Sunday, November 16, 2014

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Antique Drawers and Detox Baths

a round-up of herbal recipes for kids, including a "detox" bath




The whole family has been fighting a nasty cold, probably originating from the kids' plane trip, all week. I actually put Syd in that detox bath that's mentioned in my first link one afternoon, hoping to relieve some of her annoying symptoms, poor kid, and she LOVED it! She spent four hours in that bath, listening to audiobooks of A to Z Mysteries, running more hot water whenever she felt cold. 

The rest of the family prefers showers, so we've been regularly steaming up the bathrooms, trying to relieve congestion. I've made soup with garlic and ginger, we've had some extra home time, and although I haven't fed it to the kids, I've happily indulged in my Pappaw's homemade recipe for cough suppressant: whiskey and honey.

I don't know if whiskey and honey actually suppresses my cough all that well, to be honest, but it does make me feel better about it!

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Homeschool Math: Find the Area of Irregular Polygons

I had expected Will to have some trouble with this task, which I simply handed to her, or to at least have to do some experimenting while she worked out the most efficient way to complete it, but as soon as I gave her the graph paper with the large, irregular polygons that I'd drawn on each page, and told her that she needed to find the total area of each shape, she was off! Within minutes she handed these back to me, and here's what I saw:



What Willow immediately noticed is that to find the area of these irregular polygons, you must first decompose them into rectangles. Find the area of each rectangle by multiplying the length by the width, then add all the areas together to find the total area.

Since Will had been fussing about not seeing the point of the order of operations, I also had her write down the final equation that one would use to solve this problem. She could then see that 1) you couldn't get the correct answer without using the order of operations, and 2) there is no more efficient way to record this equation without relying on the order of operations. Mwa-ha-ha!

She still hates the order of operations, mind you. But now she uses it!

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Howl Night

My little wolves met some real wolves on a full moon night recently:

We trekked with them (and about a hundred other Girl Scouts, many of whom were poorly supervised and EXTREMELY ill-behaved--yikes!) up north to a wolf sanctuary for their Howl Night, an evening program with the wolves and some of their caregivers.

We had a lecture on wolf behavior, a demonstration of handlers' interaction with the wolves (The two wolves who were interested in participating were growling and fighting, because one wolf wanted the other wolf to submit, Julie of the Wolves-style. The wolf would submit, but not really, and then when he would be chastised again he would run right up to the handler's feet and the wolves would start fighting again, so the handler would move carefully away, and then the submissive wolf would run back up to him, etc., just like a couple of fighting kids trying to get Momma to take sides), a hike around some of the animal enclosures (Will now adores foxes, on account of how cute the foxes Hunter and Eva were. Eva had a part of a squirrel carcass that she really wanted to hide, but every time she found a good spot she'd look up, see us all staring at her, be like, "Well, crap!", and run around to find a better spot), some campfire marshmallows--

--and, of course, some howling:
Some of the wolves across the lake howled back at us, although the wolves right there sort of looked at us like, "What are you howling at me for? I'm right here, Dude!"

Wolf species are listed as endangered in certain areas, and some have been "delisted" in certain areas because of their recovery, but that doesn't mean that the animals are safe. I was resistant to the kids' wish for an endangered species study at first, because I think it's sad, and I'm not entirely comfortable with them, at the young ages at which I still see them, studying the sad evidence of human wrongdoing, but the kids seem to love endangered animals even more than they love most other animals, and if they want to study them, then it's my duty to facilitate that study.

And who knows? Perhaps I'm facilitating the study of the two people who will grow up to save these animals from their endangered status.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Tippecanoe, and Us, Too! A Visit to Tippecanoe Battlefield


Have I ever told you what a major Tecumseh fangirl I am?

My entry point was this historical novel written by a local author, and now I'm hooked. I lived right across the Arkansas River from Oklahoma growing up, so the government's attempted genocide of the native peoples of these areas has long interested me, and the kids' pioneer study has been a terrific excuse to deep dive into this particular episode and this particular national hero.

