The End of an Era

 This is kind of a sad post for the end of the year.

I have been homeschooling for 11 years. Besides kindergarten, Westwind Alternate School has supported me all along the way. In Alberta, you need to tell the government that you homeschool. You can choose to go off the grid completely and not get any support, but if you want to, you can go with a school provider.

When I first started Westwind, the founder of the Westwind homeschool program, Granny Wendy, was my facilitator. 

She would do one on one tutoring with Maxwell every week. She was a wealth of knowledge and love, and I sincerely appreciated everything she taught. 

Then she retired.

That was okay because her son took over. 

John.  He is full of enthusiasm and love of learning. I was in good hands again.

And then a year or two later, Heather Burton was hired. She had so much to bring to the table. She has studied the Arbinger Institute philosophies and helped our kids think deep and broad. She also taught them to love plants.

This was an excellent time to be part of Westwind Alternate school. We even had two full-length plays: Neverland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was amazing.

Then there was some government audits of homeschooling facilities, and our school had to figure out how to make a clear distinction from "distance learning" and "home learning." I know it doesn't sound like it should have been a huge issue, but....it was.

There was many tears, hurt friendships, and I'm pretty sure our principal had some more grey hairs by the end of it all, and she quit soon after. I wrote about it in this blog:  https://lindyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2016/09/an-enlightening-first-week.html

I was considered "distance learning" and nothing much changed except I needed to have the school's secretary order all my school supplies instead of being reimbursed. 

That was in 2016.

Then, this year...I believe in December 2020, Alberta changed a sentence or two in their definition of distance education, and just like that:

I was no longer in distance education.

Mike, our principal, spent hours and hours and HOURS trying to figure out what parents wanted and how to make a distance education that would work. They are trying it out this year. I hope it works, I sincerely do, but I knew from the on set that it wouldn't work for me.

I want more freedom in my curriculum and learning style, and I'm going to be gone for half the year. Ironically, that doesn't work with "distance" education.

This means that I have to give up Heather and John. No more collaborations. They won't teach my kids any more. 

It's pretty sad, actually.

I'm still going through Westwind for homeschool. They're even letting us homeschoolers use their facilities for "mom school" and Mike is still over me, but I feel like it's not a team effort any more.

John made me this video of all the years he was my facilitator. It made me cry:

There's still my group of homeschool moms, and through it all, we've stuck together. We all go to different facilitators, but we still support one another. So at least the main reason I even live in Cardston hasn't changed.

Anyway, let's go over what we did our last month of school (yes I'm writing this on September 1st....stop being so observant!)

I'm just going to write about what I have pictures for, because I'm lazy:

Okay so social studies: we learned about latin immigration. I decided to have us watch a bunch of news reports and mini documentaries PRE Trump to get a more unbiased view of what went on. Guess what? We saw cages for children in those documentaries done during Obama's reign. 

Then we briefly watched the current news. It's all so depressing. I certainly don't know the answers. 

We made a pinata for our activity. 

 Then we learned about the women's movement. I really taught differently than most would. That's for sure! I did a pendulum of women's struggles. On one side it showed how bad women can have it. The men get paid more for the same work, men are womanizers and that is deemed alright, women should be domestic slaves, the male gender is better than the female gender, judges chose the men's side when at court, men are predators, women are useless without men, and there is a stereotype of what the perfect man should be. 

Then there is the opposite side of the pendulum swing. (Where much of society is right now.)  Where all men are considered womanizers until proven innocent, all men are idiots and ridiculous, the female gender is superior, motherhood is not something to aspire to, in fact, it might wreck your life. Men's rights are overlooked in court. All men are predators until proven innocent, and a family with no dad is great. No one needs a dad.

We watched this TED talk as part of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlSwsE22nX0&t=2s

And then we talked about how there is a balance that we should strive for and to stay away from each of the extremes. This balance includes getting paid the same for the same work, mutual respect for each gender, an involved dad who is needed in his family. Getting equal rights in court. Realizing each gender has household duties. Men should be the protectors of their family of predators. 

