NanceXToo
-
Posts
8,264 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blogs
Classifieds
Store
Posts posted by NanceXToo
-
-
Marion, that's awesome! We are really excited about it and looking forward to it. I am sure we will have a lot of fun. We already have a four day camping trip booked and it so happens that one of the scheduled Fresh Air Fund trips coincides with that, so we immediately said we'd love to have the girl come camping with us, that would be a blast for the kids! I think it's sad that they don't ever have enough families, hopefully more people will hear about it and give it a try!
Chris, I PM'd you! :)
-
Thanks for the response, Chris! I'm glad it was a good experience for you!
By the way....that town, was it in Ohio by any chance? Because one of my brothers lives in Ohio in a town called Cuyohoga Falls...not sure if I'm spelling that right, but I remember him telling me that town was nicknamed "Caucasian Falls"! Just curious if there were two different towns with that nickname or if you by chance grew up in the same one haha.
-
Well, not sure if anyone else is remotely interested in this topic lol but I thought I would say that we had our interview/meeting today at our house with our area representative and it went great. She said she thought we would make a great host family and that she will be recommending us. We will hear back in 1-2 weeks after they have a chance to do the background checks and reference checks.
I thought I would share something she told me, which is that they NEVER have enough host families for this program. There are always more kids than there are host families, and some kids never get to go and experience life outside of the inner city. She said there are kids who actually pack their bags and show up at the bus station in NYC on 'standby' so to speak, just HOPING that another kid got sick or backed out or had something come up at the last minute, so that they might have a chance to go in their place.
So I'm really glad that we are doing it this year, and if any of you have been considering it but just haven't gotten around to it- you should! :)
-
I loved The Time Travelers Wife! My mother, on the other hand, said she had a hard time getting into it and was confused by it. I guess it's got pretty mixed reviews! I'm definitely on the loved it side of the fence though :D
-
I agree with the previous two responses. Once you get your 5th and 8th started on what they are to be doing, there is no reason they can't work independently, on at least some of the things, while you spend time with the younger two. You'll still be there for questions and clarification, and you can still do some things WITH your older kids if they'd like, but there are things they can do on their own.
-
OM 4
in Oak Meadow
No problem. I'm sure you guys will enjoy it! As for my syllabus, I need to hang on to that- I've got a little one going into Kindergarten in the fall so he'll be going up through all the levels of OM and I'll be hanging on to them all for him :)
-
OM 3
in Oak Meadow
Yeah I don't know, that was from their site, but I have an older version of the actual curriculum too so I'd have to look at it to see if it is anything like that or what they will have me doing- it's currently packed away in a box upstairs as I won't need to use it for quite a while, I started with OM4 with my daughter this year, so I didn't have the opportunity to do 3 with her, and my son is only going into K in the fall. But we always just supplement with different crafts, books, documentaries, etc of topics we find interesting anyway. So hopefully it'll be decent. If not we'll make it so lol.
-
OM 4
in Oak Meadow
Then they covered the development of the Railroad and the orphan trains (to supplement we started reading a fictional series about the orphan trains and got a documentary about them), then they have you go back to your state history and start doing a pictorial timeline. And this is where we are at now. I see that coming up in the next few lessons we'll be doing a time capsule and then beginning to read World Myths and Legends, Native America, which will include crafts.
So those are the basics of what I have for OM4 social studies. Let me know if you have any other questions! :)
-
OM 4
in Oak Meadow
oh, I think it was learning about squatters and settlers and then building a model. Anyway then they move on to Wagons and Pioneer recipes (we made a covered wagon using a shoebox and did some recipes and we'd periodically supplement topics with library books and sometimes documentaries obtained from Netflix). It covered The gold Rush, Stage Coaches (she drew her own stage coach), the Pony Express (also involved learning more about the telegraph, for example)...
-
OM 4
in Oak Meadow
They also suggest different Indian crafts and recipes that you can supplement with, and of course you can add in any extra reading that you want. We then began doing Norse Myths (social studies and language arts). Each of these things lasts a few weeks. It's in Lesson 18 that they begin doing "study of student's state". This will include landforms, state history (explorers and early settlers), the Frontier, establishment of settlements- at this point you are learning more about the settlers' material culture and can begin replacing the Indian village in your landscape with this instead...
-
OM 4
in Oak Meadow
haha no problem. OK OM4 social studies (again bearing in mind I have a 1998 edition of the curric). They do Local topography- observing an area, collecting samples, learning about native plants and beginning a landscape model. From there they move into learning about permanent and migrating animals from your area. They do models of wildlife (my daughter picked a few to make out of clay and painted them, then added them to her landscape model). I know this all sounds science-y, like I said, they do integrate a lot. But then they begin research on Native Americans which concludes in a report. We also made wigwams out of clay and added them to our landscape model to make a little Indian Village...
-
P.S. Melissa do you already have the OM4 curric? If you don't and you want similar info about the 4th grade soc. studies curric, drop a post in the OM4 thread and I'll be happy to reply to it there :) We are just about finished with it now and we've enjoyed most of the social studies stuff they had us do!
-
And often the grammar and vocabulary they give you will pertain to the social studies stuff. Like language arts for week 1 will say "identify the subject and predicate in the following sentences" and then it gives sentences pertaining to the social studies, stuff about Vikings and Marco Polo, for example. Anyway! Let me know if you have any other questions or want any further details :) Again keep in mind I don't have the most current version of the curric. But hope that helped some!