For a period of his life, after the government kicked him out of his homeland in Ohio, Tecumseh actually lived here in Indiana. He and his brother and sister established a sort of multi-national city up north, by the Tippecanoe river, where nations could come together as they worked toward their mutual goal, and Tecumseh's dream, of a united Native American people who would no longer get snowed under by the government, or incited, or turned against each other, or just plain victimized.

Unfortunately, the Prophet, Tecumseh's brother and the religious head of the movement, was... unreliable. Tecumseh, who really was building momentum on their cause, needed to take a recruiting trip to visit the nations who still "owned" land in the eyes of the government, to convince them to join with his cause and not fall prey to the government's same tricks. William Henry Harrison, however, who was a giant asshole, was just slobbering with desire to somehow kick the Native Americans off of the little land they held in Indiana, to run them off or perhaps incite them to break their treaty, and thereby open that land to settlement and eventual statehood. Tecumseh knew this, and so he told the Prophet not to engage Harrison; if Harrison actually engaged him, he should marshal their people and flee, but if Harrison did not actually engage him, he was to keep the peace.

Harrison knew Tecumseh had gone, and so he deliberately led his army to a spot that was right exactly next to Prophetstown. The people of Prophetstown, including kids, the elderly, the women who were taking care of both, and all their food and supplies for the winter, freaked out. Some begged the Prophet to engage Harrison and drive him away, and some begged the Prophet to listen to Tecumseh and keep the peace. Being insane, the Prophet decided to not only engage Harrison's army, but also to tell his people that he'd had a vision and that the army's bullets would not be able to harm them. He wanted the warriors to assassinate Harrison, thinking that, I don't know, if they assassinated Harrison the whole mess would just go away?

They chose to attack early in the morning, thinking that the soldiers would still be sleeping. They weren't. Their belief that bullets wouldn't harm them meant that they were unprepared to actually be shot, and when a watchman did happen to think that he noticed a movement and to shoot at it by chance, the warrior who was hit didn't take the injury stoically, but cried out in surprise, and so the battle began ignominiously.

Harrison wasn't assassinated, because he mounted the wrong horse and the warriors weren't able to pick him out of the crowd. The demoralized Native Americans were defeated after a couple of hours of fighting, and the survivors had to help the people of Prophetstown flee north with no preparation and no warning, leaving behind all of their food and supplies, which the soldiers then destroyed. The soldiers defiled the bodies of the dead, and even dug up old graves to defile those bodies, too.

Tecumseh didn't make it back to Prophetstown for another three months, and what he saw when he did return was a long-abandoned wasteland that used to be his village. His people had mostly starved that winter, and most had left his cause. Most of his new recruits also abandoned the cause when they heard of the tragedy. As a final, desperate maneuver, Tecumseh allied with the British, whom he believed would at least be more generous, and less duplicitous, in their treaty-making than the Americans had been, if he helped them win the War of 1812. But the Americans killed Tecumseh in battle, and finally defeated once and for all, the Native Americans were truly at the government's mercy and had to take whatever pittances and poor allowances that they were reluctantly given.

William Henry Harrison remained a huge asshole. He made a successful run for president on the back of this battle ("Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too," you know), and I am not sad to tell you that he gave a super-long asshole Inaugural Address, caught pneumonia, and died a month later, and John Tyler had to follow on in the rest of his term.

On the weekend after the anniversary of the battle (which took place on November 7, 1811, the kids can now tell you) and before Veterans' Day, we spent the morning at Tippecanoe Battlefield, and it was freaking AWESOME, just as super cool as I'd been hoping.

First of all, the museum was free on account of the festivities, so score!


These are all the Indiana counties named after officers participating in this battle.

