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!!!

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!