Farnsworth House Blog

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Officials checking in new arrivals

Official checking papers of new arrival

On the 25th of November, the whole fourth grade came together and did a simulation of Ellis Island. We learned about the process new arrivals to our country had to go through. We did this to get a better idea of how people immigrated and how hard it was.

We each got a character profile, and we had to write a autobiography about our character. The year we were simulating was 1900. Some of the characters were divorced, or exiled, or drunk, or rich, or tons of other characteristics. Some people were broke, while others had up to 41,000 dollars. We came up with costumes and props to make it all seem more real and to help us get into character.

We took the ferry (the elevator) up to the 9th floor. Some people got pick pocketed. You had to get a certain amount of points to be allowed in. You received points at each station. There was a line and officials who signed you in. Then you went to the vocation station. The parents and some of the teachers were the officials. They asked you questions about your job. Some people bribed officials to skip them to the front of the line. Some officials were nicer than others. Then you went to the character station, where they questioned you on your kind of character, whether you were a desirable addition to the country. At that station someone got caught stealing money from someone else. Then you went to the health station, where they saw if you had a disease or a mental illness. Some immigrants had to solve puzzles to show that they were mentally capable of taking care of themselves. Then depending on how many points you had, you went to either the clearance station or the deportation station. After we were done, we went up to the library to watch a movie, while we waited for everyone to finish.

Some kids were really nervous about being deported and others got frustrated at how many times they had to go back to stations to be questioned. There was a lot of waiting on lines and sometimes immigrants had to deal with unfriendly officials. We all had a really fun time, even the parents and teachers who helped man the stations.

Being questioned…

waiting…

We recently wrote poems that were reflections on our trip to the Tenement Museum and the Lower East Side. First we visited the Tenement Museum and learned about immigrants at the turn of the century and the garment industry. (For more information on the Lower East Side Tenement Museum click on: Tenement Museum.) Afterward our class split into groups and walked around routes we made the day before. We concentrated on the area contained by the streets Essex and Mulberry and East Houston and Grand. Each group had lunch at a different restaurant with cuisines from different cultures such as Mexican, Chinese, French and Italian. Through out the tour we got a feel for the cultures that immigrated to the Lower East Side. We visited places like Guss’s Pickles, and Economy Candy, among many others. We took photos of as many of the cultures as we could find on our walk.

When we got to school we made digital collages around poems that we wrote in response to the trip. We used the desktop publishing program called Pages. For our collages we selected pictures that we took from our trip and pictures of the old Lower East Side from the NY Public Library digital image bank. Once we selected our photos we were able to drag them onto a blank template and arrange them using all kinds of effects. We hope you enjoy our poems and collages. Click on the thumbnail to view the whole collage and poem.

We have been studying the books of E.B. White. Our class did E.B. White boxes based on the art of Joseph Cornell. Joseph Cornell was an artist who made boxes out of nature objects and every day things. We also used materials that we found in our everyday life. We based our boxes on the themes that we discovered in Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and Trumpet of the Swan. Our class chose themes that we would represent in our boxes. The themes were life and death, friendship, change and contrast. The whole fourth grade did this project and Farnsworth House boxes are presently on display on the 9th floor hallway.

To check out the art work of Joseph Cornell go to:

http://www.josephcornellbox.com/menu.htm

http://www.pem.org/cornell/imagination.html