When You're Goin' to San Francisco...

...be sure you know ahead of time what day of the week the Exploratorium is closed.

We drove up to San Francisco ostensibly to visit the Exploratorium (as a hands-on museum it's a little schizo for my tastes, but the girls love it, and as long as you take some Tylenol pre-emptively before you enter their doors you should fare alright), but alas, the Exploratorium is closed on Mondays.

But, you know, it's San Francisco. I'm sure we can find something to do.

We chilled at Crissy Field for a while, with its ridiculous view of the Golden Gate Bridge:
And whenever we stood still long enough, we gamely complied whenever tourists wanted us to take pictures of them with their cameras. I NEVER ask someone to do this, because their photos are always crap, and I usually make Matt take the photo when a tourist asks us, because I'm a camera snob about the boring poses and boring cameras of the tourists, but I actually wish I hadn't been such a snob and had been the one taking this shot: I bet Matt's photo was crap, though.

We ate some sourdough bread, of course, although we did not ride a cable car, and we went to the California Academy of Sciences, which I was REALLY excited about, since it just re-opened late last summer after a renovation that took so long that it's never been open in the decade or so that I've been coming to Cali for Matt.

The Academy of Sciences' renovation makes it look much more like a modernized natural history museum. You can see where many of the dusty old stuffed animals were moved to, to be incorporated into brighter, more interactive exhibits, and you can tell where the big bucks were spent, on a huge aquarium that is reminiscent of the Monterey Bay Aquarium----except that there's an albino alligator--and a big rainforest habitat that exists in a huge glass globe in center of the museum.

If you don't mind dead bugs on pins, there are some very cool exhibits on butterflies, and one in particular that shows the genetic diversity of one specific insect by showing just thousands of them stuck on pins so you can see their tiny little subtle variations of color and size and shape and spots and stuff.

The children's play room, which is a necessity, I think, in any modern museum, be it science or art or natural history, was imaginative but small, and the baseball caps were crazy-overpriced (although I really wanted one), but the Galapagos and Madagascar exhibits were really excellent, and Willow and I spent a VERY long time hanging out by the pendulum and learning that the earth spins:

Not a bad lesson for such a fine day.

Tomorrow--Point Reyes National Seashore.

Ah, the Exploratorium! Engaging science activities for kids with ADD! Seriously, it's a huge warehouse filled with hands-on science activities, designed for flitting from one to another, all of which can be manipulated without having to so much as notice the concept that drives them. Right now, our kids love it--Sydney is still at the stage where mere manipulation, cause and effect stuff, is happy for her brain, and Will has the deep focus to concentrate on one single activity for half an hour at a time, undisturbed by the mania around her, before wandering off to another one. So, among other things, we sat in a photo booth and chose videos of people relating their own particular "sound memories," made three-dimensional shapes from geometric figures edged with Velcro, used hands and tools to draw designs on a rotating wheel covered in a light layer of sand, used a column of air to hold a beach ball aloft, played drums to accompany a Nirvana song, and etc. Matt and I always try to give a simple explanation of what's going on with each activity, but if we homeschooled here, we'd probably come all the time but steer the kids to activities that illustrated just the couple of concepts we were interested in focusing on at the time.

The symmetry mirror was fun to moon over-- --the rotating curtain made me nauseous, but not the kiddos--
--Sydney mesmerized herself, and perhaps fried her brain, in the light wand camera--
--and we seem to not be able to go a day without a visit to Crissy Field:
Before we hit the Exploratorium, however, we drove around the city for freakin' ever (no left-hand turns! Argh!) looking for The Curiosity Shoppe, a crafty little store I've been dying to visit. We only had three quarters (30 minutes), so I shopped really quickly, and fortunately found nearly everything I'd been eyeing in their online shop. I bought this birdhouse kit made of laminated cardboard, the Sublime Stitching book (I justified this purchase of a new book because it's got iron-on embroidery transfers in it--those get used up! Logical, right?), and inexplicably, not because it's not awesome, because it is, but because it was insanely expensive, this card catalog card. I am a library nerd, but still. I've had to retroactively justify the cost by asserting that I'm going to matte and frame it in my study. The justification engine is fully functional, you see.