There were plenty of veterans there for me to do the "thank you for your service" thing and stand around and gossip with (I am excellent with the elderly, and there is always something to gossip about. This one dude and I speculated wildly about the Lauren Spierer case, and then it turned out that he used to be a police chief so he regaled me with loads of super-scary SVU cases that had occurred during his time and loads of super-scary details of those cases. Probably not the best thing to talk about in a museum gift shop...). There was an excellent lecture about the battle, four-fifths of the audience of which were members of my family (we totally owned that lecture, by the way. The docent holds up a picture and asks, "Who is this man?" "The Prophet!!!" both of my children shout. The docent asks, "Does anyone have any questions?" We do). AND there were re-enactors from World War II--

"Oh, my gosh! Are you Ernie Pyle?!?" I squealed. He replied, "No, but he's a friend of mine."

--the Revolutionary War (I made him tell me about the standardization of rifles. It was wonderful), and the Civil War:


Yes, I did bring up battlefield first aid AGAIN, but this time nobody fainted. I also demanded a detailed explanation of how the rifles worked and got a lead bullet to pass around.

The best part, though, was that of course there was the battlefield to explore: 

This monument stands at the site of Harrison's tent.

Harrison. Blech.

Many of these trees date from a hundred years prior to the battle.


  



These fences mark the border of the battlefield.

You can see Prophetstown State Park from here. THAT'S how close Harrison was.

The children are demonstrating Tecumseh's bundle of twigs metaphor.

The younger kid does NOT like not being able to do something, so she about gave herself an aneurysm trying to break this bundle. Nevertheless, Tecumseh prevailed!

 Since Tecumseh didn't actually participate in the battle, I was actually even more excited, if that is possible, to visit Prophetstown State Park. I wanted to curl up in a fetal position and get emotional on the ground where Tecumseh had once walked, don't you know?

Unfortunately, Prophetstown State Park SUCKED.

The good news is that the gate fee was waived for the weekend. The bad news is that the park was basically vacant. No rangers. No docents. No real signage to point to where the village of Prophetstown had once stood (We saw a sign that read "Native American Village," but it pointed to a highway that you couldn't access by car from inside the park. Apparently you either have to cross that highway on foot or enter the parking lot of the living history farm, which has a separate entrance fee). Also, the VISITOR CENTER was closed. CLOSED!!! The sign said that apparently it's closed on weekends? When, you know, people are mostly going to visit? Especially the weekend nearest the anniversary of the battle?

Ugh.

We basically drove around, confused, and then in desperation I had Matt take our picture by a flagpole near the visitor center, just in case it was an important spot.

It wasn't.

So technically, I guess I probably stood and walked *somewhere* where Tecumseh stood and walked. I mean, he probably hiked that area where the battleground was. He probably stood right there on that spot where that flagpole would someday be, even if it wasn't actually in his village. Just keep telling me that, so I won't cry.

This part of history is so interesting to me because it's seemingly such a small thing, this one small battle, and yet it changed the entire face of the country. If the Prophet had obeyed Tecumseh, would Tecumseh have succeeded in uniting the Native American nations? Would they then have had the influence to make and enforce fair treaties with the American government?

Would Indiana be a state, or would it be a nation?

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Waldorf-Style Form Drawing: The Spiral

We don't use the Waldorf method of schooling, but this catalog of form drawing images is the perfect extension of the Drawing With Children curriculum. Will, particularly, doesn't have the patience to sit and craft the detailed drawings that the book asks for in its later lessons, but form drawing allows both kids to practice the shape families in different aspects, as well as to use them to create a piece with the details and creative embellishments that make it an artwork.

The kids worked on spirals en plein air on a recent mild day this autumn:

I laid out heavy paper, the Prismacolor markers, and the tube watercolor pigments that the kids refuse to actually add water to, on account of they like their colors super-saturated!

Will at first got frustrated that her paint was so saturated that it completely covered the drawn spiral--

--but in her best Drawing with Children style, she made the best of it!
Her caption reads, "Abstract Artform of the Paint Splash Variety." She went on to make more just like this one.
 It really was a lovely afternoon to paint and putter out on the driveway:




These all hang in our kitchen art gallery now, of course.

