History group visits school

By Amanda Stewart

Published: May 15, 2008

A few sixth graders at Mayfield Intermediate School joined the Continental Army Thursday afternoon—if only for a few minutes.

The pupils donned colonial costumes, loaded imaginary muskets and marched around Marilyn Pratt's sixth-grade classroom during the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation's visit to the Manassas school.

The foundation's travelling museum visits classrooms throughout the state to bring the hands-on learning experiences to pupils, outreach education instructor Donna Watson said.

"We get the kids participating," Watson said. "They all get very excited and into it."

This week, the foundation's museum-in-a-trunk visited all of Mayfield's classrooms.

In Pratt's classroom, students participated in the "Life of a Private" program, where they learned what it was like to be a soldier in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

Their first task was sorting out which of the odd-looking garments went where.

Watson held a thin strip of leather with strings attached near one student and asked the class to help him figure out how to wear it.

"Where do you think this goes?" Watson asked the class.

Around the waist like a belt, his classmates guessed.

No, it's too small.

Around an arm? No, it doesn't fit there anyway.

The leather strip was a stiff leather collar worn around the neck, Watson told the students.

The collars were part of the Continental Marines uniform during the Revolutionary War, Watson said, and the garment gave the Marines their nickname of "Leathernecks."

After figuring out which article of clothing went where, a few students played the role of soldiers.

One of the student-soldiers, Shay Alston, giggled as Watson draped a homespun hunting frock, similar to one that would have been worn by the soldiers, around her shoulders.

"Ooh," the 12-year-old said. "I look good."

The 45-minute presentation touched on many of the topics covered in Virginia Standards of Learning, Watson said.

"We try to get in the important points and hit as many of those SOLs as we can," Watson said.

Staff writer Amanda Stewart can be reached at 703-878-8014.