Homeschool Science: The Physics of Temperature and a Homemade Working Thermometer

We weren't meant to spend more than maybe a month, tops, on this meteorology unit. What we really want to be studying is astronomy, and we'll have to get to it soon if I want to have us set up to watch the total solar eclipse as our culminating activity, but meteorology has never been something that's interested the kids enough to study before, and so we just need to zip through it just so the kids have some basic background information, and some context for relevant bits of knowledge.

There will be no weird gaps in our homeschool curriculum!

This unit is kind of taking forever, though. Like most of our studies, it's heavy with hands-on activities, but since they're hands-on weather activities, they keep either requiring specific conditions outside that we have to wait on (can't identify clouds if there aren't any!) or take days and days to complete (this week, the kids are working every day on a temperature-gathering experiment, and it's a huge pain in the butt).

Even this particular lesson was kind of a pain in the butt, because we had to put it off when we discovered that the little kid had used up all of our clear straws on a huge, messy (though delicious) milkshake project. We finally got it done this week, though, and happily, it was so awesome that it was worth the wait!

In order to understand how a thermometer works, you have to understand the physics of temperature. This Crash Course Physics video gets too hard for the little kid less than halfway through--



--but does contain plenty of reinforcement of the main takeaway, that heating expands solids, liquids, and gasses, and cooling contracts them. The rate and intensity depend on the substance, but if you know that rate and intensity of a particular substance, you can use its expansion and contraction to then measure the temperature around it.

And boom! You have a thermometer!

We studied how to physically use a thermometer as a measuring tool in a previous lesson (I probably should have told you about that lesson first, but bizarrely, I chose not to. I'll tell you about it later, I guess!), and the difference between the various scales of temperature measurement. So when we finally scored some clear straws (at the movie theater, in partial recompense for the ridiculously high ticket prices for Guardians of the Galaxy 2), the kids were all set to make a working thermometer for themselves, using sugru, a Starbucks Frappuccino bottle (I bought some different types of coffee drinks to test out for an upcoming camping trip, and this one was NOT a winner--it tasted weirdly chemically and...oily, kind of?) and this tutorial:

The kids were able to follow the tutorial independently, although I'd advise you to let the thermometer rest for a couple of hours before you use the eye dropper to add a couple of inches of water to the straw. Our rubbing alcohol was already at room temperature, but the water that the kids got from the sink must have been cold, because just by sitting on the counter the thermometer soon maxed out its temperature reading, with the colored liquid all the way at the top of the straw and dripping down.

But yes, after you fix that the thermometer works just as you'd like it to, and you can move it inside and out, around to different parts of the house, put it in the refrigerator and then take it out later and watch the water level rise while you're eating dinner, etc. 

P.S. If that Physics of Temperature video wasn't too hard for you, you should also check out this second video on the subject, and then this video on thermodynamics. If we were going in a different direction with our study of heat, the kids would have LOVED to spend some time burning and melting stuff to determine melting and boiling points, etc., but I'll save that fun activity for another time.

P.P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

How to Divide Fractions with Cuisenaire Rods

Although by now my kids well know that with almost every math problem there's an algorithm hiding in there somewhere, and that the algorithm will be even quicker and easier than the model and so they want to know it RIGHT NOW, I still try to whip out the mathematical models whenever possible, and especially whenever a kid is having trouble remembering or utilizing the algorithm. If, for instance, a kid can't consistently remember the algorithm for dividing fractions, that's because she doesn't understand dividing fractions. If she understands how it actually looks to divide a fraction, then she'll have a better idea of the answer that she's looking for, and that will likely remind her of the algorithm that she needs to use to get that answer.

You know how when you're trying to spell a word that you don't fully know how to spell, or trying to grammar check some tricky grammar, you often know when that word or sentence "looks" right, or when it doesn't? That's because you've read so much that you understand how words and sentences are formed, even if you don't completely remember the algorithm for your particular word or sentence. It's the same with math. If you understand how to physically divide fractions, and you're presented with, say, the expression 1/2 divided by 1/3, then even if you don't completely remember the tricky algorithm involved (which is to invert the divisor and then multiply), you should at least know that the answer isn't 1/6. You'll probably, in fact, be able to look at the two terms and know that the answer will be greater than 1,  and that might be enough to remind you of the algorithm.

