Blood, Guts, and a Cold War Rant

 Okay-first science:

We did the nervous system. That week we had nothing to dissect. I will never forget four years ago when we had a brain! Since we didn't have a real brain, we made "brain hats." I found them HERE. They took a bit longer to make than I thought, and we had already done some things to test out memory, reflexes, and reaction times, so the littles didn't get their hats done.

The next week, we talked about the digestive system. The butchers said that there was NO way that we would want a stomach, intestines, or gallbladder. In fact, he said he had a gallbladder explode on him before.....yeah, Ill pass. But we DID get a HUGE liver and a pancreas. 

We cut up the liver and put it in hydrogen peroxide to show how the liver transforms the hydrogen peroxide in your body into oxygen and water. It worked really well.

We also talked about how long your digestive system is. We used a hose to mark it all off. (Thus this post being called "Blood GUTS and a Cold War rant.)

We included teeth as part of the digestive system (instead of bones) and talked about how to keep good care of them. As part of this, I gave them all "disclosing tablets." Only my kids took them during class, and it was a big hit.

Next week we talked about the excretory system and skin. They both excrete liquids, so they go together, right?

We dissected a kidney. Honestly, the more I learn about the body, the more I appreciate it.

We also did a lot of skin things. Specifically about sweat.

An now onto Social Studies:

We are on a unit of the Cold War. We started out talking about Stalin. We read "Breaking Stalin's Nose." It was a really good book. It's a satire, so I had to really be clear to the kids what a satire was, so they wouldn't thin Stalin and the Soviet Pioneers were so wonderful like the book says they are (to show how horrible it was.)

We then talked about the iron curtain. As per tradition, we had a reenactment of the Chocolate Pilot as our activity. I always cry when I read the children's book about this.

We also watched "Night Crossing" about the true story of people who made a hot air balloon to escape East Germany. 

One thing that I added this time around was the youtube videos of Elder Uchtdorf, and the children's book by him. I just love him.

But Stalin...Stalin was so gross. 

Then we learned about the "Great Leap Forward" and the "Chinese Cultural Revolution." Umm......AAAAAHHHHH. Oh man, the more I study about this, the more I'm scared and saddened and and a whole bunch of other emotions. 

We've been reading an INCREDIBLE book called "Red Scarf Girl." Oh man people! If everyone read this book, the world would be a better place. READ!!!! PLEASE!!!! 

It is the true story about a young girl in China during the cultural revolution. She starts out by saying "Family is dear, but dearer still is Chairman Moa." And then you see her world crumble around her until the veil is lifted, and Moa and his regime is exposed for the disaster it is. 

We're not done with the book yet, but you don't need to get to the end before you're freaked out of your mind by what went on and how easily it could happen again.

So so disgusting.

We learned about the take over of Tibet. I couldn't help myself, I had them watch "7 Years in Tibet" but I skipped the first hour of the movie Hahaha. I remember thinking that this was the longest movie when I was a teenager, but I still loved it, and it turns out that it was only two hours long! 

The story of how the Great Dalai Lama and his people were exiled is so important to teach my kids. As our activity we made mandalas with sand. 

RANT TIME:

Okay, so in the last post I said it was "ridiculous" that major children's education video collections didn't include anything about the Zionist conference? Welllllll now I don't feel like things are "ridiculous" I am TICKED and feel like things are DANGEROUS because these video collections don't have ANYTHING about Stalin or Mao!!!!!!! Can you imagine?

TedEd does have a video about Lenin, and both BrainPOP and TedEd have one about Che Guevara, and for BOTH of them they say "This is why they're GOOD and this is why they're BAD." Fine, great, that helps critical thinking. But nothing about Stalin and Mao?!?!

Can you imagine if we erased Hitler from the history books? How would THAT be a good thing? 

As I pondered on this, I was aware of Stalin as I was educated, but NOT Mao. In fact, I don't think I truly knew anything about him really, until as an adult, I did a google search for largest massacre and his name was a the top of all the lists. (Obviously surpassing Hitler by a huge margin.) Then I went into a very depressing rabbit hole finding out why.

