But those incongruities didn't matter much to the four fifth-grade classes at Stevens Creek Elementary School, who spent the night of May 27 in a makeshift encampment on the school's back field. The hundred-plus youngsters spent 20 consecutive hours experiencing the lifestyle of those who fought for the independence of the United States.

All of this was thanks to the efforts of teachers and volunteers, including the hardy 12 chaperones who policed the troops in the overnight hours.

Teacher Sarah Beetem helped initiate the program several years ago, and after a few go-rounds now, says that most of the kinks have been worked out. "I just wish I'd remembered safety pins for their sashes," she says. The fifth-graders were divided into British and colonial camps, with the youngsters wearing sashes of the appropriate colors over baggy white-collar shirts that appeared to belong to their fathers.

The division also made it easy to separate the group into two for sleeping purposes. "After the bugle, there's no talking," Beetem says. Two sides of the field were set up with very modern camping tents to shield the soldiers from the light rain that fell overnight.

In keeping with Revolutionary War times, the food options were even simpler—stew and cornbread for dinner and bread and cheese for breakfast. The only wiggle room was in a vegetarian option, which proved challenging for picky eaters. "We've had kids eating things they've never had before and saying, 'Oh, I like this!" Beetem says. "There aren't any Cheerios here."

Much of the reenactment was spent at six different stations, educating the students on everything from artillery, which involved throwing tennis balls at painted cutouts of enemy soldiers, to surgery, where kids delicately extracted marbles from gravely injured watermelons. At any given moment, the field echoed with gun blanks firing to slightly off-key renditions of "God Save the King" to flanks of soldiers chanting, "Left. Left. Left right left!"

The latter entailed a kind of training that most fifth-graders aren't used to. Many were chatting with friends or prematurely picking up their surgical instruments to encounter sharp rebuke from their superiors. "You are soldiers," Beetem warns. "You do nothing until you're told."