Here, then, is a quick-and-easy way to model fraction division using Cuisenaire rods. It takes longer than simply calculating using the algorithm, but it makes dividing fractions make SENSE, which, if you learned how to do it using only the algorithm, is a pretty big deal and might blow your mind even now.

Take this problem:


Syd's math curriculum asks her to work the following: 2 divided by 5/6. I asked her to interpret it in this way: "How many times will the fraction 5/6 fill into two wholes? Or, how many 5/6s are in two wholes?"

Step 1, then, is to wrap your head around one possible interpretation of a fraction division problem: how many times will the divisor fit into the dividend? You can work some whole number problems to illustrate that interpretation, if you like. How many times will 7 fit into 35? How many times will 10 fit into 120? You can even work those with the Cuisenaire rods first, using the method that I'm about to show you, to prove that the problems are essentially no different.

Step 2 is to set up the problem with Cuisenaire rods. Since we're being asked to divide 5/6, then the whole is clearly 6/6, or a six bar, and there are two of them, so set up two six bars. You need to divide that by 5/6s, so gather up some five bars to represent that, and some single units in case you're figuring out remainders. The five bars make up 5/6 of the six bars, and those singles will represent fractions of the five bar. One single unit is 1/5 of a five bar.


That alone is going to tell you that if you do have a fraction remainder, it's going to be in fifths. The remainder, if you have one, is always going to have a denominator the same as the numerator of the divisor, because that numerator is what you're actually dividing. It's not something you notice when you divide whole numbers, because when you divide whole numbers in our society, you're using the Base Ten system, and so denominators are ALWAYS in tenths (or hundredths, or thousandths, etc.). Not so when you divide fractions!

Step 3 is to notice how many of the five bars, which are 5/6 of the six bar, it takes to equal the two six bars, which are each 6/6. When you line them up together, you can see that to equal two whole 6/6s, it takes two whole five bars and two single units. Those two units represent 2/5 of the five bar.

2 divided by 5/6 = 2 2/5

Note that this model takes a LOT longer to explain than it does to do. I'd recommend just modeling the actions with the kid, not necessarily all of my blather that engulfs the simple and clear actions with a bunch of verbal baggage. The kid can see perfectly well what you're doing, and doesn't have to hold all the explanations in her mind for her mind to *know* it, if that makes sense. It's the way that when you read to a kid, you're not all, "Here's the subject of the sentence. It's a pronoun, but that's just because there's a noun that we just saw in the previous sentence, so we don't want to see that again so soon. And here we have a helping verb, which comes before the action verb. You know that next you'll see the direct object, unless you have an indirect object first. Oh, no, actually we've got a prepositional phrase next! How fun!", but nevertheless the kid internalizes all of those patterns well enough that when she's old enough, she'll know that something is wrong with a sentence that lacks a verb.

If your kid is just beginning to learn dividing fractions, you can do lots of these models, as many as the kid can stand, before teaching the algorithm as the tricky shortcut that gives you the same answer. Syd, however, had already been presented with dividing fractions, and was just struggling to remember the algorithm, so every time she completed a problem using the model, I then had her rework the problem with the algorithm to show her that they give the same answer, and to reinforce the connection between the two. It still takes more time and more practice until the algorithm is second nature, because it is NOT an intuitive one, but it all goes easier when it makes logical sense!

Work Plans for the Week of May 15, 2017: The Ancient Olympics, Medieval Manuscripts and the Temperature This Week

The kids had a lovely, short school week last week--or, at least, I suppose they did, as I was busy all week finishing up a giant etsy order. They completed all of their school work, both the book work and the projects--

Syd wrote her name using the futhorc.