I was a little sad that they didn't have the Built by Wendy Simplicity patterns that I've been wanting. They had some, but I specifically want the Slim Pants, Capris, or Shorts pattern, the Pants pattern, and the Jacket pattern, all in my curvalicious size. Odd because the online shop shows them in stock, but then I probably should have just asked the proprietor--that's what regular people do, isn't it? Ask shop proprietors when they need help? Not just quietly slink off? Huh.

The fam did manage to figure out how to make only right turns to get to the Out of the Closet thrift shop, however, where I contemplated buying a massive old store mannequin, but finally settled on Singer-Quilting by Machine. As a self-taught seamster to whom straightforward skills like, oh, zipper sewing, still seem impossible, I appreciate myself some how-to manuals.

Boy, I got a lot of knitting done!

There have been a lot of out-of-town relatives around, on account of the wedding to which my children are not invited. When out-of-town relatives sit and gossip, I knit and eavesdrop.

Next time: Garage sales! Rehearsal dinner! The rant about the wedding to which my children are not invited!

Where We Go to Wonder

First, my continuing project: I'm still working out some test shots for my Craft magazine piece. The colors still look a little washed out to me and the image isn't sharply focused (my eyesight sucks, so I rely a lot on autofocus, but autofocus? Eh.), but I figured out that the overall tone would look better if I didn't pose my artifacts on, you know, a BRIGHT GREEN background. You learn something new every day...

And today, the girls and I spent quite a bit of time learning at the Wonderlab.

The Wonderlab is our third-favorite public area in all of Bloomington. I've been taking Will there, daily, weekly, monthly, since she was just over a year old--Syd's been going there since she was a newborn. My favorite thing about the Wonderlab is that since they were old enough to put their hands on anything, each of the girls has been able to interact with every single exhibit there in some meaningful way. Mind you, the kids aren't necessarily grasping the finer points of how hot air makes the balloon rise, but they grasp the cause-and-effect of push the red button, watch the digital thermometer numbers rise, and up goes the balloon. It's that kind of learning that's especially valuable, I think--as the girls visit these same exhibits over and over throughout the years, old lessons are internalized and new discoveries are made.

Here were the favorites today: Our other favorite thing about the Wonderlab is their membership in the ASTC Passport Program. Every time we go on a trip, I always pull up the complete list of Passport Program participating museums, and we ALWAYS find some cool place to get free admission into--St. Louis Science Center, Chicago Field Museum, San Francisco Exploratorium, etc. On our California trip, Matt and I took the girls to the Exploratorium for the day two times, and the first time we basically recompensed our entire year's membership at the Wonderlab. It rules.

But in case you think I didn't do anything crafty today, you're wrong! Here's a little peek at a project I'm trying to work up out of some of my felted wool:
Can you figure it out?

Homeschool History/Culinary Arts: Homemade Chocolate

The teenager's Honors World History: Ancient Times study (2 semesters; 2 high school credits) is a LOT of work, because we're using two college textbooks as the spine for this DIY course:

• Duiker's World History
• Gardner's Art through the Ages

This homemade chocolate project is relevant to Duiker Chapter 6, "The New World," and Gardner Chapter 14, "From Alaska to the Andes: The Arts of Ancient America." It also builds context with our study of Mesoamerica, and trip to the Yucatan Peninsula, from two years ago. We discussed the Ancient Maya's relationship to chocolate then--our local university's art museum actually has a Maya vessel that still has the dregs of ancient hot chocolate inside!--but we didn't do any hands-on chocolate-making projects during that particular study.

Yay, because it gives us something new to do this year!

This TED-Ed video about the history of chocolate is surprisingly thorough for being less than five minutes long, and since our study of chocolate is mostly contained to the Ancient Maya, it builds context by centering chocolate within world history:

If you'd rather your student read than watch, here's about the same level of content as informational text from the Exploratorium.

For our hands-on project, I bought this Make Your Own Chocolate kit from Glee Gum--the kids and I have actually done this exact same kit before, but since it was a whopping ELEVEN YEARS AGO(?!?!), I figured we might as well give it another go!

The kit is marketed to and suitable for young kids like my own long-ago wee ones, but it's actually quite suitable for this nearly-grown teenager and fully-grown me, as well--as long as you're a beginner chocolatier, I suppose. If you can temper chocolate in your sleep this kit probably wouldn't cover much new ground for you, but the teenager and I didn't find the instructions or the activity babyish or overly simplified. 