Monday, November 10, 2014

Work Plans for the Week of November 10, 2014: Minecraft and Endangered Animals


You may have noticed that I've reduced the children's workload a little this week. Will's Minecraft Homeschool class is very time-intensive, and she's very invested in it, which is great, but it necessitates setting aside time each day to accommodate her work on it. Syd doesn't have the class, but instead of giving her extra work each day, she'll have extra free time. She and I like to do projects together, so we'll have more time for that, and Syd is my kid who can always find something to play.

MONDAY: Today started early, as we were expected at the library first thing so that the children could attend a storytelling workshop with their Girl Scout Co-op. They LOVED it, and picked up some great tips about narration, dramatization, and composition. We went straight from the library to our weekly volunteer gig--I stocked, Will ran the meat counter (she also earned her volunteer wings by having to deal with her first jerk. Seriously, what kind of person would act shitty towards a ten-year-old?!?), and Syd cut out fruit- and veggie-themed tags for a fundraiser that the pantry is currently running.

For the kids' Math Mammoth this week, Syd is doing more time-telling and Will is doing more division. Syd will be doing time-telling for a while, and then moving into calendar review, but soon Will is transitioning to geometry, which I'm sure she'll appreciate--she's weary of long division!

I'm trying something a little different with horse breed research this week--the geography form will stay the same, but I'm interested in having the kids start to create their own infographics and other visual aids, so I'll be asking Syd to create an informational "poster" that shows this week's horse (the Exmoor pony) and relates the important facts about it.

TUESDAY: The kids have an opportunity to craft an ornament that will hang on the Christmas tree at the Indiana Statehouse--it's a big deal for them, and a great time to review Indiana state facts.

The kids are interested in doing a unit study on endangered and extinct animals, so I told them that we could start it this week. We'll be conducting this unit by studying and creating infographics, starting with this one. Using it, I'll show the children how to translate information in a variety of ways (pictograph, bar graph, and pie chart), and they can see for themselves how each method changes the way we view the information.

Will has the addition of Robotics Club on this night, so with that and her Minecraft Homeschool work, she'll be busy!

WEDNESDAY: Depending on my energy level (is it just me, or has this autumn been especially busy?) we may or may not make this homeschool program at the library, but Matt will be taking the kids in their Girl Scout uniforms to a volleyball game in the evening. Other than that, the day is free!

THURSDAY: Problem #7 is the last of the 2013 AMC 8 problems that I think I can successfully review with the kids, so we'll continue with Problem #1 from the 2012 test--the kids will be stoked at how easy it is!

The kids are very into accruing volunteer hours--they're working towards 100 hours and the mayor's pin--so I'm letting them spend school time doing this project for the Girl Scouts. They each have to fill a box with stuff to donate!

We'll begin our endangered animal study in earnest on this day. The children may choose an endangered or extinct animal, record the pertinent facts about it (using the form in this teacher's guide), and then create either an infographic about it--we'll be using Piktochart--or an artwork.

It's cold now, so our homeschool group meets at a local community center on Thursday afternoons instead of the park. Nobody prefers the gym--for one thing, it's LOUD!--but as long as the kids get to run and play, they're fine.

FRIDAY: Fridays are busy now, with math class AND ice skating class to attend! It's a lot of chauffeuring for me, but the kids do love both classes, and at least both venues have wi-fi.

This week was so busy that we're only getting spelling and grammar once, and Spanish and music not at all. I'll have to make sure that those classes get worked into the schedule next week!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Saturdays are impossibly busy this autumn--this Saturday brings ballet class and Nutcracker rehearsal and a Girl Scout Math and Science Day for Syd, and an aerial silks rehearsal for Will. Sunday brings only a birthday party, so we will make sure to lounge as much as we can, while we can!

Sunday, November 9, 2014

My Latest: Glass from our Private Dump, and the World is Ending

My latest freelance pieces include:





I have mixed feelings about the 1950s/1960s-era dump site that exists at the very back of our property; on the one hand, it's gross and probably quite dangerous--

--but on the other hand, we find such odd and wonderful treasures!