--helped me outside when I asked (both my perennial sunflower and my thornless raspberry, both of which leafed out and grew when I first planted them exactly the way the instructions said to, are now wilting. I have no idea why, other than possibly that plants hate me?), and still had loads of time for their own play and projects. Syd's birthday brought her a bounty of new toys, so she, in particular, has been quite busy grooming her ponies and having tea parties with her dolls and dressing them for outings, etc.

Matt helped me finish packaging the last of my etsy order over the weekend, so that I was free to enjoy a happy Mother's Day with my family. We did all of my favorite things: an indulgent breakfast in bed (both the kids are now competent cooks, so a Mother's Day breakfast in bed is now quite the pleasant experience), nerdy presents (a wine bottle light, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, AND this DIY speaker kit which claims to require a full two hours of soldering--squee!!!); a long hike--








--a movie (Guardians of the Galaxy 2, FINALLY!), and then I lounged and read while the rest of them cleaned house. And THEN we ordered pizza and started to watch the latest Doctor Who as a family, but as soon as the first corpse appeared I covered Syd's eyes, and then when the pack of corpses appeared I sent her out of the room entirely because after last week's episode, she was too scared to take a shower in the bathroom by herself and we had to leave the door open and keep coming in to check on her--this season is DARK!

So it was a good week, a great weekend, and without a giant etsy order over my head this week is shaping up to be excellent, as well, as perhaps I can get many smaller things knocked off of my to-do list this week, and not just the one huge thing.

The kids' daily work for this week is the usual: typing practice on Typing.com, progress on their MENSA reading lists (we do a LOT of independent reading in our homeschool, because Will loves reading more than anything else, and Syd loves listening to audiobooks more than anything else--might as well utilize those passions!), Wordly Wise 7 for Will (she ought to finish that book within the month, and then we'll take a bit of a break before beginning Wordly Wise 8) and a daily word ladder for Syd (she'll finish her book this month, too, but won't get much of a break before I make her get back to finishing up Wordly Wise 4), a Hoffman Academy lesson and then keyboard practice for both, SAT prep through Khan Academy for Will, and Greek language review, using a variety of sources.

Memory work is the same as last week, with the addition of measurement conversions, and Books of the Day this week include some classics that I thought the kids would enjoy (Will is going to be trying out both Little Britches and National Velvet--I'm sure she'll like National Velvet, but she'll probably end up skimming Little Britches), a couple of short non-fiction books on Ancient Greece, and this book on fairy houses for Syd.

And here's the rest of our week!



MONDAY: In Math Mammoth this week, Will is finishing up her chapter on graphing and data, and Syd is finishing her chapter on fractions, decimals, and ratios. While working with decimals, Syd had a little trouble with figuring out when and where to round. You remember how hard she worked learning to round the first two times around, so we're going to review rounding today, all of us, by playing this game. I like that it requires strategy as well as rounding skills, and I think we'll enjoy it.

For both math and grammar, the kids complete that day's lesson and give it to me. I mark their errors and on that day or the next school day, they have to correct those errors and give it to me again. If there are still errors, we go over them and work them together. Both kids HATE this, and I have no idea why. They act like I'm a condescending jerk just because I want to walk through multiplying fractions or identifying helping verbs with them. Will's strategy to attempt to avoid this scenario is to throw a giant fit and get a lecture from me and then have to do it anyway; Syd's strategy is to "forget" to show me her work and simply continue the next day with the next lesson until I realize that it's been days since I've seen her answers and go find them and mark them all at once. That's what she did last week for grammar, so for the first three days of Junior Analytical Grammar this week, I've told her exactly which lesson she needs to check and rework the incorrect answers to. You'd think she'd realize that she'd do better on subsequent lessons if she's just let me check her previous work, but both of my children are as stubborn as their father.

Will only has grammar review on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so on this day she and I work a mind bender. They're VERY fun, and in a couple of weeks, when Syd finishes Junior Analytical Grammar (if we stay on track this time...), I might have them both working mind benders three or so times a week during the break, they're so fun.

