Living On the Oregon Trail

 

Overview:
- Read more of Westward to Home: Joshua's Oregon Trail Diary

 - What can they pack in their wagon?
           Activity: Find wagon size 

- Find out how many steps they took

- “Life on the Oregon Trail” reading
            What personal items would you bring?

- Try Soda Biscuits

 Materials:
- Westward to Home: Joshua's Oregon Trail Diary
- Whiteboard marker
- Calculator
- “Life on the Oregon Trail” reading
- Interactive Notebooks
- Soda Biscuits

Procedures: 

Read around twenty pages in the book Westward to Home: Joshua's Oregon Trail Diary.

Explain to the students that it took about six months to cross the Oregon Trail.

A family of four needed:      800 pounds of flour

                                                200 pounds of lard

                                                25 pounds of salt and pepper

                                                200 pounds of beans

                                                700 pounds of bacon

                                                100 pounds of dried fruit

                                                75 pounds of coffee


Tell the students: This equals 2000 pounds of food. Most wagons were not supposed to carry more than 2400 pounds. Pioneers also had to bring cooking utensils, weapons, clothing, personal items and more. Write all of the items that were needed in one wagon on the white board. 

 Tell students to write the wagon items in their INB

Use students to see about how large these wagons were. Wagons were four feet by twelve feet. Line enough students up so that they form a rectangle to meet these dimensions.

 Have them imagine all of the items listed on the board in a wagon of that size.

Let leftover students stand in the middle of the human wagon.

 Ask students if they think people were able to sit in the wagon with all of the stuff that had to be in the wagon.

 Tell them that in most cases the people had to walk along side their wagon, the entire 2,000 miles to Oregon. 

 Find out as a class how many steps the Oregon Trail pioneers took to get to their destination.

            First, let the students measure one of their normal steps from front heel to back heel. Takethe average amount from the numbers that the students give you.  Next, divide 63360 (the number of inches in a mile) by that number. Now you have figured the number of steps in a mile. Now, multiply the number of steps by 2,000 miles. The answer is the number of steps it would take for you to walk from Missouri to Oregon.

 Pass out to students a reading on “What life was like on the Oregon Trail”. Have them paste it into their INB. Ask students to read the handout.

 When students are done with the reading handout, they should write in their INB, five items, other than food or clothes that they would bring with them on the Oregon Trail

 Give students a Soda Biscuit. Explain that you made these biscuits with a recipe that pioneers on the Oregon Trial often used. 

Recipe:

Take 1 lb. of flour, and mix it with milk enough to make a stiff dough; dissolve in a little milk 1 teaspoon of carbonate of soda; add this to the paste with a teaspoon of salt. Work it well together, and roll it out thin; cut into round biscuits, and bake them in a moderate oven. The yolk of an egg is sometimes added. 

 
ESOL Accommodations: Make sure ESOL students get the food items in their INB. Make a lower level reading handout for ESOL students.

 Sources:
Information and Recipe: www.blm.gov/or/oregontrail/education-teachers-packets.php