Mind you, most of those odd and wonderful treasures get admired and then put into our trash bags anyway-- 





--but we do always find interesting unbroken bottles, enjoy our hike--

Yes, this cat always hikes with us. She's VERY attached to the children.
 --and make new discoveries about our property every single time we venture out:

When we're home, Will sorts the bottles for us--

These are keepers!

--so that she can sort out the interesting pieces of broken glass for herself:

She claims that she's going to make sea glass in her rock tumbler one of these days, but I suspect that she just really likes to pile broken glass bottles in a large plastic bin, set the whole thing on a tarp, don a pair of safety glasses, and smash everything up with a hammer.

It's quite relaxing, don't you know.

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Becoming Tinkerbell

In all the bustle of getting ready for Halloween and the kids' vacation with their grandparents, I'd completely forgotten that I'd actually snapped a few photos of Syd's design and construction process for her Tinkerbell outfit.

I didn't take a photo of what, to me, was the cutest moment: Syd watching a Tinkerbell movie, sketchbook and colored pencils around her, and pausing it every time Tinkerbell demonstrated a new pose that showed off a different aspect of her outfit. Syd recorded everything from Tinkerbell's hairdo to her pom-pom shoes in her sketchbook.

Thankfully, I had felt of an acceptable color in my fabric stash. I REALLY don't want to buy new fabric until I've used up the old, but I'm also putty-like in the face of a child's artistic determination, so I'm glad that I didn't even have to think about fighting that internal battle. I took Syd's measurements at her chest and from chest to knee, showed her how to transfer the measurements to graph paper, and here she is working out the bottom width of her garment:

Syd then sewed the side seams and top elastic casing, and later fringed the bottom:

I had assumed that tight elastic at the top of this dress would be enough to hold it in place, but on my straight little noodle, it was not. There goes my idea for a Trashion/Refashion Show garment that she can sew herself! I tightened the elastic several times, but finally ended up just instructing her to keep hitching it up. 

We used part of my wire hanger wings tutorial for Tinkerbell's wings--Syd sketched the template, but the wire hangers were too difficult for her to work with, so I bent the wire--but Syd rejected any sort of fabric overlay as being too far of a deviation from her original concept, so Matt did have to buy clear cellophane gift wrap from the Dollar Store and let Syd hot glue that to the wire frame:



Matt also took Syd to a shoe store so that she could ask for (and receive!) two of those cardboard shoe inserts that new shoes come with (it's been ages since I've bought the child new shoes, so who knows how she managed to remember those!), and her plan had been to paint them green, attach pom poms, and somehow adhere them to the tops of her regular shoes, but fortunately she finally decided that her dress and wings and hairstyle were enough--whew!

The child tells me that she wants to be a dress designer and hair stylist and ballerina when she grows up, but if you ask me, she has an affinity for engineering. We often joke that Will's perfect occupation would be the dictator-for-life of a small island nation, so I think Syd would be all set as her Czar of Public Works.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Sad Poem, Happy Poem

It's well-known in our house that I have a beef with American Life in Poetry. It's a newspaper column that appears in our paper on Sundays, and you'd think that with a national readership, Ted Kooser would choose poems that were both accessible to the average person and of a wide variety, so that everyone could discover that they do, indeed, love poetry.

Instead, our family's running joke is that I discover every week that once again, Kooser has chosen the Most Depressing Poem in the World to share with his readership. The joke goes that I read out the title, which often sounds quite happy--"Oh!" I say. "This one is entitled 'Early October Snow!' Doesn't that sound nice!" Then I begin to read the poem, which always does, indeed, start happily. "The poet is painting a lovely picture of a snowfall!" I exclaim contentedly.

But, alas, hints of a deeper darkness begin to emerge: "Hmmm, that imagery of the winter landscape laid out over the colorful autumn is a little sad..." Sometimes, Matt will actually take the paper from me at this point, if I've mentioned a pet or a child in the poem, and pre-read the rest of it. He will then inevitably shake his head in disapproval and recommend that I do not read on. I love a good poem, though, so generally I insist on having the paper back and read through to the end where, of course, I'm given a bleak piece of evidence of our own mortality. The pretty winter landscape superimposed over the autumn season is a metaphor for growing old, you see.

