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5th grade · Social Studies · Unit 2 of 7

Colonial Trade & Work

Resources, trade and choices

What your child practices

Resources, specialization and trade in the colonies, mercantilism, and the Atlantic slave trade and its impact on African peoples, told plainly and age-appropriately.

Maine Learning Results learning standard: Economics · how colonial producers, workers and trade met people's wants and needs

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. A need is something you must have to live; trade is exchanging goods or services.
  2. Saving money helps with a future need.
  3. Colonists smuggled to avoid English trade rules. Enslaved people resisted because they were forced to work.

Example: Why was smuggling common in the colonies? England made strict trade rules and taxes. Smuggling let colonists avoid them. Answer: to avoid English trade rules and taxes

Colonial Trade & Work in Maine

In the Maine Learning Results, this is unit 2 of 7 in 5th grade Social Studies, after The Thirteen Colonies and before Road to Revolution.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Maine Department of Education

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    What does it mean to specialize?

    • To focus on making one kind of good or service
    • To give things away
    • To make everything yourself
    • To stop working

  2. Question 2

    Smuggling was common in the colonies because…

    • Colonists wanted to avoid English trade rules and taxes
    • It was legal everywhere
    • The king asked them to
    • There were no ships

  3. Question 3

    Free land offered to settlers was an incentive to…

    • Move to a colony
    • Stop farming
    • Join Spain
    • Leave the colony

  4. Question 4

    England's rule that colonies should send raw materials to England and buy its finished goods is called…

    • Independence
    • Mercantilism
    • Immigration
    • Democracy

  5. Question 5

    Why do people who specialize also trade?

    • They have too much money
    • They need goods that others make
    • They never need anything
    • Trade is against the law

  6. Question 6

    A colonist borrows $100 at 10% interest for one year. How much does she pay back?

    • $200
    • $110
    • $90
    • $100

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