The END of the School Year! Post WWII and Dead Pigs

 We did quite a bit of history, but not that many activities. Thus....not too many photos. 

As we continued to learn about WWII we of course talked about the Holocaust. I did not hold back. I figured that they needed to know about the ugly and bad so that it doesn't get repeated. We did not do a activity at the time, but **spoiler alert** during the summer we went to the Holocaust museum in Washington DC. I will go over that more in detail when I do a blog about that trip, but trust me, it was a very good educational experience. 

We learned about Albert Einstein. What a man! We tried to focus on his theories, but we did have a little fun. At the time of learning about him, we were with my parents who just happened to have this movie, and although it has nothing to do with actual history, it's fun:

Then we learned about the atomic bomb. Yes we watch a lot of movies for history, but, whatever...there's a lot of good movies, okay?! And for our activity we watched a SELECTED PORTION of Oppenheimer. NOT the whole movie...I'm not interested in THAT kind of education.

For our activity, we made Japanese floating lanterns to remember those who died. Usually when we've gotten to this point in learning about history, it's in the middle of winter (yes, we are still very behind where we should be in our school schedule) so bodies of water are frozen over except for that one time we did it in a coral pool in Vanuatu eight years ago. This was the first time we did it in open water here and I invited all of my homeschool friends and we had a memorial service for those killed by atomic bombs. I think the kids won't forget about this. 

Then we learned about how WWII changed home life. We talked about how the women worked outside of the home. My boys, who live in this homeschool community bubble of all these moms who sacrifice to be stay-at-home-moms, were watching the documentary about this, and as it was talking about the moms leaving home and working and taking over the men's place, they all looked at me so confused and asked "What about the kids? Who's looking after the babies and little children?" Ahhhh yes...the beginning of massive daycares. 

As our activity, we made window flags. These are flags that the families in the USA would put up in their windows to show who in their family was serving (blue star) or died in action (yellow star.)

That top one was by William. It represents all of his brothers dying, and him surviving....the stinker! (I promise he loves his brothers!)

Then we learned about the Zionist Conference and the creation of Israel. Needless to say that this is a VERY controversial topic right now!!! Remember four years ago when we learned about this? This is what I said back then:

"For social studies, (and science) I always embellish my lessons with BrainPOP and TedEd and children's books. They almost alway have something about the topic, but for Israel/Zionist/Jew rebuilding post war? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. So ridiculous. It's so important. I KNOW it's controversial, but that's WHY children need to hear both sides!"

Yep. Almost like history is important to learn so we can have full context when modern conflicts happen.

I made my own slideshow for my kids about this because: they're my kids, and with such a biased world, I choose my own biases. Thanks. One of the slides:

ANYWAY 

After all that war and horrid stuff, we learned about happy things! The discovery of penicillin, which wasn't widely used until WWII. One of my favourite sayings is "Chance favours the prepared mind" which couldn't be more apt for Fleming and penicillin. No real activity, but pretty much at the same time we were studying bacteria in science, so let's see one of those photos of our cultures....I'm only now thinking how we should have put a penicillin pill into one of these petri dishes to see what would happen! Missed opportunity!!! 

Then we learned about vaccines, and focused mostly on Small Pox, Rabies, and Polio. We talked about Jennings, and Pasteur, the march of dimes, Roosevelt, and all that. When we talked about the pioneers who volunteered to be test subjects (mostly this was on the scientist's own children!!!) we all marvelled at their bravery! 

This "ValueTale" was one of the things we read:

I remember reading this as a child myself, and I had never forgotten this image of all the "soldiers" entering the little boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog:

As our activity, we went to update our vaccines. I forgot to get a photo of this. Shucks. Ummm instead, here's a link to a fun video about the history of the polio vaccine: 

Then we learned about Stalin: Yep, we're done with happy/fun topics....practically forever.

Stalin was, of course, a disgusting human who led the philosophies and regime that ended in millions of deaths. Fun things to teach. 

The Ukrainian Genocide, known as the Holodomor, seemed an appropriate way to start studying Stalin. FOUR MILLION people were deliberately murdered by starvation, so, you know, no biggy. It's not like ANYONE knows about it!!!!

