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downloadable activities

Explore "Color Our Collection" and other downloadable kids' activities to learn more about Jamestown and some of the exciting artifacts that we have found. Once youngsters have completed the activity, we invite you to explore with them the photo of the real thing and the corresponding web page to learn more.

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Visit the real thing at Historic Jamestowne, explore the actual location and active archaeological dig, Jamestown Rediscovery, home of the first successful English settlement.

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Jamestown, Part 1

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Jamestown faced daunting challenges in its early years, but the hard-luck colony succeeded in one important way—putting England on the map in America!

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Jamestown, Part 2

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Jamestown faced daunting challenges in its early years, but the hard-luck colony succeeded in one important way—putting England on the map in America!

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VS.2a-c Virginia Geography and Native Americans

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Contact:
Bob Dunn
Falls Church, Virginia

In 1606, some 105 adventurers set off from England to try and establish the first permanent English colony in the New World. They settled in what is now the state of Virginia and called their colony first James Fort, and then James Towne, in honor of James I, the King of England. The early years of the colony were nearly a total disaster. Almost half of the settlers died due to poor choices in settlement location, management of resources, and quarrels with the indigenous Powhatan Indians.

You are the Captain of the Jamestown Colony:
Can you do any better than the real colonists? You will have a copy of the London Company's Instructions to help guide you. Also, you can ask your fellow colonists and the Native Americans for advice. Be careful, though, because some advice is better than others!

Scoring Factors:
After you make all your decisions, you will receive a report on the state of your colony based on these factors:

Food: How well can you provide it for your colonists?

Health: Can you keep your colonists from dying due to disease, starvation, and attacks?

Wealth: Can you make yourself and your sponsors at the London Company rich from the discovery of gold and silver?

Morale: Can you keep yourself in power by keeping everyone happy?

Make History: You will get to compare your colony to the historical Jamestown at the end. By examining the "Now we know..." section, you can learn from the mistakes of history so you do not repeat them when you play again.

Good luck and Godspeed!

E-mail your comments and suggestions to: historyglobe@yahoo.com

UPDATE September 2006:

Game is now compatible with Flash plugin version 7 or higher

Printable results- compare outcomes with other students in your classroom!

© 2002 Bob Dunn

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Contact: Bob DunnFalls Church, Virginia In 1606, some 105 adventurers set off from England to try and establish the first permanent English colony in the New World. They settled in what is now the state of Virginia and called their colony first James Fort, and then James Towne, in honor of James I, the King of England.

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Read Pueblos indígenas del Noreste (Native Peoples of the Northeast) on Epic

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Author - Barbara M. Linde

Create an Epic account to start reading!

Aprenda sobre la gente del Ártico norteamericano. Descubra cómo y por qué la gente se asentó tan al norte como cómo vivían.

Read this Book on Epic!

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online access fun thousands children great kids ebooks books

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Read Pueblos indígenas del Noreste (Native Peoples of the Northeast) on Epic

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Author - Barbara M. Linde Create an Epic account to start reading! Aprenda sobre la gente del Ártico norteamericano. Descubra cómo y por qué la gente se asentó tan al norte como cómo vivían. Read this Book on Epic!

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Read My Life As An Early Settler on Epic

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online access fun thousands children great kids ebooks books

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Read My Life As An Early Settler on Epic

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Instantly access My Life As An Early Settler plus over 40,000 of the best books & videos for kids.

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Jamestown

Britannica School

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Welcome to Britannica School , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Elementary, Middle, and High School.

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online access fun thousands children great kids ebooks books

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Instantly access Pocahontas plus over 40,000 of the best books & videos for kids.

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Slavery in Jamestown

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Welcome to Britannica School , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Elementary, Middle, and High School.

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Read The Jamestown Colony Disaster on Epic

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Author - Marcia Amidon Lusted

Create an Epic account to start reading!

In 1607, settlers established the Jamestown colony in North America. They struggled to find food, and many fell victim to disease.

Read this Book on Epic!

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online access fun thousands children great kids ebooks books

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Read The Jamestown Colony Disaster on Epic

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Author - Marcia Amidon Lusted Create an Epic account to start reading! In 1607, settlers established the Jamestown colony in North America. They struggled to find food, and many fell victim to disease. Read this Book on Epic!

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Read Surviving Jamestown: The Adventures of Young Sam Collier on Epic

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Author - Gail Langer Karwoski , Illustrator - Paul Casale

Illustrator - Paul Casale

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Discover Sam Collier's courage and survival while learning about this important period in the history of the United States.

Read this Book on Epic!

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online access fun thousands children great kids ebooks books

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Read Surviving Jamestown: The Adventures of Young Sam Collier on Epic

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Author - Gail Langer Karwoski , Illustrator - Paul Casale Illustrator - Paul Casale Create an Epic account to start reading! Discover Sam Collier's courage and survival while learning about this important period in the history of the United States. Read this Book on Epic!

