If You Lived In Colonial Times

My children and I frequently visit historical sites, watch documentaries, and listen to the Colonial Williamsburg podcasts. In preparation for our next trip, I decided to read aloud "If You Lived in Colonial Times." First of all, it isn't about Colonial Times in the American colonies, but Colonial Times in New England. However, even given the narrowed subject matter, I was surprised by much of the information and how it conflicted with what we'd learned about the colonies from other, more recent, sources. Much of the information in this book reflects outdated ideas and theories about the colonial period. For instance, there were marketplaces in colonial towns, which included vegetable and meat sales. The book explicitly says there were no markets and people made all their own goods. Religion was an important part of some of the colonies there weren't strict rules governing behavior in church nor did meetings last four hours on Sunday's as the book claims. At no point was slavery mentioned, and native Americans were only mentioned in terms of colonists learning about corn from the Indians and planting "in the Indian way." Half way through the book, it occurred to me to check the copyright page. The text copyright is 1964. Illustrations copyright is 1992. The cover says "New and Updated," but I suspect based on the copyright page that only the pictures were changed. The book itself could be a useful starting point if placed in context and elaborated upon, but since it's aimed at younger children (mine are 5 & 8 and listened intently), I'm concerned this book will be taken as fact. It desperately needs a true updating of content, and ideally the title, not just pictures.

This is an extremely interesting book. My children learned from it and now I want my grand children to be able to read it. So I bought a copy for each household. I have always wondered about the strictness for church services that is described in this book. I have since learned that the was not that degree of strictness about church services. That is the only thing I found that was not, or did not, sound correct.

Painted what life could have been like in colonial NE times. Generated alot of great questions, research and discussion. Expat homeschooling US History. Somethings mentioned were questionable but it is still a great read to paint a broad picture of what life was back then for kids and adults.

I enjoyed this book. I have a first grader and a second grader. We have been studying colonial America and I thought this might be a good book to bring the times to life. It was much longer than I had anticipated but that's just fine. We read out of it during the whole time we studied the colonies. I think they learned quite a few things (as did I). It's not the "fun," simplistic story that I had thought it would be but it contained a lot of interesting information. I would definitely recommend it.

Excellent Book! My boys are 6 and 9 and loved it!

I bought this book to supplement our homeschool American history course for my children ages 6 and 8. They loved the book with its information about how kids their age lived in colonial times. Each page asks a question and then answers it so I liked to ask the kids what they thought the answers might be. It's been a great learning tool for us!

My six year old daughter loves this book. I read a few sections to her and then had to do a few things, she sat and read 20 more pages by herself. She thought it was so interesting. Every time she sees the book, she picks it up to look through it. She doesn't mind reading it again and again. Even her grandparents thought it was interesting. We all learned something from it, we can't wait to read more of these books!

Excellent introduction to life in colonial times. I bought it originally for my 7 year-old to prepare her for a trip to Williamsburg, and this book covers more of the background to colonial New England (Puritan values, etc), but it is still an excellent book and presents life in these times in a context that is relevant to young school-age children. My daughter really enjoyed it, and we followed it up with a book in the same series that was more specific to Williamsburg.

Got this for my daughters, (they are part-American), but ended up reading it for myself!Will definitely buy more from the series.