Fast forward to today, and if you type in "largest massacre" you WON'T fined Mao on the list at all!!! Nor Stalin. At least in my experience (I know the Google algorithm is different for everyone,) you'll find a list where an 200,000 massacre KILLING COMMUNISTS in Indonesia shows up at the top of the lists.

Nothing of Stalin's Katyn Massacre, or Stalin's 800,000 executions, 1.7 MILLION deaths in the Gulag, the 800,000 deaths because of exile, and the 6.5 MILLION deaths that were caused by the Soviet's preventable "famine." 

NOTHING of Mao's "famine" that was CAUSED by him by killing birds, planting seeds way too deep and close together, forcing everyone to do communal farms, and consolidating all the food and then distributing it back out. 30-60 MILLION were murdered by starvation this way!!! Should we just pretend this didn't happen????

Should we NOT talk about the ONE MILLION Tibetans who were slaughtered?!?

Or how about Mao's Cultural Revolution where between 500,000 thousand to 20 MILLION were killed. Why the huge disparity in numbers? BECAUSE IT WAS ALL A STATE SECRET!!! No freedom of press. No records. No trials. 

Now they're estimating that it was 2 million. We'll never know.

So let's not talk about this. Let's not THINK about this. Let's not teach the children this.

This information should be repressed and forgotten. And instead, let's do a "Great Leap" ....oh....sorry.....that's a typo. I meant a "Great Reset" in our society today. 

Okay, just look at these two videos. The first is of my Province's Premier. (That is equivalent to a State's Governor.) The second is done by the Prime Minister of Canada. 

Honestly.

These are primary source videos of my government leaders, folks. This is not some kooky thing.

Yep.

Okay, so I have to say, the there was a youtube channel that DID cover Stalin and Mao in a child-friendly-educational way. That was "The Infographics Show." So if anyone is actually reading this and wanting to teach their kids about Stalin and Mao....that would be a good place to look. 

Okay. Rant over. I'm just ticked and scared.

So then we learned about McCarthyism. What a different world than China and Russia!!! I have always thought of how incredibly horrible an unjust McCarthyism was, and DON'T WORRY I still feel that way, but the PERSPECTIVE! Compared to what Stalin and Mao were doing, McCarthyism was a playful slap on the wrist.

What's more, IT WAS SEEN FOR WHAT IT WAS AND DISMANTLED!!!

THAT didn't happen in Stalin and Mao's life time!!!

AND every school child is thoroughly taught about the evils of McCarthyism. Deliberately and completely taught about its evils.

I realize this is not my usual post. I'm literarily yelling at you, but I just can't help it....and it's about to get worse:

So then we learned about the Cuban Missile Crisis and we built a lego submarine as our activity:

While learning about the Cuban missile crisis, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. Most Canadians know about the conspiracy theory that Justin Trudeau (Canada's Prime Minister) could be Fidel Castro's son.  I know I know I know. Kooky kooky kooky. But, when you read THIS article and then read this primary source: 

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/41523862/

Ok you begin to wonder. I wasn't teaching my kids all this, but it DID make me curious enough to rent Margaret Trudeau's autobiography "Changing My Mind."

GAAAAHH!

So I found some interesting things that backed up the "conspiracy theory" such as when she talked about Fidel Castro: "I was immediately mesmerized by what I saw:...physically very attractive" pg 142. Then Castro told her that while he forced himself to look at the sun every day to make his eyes stronger, "Do you know what I find harder?" he asked. "That is to look into the blue of your eyes." pg 144. And she did confirm that she was in the Caribbean during the time when Justin was conceived. pg 63. Do I think this theory is plausible? Well, it's not impossible.

BUT even MORE crazy was Margaret Trudeau's blatant love for communist and marxist ideals. 

