Rock Walls Rock!

Today Ken and Althea led us in a great lesson on rock walls. We learned that in the 1800s people around VT built walls for many reasons. Some walls were built as property lines, borders for a cultivated field, or to contain livestock. A property boundary was built from stones of relatively the same size and shape giving a neat and orderly look. Walls built for cultivated fields utilized both large and small stones. Often times these stones were removed from the field to make it easier to plow. Finally, if a farmer had to build a wall for livestock, he used large stones stacked together and sometimes wood fencing to add height.
The class was broken up into teams of 4-5 kids and asked to construct a village with a variety of walls. Ask your child what went well for their team as they worked through this task. Or what their team found as a challenge and finally, what he/she would do differently if given this task again.