Yep. That's the kind of men I want my boys to be. And ones not ashamed for being born the way they are.

We also got our McDonalds burgers out. It was pretty depressing. The fries worked (the homemade ones were gross and the McDonald ones were perfectly preserved) but the burgers were both gross. So much for that lesson.

We also learned about GMOs and the green revolution. I tried to be pretty non-partisan about it, but some of it....do we really know the long term effects of these things? Specifically on bugs? We quickly went through the history of agriculture, and man, we've done some dumb things that we've had to correct. Some dumb dangerous things.

For our activity we did the "before and after" of GMO crops.

Oh and we also learned about Nelson Mandela. I haven't studied enough about him, but he appears to have decided, that instead of raging war against white people, he refused to be bitter towards them. That is truly remarkable if you think about it. Boy, South Africa sure could use his leadership right now.

We watched "Invictus" as our activity.

And lastly (well I don't have any other photos at least) we learned about Sept. 11 2001. We did talk about Malala, and the fall out of 9/11 as well, but that was just a refresher since we had an impromptu unit on Malala earlier this year. 

We took balloons and wrote messages of hope on them as our activity. 

Also, since this lands in the social studies sector, we observed May 31 as another Orange Shirt Day. We've always been taught the horrors of the residential schools, but the graves were finally found and brought to light. We went to the residential school 10 minutes away in recognition and we also put shoes and stuffies on the gate of the reserve.

Now onto science. 

We learned about the ear and we dissected...just kidding we didn't dissect anything, but we did make a model of an ear. If you clapped in front of it, it would make ripples in the water.

We also learned about DNA and heredity. I wish I spent more time on this. I remember loving learning about this from my highschool biology teacher. 

Did you know you can make it so you can see the DNA of strawberries? Well you can, so we did.

Also, we turned ourselves into strands of DNA to understand mitosis. 

We also had a class on plants. This is of our flowers that we put in coloured water.

And I think that's it for science.

And as for other subjects, Westwind had an art show:

And here's some random worksheets:

It was also Abraham's Birthday. He wanted an EYEBALL birthday party. A SIX LEGGED eyeball party. That is his cartoon character he's been drawing all year. Eyebee is his name.

And Hyrum's birthday where they went to laser tag (thank goodness they were open! COVID rules had recently changed or something.)

And last but not least, MAXWELL WENT TO PROM! Well, not really. It was "homeschool grad" that Naomi put together. It was SOOO cute. I loved it. 

And now it's time for SUMMER!

Maxwell's Proof of Learning

Maxwell has been doing a lot this semester, and I need to prove that to his facilitator, so here you go:

He's finished with his YALE course that he got a certificate in

This is the description of the class: In this course you will engage in a series of challenges designed to increase your own happiness and build more productive habits. As preparation for these tasks, Professor Laurie Santos reveals misconceptions about happiness, annoying features of the mind that lead us to think the way we do, and the research that can help us change. You will ultimately be prepared to successfully incorporate a specific wellness activity into your life. The syllabus can be found here: https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being#syllabus

He LOVED his photoshop class. This is the description of the class: Welcome to 30 Days of Photoshop! Join us for 30 tutorials that cover some of the most important tools and techniques, from he basics of Layers and Selections, to powerful skills like compositing and retouching. Start your Photoshop journey today! and you can find the syllabus here: https://phlearn.com/tutorial/30-days-photoshop-introduction/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=30%20days%20intro%20link

He's been taking an economics course from Brigham Young University Idaho and getting college credit with their concurrent enrolment program. He is currently getting a "B."

This is the course description: This introductory course in macroeconomics studies the national economy as a whole and its interaction with the global economy. Measurement of economic health and the use of fiscal and monetary policies to address unemployment, inflation, and growth are analyzed.

