Comments | sartorias: The more things change...

sartorias

The more things change...

Mar 27, 2006 16:41

So the next unit is the Westward movement for my fifth graders. I'm looking through collections of diaries and letters and memoirs of Pioneers and others involved in the Westward Movement.

Came across this bit from a letter from a wagon train driver going out to the Gold Rush.

Whenever a wagon unluckily gets stuck in the mud in crossing some ( Read more... )

nineteenth century, quotes

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shahrizai March 28 2006, 02:06:30 UTC

May I suggest emulating the Oregon Trail on an Apple II emulator? I was a wee student about the age of yours when that game took my class by storm - we loved it.

merriehaskell March 28 2006, 02:52:22 UTC

I was going to suggest the same thing. Here's a link to an online emulator: http://www.virtualapple.org/oregontraildisk.html

I didn't get to play this when I was 10 or 12 when all the other kids were doing it. I had to wait until I was 29, when I found the emulator. I have to say, it lived up to the hype.

sartorias March 28 2006, 02:58:49 UTC

I will give them the link, but alas, all we have are extremely ancient PCs that nobody wanted six years ago. They can type papers on the old versions of Word, and that's about it.

That's why I have to justle all my own enrichment stuff.

sartorias March 28 2006, 02:59:07 UTC

hustle, not justle. Urgle.

merriehaskell March 28 2006, 03:14:50 UTC

Giving them the link's probably sufficient anyway--I'd be frustrated if I couldn't play the game to completion, and you probably can't spare that much classtime...

You could always play it and get ideas for transmuting it into a board game or something. (A blackboard game (or whiteboard)! One turn each day! And they have to make the decisions as a group, majority rules! And they can roll a six-sided die to make successful hunts--4 kills a rabbit, 5 kills a deer, 6 kills a buffalo! And they have to "buy" the "bullets" (dice)!)

I would totally have loved this. But I'm thinking, what a lot of work!

sartorias March 28 2006, 03:19:44 UTC

Yeah, I don't yet another load of unpaid work at home, sigh. I'm struggling now--and I don't really have much classtime for anything but the barest snippet.

But I definitely will tell them about it--most of them have nicer computers at home than I have, so they can play it there.

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