LEVELED BOOK • L
Colonial Life
Written by Julie Harding • Illustrated by Maria Voris
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Colonial Life
A Reading A–Z Level L Leveled Book • Word Count: 655
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Colonial LIfe
Level L Leveled Book
© Learning A–Z Correlation
Written by Julie Harding LEVEL L
Illustrated by Maria Voris
Fountas & Pinnell K
All rights reserved. Reading Recovery 18
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DRA 20
www.readinga-z.com
Illustrated by Maria Voris
Written by Julie Harding
Colonial Life
Step back more than three hundred years to when life was
much different. Imagine a time before the United States was
a country. It is a period known as the
Colonial Times.
It is a cold morning. You wake
up before the sun rises. You have
much work to do. Only some
lucky children get to go to school.
Most kids spend their days
working beside their parents.
Colonial Life • Level L 3
This is your first chore of the day.
walk outside to gather wood from the woodpile.
Then you light a lantern and
or father has already boiled some.
The water isn’t hot unless your mother
in the washbasin and getting dressed.
You begin the day by washing up
If you are a girl, you probably have to help your mother
cook, gather eggs from the chickens, or wash the laundry—
by hand! You might also have to churn the butter. That
means that you sit over a large wooden bucket full of
cream. You grab a long, funny-shaped stick and gently
move it up and down in the bucket. This churns the cream
until it slowly turns to butter. The butter tastes good, but it
takes many hours to make. Once you make it, you are not
able to keep it for long. You see, there are no refrigerators
in colonial days. You have to chill things in a stream—
if you live near one.
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you have a day of hard work ahead of you.
You soon sit down to a big breakfast. You need it because
the house. Your mother uses the fire to cook breakfast.
After you put the wood in the fireplace, a fire is lit to warm
If you are a boy, you might have to work on the farm.
You plant seeds and till soil with a plow pulled by oxen.
You might repair the barn, milk the cows, or chop down
trees for wood. Some days, you might help to build a new
neighbor’s house or even work in the local mill. You have
to work many hours both in the cold of winter and in the
heat of summer. There is no air conditioning in the summer.
In the winter, you have only a fireplace to keep warm.
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You might come from a
well-off family and attend
school in a small, one-room
schoolhouse. The classroom
is filled with children of every
age. One teacher has to
teach all of the children.
The subjects that you study
are similar to what students
learn in school today—
math, reading, and writing.
You do not study science.
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If you don’t go to school, you probably don’t read.
So reading a good book is not something you do for fun.
Since people live far apart from each other, you don’t
have friends nearby. If you want to play with your friends,
you don’t have a bicycle to ride
to their houses. Your parents
don’t have a car to take you,
either. You have to ride a horse
or walk a mile or more. But
most families are large. You
probably have many brothers
and sisters to play with.
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You don’t even have electricity.
there are no televisions to watch and no video games to play.
that you spend most of your time working. In colonial days,
You may be wondering if you have time for fun. The truth is
Life in Colonial Times was much different from life today.
It was a much harder life. People did not live long because
there were no medicines or hospitals. But colonial life was
also good in many ways. The air and water were much
cleaner. There was not much traffic or noise.
Do you think you would like to have lived then?
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You might have picnics with other families in the afternoon.
a good day to play with your friends who also go to church.
On Sundays, children go to church with their families. This is