I don't think a link to the syllabus is possible, but here are the outcomes of the course: 

1. Evaluate the health of a national economy.
2. Demonstrate the impact of fiscal policy on the national economy.
3. Demonstrate the impact of monetary policy on the national economy.
4. Illustrate the impact of trade policies on the relative health of two or more economies.

And here is proof of his enrolment and progress: 

He also started his own business of making dog houses. He makes them using out CNC machine. He taught himself how to use the Carbide Create program so that it could carve the pieces for the house from plywood sheets.

He as already sold one house, and he has an agreement with a furniture store in Calgary to place the other houses he's been working on.

We've also been taking a Amateur Radio course in preparation to sail. This is the course description: Does everyone on your boat know how to call for help?

Get your ROC-M Restricted Operator Certificate (Maritime) Self-Study. A requirement for all operators of a VHF Marine Radio.

Here's the link: https://www.cps-ecp.ca/

He took a 6 week Essay writing course. The class description is here: This course provides students with all the tools necessary to independently compose an A+ essay! It includes weekly video instruction, printouts to assist in taking notes, simple homework assignments and meaningful feedback on all assignments.

https://www.classicsallowed.org

Here is an example of a worksheet done in this course:

This is an essay he did for this course, written in their format:

    Throughout all of time, there have been islands all around the world. There are many different types of islands. Some are snowy, while others are desert-like. Most people agree that tropical islands are the best type of islands. This essay will prove that Vanuatu has the best tropical islands.

What is the definition of best? Google defines best as “the most excellent or most suitable manner.” Many people say “I want the best thing,” best can mean something that makes your life easier as well. Some people may say that what is best is subjective, however, when something is excellent and life easing, it is the best. Ultimately, the best tropical island is Vanuatu.

 

In Vanuatu, tropical foods are one of the easiest types of food to get. My dad used to have lots of headaches. However, when we lived in Vanuatu, he found out that drinking coconut water got rid of his headaches. He had at least one coconut every day that we were there. He would just drive maybe two minutes to pick it up from a local fruit stand for 1 to 2 dollars. There are many kinds of tropical fruit that have a short shelf life, so you are unable to get them in colder climates. You have to actually be there to eat it. In summary, the easiest types of food to get in Vanuatu is tropical foods. Another significant component, is that the rainy season provides a lot of the freshwater on the islands of Vanuatu.

In the rainy season, there are short bursts of rain, and there are warnings for when hurricanes hit. When I lived in Vanuatu in the rainy season, I was reading outside and all of the sudden it started to rain. As soon as I realized that it was raining, it had stopped. When Hurricane Cook hit Vanuatu, we had a few days worth of warning to know it was  coming. Because we had so much warning, we were able to put up the hurricane shutters. Ultimately, before hurricanes hit anywhere there is a warning for the people that live there a day or more in advance. On another note, unlike the Native American tribes, the people in Vanuatu do not do rain dances.

Vanuatu is a very culture rich environment. One way that you can see this is when you look at the 138 languages that are spoken. With only 0.3 million people, different languages makes this country the most dense concentration of language today. Not only do they have the highest number of languages per population, but people who live there usually know two to four languages including their native language. So if you ever go to Vanuatu you can most likely find someone that can help you in your own language. As shown here,The environment in Vanuatu is full of culture. Another important element, some people that live in Vanuatu are very scared of snakes even though the snakes are harmless.

Vanuatu does not have many poisonous land animals. When my family and my cousins lived in Vanuatu for over a year, we saw only one poisonous type of land animal. It was the centipede. We saw a few centipedes, which were around five inches long and were reddish brown, but we were never bitten by them. There’s also a red snake that will bite you, but it’s not poisonous. There are huge spiders as big as your hand, but they aren’t poisonous, so I was never worried about them. There are not many poisonous animals that live on land in Vanuatu.