And look! We got to taste real cacao beans!

The kit is sort of like a Hello Fresh for chocolate-making, in that it provides the ingredients in the amounts needed, and then you heat and combine them as directed. I especially liked the sticker thermometer for easily taking the temperature of the chocolate. My teenager was more than capable of completing the entire project independently, so all I had to do was hang out, take photos, add weird mix-ins to the candy wrappers, and then enjoy all of the chocolate!

For mix-ins, we tried various combinations of candied ginger, dried unsweetened cherries, and peanut butter. The latter two in the same truffle was my favorite combo.

If you wanted to extend this activity even further, there are a ton of ways you could go:

If you live within driving distance, Hershey's Chocolate World in Hershey, Pennsylvania, would be a fun, educational-ish trip. They mostly want to sell you things, but if you're thoughtful, you can make the things that they sell you work as enrichment. We didn't visit The Hershey Story on our own trip, but it looks much more legitimately educational, ahem.

If your kid gets really into the foodcrafting part of the experience, you can buy more of the same ingredients from the kit and make more chocolate from scratch. Kid-made homemade truffles or chocolate bars would be such a lovely Valentine's Day project or handmade gift!

Another super fun but low-effort chocolate crafting project is coating random foods in chocolate. Chocolate-covered gummy bears ARE surprisingly delicious, as are sour gummy worms, mint leaves, and, um... Ramen noodles.

If you're working with a young kid, and don't want to mess around too much with molten chocolate, you could make them a batch of edible chocolate slime for a fun sensory extension activity. Or make modeling chocolate, which sculpts well and is also delicious!

Here are some books that pair well with making your own chocolate:

• The Bitter Side of Sweet. Pair this with any chocolate study to bring insight and empathy to the serious problem of child enslavement that plagues modern chocolate production. 
• The Book of Chocolate. This is a very readable history for apt middle grades and up. 
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It's not for the history buff, ahem, but it's perfect if you're doing the kit just to have fun with candy. If you've never read this book aloud to your kids, are you even a homeschooler?
• Chocolate Fever. Yes, it's a children's book, but it's really, really good! Find an audiobook version that you can listen to while you do some of this food crafting, and you can probably get through the entire book in one session.
• Making Chocolate: From Beans to Bar to S'more. This book is a completely excessive tome about making chocolate from scratch, but if you've got an older kid who's interested... well, you're homeschoolers for a reason!

P.S. Want to know more about all the weird math I have my kids do, as well as our other wanderings and wonderings? Check out my Facebook page!

Museum of Science, Museum of History

I tell you what, if there is anything that we did not see in Boston, it is not for lack of walking fast and changing lines on the T three times and walking fast a little more. We did that town until it was DONE.

Among the doings?

• Duck Tour
• Faneuil House
• New England Aquarium
• Sea Rex
• Mike's Pastry
• Boston Harbor
• Harvard
• Boston Public Garden
• Zakim Bridge
• Old State House

And etc.

I have a love/hate relationship with science museums. I take the girls to a lot of them using our ASTC Passport, and I know what I like, and I know what I do NOT like. I like a low-key museum, not one filled with frenetic activity. I like a museum in which the collections are arranged thematically, not helter-skelter. I like a museum with ample lighting. I like a museum with ample seating. I like a museum that is not loud.

The Exploratorium in San Francisco is my baseline for a science museum that I cannot stand. The girls love it, but it's frenetic, constantly crowded, jam-packed with a new exhibit every few steps, and it's LOUD. The Boston Museum of Science, in contrast, has exellent thematic arrangements and is spacious. It is, however, crowded and loud and doesn't have enough seating. We enjoyed the unusual exhibits, such as the one on nanotechnology--

--and there was a great cheering of cheers and clapping of claps during the amazing electricity show--

--and Uncle Chad hit the girls up with some truly excellent swag in the museum gift shop, but all the same, I far more enjoyed the far quieter, far more peaceful time that we spent the next day at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, also an ASTC Passport member.