We read this book about it, and Daniel was like "What? This is a children's story?!" So depressing, but yes, this is a Ukrainian children's book about deliberate starvation.

 

We then talked about the creation of the iron curtain. We talked about the "brain drain" and Elder Uchtdorf. Did you know he was a refugee TWICE? Once during the war to escape fighting, and then again right before the wall went up. 

My favourite story from this time period is, of course, the story of the Wiggle Wings pilot, Gail Halvorsen, who dropped gum and chocolate onto the children of Berlin. HEY! I found a happy/fun topic in the midst of horribleness! What a good educator am I! 

We recreated the chocolate drop, and everyone was very happy about this.

Then we learned about the Great Leap Forward, because all evilness could not be Stalin's alone! There's enough evil to go around, the the biggest taker was MAO ZEDONG!!! Winner of more people killed by his policies than any other human in history including Hitler!!! Congratulations! 

My friend who is from China was taught that the Great Leap Forward was "natural disasters." It is mind boggling that these people are still in power!

When studying the Great Leap Forward, we studied the Tibetan cultural genocide (where an indeterminate amount of people were murdered as well.) This is history that is so depressing to me. I can hardly stand it.

We watched the last half of "7 Years in Tibet" as our activity.

Then we learned about McCarthyism. I know I talked about it like others wouldn't. I was very upfront and honest with the tragedy about McCarthyism and how it directly effected Dustin's grandfather. Our last name should be Kostyniuk. However, this was perceived as a Russian name (it's Ukrainian) so he couldn't get a job (because of McCarthyism/Red Scare even though it was in Canada.) BUT I also pointed out that while a few thousand people's careers were ruined and hundreds were sent to prison, let's not forget that in Russia and China MILLIONS were murdered for being capitalists, and that it was a miracle that McCarthyism was stopped and called out for what it is, while in Russia and China they never were called out and shown for what they were.

No activity.

I realize that I am not done with history. In fact, I have two and a half months worth of history to do before the next school year. Will I catch up? You are most likely from the future, so you must know better than I.

Speaking of catching up, I'm at a loss as to what I should do next year. I mixed up the order in my last rotation. So I don't even know what things I should teach next year!

Now SCIENCE!!!

Okay, so I left off talking about DNA. Well, I felt like I needed to do even more about this subject, so we continued talking about DNA the next week and we cut gummy bears as an "experiment." 

Now we had talked about all the systems of the body (musculature, bones, excretory, digestive, circulatory, respiratory, nervous, and reproductive) BUT we had not talked about the five senses. so first we talked about hearing. We made a model of the ear with household objects and we also showed how sound travels better through solids (like string.) I love this experiment where they ding spoons connected to strings. It's always surprising. 

However, the experiment where you put clay in the folds of your ears to mess up your sound direction didn't work! Maybe we needed to try it outside where there was no echo.

Then we talked about sight. I was so sad I couldn't find my glasses that turns everything up side down! Those were the coolest, and make an important point. But we DID get two cows eyes to dissect, and unlike last time, these were from a cow that was NOT blind, so there actually was a lens, which was awesome to feel. It wasn't as solid as I thought. I completely squished it at the end of the dissection.

Then we learned about taste and smell. (We did these the same week.) We did a lot of taste testing and mapping of our taste buds. I made some chicken green to show how our senses work together to give us clues about how things will taste and if they're safe.

One week we also learned about touch. I don't think I have any photos of our actual class, but we did this experiment that I had seen on facebook, and it DID NOT work....well not totally. You were supposed to be able to touch this fake hand and trick your brain into thinking it was yours, but (unlike the Facebook video) if you didn't actually touch your hand, you couldn't feel anything.

Now that we had thoroughly studied the body, we needed to study the classification of living things. We started out by "classifying" our shoes. This is the only thing that I did in school that I remembered and carried into my science class. We take everyone's shoes and put them into categories until we have a full taxonomy of shoes.

The next week (or did we have enough time that week? It's all jumbled in my memory) we talked about the different kingdoms. We focused mostly on the fungus and bacteria kingdoms. 

I had them take petri dishes and go through my house and collect cultures from things in my house. Over the next few days, this became very disgusting:

This one I got from my ice maker....which instills all kinds of confidence in the cleanliness of my house.