This essay has proven that the greatest tropical islands are in Vanuatu. Tropical islands are most people’s favourite type of island, but this essay has shown that there are many reasons why Vanuatu is the best. Some other kinds of islands kind be dry and sandy or winter wonderlands, and this essay has proven that tropical islands are the greater type of island. Besides these types, there’s even a greater variety of islands out there, and this essay argued that tropical islands are one of the best. The earth is spotted with all kinds of islands, and there are many islands that are going to be found.

He then took their follow-up course which had him read five classics, discuss them with a zoom class, and write essays on each book. https://www.classicsallowed.org/applied-literacy

Here's the course description: 

1. Read five fantastic classics (the book list is below, in the FAQ section).

2. Write an essay about each book, and receive feedback to improve their writing.
3. Participate in live virtual group discussions about each book with their peers.
4. Play fun online quizzes with other students to test their reading comprehension.
5. Learn vocabulary (in context!) that allows them to take part in intelligent discourse around themes, characters and plot development in stories.

These are the books they studied:

1. “Summer of the Monkeys” by Wilson Rawls
2. “The Birchbark House” by Louise Erdrich
3. "A Little Princess" by Frances Hodgson Burnett
4. “The Long Winter" by Laura I. Wilder
5. “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank

Here is an example of an essay he wrote for this course:

Many people these days have diaries, but only a small amount of them are read by more than a few friends and parents. Some diaries get famous and are read by millions. These types of diaries influence the people that read them. This essay will discuss why Anne Frank's diary helped show how we shouldn't persecute because of religion or race.

What is the definition of persecution? Google defines "to persecute" as “To oppress or harass with ill-treatment, especially because of race, religion.”

When you get to know someone of a different religion or race, they are people just like you. How do you think that the people that bring the poor souls into the gas chambers think about the people that they bring in? Do you think that they try to find out anything about them or just think of them as some type of pest? In Anne Frank’s Diary, you learn that she has her own fears and worries that were just the same as anyone else. If the people who worked in the gas chambers read journals like Anne Frank’s, they most likely would resign. They would realize that they are hurting innocent people.

The diary can also help the reader see how persecutors' choices can hurt common people. Anne Frank was just a normal girl like any girl here in North America. And what happened to her? She had to hide in a secret location so that she could live. All because she believed in something different than the people that were in charge. Obviously persecutors' choices can hurt any one, even innocent, normal people.

When living through being trapped with Anne, the reader realizes everyone deserves freedom. As you are reading Anne Frank’s diary, you find out how it is to be trapped. Trapped doesn't necessarily mean behind bars. It could be trapped emotionally, mentally, or physically. Anne was trapped by all of these in different ways. Ultimately When living through being trapped with Anne you see how it affected Anne.

This essay has considered why Anne Frank's diary aided in how we shouldn't ill-treat others because of religion or race. Like Anne Frank’s diary, there are diaries that are celebrated and influence many people. However, almost all journals are only seen by people that are close to the person that created them and have the thoughts that go through the person's head in it. Most of the population have journals on their phone.

And I hope that's enough Information to prove that he's been working hard this semester to further his education!!!!

Civil Rights and a lot of Hospital Visits

 A lot of hospital visits? Yes, yes there were.

My kidneys were hurting, and I took a "home remedy" for kidney stones. But then I got sick---can't get out of bed sick--Dustin finally made me go to the doctor who said it was a kidney infection, so I took lots of antibiotics. I was too sick to go to the zoo with my family, which was a huge bummer.

I'm so grateful they were able to go. The zoo allowed a certain number of people to come at timed intervals, and there were other homeschool family friends that came at the same time as my family! What a lovely breath of adventure in this cooped up crazy time.

I thought I was getting better but then Daniel broke his arm when he was riding his scooter in dirt and flipped. He needed surgery to make sure it healed properly. That meant we went to the Cardston hospital and spent the evening there, then the next day we went to Lethbridge and spent the day AND night there. They put in two pins to hold the wrist in place.

