Fifth Grade
Worksheets
Destruction - The Dirty Thirties
What does dust look like? Would you recognize it if you saw it on a piece of furniture? Dust stops furniture from shining and looking its best. It also can make you sneeze. Cleaning helps get rid of dust. Imagine, though, that there is so much dust that you could never get it all cleaned up. Imagine what it would be like if your entire town was covered in a blanket of dust. It would not be healthy for the people in your town to breathe. You would not be able to play outside. Everything would constantly be dirty. Living a healthy and happy life would be very hard.
This actually happened in the Great Plains region of the United States in the 1930s. It was known as the Dust Bowl. Farmers plowed the land. Grass no longer grew there that could hold down the soil. There was also very little rainfall which caused a drought. A drought is when everything becomes very dry. Crops cannot grow well without rain. When the wind blew across dry, plowed farm lands, it caused big clouds of black dirt. The black dirt swirled .....
