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Colonial America (1492-1765)

Shopping

Shopping
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 5 to 7
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   7.52

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    all-purpose, apothecary, monetary, tableware, wampum, countryside, lifestyle, colonial, merchandise, pence, sales, fairs, account, cooper, especially, resourceful
     content words:    North America, Native Americans

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Shopping
By Sharon Fabian 		  
1     For the first colonists in North America, there was no place to shop! However, being the resourceful people that they were, the colonists soon went to work to remedy that situation.
 
2     One of the first difficulties was money. The British colonists used British money, of course, but there just wasn't enough of it in the colonies. The pounds, shillings, and pence that they had brought along were just enough to buy the things that they needed from England. There wasn't enough to support a colonial economy too.
 
3     That didn't stop the colonists. They found other things to use in place of British coins. For example, iron nails and musket balls were both used as money substitutes. The colonists also used wampum, already in use by the Native Americans. Wampum was made from polished pieces of clamshells. Each piece had a hole drilled in the center so that the pieces could be strung together for easy use.

Paragraphs 4 to 9:
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