 Then we learned about invertebrates. We were running out of time to be done for the year, so I tried to do as many invertebrates as possible. We did worms, (and played with worms) and molluscs (and ate snails.) Speaking of eating snails, 4 years ago when we had this lesson, I just had them eat escargot right out of the can, but as I was going to buy them this time, my Francophone friend said I had to cook it in garlic and butter or it was gross, so I did that this time. Last year, only one kid was brave enough to eat it, but this time, I think they all did! It pays to know how to cook!  

But then we also talked about bugs. I had them take "butterflies" and stick them in "pollen" (ie glitter) and then into another bowl of "pollen" and see if they could spread the different kinds of pollen around. They went CRAZY and I think I still have glitter in my dining area!

I had asked them to bring any bugs that they had caught to show to the class. ZABY was a STINKER and had brought this huge jar that he had covered with a tea towel. I though I was going to see an ant, and was confused when I thought I saw the bottle move a bit. This put me a little on edge, and when I lifted the towel, I saw a WET GOPHER! (For some reason, it being wet was sooo disconcerting.) I of course screamed and Zaby was so proud because my scream had been his goal.

Then the next week we finished invertebrates by doing arachnids and crustaceans. Honestly, they seem incredibly closely related. Think about a scorpion and a lobster....brothers! We dissected a crawdad. We had enough for everyone to dissect one! And boy did they STINK! I've never had a dissection that stunk so bad. But I think they all thought it was pretty fascinating. 

We learned about reptiles and amphibians. Yes, I taught them in the same lesson because summer was closing in on us. We of course dissected a frog. The tongue always gets me. So crazy.

The next week we learned about fish. I put it on facebook that I needed a fresh fish that had all its guts, and a super nice fisherman jumped at the chance. (Any excuse to go fishing seemed to please him! LOL.) Fresh specimens are so superior to things preserved. The swim bladder was even still inflated. 

Then we learned about birds. One of my favourite dissections ever is dissecting owl pellets, and they are expensive online and four years ago, my friend had brought a ton extra that were just in her backyard (she's in the country...more than me.) So I thought I could get some, but it was a bit of an adventure.

Since my friend's owl had deserted her, yet again I said on facebook I needed them, and when I was driving one day, a friend tracked me down (I had a very distinctive car) and told me (all conspiratorial) where to get a huge amount of them. I thankfully knew of the farm he was talking about, and boldly went up to the farm house later that week and asked if I could look on their farm, and they said yes.

I looked for half an hour, I kid you not, and had only found a few. Suddenly I found a huge pile of them. I looked up, and sure enough, there was a nest. My advice: look for a nest before you look for pellets.

We had more than enough for everyone, and I think they had a blast looking through the pellets for bones.

Our final class was dissecting a PIG! I have never received a specimen this way:

Yep. That's a pig in a bucket of formaldehyde. Yum

Honestly, it was well preserved, and it really was a good culmination of everything we've learned all year. We opened the bucket and dissected it OUTSIDE. I had learned my lesson from the crawdads that this did not need to be an inside affair.

That middle photo is of the brain. Everyone was pretty insistent that we get to the brain. That was a hard thing to do! The brain was so well protected by the skull! Which was a lesson in and of itself. You can see me comparing it to the small intestine because they looked similar. 

Oh! And we had a bonus science class. My sister-in-law asked me to come over with all my ideas of how to play with dry ice. You don't have to ask me twice! I knew exactly what to do with dry ice. It turned out she had buckets and buckets and buckets worth of dry ice! (By the way, it's really hard to get ahold of dry ice in Canada.) I guess what had happened was that her friend was using the dry ice to brand her cattle. Instead of heat burning them, they cold burned them (if that makes sense.) And we got her left overs.

We had so much fun, but there was so much even after, so we went with some of those left overs to another friend and had even more fun. We put a ton in their sink and it filled up the room (DO NOT WORRY! We were in a ventilated area with doors open and made the kids run outside every 2 minutes.) It was so much fun!

And that's is for science for the year. Did we get to plants or ecosystems? No. Does that bug me? Yes. Will I do anything about that? Not sure.