On being in Cuba: "So long steeped in the staid, conservative political world of Ottawa, I was soon engulfed in memories of my hippie days. If this is revolution, I thought, then bring it on. Once convinced that CUBA COULD DO NO WRONG, I found my enthusiasm confirmed everywhere I went." pg 143

"My education was now taking place continuously both inside and outside the classroom. On the faculty, there were Marxists and Maoists, Liberals and Trotskyites...and we talked and talked and talked....that year changed me." pg 22

I thought reading her own words would help me understand her, but it honestly made me just more wary of our Prime Minister. Although she wasn't around for much of his youth (she was in the US being a photographer and other things) her influence was not of a political opinion that encouraged individual freedoms, yet she THOUGHT it did. Which is the most dangerous way of thinking.

ANYWAY

And then we finished out our submersion of the Cold War with talking about the Korean War (we'll still do the space race, Vietnam, and the fall of the Berlin Wall but not for awhile.)

FINALLY something that even the mainstream media cannot deny. 

I so desperately wanted them to listen to the Ted talks about refugees from North Korea, but they are not intellectually ready for that. I tried. 

But there ARE lots of kid friendly videos about this. So, that's something. Also The History of US has some excellent kid friendly reading on it as well.

No activity.

And then we changed over to fun, nonemotional topics:

Popculture

So fun, but so necessary. Everything changed in our society post WW2, so that everything revolves around pop culture. It influences everything in our lives. We had to focus on it. We bought some McDonalds as our activity.

Then we talked about preservatives, and we had a very long, very involved activity. Or should I say, LINDY had a very long, very involved activity.

I made a homemade Happy Meal. We are going to put it away for a month, and come back and see which is worse: The McDonald's Happy Meal, or the Homemade one. 

I did this 8 years ago, and it was really fascinating:

http://lindyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2013/05/mcdonalds-before-and-after-and-lots-of.html

But MAN it takes forever to make a homemade happy meal! I never make bread, and that takes HOURS, and THEN I almost BURT them when was toasting the insides but Dustin just shaved off the burnt crust and it tasted just fine. And then cooking everything else. Blah, no wonder we just go to McDonalds. 

I'm worried that my fries won't look gross in a month because this year I fried them. We'll see!

Then we talked about plastic.....ummm not very thoroughly......at all. The proliferation of plastic is such an important part of history. Uhhhh....maybe I'll talk about it more. Maybe.

Now for extra curricular:

Maxwell has started a business! He's making Dog houses. He taught himself how to use the software to run our CNC machine and he has used the CNC machine to cut out the pieces of the houses and then he paints them and puts them together. Start to finish all by himself.  He's already sold one, and his aunty volunteered for him to put them in their very successful furniture store!! So happy for him

We love our dogs! But our puppies are getting placed in their new homes this week.

And we signed our family up for Mark Rober's engineering course which their dad is helping them do (I'm not involved and it feels great.)

And they're still doing their Blackmore zoom classes. This is a "magical" drink Daniel did:

And there were tow holidays. St Patrick's day where the Leprechauns came to their traps:

And Easter when we watched Conference:

Now for English and Math:

Maxwell-He's doing a new Novel-studies class where they read novels, have zoom discussions and then do essays about them. I feel horrible because I realized too late that the zooms are at the same time as his seminary-we've asked them to record them, so we'll see if that works.

He's also doing an ALEKS math review to get him ready to pass the ALEKS exam which will let him skip  some college classes of math. I HOPE it works, but if worse comes to worse, he just takes the beginning college math course.

Hyrum- swimming right along. Here's an example of his math lately:

Daniel-he's getting used to his new way of school. He's doing great with VideoText:

And IEW writing

And William is doing great with Rightstart Math

And AAR is going great. So far I feel like it's not too fast, but he's already doing "silent "E" which Barton takes FOREVER to do. He's able to do it because they drill and drill the DIFFERENT sounds of the vowels, which is also something that Barton doesn't do. AAR and AAS don't do enough writing, so he dictates and then copies:

And Abraham is doing Awesome in Rightstart. He's only 6 folks, but look at his math:

And Logic of English is going pretty fast. Faster than AAR I think, but Abraham is getting it so far, so that's good. Although, when spelling I leave the "igh" phonogram card out on the table. Maybe that's not good of me. I don't know. Barton doesn't cover the "igh" unit in books 1-7 that I'm aware of, so this is crazy that Abraham's learning it right now.

And there you go!!! My school blog. My very long winded school blog!