It has been a month since I last posted-sorry John-, but it has been an incredible month for science!
I have a friend whose dad is a butcher, and he's been so good to me in the past, and he got me the tongue, esophagus/trachea, lungs and heart (all still connected) of a cow! Seriously, it was awesome!
When I got it, I was a bit worried. It was in this bloody see through garbage bag, and it just seemed pretty gruesome, but I was undaunted, and brought it to school.
We learned quite a bit about lungs from doing experiments that didn't include the cow lungs, including proving that our air is mostly carbon dioxide when it comes out by putting out a candle with CO2, showing them a homemade lung model, and seeing how much air your lungs can hold by blowing into a jar filled with water.
And then came out the lungs (that was still connected to the heart and tubes) it was so big when straightened out, that it took up most of the sled I brought to contain it!
We watched this awesome youtube video to help us dissect it:
I think my favourite moment was when Heather Burton came in and the look on her face was not of disgust, but of absolute love of learning. She wanted to know everything.
I certainly learned a lot. It's one of my favourite dissections I've ever done. I was amazed at how easy it was to see the different air and blood pipes and how those pipes became smaller and smaller until they interchanged oxygen with one another. Also, I didn't realize that your trachea is made up of cartilage hoops all the way, down to make sure your air passageways stay open.
Then the next science class we did was about the heart. I had prepared hearts to dissect, but then I had the heart that was connected to the lungs that I kept. HOLY COW there was a huge difference between the fresh heart and the prepared heart (get it? Holy cow?-moving on.)
We used "We the Curious" Youtube again, and we saw the heart strings, the different chambers and everything.
The red one I'm holding is the fresh specimen, and the brownish grey one is the prepared. It was so hard and smelly. It makes me only want to use fresh specimens from now on. It's a whole lot cheaper too! (Free from my friend!)
We had so many activities to do about the circulatory system, that each club (I have a younger and an older) didn't get to all of them. I had these "blood type" tests, and I had never used them before, and so I thought you just pricked yourself and then sent it in the mail to get tested, so I thought that wasn't interesting enough for the Youngers, so I waited until the Olders came, but then I realized that you could find out your blood type IMMEDIATELY! Cool? Yes.
I only had five tests (one for each of my kids) but I decided that I would do it with anyone willing to get impaled by me. (I'm glad that their parents are my friends because I forgot to ask permission!) and it was so cool to see how the blood reacted differently with the different chemicals on the paper.
The three non-McKays were all O+ and the McKays were all A-, and I'm so grateful that we had at least two different kinds of blood types! We looked at their blood under the microscope. It isn't red under the microscope, it's clear!
And this week we learned about muscles. I wasn't prepared as much as I should have been. I had them watch a few extra Brainpops this week while I finished up my tendon-hands. But they were worth it, they were pretty fun:
You can't tell in this photo because for the Olders I ran out of coloured string and used fishing line instead, but there's tendons running down every finger. The rest of them were better than this one, but I forgot to take a photo during science club.
We also did a few activities to feel and be aware of our own muscles.
Yep! Pretty cool science month.
As for history, we finished up learning about WW2.
We obviously talked about the holocaust. What a depressing but necessary subject. We read the book "Number the Stars" as part of this and also watched the 1950s Anne Frank movie.
I'm such a baby with this subject. I get so easily depressed. I watched "Jo Jo Rabbit" on a plane headed to Argentina (I think) and ugly cried in front of everyone.
I was headed to Calgary with Maxwell for a Dr appointment, and I thought to myself "I want something uplifting to listen to, I'm sick of the holocaust," so I turned on "Mans Search For Meaning" by Victor Frankel (obviously I've never read it before) and it started out "Part 1: Experiences in a Concentration Camp." NOOOO but of course I didn't turn it off, so we listen to all the horrors and never really got to the inspirational part.
As our activity we made Stars of David.
Then we learned about Einstein (I always try and teach about him when learning about the Holocaust because he was a jew in Germany.) But we had no activity.
We talked about the shift in culture that happened because of the war and how women were now working and all their sons and husbands were dying, and as our activity we made star window flags. (I guess this was just a USA thing. I couldn't find any Canadian examples.)
And we learned about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I try to show both sides of the story=how absolutely devastating and sad and disgusting it was, AND how the Japanese almost STILL didn't surrender even after the bombs, so the war might have gone on for years without the bombs.
As our activity, we made floating lanterns with old pictures of Japanese people on them. When the cutey came up from downstairs and asked what we were doing, little Abraham said "We're remembering all the people who died." Whew! at least my messages get through sometimes!
Of course, all the rivers and lakes were frozen stiff, so we put the lanterns in our bathtub.
Now that the WW2 was over, it was time to learn about the Zionist conference. I know I probably mentioned this four years ago, but I'm so annoyed this never gets taught!!!
I majored in art history and minored in history, and was NEVER properly taught about the Zionist conference. I knew Israel was a jewish country, and I knew there was a lot of hate, but I didn't really know anything.
I actually never learned about it until I read "the Chosen" in a book club as an adult.
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!
At least Story of The World has three awesome pages about it.
As our activity, we made Israel flags.
Then, according to my history schedule, for some strange reason I chose NOW -in this post ww2 unit- to talk about vaccines. Not sure why.
We talked mostly about Jenner and smallpox, but of course that leads to polio and others. There were SO MANY videos on BrainPop and TedEd and children books about vaccines!!!
Obviously I talked about the COVID vaccine as well and how it's a completely different vaccine than anything that's ever been made. I MAY have shared my serious concerns....but that was after praising past vaccines...this is a tricky time in history.
As our activity, those that weren't up to date on their vaccines got them (obviously not the COVID one since that's illegal for children still- since they are still in the testing stage of this science experiment.)
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