But wait! There's more! THEN my kidneys started to REALLY hurt, and holy cow I needed to go to the hospital. I spent the evening in Cardston where they gave me pain killers (hallelujah.) And then the next day I spent ALL day at Lethbridge waiting and was sent home, and then the next day we spent ALL day waiting and then got an operation for kidney stones and got home at 2 am.

Sooooo homeschool suffered. Big time.

Home life has suffered too. The kids have gotten even MORE screen time. In fact, when I started to get sick again, there was a little cheer from my crew because they knew it would be Minecraft, not school for the next few days. The stinkers.

THANKFULLY I have an amazing friend, Jandy Berry, who made Daniel's birthday fun. Before he broke his arm, he had his birthday, which was a couple of days apart from Kieren Berry's birthday. Jandy had a "travelling birthday party" for our boys. 

Since only 10 people could be together, and all our friends are part of large families, she made mini parties that she did at each house of our friends! Isn't she sweet?!? I was way too sick to handle a birthday.

Thankfully this was before our Nazi government changed the laws to be five people outside. I'm getting so sick of this. The evidence doesn't support what they are doing. It's so crazy.

My kids did do some things without me. Like this little TV thing they made.

And Maxwell did his school (I'll have a separate post for that, since I need a proof of learning for his school.)

By the way John, if you're reading this, because of crazy sickness, I'm not going to do my usual checklist post. I'm sure you'll get enough proof in other ways. 

Speaking of, I was originally going to call this post "end of an era." I still might make a separate post. Maybe I will make an extra post....so look for that post to see what I'm talking about.

Anyway. so let's move on to the "civil rights" part of this post.

First, we just talked about segregation in general. We talked about the Jim Crow laws and the injustice of it all. There are so many beautiful children books about the civil rights movement, and I own a few.

There's also a ton of kid friendly brain pop, ted-ed and other videos that we watched.

For our activity we watched a movie, the Help. We watched a lot of movies for our activities this month....hey, I was sick and there are some good movies about this so...no judgement. 

Then we specifically talked about Rosa Parks. I had forgotten how involved in the Civil Rights movement she was long before she didn't move on the bus. As our activity, we watched Hidden Figures. I'm sure I had a lot more to say about all this, but it's been a fuzzy month in my head, so yeah.

Which is such a perfect film because we also learned about the space race. SOOO INSPIRATIONAL!!! I cry when I watch this Nasa video:

We spent hours and hours on this subject. I just love it so much. As our activity, we watched First Man:

Then we spent a day specifically on Martin Luther King Jr. I read a Barton Stand Alone book as part of this, called "Legacy." It really shows how directly tied to slavery the civil rights movement was. We watched his actual speech.

As our activity we made a big poster about what we dream for in the future. One of my kids did this drawing to represent space travel, but no guns/war for their dream for the future. 

Then we spent some time on Ruby Bridges, but we didn't do an activity for her.

Then we moved on from the Civil Rights movement and back to the Cold War. We talked about nuclear power plants and Chernobyl. No activity.

We then talked about Vietnam and the hippies. We started a book called "The Land I Lost." which is about how damaging the war was to the average Vietnamese person. I'll tell you if it is any good.

It's so fascinating to me how different the Vietnam war was compared to the Korean War. They seem like they should have been similar. If you ask any South Korean, they will tell you they are happy to NOT be part of North Korea, but every Vietnamese seems happy to be united to their north. Every situation is different.

As our activity, we made tie dye shirts. This was a very involved activity that I had all the supplies for, but I procrastinated it because I was not very ambitious this month.

So now let's move on to talking about Science.

We've only had two classes. 

First, we did a class about eyes. We had lots of fun learning about lenses and rods and cones and all the amazingness that goes along with eyes.

