Lewis and Clark project asks kids to look at history and math questions

How did Meriwether Lewis and William Clark transport the lead shot and black powder they'd need on their Missouri River expedition 200 years ago?

What did the frontier area north and west of St. Louis look like in the early 1800s? Who lived there?

How does that same area look today? Who lives there now?

The University of Missouri-St. Louis' College of Education has designed a history project that asks kids to help find answers to these and other questions. It's all part of a Corps of ReDiscovery program now taking shape.

Schools all along the original Lewis and Clark Expedition route are invited to take part. That includes schools in the St. Louis metro area as well as all along the Missouri River.

One of the schools that's already signed up is the St. Joseph's Indian School. That's a Catholic boarding school for Lakota Souix on the Missouri River near Chamberlain, S.D.

An Indian at St. Joseph's Indian School in South Dakota

Jim Sturm is an enrichment teacher at Wydown Middle School in Clayton. He is working to enlist schools to take part in the UMSL project. Last summer, he visited St. Joseph's to sign up the school.

Sturm said, "Every town along the route has a story to tell. When we come to town, we want to find kids and teachers who will tell the story of their towns."

He said, "That will let people know about other parts of the country. Our country is so big that sometimes we don't know about other Americans."

UMSL wants a whole lineup of schools ready when the 2003-2005 Lewis and Clark Bi-Centennial Expendition is launched. That's a re-enactment of the original trip. Men in period costumes will begin from Washington, D.C.

By that time, UMSL's Corps of ReDiscovery website (www.urbanachievement.org/lc/) expects to carry daily reports and pictures of the expedition's project. The reports will be sent to the website via satellite on a daily basis.

You can get a taste of that now. The website includes pictures and diary of a test voyage last summer on the Missouri through South Dakota. Clayton teacher Scott Mandrell was acting as Meriwether Lewis. He wrote his journal entries in the style of Lewis.

Sturm said the website also will carry examples of interesting science and math lessons that are based on the Lewis and Clark journals.

He's already has some math students at Wydown Middle working on an unique problem.

The original expedition was faced with transporting a lot of supplies all the way from the East. Two of those were black powder and lead shot for their rifles. Lead is heavy. So they wanted to know how much powder they'd need to fire all the lead shot.

In order to keep the powder dry on the trip, Lewis and Clark decided to carry it in lead containers. That way, as they went along, they would melt down a container to make rifle shot while using the powder from that container to fire the shot.

The students got from an Internet website what was supposed to be the amount of powder on the expedition. They wanted to figure out what size lead containers were needed to have enough lead for shot but be big enough to store all the powder.

But, when the students figured out the volume of lead and the volume of powder, they didn't match up with the size of containers on the expedition.

Sturm said, "Then, one of the students found the correct amount of powder in the actual Lewis and Clark journals. We then ran the revised figures and they did agree," he said.

"That proved to be a good research lesson. You need to use the original research sources whenever possible," Sturm said.

He said St. Louis area kids also will learn some fascinating history by studying the St. Joseph's Indian School. The school has about 200 students who have been sent there because of childhood hardships.

Founded in the 1920s, the school has withstood drought, a plague of grasshoppers and a fire that nearly burned down all the buildings.

Now, the main campus near Chamberlain houses kids in first to eighth grade. There are living units in town for high school students. Also, other units are in nearby Mitchell, S.D., where college-age students attend Dakota Wesleyan College and Mitchell Vo-Tech.

If you'd like to learn more about the Indian school, you can log on to its website at www.stjo.org.