Even though both kids learned cursive years ago, neither every really uses it in their daily writing, so I have to enforce daily writing in cursive to keep their skills up. Will hates journaling and story prompts, so occasionally needs a break from them during which I just let her do cursive copywork. Currently, she's copying Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf for five or so minutes a day. Syd usually loves creative writing, and is in fact in the middle of writing a story entitled "Shopping Shipwreck," but is taking a break from that this week to write the thank-you notes for her birthday gifts. Two birds with one stone!

We're still pausing Story of Science so that we can catch up to it in the history of Greece; on this day, we're reading about the gradual settling in of the Dorians and Sea Peoples after they drove the Mycenaeans away from Greece; those pirates and barbarians are now the Greek people, and are starting new traditions in their new cities, one of the most interesting of which is the Olympics. We're actually going to see Olympia, Greece, next month, so you can bet that we're going to pay special attention to this lesson! On this day, the kids will listen/read the chapter in Story of the World volume 1, and then do the quiz orally with me, and the mapwork on the AAA map of Greece that we'll be taking with us. I got pissed at Will last week when after I'd told her twice to use a thin-nibbed pen and write small so that she didn't write over anything else, she used a too-large marker and obscured part of our planned route by scrawling "Mycenae" over their former city as well as the highway and 30 miles of surrounding countryside. Hopefully, even though she behaved like an obstinate jerk about it at the time, she'll take care to write smaller this week. I'm an obstinate jerk, too, so if she doesn't, I have no problem with begging a second map from AAA and then making Will do all her work over again.

We had our lesson on the physics of temperature last week, so this week the children are running an experiment to explore how various natural insulators affect temperature. We have three outdoor-friendly thermometers, which the children will install in various locations outside (one needs to go in the garden soil, and I have suggested that the inside of the chicken coop might be a good location for the second, but the third is dealer's choice) and then record their readings three times a day through Thursday. It would be a bit much to ask of just one of them, as we're a little too loosey-goosey in our schedule for two kids to both remember to check three thermometers three times a day, but I'm crossing my fingers that the kids can work out a system between themselves to get the work done.

Syd FINALLY finished all the work for her Girl Scout Junior Scribe badge this week, and attended a webinar on earning the Bronze award, so now she's all ready to go for it! She's meant to be observing her community to figure out its needs, but she knows that she wants to work in some capacity with animals, so she'll be "actively observing" by emailing local shelters and rescue groups and asking them what they need. Understanding the need to do this is a vital life skill--too many people take it upon themselves to do things for non-profits without that non-profit's go-ahead, and then that non-profit is left with, at best, a tertiary need met when a primary need could have been met instead, or at worse, a bunch of crap donations that they have to spend their own time and resources figuring out how to utilize. You should always ASK before you give.

TUESDAY: We were all set last week to make a working thermometer, so that the kids could observe the physics of temperature in action, when we discovered that Syd had used up the last of our clear straws making milkshakes for everyone as last week's cooking project. We stocked up on clear straws over the weekend (at the movie theater, obviously--we don't BUY straws!), and I hid them in my homeschool closet, so milkshakes or no milkshakes, we'll have straws aplenty for thermometers on this day.

Even though we're studying ancient history as part of our science unit (and for our upcoming Greece vacation!!!), the kids also wanted to study Medieval history this semester, and as a former Medieval scholar, myself, I am happy to comply. After spending three weeks on the Anglo-Saxon period (Celts! Beowulf! Runes!), we're finally going to allow Britain to be Christianized, The kids will read the chapter from Story of the World volume 2, then complete the mapwork from the activity book and do the quiz orally with me.

WEDNESDAY: As part of our study of the Ancient Olympics, the kids are going to organize and run a family Olympics on this day, to be held after Matt gets back from work. They'll need to research the Ancient Olympics and include the following components: 1) an opening ceremony; 2) at least five events, at least one of which must be adapted from the original Olympics, and at least one of which must be something creative and modern; and 3) something, traditional or contemporary, to award the winners. There will be some learning, sure, but mostly I think it will just be a fun family evening.