It was kind of crazy. The butcher that gave me cow eyes, gave me eyes of a BLIND cow. How random is that?! And when we dissected the eyes, we found that the lens had never developed! Which is a shame, because that is the most interesting part of an eye to look at.

We did have prepared specimen eyes, but they were so old and chemically that the lenses were yellowed.

And this is showing how lenses turn everything upside down:

Not sure if you can see, but this is a projection of the window.

A week later I found these AWESOME glasses that make you see everything upside-down. I loved them so much I couldn't resist buying them, and they are truly scientific since we are actually seeing the world upside-down. Hehehe. Too bad I found them after the class.

Then my next class was about mammals. I jumped to this, even though I hadn't finish learning about the body completely (I want to do the rest of the senses) because of this crazy province's decision to close school for at least two weeks because of COVID.

I knew I wanted to dissect the pig fetus before the shut down (they gave us a few days before the shutdown to prepare.) 

I was at the hospital when the shutdown announcement was made, and the nurse next to me was upset. She said (and she was in the paediatrics) that there had never been a child sent to that hospital BECAUSE of COVID. There had been children at the hospital who had COVID, but they were there for things like broken bones or something else.

But let's shut down schools. 

Anyway--

So mammals-it was a good time where I thought I didn't have enough content to fill the time, but then ended up going overtime.

Dissecting the pig was really awesome. Especially since we had already learned about each system of the body, and here we were seeing them all work together. 

LINDY FROM THE FUTURE: do the systems of the body before doing the the classifications of animals. It will make the dissections of the classifications so much better.

Here's some viewer-discretion-is-advised photos of our dissections:

That last one has the brain exposed. For the Youngers, when I tried to get at the brain, it smooshed out, but Kieren and Daniel were patient and careful, and opened it up. So that was interesting.

And now for the the core subjects...umm...I only have one photo. It's of Abraham doing long addition. Impressive? Yes.

And to be fare, I did just do a post about "write into spring" which had English examples.

And in other news, Mothers Day happened, and my kids wrote me messages.

And it was May the Fourth be with you day, and we watched StarWars and had a waffle bar as a celebration.

Write Into Spring

 Umm...yeah. It's been a month since I've posted on this blog, but it's been a month of my being sick....don't worry....it's NOT the lovely corona. It's kidney infections and kidney stones. Having actually dissected kidneys recently and taught about kidneys recently, that made all the mental vision processes of everything very clear to me, which made it better or worse, I don't know. I had surgery yesterday, so now all should be good. 

But guess what? I'm not even going to do one of my regular posts right now either. I'm just making a post to put all the stuff from "Write In Spring" somewhere.

"Write into Spring" is a writing challenge Westwind Alt does. I was really planning on having my kids do more. I really was....but HAVE YOU EVER HAD KIDNEY STONES? It's worse than labour.

Anyway. Ahem. 

BUT my kids DID do some things before that drama.

Hyrum just did one-the rap about your animal:

Yo! This is a song about ZOEY.

She likes to eat MAUI. 

That’s kinda CREEPY. 

She also is HAIRY.

She sheds so much that it’s kinda ANNOYING.

She sheds ALL DAY AND ALL YEAR…HELP ME.

It’s a CATASTROPHE.

No it’s actually a PROBLEM.

I really need some help!

Like now it’s a big big PROBLEM and NOT only that, but she’s really SLOBBERY which means.

I’m going to die now!

Daniel just did one, ummm not sure which prompt this is and I'm too lazy to figure out-how's that for a great homeschool mom?:

And then William did three.

Here's he monster with labels:

Here's his favourite food grocery list:

Here's his "fable."

Then Abraham did four.

Here's his monster with labels:

Here's his incredible labelled playground with emotions you would feel.

Here's his rocket ship. I realize he was supposed to do an explanation about it, but we just never got there.

That last one is from the cockpit. 

And then here's his city that's labeled. But honestly, he got really into this one, so I couldn't label it. I video recorded him instead, and he has A LOT to say about it!!!