While Sydney pulled Uncle Chad by the hand on a whirlwind tour of the museum, and Poppa toured the place with his headphones on, the Willowsaurus and I looked at every single dead stuffed thing, read every single label, in that entire place. From skulls--

--to butterflies--

--we saw it all. We lingered a goodly amount in the prehistory gallery, of course, saying howdy to the 42-foot kronosaurus and the plateosaurus and other awesome and unusual specimens--

--but all the other stuffed critters and skeletons and bony bits were quite engrossing, as well:

I tell you, we did that place until it was done. But then, but THEN, after the museum, eating a picnic lunch on the Harvard campus, the Poppa says to me, "Did you see the meteors?"

NO!!!!!

Turns out there was a whole other half to the museum! On the OTHER side of the gift shop! Which we did not see! With meteors! And gems! and realistic glass flowers!

We might still be there yet.

Beaches! Beaches! Beaches!

Back in landlocked Indiana, we heart ourselves some beaches. We happily go to Monroe Beach (volume alert!) and Indiana Beach and pretend, but a real, live beach? With an ocean and everything? And tide pools? And pelicans? I love it so much it makes me sick.



Pebble Beach has tide pools you can clamber around while the surf awesomely (or terrifyingly, depending on whether or not you can swim...ahem) cascades over the rocks a few feet away: Near the tide pools were all these big crabs hidden in the rocks, but if you sat very, very still for a while, say, looking at a starfish, they would creep out and do weird things with their mouths and go click, click, click, just like in The Dark Crystal.



Pebble Beach is made up of the leavings from a rock reef offshore, and it's a very nice sound when the waves move in and out. There are supposedly some very interesting stones here, because you're not allowed to take any of them:

But dance on them you can:

Davenport Beach, where some of Grandpa Bangle's ashes were scattered, is a more traditional sandy beach:

Add to that a visit to a real freakin' ORGANIC STRAWBERRY FARM, and the day was pretty well set, don't you think?

Care to see the third 24 hours of knitting?

I neglected to mention previously that I am not using the Cascade 220 that the instructions in call for--Uncommon Threads (sound alert!) didn't have those exact colors, but one of the shopkeepers whipped out this massive book of yarn samples and picked out for me the two same colors in Nashua Handknits Creative Focus Superwash. Hella expensive, though. Is knitting seriously this expensive, y'all? One of my secondary projects is now officially to figure out how to reclaim wool from ugly knitted sweaters.

Next time...Exploratorium! Boutiquey San Francisco craft store! Gay thrift shop!

Queen of the Fair

The Grand Champion Rabbit can see into your soul:Yes, peeps, it was an evening at the Monroe County Fair--we didn't ride any rides, being as we're going back again tomorrow night with my friend Betsy, but we did eat an elephant ear and nachos and a hot dog and a purple snowcone, nurse (at least a couple of us) in the Lactation Station, visit every single animal, look at all the rides and talk about which ones will be ridden tomorrow (um, all of them?), and check out our contest entries over in the Community Building. It was a red-letter day for our family in the Community Building, let me tell you.

Do you think our little prize winner looks proud of herself? Will has no concept of competition, obviously, but she was beside herself to see her work "in the museum, Momma!" She was a tad bittersweet about visiting her award-winning dinosaur collection, however...
...because she hasn't played with them since last Wednesday and she can't have them back until Sunday. Poor little dino-less lamb.

I was no less stoked about having my own work up "in the museum":
My photo of Will in the Exploratorium won a first place and my other two photos won second places; both my stuffed dinosaurs, the faux fur and the felted wool one, won first places in sewing, as did my pillowcase dress, netting me a champion ribbon in the sewing with recycled materials class, and my T-shirt quilt, soldered glass pendant, and felted wool flower pin all won first place, as well:
Some of them also had honor ribbons, as well, but I don't know what those are for--the Monroe County Extension Homemakers can tend to be a little arcane. I am totally going to join them...but do you think you're allowed to have a job AND be a homemaker? Or is it okay if you're a really unsuccessful homemaker, because I don't actually give a flip about cleaning? But I'm so sold on them because at their meetings...they do CRAFTS! Who could not like that? And I bet there's food. I love anyplace with food.

We're going back to the fair again tomorrow, but there will be less self-absorption--

--I swear. I'll actually check out, you know, what other people made, instead of just mooning over my own stuff, which I already know what it looks like.

P.S. I decided on eyes but no mouths for my simple dolls. Freaky, but awesome.