Quarter 2

The activity that I will be doing this quarter 2 reflection on is the Colonization Simulation Game. This game had us go into of four to five and together, each group would create a colony. During the game we could trade with the other groups in the class, we could trade with the Native Americans, we could engage in battle with the other groups and many more exciting things could happen.

The purpose of the Colonization Simulation Game was to create an atmosphere of the time during the colonies and it also allowed for it to be as accurate as possible by adding weather, general welfare among other things to the equation. This taught us about what life was like in the colonies and how the colonists would get by. It also taught us how rough the life of the colonists could be. For example: One group in our class had lost two out of the three ships that they brought with them when they were sailing over the Atlantic Ocean. These two ships were not lost by Native American attacks or Spanish attacks, but by the raging ocean. This in itself showed us how important nature was in the survival of the colonists. When that same group landed on the shore of America, they were met with even more unhappiness like the weather which made them produce little food when farming, fishing and hunting. Sometimes the weather would make them unable to produce anything and sometimes the weather would kill some of the people or a percentage of the people that they brought would be lost. This would provide us with a "hands on" experience to what was really going on in the colonies.

I learned many things during this game because it allowed us to experience exactly what was happening. Some of the colonists had left there homes in England and Europe to come and settle in these strange new lands. Also, some colonists decided against staying with their families and they moved to America to start new lives where they could have religious freedom. This applied greatly on the Pilgrims and the Puritans who came because they wanted to flee the Anglican Church which was persecuting them because of their religious views. The Pilgrims wanted to seperate from the Anglican Church completely and the Puritans only wanted to purify it because of the corruption and the amount of power in the church members' hands. I also learned that I was very hard for the colonists because the weather worked against them most of the time and it stopped them from fishing, hunting and even farming. It also simulated the Native American views on the colonies's advance because the game had them attack us every now and then. This also taught us how hard it was for some colonies because some of the Native Americans were never open to the idea of the English colonies simply coming in onto their land and taking it from the Native Americans.

Our group could have done many things differently by changing what we would trade for with the Native Americans and also with the other colonies. We could have also changed the amount of each thing that we could have brought because each item brought as a wealth value. This wealth value contributes to the success of each group in the form of points in a game.

My goal in Social Studies is to enhance my learning of history and this game is a very big role. This game has provided me with a "hands on" experience as I have mentioned before and this really helped me to understand what it was like back in the colonies' time. This let me understand better how politics worked back then in the form of trade with all the other colonies and the other Native American tribes that were either hostile or friendly