What about other classes I teach? Glad you asked. My debate class has been moving right along. Has my crew been prepared every debate class? No, but they try anyway, and they all support each other, and I think it's been a positive experience. 

We also talked more about how to be persuasive, and we watched this amazing video that I found while my boys took BYUI classes:

And I printed out this visual to remember the importance of logos, ethos, and pathos.

Anyway, here's some photos of our club over the weeks:

And for other classes my kids take, they have continued to love Janet's literature class. She wanted them to watch "Dead Poet's Society" so I took out the centre fold scene, and we had a movie night at our house. I think it's Daniel's favourite movie officially. 

This class has really effected Hyrum. Actually, two things effected Hyrum. First was this class. Janet encouraged them to write a short story, and Hyrum became obsessed. His short story started to fill up all his spare thoughts and more. It was called "Blood Raven Phoenix." It had to do with Ravens (obviously) and he became obsessed with ravens, and over the months he became obsessed with birds in general.

But also, there was this movie:

Wolfwalkers. 

Have you ever heard of this movie? NO? Are you living under a Rock?! This movie is the only movie of consequence in Hyrum's world. This movie is perfection. This movie fills any thought Hyrum doesn't spend on his short story. THIS MOVIE changed Hyrum. This movie made Hyrum want to write stories as good as THIS MOVIE.

(I hadn't heard of it either.)

SO Hyrum started studying how to be a writer. He read all these books:

But that was not enough. Brandon Sanderson has put his entire BYU class lectures online, and Hyrum took his entire course:

He now writes and writes and writes and writes. It is his life. If anything gets in the way of his writing, he laments that he is not writing. I will post one of his short stories after I post this post.

But what about my other boys writing? Like Daniel? Well, 

DANIEL IS A FULL TIME UNIVERSITY STUDENT!!!!

Here's a photo of the first day of classes

And for his first University paper, he wrote about how he loves.............toilet paper.

Daniel Mckay 

Sister Sailors 

Eng 106 Apr 30 2025 

The One Who's Always There For Me 

To my dearest toilet paper, Where do I even start? As long as I can remember, you've been there for me, constantly wiping away my troubles. Despite having a heart of cardboard, I'm always looking forward to your softness. Without you, I’d be a complete mess. In an emergency, you're the one I need. You've always been my number one… and number two. When you're gone, I just don't know what to do but scream for help. 

You've helped me when life goes up or down, and I'm not saying we were perfect through the wear and tear. We had rough chunks during COVID but even when things get... well... crappy, we still push it out in the end. I know life hasn't been easy for you when you hit rock bottom, but I'm still here for you and I know you've got my back… end. 

You're the softest part of my life. I love how you are always willing to roll along with the pranks we pull on the bishop's car. I'm so wrapped up in your love that I can no longer hold it in, even despite all of the close calls. Your white soft outside, so clean and pure, with your strong, cylinder cardboard inners, so sweet yet firm, is why I would be a mess without you. 

I was wrong to take you for granted and should have treasured you more. Only during COVID did I see my woopsy because it was the only time I could truly smell how much you meant to me and my hygiene. 

For you, it was love at first wipe, so here's a poem I wrote for you. 

If love is patient, and love is kind… 

Then love is also wrapped around a paper spine. 

You make me clean and you give me time, 

So that's how I know you are mine. 

When there was no time, or when it gets on my hand, 

You're always there on your stand. 

When I feel that there is no one, and have a crappy day, 

You are there to wipe it all away. 

You clean my every crevice, you fulfill my very soul, 

And always help me with my bathroom goal. 

Through plop and splash, through thick and thin, 

You always make me feel like I'll win. 

So despite the smelly place you live in, 

despite the troubles we've had to mend, 

You will always be my one true friend. 

Toilet paper

Umm....He got 25/25. Thank you BUYI.

This was his professor's comment about it 

"Daniel,

Thank you for your submission. It is hysterical and very well done! Please see the rubric for comments under each section regarding the depth, organization, detail, and formatting of your letter. Keep up the good work! Please reach out if you have questions.

Kindly,

Sister Sailors"

So there you go! Professors can have a sense of humour and give perfect scores to homeschooled cheeky stinkers! (Hey, I didn't even mean to make those puns!)

