US History: WWII part 6

We went through all of the WWI and WWII stuff at the Air and Space museum.  This was interesting because we had seen it all before, but now that we really knew what it was about, it was a different experience.

Here we have a replica of the Red Baron's Fokker  from WWI (remember Snoopy and the Red Baron?)

Here we have a picture Zorg took of a WWI soldier who died in "no man's land" between the trenches.

Sure it was a mannequin, but it brought home the reality in anew way.



In the WWII room, they have an actual aircraft from each of the major Allied and Axis countries.  How they fit them all in, is a marvel of spacial relationships, but they have, in that one room, a British Spitfire, a Japanese "Zero," a German Messerschmidt, and an Italian and US plane, the names of which I've lost!

Choclo quickly picked up that the planes with black crosses or red circles were "bad guy planes" and pointed them out all over the museum.  He also looked for white stars and pointed out the "good guy planes." (Do you think we watched too much propaganda?)

My favorite, however, was when he dragged me over to this exhibit and told me, "Look, Mom!  It's Mr. Plastic Head behind glass!"

That's actually General Hap Arnold's WWII uniform, but it was hard to argue the point!

We finished up with our favorite part of the Air side: the bridge of the aircraft carrier.  You can handle all the controls while watching planes take off through the "windows."

On the other side of the room, you have the rear controls and you can watch the planes landing on the carrier deck - so cool!

US History: WWII Part 5, Seven Quick Takes

But wait, there's more! With the last 5 or 6 posts about WWII,  I totally forgot, we've been listening to music from the war years for the last six weeks! I must share!

1.   My favorite has to be "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" (Andrews Sisters):


2. But I also love Johnny Mercer's "GI Jive":


3. Actually, it's hard to pick a favorite.  How about Glenn Miller's "In the Mood?"


4. Quite nearly the perfect wrap up this unit has been this Porky Pig cartoon.  No, really!  It's got the good guys, the bad guys, rationing, war bonds, and mutual non aggression pacts.  Alas, it also has one (written) ethnic slur.


5. Abbott and Costello's Buck Privates isn't a bad idea, either!


6.  God bless the USO!  I do believe there's a special place in heaven for Bob Hope and the many USO entertainers.  This gem is from Danny Kaye doing a musical imitation of the draft medical exam:

7.  I'll leave you with this gem, which my parents used to sing to me at certain times:

One extra note: The absolute best (free) WWII aerial combat game on the web is Battle of Britain!

Return to Science

We started up our Science class this week.  This semester we are doing Physics, and we are starting with rockets.

Specifically we started with Newton's first law of motion: "Something at rest stays at rest, and something moving stays moving unless acted on by an outside force."

We started off with the inertia side.

Did you know that if you drop your clothes on the floor, and no one picks them up, they will stay there for hundreds of years?  It may be propaganda, but it's true!

We went on to do the jar and coin trick - you place a quarter on an index card over a jar, and then flick the card away.  The coin's inertia causes it to remain stationary, then gravity drops it into the jar.  They ended up able to do it with a stack of coins.

I had Mxyl and Klenda show them the catching the coins on your elbows trick.

Than I slowed it down a bit and showed them inertia by pulling a heavy coffee can with a rubber band.  This is nice because the rubber band shows (by it's length) how much force you are using.  You see the band lengthen until the can starts moving, and then contract as it uses less force to keep moving.

Next we went to work on the momentum side.

First we talked about riding a bike: how hard it is to do a standing start uphill, and how hard it is to balance on a still bicycle.

Then we practiced with a hula hoop - this actually shows inertia (you give it a hard push to start it) and momentum (once it gets going it's a lot easier to keep it going).

We moved on to our dump truck demonstration.  I couldn't find enough little people, so we added a pony for pizazz.  On the plus side, one of the little people was missing the top of his head so I could show them, Look!  He has no brains, he thinks it's a great idea to ride in the back of a dump truck!

Off they went, straight into a wall, and even the youngest kids got it - that's why we wear seat belts! 

Everyone felt the need to repeat that demonstration, so I was able to set up the balloon rocket experiment. 

The balloons were a real hit, so we eventually took them off the tracks and just zoomed them around the room!

Floored

A mere 8 years after I laid the white Armstrong tile on the bottom, the surface plastic became brittle and began tearing away in sheets.

I was not a happy camper.  The tiles did have a 25 year "no hassle" warranty... if you had the receipt.  Armstrong was able to tell me where I bought it and when the tiles had been manufactured, but this, alas, was not enough.

I'm wondering two things: How do they think I got the floor? and What, in their opinion, would be a hassle?


 On the other hand, I like my new floor better!

It was certainly fun to put in - I love peel and stick  vinyl tile!  All the Zoomlians (even Oob!) helped out, and it took about 4 hours all together.

This time, before I went down the primrose path, I got a bunch of different tiles and lay them on the floor for a few weeks to see which ones I really liked.  Then I took the winners and tried to damage them as much as possible: cuts, scrapes breaks and attempts to peel off the top layer.


The winner was Traffic Master, if you're interested!  It has a lifetime warranty.

And I kept the receipt!

US History: WWII part 4

Pushing on this week, we've made it to VE Day, and have circled back to the war in the pacific. 

As it turned out, we used the (also instantly available) True Glory to detail the war from D Day through the capture of Berlin.  This was an award winning documentary made by the Brits and Yanks in 1946.

It's all war footage overlaid with different soldiers talking about events.  The Zoomlians had some trouble following all the accents (upper class Brit followed by Brooklynese, then an Aussie, then a Cockney), but the footage was fantastic.  I also stopped and explained whenever I thought it helpful. 

