Learn what a "blab school" is and recreate one in your classroom.
Pretend it is 1800 and you and your family are moving to south central Kentucky.
Make a list of the essential items you must take to build a home, feed your family,
and survive in the wilderness.
Visit the courthouse and make copies of several deeds filed during the county's early
years. How many of the survey points could be located today or even a few years
after the original survey was recorded? Conduct a discussion on the problems created
by overlapping survey claims. Ask a local attorney or surveyor to talk to the class
about the problems that still result from such methods.
Divide the class into small groups. Provide each group with a yard stick and a length
of pre-measured string and have each group measure the classroom's perimeter.
Compare the results. Are there differences in measurement? How might such
differences compare to the results of amateur surveyors on the frontier?
Have students role play as pioneers and write letters to relatives back home about
their activities and experiences.
Check out the Frontier Kentucky traveling exhibit from the Kentucky Museum.
Discuss the relative merits or limitations of written documents and artifacts as historical
evidence. Consider that much of the population was not literate and that many artifacts
have not survived.
