Third grade students are studying the Oregon trail in their Pioneer Unit at Clairbourn. Thanks to first-hand accounts from journals kept by about 2,500 pioneers, they have been learning how a “dream for a better life” captivated half-a-million people to plunge into a journey filled with extreme hardships and sacrifice. This mass migration also resulted in serious and devastating effects to the Native American population and the physical environment. (The Oregon Trail was a journey of 1,932 miles that extended from Missouri to Oregon. The Federal Government opened up the state of Oregon for people to claim land, and over 500,000 people set out to stake a claim. 50,000 people died along the way from drowning, disease, animal attack, bullet wounds, and even starvation.)
Clairbourn’s Pioneer Unit is a cooperative learning activity where students make their own covered wagons out of paper and travel across the country (the campus) with their pioneer family groups. To add authenticity, girls dress in bonnets with aprons and boys wear cowboy hats with bandanas , and their gear includes period crafts, games, and musical instruments such as harmonicas. As they move along the trail, they face situations drawn from historical diaries, literature, and other documents from the time period. Each adventure is also designed to cover key learning objectives in subjects like reading, writing, math, social studies, geography, science, drama, music, dance, speech, sports, or art. While re-enacting life on the trail, they also learn songs, games, and dances. These are shared with parents at a final Pioneer Day assembly and celebration which is a day-long extravaganza of pioneer food, crafts, dance and adventure.
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