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Read Jamestown and the Settlement of Virginia on Epic

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Create an Epic account to start reading!

Despite difficulties, Jamestown established a legislative assembly that was the first example of representative government in the US.

Read this Book on Epic!

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online access fun thousands children great kids ebooks books

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Read Jamestown and the Settlement of Virginia on Epic

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Create an Epic account to start reading! Despite difficulties, Jamestown established a legislative assembly that was the first example of representative government in the US. Read this Book on Epic!

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Read Jamestown: The First English Colony on Epic

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Author - Susan Sales Harkins, William H. Harkins

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In 1606, one hundred and five men left England for the western shores of the Chesapeake Bay

Read this Book on Epic!

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online access fun thousands children great kids ebooks books

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Read Jamestown: The First English Colony on Epic

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Author - Susan Sales Harkins, William H. Harkins Create an Epic account to start reading! In 1606, one hundred and five men left England for the western shores of the Chesapeake Bay Read this Book on Epic!

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Read America's First Settlements on Epic

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Read America's First Settlements on Epic

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Colonial America for Kids: Jamestown Settlement

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Kids learn about the Jamestown Settlement of colonial America including the first settlers, John Smith, the Powhatan tribe, the Staving Time, interesting facts, and Pocahontas.

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Choose a video category below to learn more about Jamestown Settlement and the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown.

Featured Video

Latest Videos

Discover the latest video and lectures brought to you by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.

What did people in the 17th century do when they got sick? Join us at Jamestown Settlement to find out what an apothecary is and why he would keep a garden. Master science skills as you learn about how plants became medicines.

How did English settlers in Virginia get food in a strange land? Explore the importance of agriculture at Jamestown and learn why chickens, greyhounds and other animals lived in the fort - hint: not every animal was there to be eaten!

Are you washing your hands and clothes a lot these days? Laundry was much harder to do in the 17th century than with the washing machines of today! Join us to discover the many steps English settlers had to take just to get their clothes clean. Find out who did the laundry in the Jamestown colony and what clothing displayed about a person's status.

Have you ever had a tummy ache or the sniffles? Who's the first person you go to when you do? Dr. Mom was the go-to person for help in the 18th century too! Join us to learn about 18th-century remedies for colonial ailments and find out what resources a farmer had on hand to cure you of headaches, indigestion or other unpleasantness.

18th-century baskets came in all shapes and sizes and were used for a variety of everyday chores on a colonial farm during the time of the American Revolution. Ever wonder how these beautiful baskets were made? Join our basket maker on the farm to learn the first steps in acquiring and preparing materials and getting started with weaving a basket.

What determines the shape and size of an 18th-century basket? How does it take shape and expand? How will the basket maker finish the basket? Join us as we continue to learn about the techniques and skills required to weave an 18th-century basket.

Tune in for a personal tour of Susan Constant, a re-creation of one of the three ships that brought the English colonists to Jamestown in 1607. Explore where the sailors and colonists lived, learn what they brought with them for the long voyage or to build the colony, and dive below to see spaces that are not normally open to the public.

What has a foot, earrings, and leeches? Don't have a clew? We'll teach you the sailor's vernacular as you learn to set sail aboard one of Jamestown Settlement's re-created ships.

What does it mean to navigate? What navigational tools were used to guide the ships to Jamestown in 1607? What is dead reckoning? Get the answers to these and more questions as we explore how the English navigated ships across vast oceans in the early 17th century.

Did you know that African Americans played important roles in the American Revolution? During the war, free and enslaved African Americans had difficult choices to make, and served in both the British and Continental armies. Join special exhibitions curator Kate Gruber at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown to learn about African Americans in the American Revolution.

African Americans played many different roles during the American Revolution. Some even acted as spies! Join special exhibitions curator Kate Gruber to learn more about the experiences of James Lafayette, an enslaved Virginian who worked as a spy for the Marquis de Lafayette on the eve of the Siege of Yorktown.

What happened to enslaved and free African Americans after the American Revolution? Well, it depends! During this segment, special exhibitions curator Kate Gruber will explore stories of African Americans who left the United States with the British, and those who stayed in the newly-formed nation.

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Choose a video category below to learn more about Jamestown Settlement and the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown. Latest Videos Discover the latest video and lectures brought to you by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. What did people in the 17th century do when they got sick?

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they helped build a new world but rarely show up in the written history

Young people have been important at Jamestown since the very beginning. There were four boys in the very first group of 104 Jamestown settlers. A young daughter of the Powhatan Indian leader fearlessly helped the English survive their first rugged years in Virginia. Two English boys became translators between the English and the Native peoples.