As for Abraham and William, they are continuing on with All About Spelling. I told Abraham one day about how, when I told Maxwell to fix his messy handwriting by making it "pretty," he would draw flowers on the letters. So this is what Abraham drew:

Yes, that is pretty letters being sprayed on with weed killer until all that's left is the ugly letters.

William was going over all the ways to spell the "j" sound.

By the way, I've come up with a revolutionary way to teach b and d confusion that was inspired by William, and I'm going to make a movie about it, and it's going to be HUGE!

Now math. Did I tell you how Hyrum took the ALEKS math test for BYUI and got a really high score, but that's because he would look up how to do it, and then, if he truly understood it, would put the correct answer? Hmmm....well, we'll see how he does eventually with math. If he decided to do a double major of Software Engineer AND Computer Science, he's going to need high level math for that Computer Science. 

For some reason, the only photos I have are of math Abraham's been doing.

Yep. Rightstart is the best. I love how they teach. However, I've always had my supplemental teaching, and one of those supplements has always been the book "What's Your Angle Pythagorus?" The best book to teach "a squared +b squared =c squared" (I don't know how to do the "squared" symbol on a normal keyboard.)

Is that it? Have I finally caught up in all our classes? I should mention that Daniel, as a full time UNIVERSITY STUDENT, is taking more than English. He's taking Spanish 101:

and He's taking "Business Applications" in which he's getting ONE HUNDRED PERCENT! And this is his last week of the class! 

And he's taking Teachings of the living Prophets.

Can you tell I'm proud of that kid?

Moving on, we had an awesome trip that could totally count as social studies that started with the Colour Festival and ended with General Conference.

I could not miss Holi at the Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple, which is only five minutes away from my parents' house. We have gone to the Holi festival for years, and it's becoming my favourite holiday, and I'm not even Hindu!

Before:

After:

While we were with my parents, we decided to go to every museum at BYU Provo, which were all FREE. Some were incredible, and some not so much, but it was an awesome day.

The Palaeontology museum was the best surprise. Ugly on the outside, incredible on the inside.

William used to be obsessed with saber-tooth tigers...He still likes them.

The Peoples and Cultures museum......was the opposite. Pretty on the outside...no photos needed of the inside.

The Art museum was okay, but the Bean Museum was the best. 

(That last photo was taken by Hyrum because....birds....his short story helped him to love birds. He is now a budding birder. His Uncle Randy would be so proud.)

We also went to everything open on Temple Square, which wasn't much because it's all under construction.

And of course we went to Conference:

And Dustin's good friends from Benin/Togo Africa (I think they lived in both countries...I met them in Benin) came for conference, so we had to show them around! We took them to "This is the Place" state park, which is a living museum from the pioneer times. They smiled because some of the things we marvel at, they are still doing in Africa daily! (Like knowing how to make things from scratch) But most of the things were new to them, and I hope they had fun.

Then Dustin took them to Lagoon, which is an amusement park. Daniel paid to go as well, but Hyrum didn't want to spend his own money on it (which was the deal.) HOWEVER, on the way home, we had the worst travel experience of my life. We were caught in the worst blizzard I've ever driven in (I'm talking electric lines being blown over) and one of our children was sick, and I couldn't drive any further because I couldn't see the road, and Hyrum, who would not spend a $100 on Lagoon screamed "I would spend a $100 to not be here right now!"

ANYWAY

Other things that are Homeschoolish:

We created a "Passover" at my house. It was so fun to be able to call up 4 other moms to create a learning station Passover with me. There were 5 stations throughout my house and we split up into 5 groups and each mom taught a portion of the Passover. Best moms ever.

And then the next day we had an Easter egg hunt and meal with the same group of people! I love my little slice of heaven!

We also are continuing to love Mark Rober and his crunch labs. One inspired Abraham to make his own creations:

Abraham's artisticness has not slowed down. I was kind of frustrated that I thought he broke this toy I gave him for Easter, but it turns out he was just being artsy with it:

Also, Abraham's had an awesome Activity Boys leader this year and they are always doing awesome things like bottle drives and hikes.

