Oregon Trail Night at Tom McCall was an incredible showcase of 4th grade student learning, creativity, and collaboration.
Fourth graders researched, wrote, and built presentations around life on the Oregon Trail, exploring topics such as the roles of men, women, and children on the trail, settlement at the end of the journey, challenges faced along the way, key historical figures, migration routes, motivations for heading west, food, and wagon design and supplies.
Students brought their learning to life through hands-on projects: sewing and making corn husk dolls, building mini wagons to model how supplies were packed, coding Spheros to navigate the trail, performing living museum speeches, designing board games and model towns, making butter, and even creating cookbooks inspired by their research.
Earlier in the day, students shared their projects with their first grade buddies, and in the evening they welcomed hundreds of family members to the Oregon Trail Mobile Museum experience in the school gym. The event also featured art projects supported through a Dry Canyon Arts grant and collaboration with an artist from Northwind Studios.
It was a powerful night of interdisciplinary learning, student voice, and community connection that showed just how deeply students engaged with history in creative, meaningful ways.