I found it interesting for what it left out, as well as what it put in: FDR's death was only alluded to by a headline, Hitler's death was never mentioned, and it sure looked like the US captured Berlin with some English support (it was actually captured by the Russians).

We've now switched to the Pacific, and The Last Days of World War II.  It's a bit bloodier than I would like to show, especially since some of the footage is color, but the kids seem to be handling it, and it's a really good explanation of why we used atomic bombs.  The number of people (Japanese as well as US) who died on these little islands is staggering.  The thought of how many would have died in an invasion of Japan does not bear thought. 

The big question from the kids is, "Why did the Japanese fight so hard?" Obviously that is a huge question, but one answer is that the Japanese had committed atrocities and they believed (and were told) that the Americans would do the same, if not worse.  One of the side effects of doing bad things is that you are more ready to see evil in the world.

I am hoping to finish up the war this week, and that will keep me on schedule to finish the mega unit by Thanksgiving.  We'll see how it goes. 

US History: WWII part 3

We went up from Pearl Harbor through D-Day (stopping just short of D- Day, actually) and then circled back around to life on the home front.  This has been interesting because it answers the question, "What would you have been doing if you were this age during WWII?"

Part of that answer has been "collecting scrap metal and paper" and part of it has been, "not eating much."

Ah, the joys of rationing!  We found a great internet site called Cookit that dealt with food rationing.  The link goes to the WWII stuff, but it's actually a "history cookbook."  We also found this fun rationing game about clothes!

We've also been talking about women at war: WACs WAVes, and WOWs, as well as the women going into the workforce, and the general concept of total war.

Most of the best of the web seems to be British, but I can see that it's a bigger part of their history than ours!  This poster is showing how desperately parents wanted to bring their children back from the country to be with them, but, of course, needed to keep them away from the bombing.  I can't even imagine sending my kids away (or keeping them during the Blitz).

Here's a cool aerial dogfight game, also from the Battle of Britain, as well as an interesting interactive timeline.

On the US side, National Geographic has a great interactive site about Pearl Harbor.  We also are set up to watch some of The Last Days of World War II (instant watch on Netflix) which covers day by day from D-Day to the end of the War.

US History: WWII part 2

We have moved into a more personal part of our US History mega unit.  WWII was the part of the history book I always hoped we'd get to in school, but we never did.  My dad was a small child during the war, and my Mom was born near the end.  I know my Grammy Ann (who reads this blog!) was in the Navy as a very young woman during WWII, but I don't know the details (and would like too, hint, hint!).

I had a lot of names floating around, allusions that had never quite gelled into real places, people or things: the Maginot Line, Ardenne, Vichy France, The Desert Fox, barrage balloons. But I grew up with people for whom all these things were real, in the way that the Twin Towers are real to me, and not to my children.   When I visit New York, it's like an absent tooth in the skyline and an almost physical pain, but to the next generation, they were never real, it was always a hole.

In the same way, as I learn more about this war, it's ghosts coalesce and become real to me, and I can see the world that shaped my parents and grandparents.

We've been moving rather chronologically, from the causes of WWII and the rise of Hitler, through the Nazi expansion throughout Europe, Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, Japanese expansion in China, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

I 

I told the Zoomlians it was a month after D-Day and they each had to write a letter to me explain which branch of the service they had joined and why they just had to do it.  I loved their answers, by turns silly and touching.

Klenda was an Army Nurse, helping save as many soldiers as she could, Leena joined the Navy so she could (improbably) "nuke the Nazis," Mxyl joined the Air Force because "We can't just assume that if we ignore the war, the war will ignore us anymore," Zorg joined the Army, got a grenade launcher and summed it up, "The US Army needs help and I'm givin' it!"

US History: WWII part 1

Despite the lack of blogging, we have been sailing along in high tide on World War II!

We actually started back during our visit to Mumpy and Pa, quizzing Pa about his experiences during the war (he was a little kid, but even little kids knew about blackout drills, rationing, and how to identify enemy planes!).

We have found an embarrassment of riches when it comes to resources.  We have been using a number of excellent books including World War II for Kids (which I have found more useful for it's primary sources - letters and interviews - than for the activities), Woeful Second World War (one of the irresistible Horrible Histories series), and several of the Dover coloring books (especially Color Your Own Patriotic Posters, and Story of World War II).

We also stumbled upon the series Why We Fight, propaganda reels made during the war.  On the plus side, the series is a gripping narrative about the events leading up to America's entrance into the war - they were done by Frank Capra with actual war footage from both sides!  Also, since they were made while the war was going on, there is a lot of suspense...

On the negative, it's propaganda - very one sided, down to the use of racial epithets.  For us, that was more to talk about - why do people at war need to make the other side less than human? 

We also looked at part of Hitler's propaganda film Triumph of the Will.  Scary stuff, and a good answer to the question, "Why did people follow Hitler?"

Here's the first episode of Why We Fight:

Sad News

We lost our little one.  Please keep us in your prayers for the next week or so.

I should be back to blogging soon.

Sorry, No Posting

This is a case where no news in bad news.  I started bleeding and I've been on bed rest.  Now I'm off bed rest, but it's unclear what is happening. 

The good news is that the baby could be totally fine and this is just a side effect of the medicine I'm taking to keep the little one safe (progesterone).  The bad news is, well, the little one could be gone.

I'm having another blood test today, and probably a sonogram Monday.  Please pray for us!  I'll let you know when I know something.