the colonists were trained
artisans and could make things that people needed. Items, such as
plates, crockery, and glassware, would have come from New Orleans
in exchange for animal pelts or agricultural goods from the
colonies. Estate sales made items available that were scarce or
otherwise too expensive for most settlers to purchase.
Why would this table have been important to the Moreaus? Can
you list all of the different things that might have taken place at
this table?
A colonial house would have had very little furniture. A table
would have provided a useful surface, and served as a reminder of
the European way of life. They might have prepared and eaten meals
at the table. Outside of meal time, the table would have been a
place to play cards or would have served as a desk.
What is an estate sale? Have you ever been to one?
When a man or woman died, their possessions were usually sold in
an estate sale. The profits of the estate sale were divided among
the heirs. Estate sales exist today. They are usually publicized in
a local newspaper or gazette (find one to show to your
students).
for
suggested activities.
- Estate Inventories: Ambroise went to the estate sale of Marie
Catherine Baron. Take a look at the inventory of her estate in Clues to the Past
- Use the estate inventory of Marie Catherine Baron as a model to
make an inventory of your bedroom, living room, and kitchen.
- Compare your inventory list with that of Marie Catherine Baron.
- What did she have in her house that you don't have?
- What do you have in your house that she didn't have?
- Are there any similarities between your inventory and
hers?
- Make a museum label: Choose your favorite object from your
inventory list and draw it or take a photograph of it. Can you
write a museum label for your object?
- For an example of a museum label go to Objects
Select one of the objects and read the text underneath it. Notice
how the text is organized:
- the name of the object and the date it was made
- a list of the materials used to make the object
- a brief narrative describing how the object was used, maybe its
cost, and who made it.
- See if you can trace the route the table from Marie Catherine
Baron's estate inventory would have taken to reach Illinois from
Quebec, Canada.
- Read about her table in Objects
- Trace the two different routes the table could have taken from
Canada to Illinois in Maps
Livre's Worth: introduces students to the rudiments of the
barter economy of colonial Illinois. Students choose an object from
a list of household goods that belonged to marie Catherine Baron
and were sold at an estate sale in 1748. Students are asked to
calculate how much of a certain agricultural product, for example
bacon, they must produce to trade for the object. They will be
determining the relative value in livres through simple
mathematics.
Click here for the teacher's lesson plan for the
Livre's Worth activity.
Students use Side by Side as a model for categorizing information
about themselves, their classmates, and their community.
Click here for the teacher's lesson
plan for the Side by Side activity.
| Level 2 | Level 3
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© Illinois State Museum
31-Dec-96