Children Recreate Schooling

and Games From A Bygone Era

By Andrew Gorosko

A group of children last Sunday got a sense of what life was like long ago, before computers, before television, before electricity was in use.

They gathered on a clear day at the Newtown Historical Society’s red one-room schoolhouse on Cold Spring Road, near Middle Gate School.

At its open house and living history demonstration, the society presented a program on schooling, children’s chores, and games. The program was entitled “The Life of A Child in Colonial Connecticut.”

Supervised by Shari Rowe and Nanette Maturi, the assembled youths demonstrated penmanship with a quill pen, read school texts by window light, and listened to tales read aloud by a teacher.

The children also enjoyed the warm day outdoors on the expansive lawn, where they used sticks to toss hoops among themselves. Sets of streamers attached to the hoops stabilized the devices as they sailed through the sky.

Also, Julia Yingling, 12, demonstrated the art of using a stick to roll a large wooden hoop across the verdant lawn.

On the stone stoop of the schoolhouse, Ms Maturi and young Will Sandercox enjoyed a game of jacks.

Inside the building, Talia Hankin, 8, demonstrated quill penmanship as Maren Brady, 10, looked on.

During the three-hour program, the youths were dressed in period garb, lending a sense of history to the activities that they demonstrated from a bygone era.