Everything and everyone that we love is going to die, but it doesn't matter, because we're going to die, too.

I swear, we do this every week, practically. Practically every single week!

It's the poems about children and animals, though, that I respond to with genuine upset. This poem, in particular, has become legend in our family, as I still sometimes bring it up--"The dog, Matt! They forgot the dog!!! Why is there such carelessness and cruelty in love?!? Why is everyone so horrible?!?"--but this poem about, sigh, a dead cat, had me sitting at the kitchen table and crying so much about Ballantine that Syd hugged me and promised to write me a happy poem.

And so she did:

It's not exactly a "poem" poem, but it is very happy, don't you think? I'm especially intrigued by the poet's imagery of perfect happiness residing in a place where people have never been. Evocative, yes?

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Rice Paddy in a Bucket

Rice is a key component of our Artifacts of Ancient China study. We memorized the approximate beginning of its usage in settled agricultural communities (around 5000 BCE), and then the kids planted a miniature rice paddy in a bucket!

We're going to have to do this project again in the spring or summer to get the full effect, or I'm going to have to buy a grow light, because cool autumn days in the window of our front hallway was not the ideal growing condition for rice; nevertheless, we were able to carry the project along far enough to get a good idea of how growing rice works. Here's what we did:

1. Get a bucket. Buckets make excellent tools and playthings for children, and I pick them up wherever I find them in a good condition at a good price. The one that we used is a small-ish one from Lowe's.

2. Fill it halfway with dirt. We used potting soil for container plants in our rice paddy, and that was a mistake, as it was too light, and it wouldn't sink right when we added the water. It worked, so use it in a pinch, but next time I'm going to buy straight soil or composted manure or something similar instead of "potting soil."

3. Buy rice. We went to our local natural foods co-op and bought simple, organic brown rice from the bulk bin. This would be a fun time to expand the project, perhaps even for a science fair, as the kids discovered several varieties of rice in those bulk bins, and got pretty excited about the possibilities! I wasn't sure if this project would work at all, so I dissuaded them from experimenting, unfortunately, but in the spring/summer (or in science fair season!), I'll encourage them to choose as many varieties as they like, and we'll simply prepare a separate and labeled rice paddy for each.

4. Fill the bucket with water. Ideally, you want the water to be just a couple of inches over the level of the soil, but this didn't really work out with our potting soil, since about half of it floated! Weird. Again, the project still worked, but that soil choice at the beginning is very important.

5. Generously sprinkle in the rice. The bulk bin rice will sprout, but not very prolifically, so sow heavily.

6. Set the rice paddy in a warm spot. Keep an eye on it, and keep the water level high.

7. Observe! It was VERY exciting when the rice grains began to sprout, and even more so when they began to grow in earnest:


How fun is that? It's a real rice paddy! Of course, you can see in the photos that the potting soil is floating, and the rice is growing on top of that, so it never really gets under the water as it's supposed to. For this reason, we also had a mold problem on the surface, but since I knew from the beginning that we probably weren't going to be able to grow full rice plants for food in this chilly hallway, I just ignored it.

When the plants were several inches high, the rice paddy got smelly and stagnant, and so we knew it was time for the project to come to an end. Will didn't want to just dump it out, as I'd suggested, but she did carry it outside to die a natural death during our next hard freeze. 

She also did consent to pull a couple of rice sprouts so that we could look at them:
She's wearing safety goggles because she's on a break from smashing glass bottles with a hammer.
 Even though the project didn't work perfectly, it was a great one for cementing the timeline date, getting a visual of what a rice paddy looks like (in miniature), reviewing botany, and inspiring the kids towards further exploration.

Also, Will now knows that a stagnant rice paddy smells like "farts," so there's that, as well.