Weekly Wrap up 3/3/17

I missed our weekly wraps for the last two weeks due to being extremely busy and not getting any time to actually sit down to write up our homeschooling week.  So I am a bit behind reporting what we have been doing.

MarioFan is completing his science unit on simple machines and we just wrapped up a unit on pulleys.  We are build models of each pulley system using our knex kit.

First we looked at Fixed pulley like a flag pole

Next we looked at Moveable pulley like raising a sail on a boat

and lastly we looked at block and tackle pulley-- like a crane

Our Coop is doing a project Fair in a couple of weeks and we have decide to do our project on what we have been learning for the last couple of months.  So now we are busy putting together our project board and presentation on this topic.

For History we are continuing to examine WWII and while we are actually reading more about the Pacific campaign and the building of the Bomb-- we manage to make a quick trip the our local holocaust museum with friends.  This museum concentrates on 300 families from the St Louis area and their experiences surviving the holocaust and emigrating to the area.

Jewish medals from WWI

souvenirs of 1936 Olympics.

diorama of the Jewish gehttos.  What I found interesting here is that often German trolley or trams ran right through the  ghettos and could not be moved so fences were built about the lines and bridges were built over the lines where the Jewish people had to walk over the bridge to get from one side of the ghetto to another.  Which means the average German going to and from work would pass though the ghetto daily.   So bizarre!

Various Identification badges and we read horrible stories of the German starving handicapped children.

This map took me by surprise as every black dot represents either a death camp, transit camp, slave labor camp,  concentration camp, killing sites, or euthanasia centers.  You only hear about the biggest ones but there were so many more:( and all over Europe.

Pictures of the families that moved to St Louis and how they made something of themselves here.

MarioFan and Firedrake are also reading the book the Bomb and learning about the race to build the atomic bomb.  The book also includes the Soviets and their spy ring to obtain secret documents to build their own bomb.  I have learn quite a bit from this book myself.  I highly recommend it if you are studying this era.

Hope you are having a great week!