And of course, our church also had their annual youth days where they have a Stake wide baseball competition. This year everyone really practiced to prepare for this, and my older boys were in the Second Place team! I appreciate when other people teach my kids sports, because heaven knows I'm not going to!

Also, a mom in our homeschool community arranged to have a full tour of our Carriage House Museum here. We've lived here for about 15 years (off and on) and never had such a good tour! We learned about Smithing and shoeing and met some horses! (real and fake....fake so we could learn how to put a harness on...)

It is kind of random that our tiny town has such a big beautiful museum about carriages. 

Our little town is super unique and this semester we got to explore the 3 distinct cultures that make up who we are. 

1st the Hutterite culture. We did something I've been wanting to do for over a decade: we had a tour of a Hutterite colony. They were SO KIND. We go to look at their cafeteria, kitchens, school, butcher house, and the whole time they were telling us about the history of the Hutterites, their language, culture, and religion. 

I was fascinated that so much of what they do is just tradition. Their hair and clothing styles are not their religion, but their interpretation of simplicity and not being vain. It's so distinctive, so I thought there was more of a "commandment" about it, but then I remembered how my mission president's wife told the sisters on my mission that we HAD to wear panty hose, even though that had nothing to do with LDS "commandments" so I think I can understand the Hutterites.

They gave us milk and jam with bread, and it was such a positive lovely experience that I'm glad my children were able to have (And me too!)

2nd we learned more about our indigenous neighbours. We went to the "Reztown" theatre once. It is an initiative to get the town of Cardston and the Blood Tribe reservation to do something together. I felt bad because we were going to be gone during the performance, so it didn't seem right to be there for any more practices, but at least we were there for one, and it was such a great experience and my boys loved it. (no photo)

But I DID get photos of when BYU provo came and preformed "Living Legends" and before this AMAZING show which highlights Polynesians,  American Indigenous peoples, and Latino history, there were Cardston/Reservation performances of indigenous dances. Coolest night in Cardston ever!

And of course 3rd is LDS culture, and we are always living that, and getting Hyrum ready for his mission call was a big part of last semester. We had to fly to Washington 2 times to get his implants and wisdom teeth done. Ammon did it all for practically nothing (well, I think it was like $2,000 or something, but for two implants and wisdom teeth, that's practically nothing) and he was so sweet to us and after that Hyrum was able to send in his papers! (Yes he got his call, but I'll talk about that in my post about our church history tour.)

And we are almost done for this school year, but our last month was an intensive lesson on how to finish renovating your house so that it's ready to put up on AirBNB. My boys put in floors, painted, dejunked, landscaped, and much more! And the finished effect felt soooo good!

And the last thing we did in our house was to have a birthday party for Abraham which doubled as a Harry Potter Party because we'd finished reading the Fifth book, and needed to have a party about it (we finished the fourth book and just watched the movie in Victoria.) 

To combine the two activities was Abraham's idea, and that was like music to my ears, because we had enough going on, so it was nice to have one party instead of two! 

We separated the guests into the four "houses" and had them rotate between four activities. 1-Wingardium leviosa, where you had to keep balloons off the ground using stick/wands....but it was a bit windy and the balloons all flew over into the neighbour's yard!

2-Occlumency, where they played "Two truths and a lie" and try and guess which one was a lie.

3-Wand/spell practice where they threw...ummm...I'm not sure what I was pretending them to be, but it was ping pong balls...at cups that has spells on them.

4-Dumbledore's army where half of them dresses up as death eaters and the other were just normal and then they had "duels."

But the best part were the movie snacks where DUSTIN made eatable EXTENDABLE EARS! Isn't my husband amazing?!?

And I made the cake, so I'm pretty incredible too.

And then we had to leave our house...because our AirBNB guests have been living in it, so we are homeless. 

Thankfully, our sister-in-laws have given us shelter, and it has been more magical then I ever thought it would be. I've never lived on the land in the summer, but I highly suggest it! From northern lights, to all the wildlife (including snakes that stinker teenagers bring into the house to tease their moms) it's all magical.

And now I'm sort of caught up! I need to do a post about our cross country travels, and the rest of the summer, but WHEW! We've had quite the interesting end of school year fun!