Describe daily life, work, and education for colonial children and families, noting real differences by region, class, and free or enslaved status.
A colonial child's day depended enormously on where, and to which family, they were born. In New England, Puritans valued literacy so children could read the Bible themselves, so many towns ran small schools; children often studied from a hornbook, a wooden paddle holding a single printed page with the alphabet and a short prayer, protected under a thin layer of transparent horn. In the Southern colonies, wealthy planter families often hired private tutors for their own children, while few schools existed for poor free families at all. Children in most farm families, rich or poor, were expected to help from a young age -- fetching water, tending animals, cooking, sewing, and, as they grew older, learning a trade through apprenticeship for boys or household skills for girls.
This picture of chores and modest schooling, though, describes only free colonial children's lives. An enslaved child's day looked entirely different: forced labor from a young age, no legal right to schooling in most colonies, and no power over where his or her family lived or whether it could be kept together. Being honest about colonial daily life means holding both pictures at once -- the ordinary routines of free families, and the very different, harsher reality faced by enslaved children and families, a subject the next two weeks will look at directly.
Mastery looks like: They can describe at least one detail of colonial schooling and one chore or work expectation, and state honestly that daily life differed sharply for enslaved children.
Common stumbles: Assuming every colonial child went to school; describing "colonial daily life" as one single experience instead of one that varied enormously by region, class, and status.