Will and I have a little bit more work to do on the last activity of her Girl Scout Cadette Budgeting badge (she's helping me create the budget for our Girl Scout troop for the coming year), but if we can finish that up before Wednesday, then she'll be free to start a new badge! She has several in hand that she wants to complete, including three retired badges that will be extra fun for her, and look extra interesting on her vest.

THURSDAY: Medieval monasteries are vastly important in the Middle Ages, and I actually have a couple of field trips that I'm planning this month to explore them further. Yes, medieval monastery-themed field trips in Indiana! There are two Catholic monasteries in Southern Indiana, both of which welcome visitors, and our local university's special collections library has a nice collection of medieval manuscripts. On this day, however, we'll be having a lesson on the illuminated manuscripts created in many Medieval monasteries, and then we'll be trying our hands at illuminating our initials. Syd loves to draw, and Will loves to color, so I think they'll both like this lesson and activity.

I encourage Syd to figure out her baking projects in advance, because I don't make last-minute trips to stores, but for the past couple of weeks, she's been choosing her projects based on what (little) we happen to have in the pantry, and I have to say that they've turned out amazing! Two weeks ago, she baked scones with frozen blueberries, and they were the most delicious scones that I've ever eaten, so delicious that she made me more scones, this time with chocolate chunks, for Mother's Day. Last week she tried to make milkshakes with the ice cream that we'd bought to use up the ice cream cones that we'd bought for Syd's castle cake. Instead of making milkshakes, she learned that our Vitamix quickly liquifies ice cream, but she turned it into a kind of milkshake/smoothie by adding frozen bananas and frozen strawberries. Thanks to the fruit, I felt quite justified in having milkshake/smoothie for lunch!

Who knows, then, what she'll come up with this week?

Do NOT let me forget to make the snack for Pony Club on this day! I'm supposed to be Snack Mom for the unmounted meetings, and usually I make something cute and sometimes even horse-themed, but last month, about a week and a half AFTER the unmounted meeting, it suddenly occurred to me, "CRAP! I didn't bring a snack to Pony Club!" Will says that her leader whipped out some cheese and crackers, since it was at her house, and nobody ever said anything to me. I feel like a monster. This week's snack will be extra delicious and even more horse-themed than usual... if I don't forget again.

FRIDAY: By Friday, we're ready to start winding down, and it's not unusual for one or both kids to still be working on something from earlier in the week, so even though I could have added a couple more assignments to this day, I decided to just let it rest with our daily work and the completion of this Junior Archaeologist badge book. If we do finish early and want some more learning, I've got plenty of craft projects and library documentaries that we can entertain ourselves with!

Hopefully, the kids will have been able to run their temperature experiment Monday-Thursday, so that on this day they'll be able to compile, organize, and present their data, and come up with a meaningful interpretation of the information.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: For the first time in forever, the ONLY weekend activity that we have is Luna's obedience school on Saturday morning.  We could, therefore, take a day trip to one of those Southern Indiana monasteries, or we could stay home and work on the many outdoor projects that I've been nagging the family to help me with.

OR we could stay home and read in the hammock, watch movies in bed, and eat scones. That could be fun, too.

What are YOUR plans for the week?

Homeschool Math: Use the Decanomial Square to Explore Binomial Squares

If you took algebra in middle school, you probably remember that squaring a binomial makes no sense.

Let's say you've got to square the expression (a+b). You square the first term, take twice the product of the two terms, and square the second term:

a squared + 2ab + b squared.

And you're all, "Umm... okay?" And your teacher is all, "Just memorize it. It'll be on the test."

And you do. And you earn an A on the test. And then you forget what you've just memorized, on account of it makes no sense and you have nowhere to put that information, nor anything to use it on other than more algebra.

Well, there's a deep, dark secret at the heart of Algebra 1, and that deep, dark secret is that the binomial square?

It is REAL:


Will hasn't been asked to square binomials yet, and Syd certainly hasn't, either, so this is something that we're exploring well in advance, so that when each child is then asked to square her first binomial in her math curriculum, I can say, "Oh, that! Remember that we do that with the decanomial square. You remember what that looks like." Takes the fear out of math before the kid even knows there's something there to fear.