-
As you know they will continue assigning books based on these topics. And they'll do interesting crafts/projects like making a sailboat, paper making, candle making, making your own ink, bead weaving and things like that as you go. They also frequently will let you know about "extra optional reading" you can do on each subject as you go. Like weeks 1 and 2 cover Columbus, so at the end of Week two it gives you five different optional reading books you can choose from to learn more.
-
That's to give more specific examples of the kinds of things they have you do for social studies. Now I'll more briefly/generally mention the other topics they cover...Jamestown/Mayflower, Pilgrims, Colonists, Colonial Living, Salem Witch Trials, Puritans, Colonial Trades, Plants and Home Remedies in the New World, different explorers (Spanish, French, and the French and Indian War), Colonial Children, Taxation/Boston Tea Party, the Revolution, Paul Revere, George Washington, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, Indians, The Frontier, The Civil War.
-
It goes on to talk a bit about how dangerous sailing was in those days, and how early explorers didn't have fancy technology to find their way but that they knew how to find directions. It talks about the cardinal directions and how they used the North Star as a fixed point and different things like that. Other projects for the week involve drawing a globe and dividing it into hemispheres, making a shadow stick which you will periodically measure (shadow length), looking for the North Star at night, making your own compass (extra credit), and writing a poem about the night sky. As you can see/probably already know, OM integrates a lot- what is meant to be soc. studies can also be geography and language arts, for example.
-
OK, well in Lesson 1, you start reading "Where Do You Think You're Going, Christopher Columbus? The soc. studies section of the syllabus covers early visitors to North America - Navigation. (It will have you stop and do things like looking up the Bering Strait on a map to get an idea of the area being discussed; it does give a hint as to where you can find it). It touches briefly on Vikings, Crusades, Marco Polo. It gives a choice of two writing assignments for the week. Choice 1: Read about Marco Polo's adventures in the encyclopedia or a library book, write a page or two about what you learn. If you enjoy creative writing, you might prefer composing a scene that you imagine could have occurred between Marco Polo and the great ruler Kublai Khan in China. Choice 2: Compose a short story or newspaper article about what terrible monsters and other hazards might await anyone who tries to sail around the world. Illustrate your story with crayon or colored pencil drawings.
-
OM 3
in Oak Meadow
Stephanie, on the OM site under the "Social Studies" section when looking at "samples" of the 3rd grade curric, this is what it says for social studies: Community and group participation, Map making, Introduction to telling time, History of local area through story, Adaptation, Occupations, Ethnic groups, Significant people, Natural resources, Communications, Transportation.
But then again it proceeds to show a random sample lesson and they're looking at ancient Phoenician culture via a story, discussion, drawings and a flatbread recipe so I guess it goes more into ancient stuff than that list made it sound!
Personally I do whatever the OM history has us do and stick with OM over the school year, but over the summer when we have more time, we are working our way through SOTW. We like to do as many of the projects and books and activities as we can and I feel it would be too much over the school year WITH OM. But we worked on it last summer and will pick it up again this summer.
-
I can tell you the kinds of things that are in the OM5 social studies curriculum (going by my 1998 edition) if you want, Shari? Let me know if you want to see it before I bother typing it all lol. P.S. I hate how few words we can fit in these boxes! I ALWAYS type too much and get those messages that I need to get it down to x words or characters :P So it'd be a few posts, I imagine!
-
Mine seems to do a pretty good job of staying drama-free, fortunately!
-
Kids, gotta love 'em!
My 9 year old cracks herself up by reciting the alphabet, but skipping over and not saying the letter "P."
Then at the end she goes: "Where'd the P go? Running down my leg!" I have to strongly discourage her from teaching it to my four year old, but I think it's already too late.
-
I had bought the OM curric used, and I got K all the way through 8 at a fantastic price. My daughter started OM4 this year but I found myself wishing "wow I wish we'd known about this before and that we'd gotten to do the younger grades!" I consoled myself with the fact that my son will be going into K this fall and at least I'll get to do all the OM grades with HIM. But I do know what you mean! :D
-
Oh she's still VERY young! I don't think I would worry about handwriting at that age! When my daughter was in public school, her teacher used to tell them to put a "meatball space" in between each word- which meant, I think, that she wanted them to picture a meatball after every word and that would help them space their words out- of course, for a while, I found my daughter put TOO much space between words rather than not enough lol. And in later grades I'm sure your daughter will learn about syllables and where to break up her words with hyphens and whatnot- anyway I'd just continue giving her gentle encouragement for now but not worrying about it too much!
-
Sonja, my daughter loves to add illustrations to a lot of her writings, especially her daily journal entries, so the unlined paper definitely comes in handy there! And she doesn't seem to mind it- when we first started using the unlined paper she was like "What do you mean, no lines?!?!" haha but now she is fine with it. I was just curious if/when I might see more of a difference- there has been some improvement like I said- but not what I'd call drastic improvement. Truly, I wonder if it will just come with age/maturity/development as much as from practice anyway. But we'll keep going with it for now.
Does getting a tatoo make it harder to give blood?
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
Well, my husband is a tattoo artist and body piercer who owns his own shop here in PA and I've got a few tattoos myself.
I also donate blood regularly.
The only thing they've ever asked is whether you got one within the past twelve months. Which in my case I hadn't as I got all my tattoos years ago.
They never asked where I got the tattoos and they never told me I couldn't donate due to having them. I'm not sure what would happen if I ever said yes, I got one within the last twelve months, if they'd then say "well, you can't donate until it's been a year." But I don't foresee getting any more tattoos either so I don't suppose it will ever be an issue.
Thanks for the reminder on blood donation though. I'm due for it and as I'm type O neg, they're always looking for my blood type! I need to schedule an appointment :)