The first four boys were servants to gentlemen. We know their names-Samuell Collier, Nathaniel Peacock, James Brumfield, and Richard Mutton-but no one recorded their ages. They were probably at least 14, which was the usual age for apprenticeships in London. Two years later there were likely more children accompanying the 30 or 40 women aboard the ships of the third supply fleet to Jamestown.

The most famous of the young people at early Jamestown are Pocahontas and the English boys Henry Spelman and Thomas Savage. The three were hostages who came of age among strangers and served as emissaries, spies, translators, and diplomats. Pocahontas and Spelman were probably born the same year, 1595. Pocahontas was the daughter of Wahunsenacawh, who ruled a Powhatan chiefdom that included more than 30 Indian nations across eastern Virginia. Spelman grew up the son of a widow. He, like John Rolfe and William Strachey, came to Jamestown in 1609 after their ill-fated supply fleet was battered by a hurricane and shipwrecked on Bermuda for nine months. Spelman was then smart enough to recognize the dire condition of the James Fort colonists and went with Savage to live in the bountiful home of Wahunsenacawh.

Pocahontas herself was captured when she was in her late teens. Spelman had helped English leader Samuel Argall establish a relationship with the leader of a Patawomeck village that undermined Wahunsenacawh's authority in the area. In the spring of 1613, Argall used that relationship to trick Pocahontas onto his ship and take her hostage. After a year of captivity with the English, Pocahontas converted to Christianity, took the name Rebecca, and married tobacco grower John Rolfe. Their wedding got the blessing of Wahunsenacawh and ended five years of warfare. Meanwhile, Spelman's years of living with the Patawomecks had made him an accomplished trader with the Indians and one of the best interpreters the English had.

However, this is an unusual amount of information about young people at early Jamestown. The written record rarely mentions children because they had no legal status or power. No one even thought to write down which child was the first born in the settlement (the best guess now is that it was Virginia Laydon, daughter of carpenter John Laydon and maid Anne Burras). It is modern archaeology that can tell us about the lives of children through the objects left behind.

Children's toys were mass-produced in Europe as a secondary business for most manufacturers from the 14th century until the 18th century, when toy-making became a specialty. Yet, children's toys are rarely found on archaeological sites. Many toys were made of wood, which does not survive most soil conditions, and those made of base metal could be recycled into something else. The few toys found at Jamestown-such as tiny lead horses with arched necks and tails docked, poised to move into battle-are the earliest documented from colonial Anglo-American sites. Somewhere along the way, they lost the riders to spur them into action and the legs to run with. No longer useful for playtime warfare, the battered ponies were thrown away with food remains, broken pottery, shattered glassware, and other James Fort trash.

In a cellar the archaeologists found a tiny house one inch tall, with a steeply pitched roof like a Dutch house in the 17th century. It may have been a toy windmill. The blades, now missing, probably attached through the hole in the roofline, with a rod passed through to the other side of the object. Pulling a string wrapped around the rod would have made the blades spin. Turning the blades in the opposite direction would have rewound the string on the rod to start all over again, a little like a 17th-century yo-yo!

In 2006 fragments of a child's first shoe were found in a timber-lined well filled with trash from circa 1617. The goatskin shoe was a "draw-bridge" style that came into fashion about 1600. The size 1 shoe showed signs of slight wear, perhaps from the infant's first steps on Virginia soil. This shoe was a prestige item and reflects the status of the infant's parents. This find is all the more rare because shoes were in short supply in the early Jamestown colony for everyone.

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Visit the real thing at Historic Jamestowne, explore the actual location and active archaeological dig, Jamestown Rediscovery, home of the first successful English settlement.

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Back to Assignments

Jamestown in the Virginia Colony on Chesapeake Bay was settled in 1607. The reconstructed James Fort and neighboring Powhatan Indian Village exhibit the complexities of life for both colonists and Indians during the early years of interaction between the two cultures. As you view the panoramas, use the linked quotations and additional photographs to characterize the challenges and problems facing settlers and Indians as both groups struggled to control the land and resources of the region.

Credits: Photographs by Carolyn Merchant; panorama assembly and web page by Rob Weinberg. Panoramas updated by Ravi Shivanna using PanoramaStudio 3 (July 2018)

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Back to Assignments Jamestown in the Virginia Colony on Chesapeake Bay was settled in 1607. The reconstructed James Fort and neighboring Powhatan Indian Village exhibit the complexities of life for both colonists and Indians during the early years of interaction between the two cultures.

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Visit the real thing at Historic Jamestowne, explore the actual location and active archaeological dig, Jamestown Rediscovery, home of the first successful English settlement.

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Welcome to Britannica School , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Elementary, Middle, and High School.

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John Rolfe

Britannica School

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Welcome to Britannica School , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Elementary, Middle, and High School.

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Jamestown

Britannica School

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Welcome to Britannica School , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Elementary, Middle, and High School.

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John Rolfe

Britannica School

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Welcome to Britannica School , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Elementary, Middle, and High School.