CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES: Family and Friends
ACTIVITY ONE: Write an Old-Fashioned 
Quill Pen Letter

• A large feather (large white turkey feathers from a craft store work best)
• A knife for cutting the feather
• Some parchment or onion-skin paper
• A bottle of black ink

1) Get someone to cut the point of the feather on an angle. With the feather end pointing up, you now have a pen!

2) Get your paper ready, and dip your pen (feather) in ink. Tap off excess ink into the bottle so you don't get blobs on your paper.

3)Write a letter to a friend or relative using your best handwriting (don't print). You'll have to keep dipping your pen in ink after a few words. Tell the person what you've been doing since you last talked to them.

4) Explain to the person you're writing to that this is how people communicated before typewriters, telephones and computers were invented.

5) After the ink is dry, put your letter in an envelope, put a stamp on it and mail it. Remember that John Tod's letters took almost a year to reach his friends! Yours will arrive in about a week if it's within Canada.

• How do we communicate with friends today?
• In what ways are today's modes of communication better? not better?
• Does mail take the same time to arrive from all parts of Canada?
• What can we learn from reading old letters?
• If you lived in Inuvik, could you e-mail a friend in Hong Kong?

These activities are meant to supplement your classroom lessons and help to achieve the following Social Studies 5 Learning Outcomes:

• Explain ways people preserve and transmit culture.
• Analyze factors that influence use and development of transportation and communication systems in different regions of Canada.
• Analyze the impacts of technology on lifestyle and work.