To start, I asked the kids to build the decanomial square and then to place the labels that let us use algebraic notation to name each piece of the square. Then, I asked each of them to pick two random squares from the decanomial square, and to place them kitty-corner to each other (kitty-corner, you probably know, is the official, scientific term). Then I asked them to figure out how to complete the puzzle to make a square:


I did have to redirect Syd, as her first instinct was to piece together the sides with many small pieces. I told her that the perfect solution would be just two pieces, one for each side.

And you can see as well as I can what both kids discovered, that it's two identical pieces that complete this square:

If they don't quite notice that these two pieces have the same lengths as square a and square b, they do notice that as soon as I ask them to write down the expression that represents what they have:

You can see in the image above (you can also see that I need to recondition our very old dry erase board) that Will has written the expression correctly: c squared + cb + bc + b squared.

She's written "cb" and "bc" because that's how they're labeled on the square, one in row c and column b, and one in row b and column c. But she can see that they're perfectly identical, so that and her knowledge of the commutative property of multiplication (a*b=b*a) allows her to simplify cb+bc into 2cb.

The simplified expression, then is this:


You can also look at the square that you've made and pick another way to write the expression, one that's even simpler: each side is made of length a + length e, so to represent the square as a whole, you can simply write (a+e) squared.

(a+e) squared = a squared + 2ae + e squared

Congratulations! You've just squared your first binomial!

See, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Once Upon a Time There was a Fairy Tale Birthday Party

Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved birthday parties. Every year she had a birthday party with a different theme, and she got so much pleasure out of making her party fit that theme, from invitations to decorations to games to food, that the whole family loved to chip in and help her, just to see how happy she was.

Of course, it didn't bother her mother terribly much when this little girl grew up some and could do MUCH more of the planning and prep work all by herself!

For instance, guess who baked this entire cake all by herself? Who assembled it and decorated it completely independently?



The birthday girl herself!



Matt carved the watermelon into the shape of a crown, and I assembled the fruit wands:



My plan had been to use those watermelon cut-outs there as the wand toppers but let me tell you--cut watermelon is MESSY! It was dripping sticky juice down the entire wand, and while I'm not squeamish about kids getting messy when they're at my house, the line must be drawn somewhere.

To round out the dinner, we also made a tray of cheese sandwiches and peanut butter sandwiches, all cut out with a crown cookie cutter, and then some chips and mini un-iced cupcakes (from the leftover birthday cake batter). The party guests demolished the lot, so I think they liked it!

When the children arrived, I taught them how to make balloon swords--

--and another kid knew how to make balloon dogs, so we all happily played with balloons for a very long time before I was able to heard them into the playroom for our first game: Pin the Kiss on the Frog Prince:



Matt drew the frog, Will painted it, and Syd drew and cut out all of the kisses. Competitive games stress Syd out, so the kids just took turns for fun, and there were no prizes.

One of my favorite things about Syd's group of friends is how engaged they are. They love everything! Every activity you introduce, they're super into it. Every game you play, they give it their all. And what's more, they're so connected, as well--they love watching every other kid take her own turn, shouting advice as she wanders way to the left of the frog, laughing when she puts her kiss on its butt, congratulating her when she takes off the blindfold, over and over and over, for every kid, for every single turn. And some kids took several turns!

After giving that frog prince many, many, MANY kisses, we broke for dinner, and then came back to the playroom for the game that I had been looking forward to the most:



Yes, we played Toilet Paper Princess!



This game was just about the cutest thing that I have ever seen. We had enough guests to make three groups, each with a princess and two ladies in waiting. The ladies in waiting had approximately ten minutes to dress their princess for the ball, and then we had a princess fashion show.

I had planned on doing this once, but you know we ended up doing it three times in a row. Surprise, surprise--all the little girls wanted a turn at Princess!

And here's the token male, sitting in the corner looking bemused:


This game took a full hour, and after all of that shrieking and giggling I am not ashamed to tell you that I sent every single one of those children outside, taking the dog with them, and told them not to come in until they were ready for cake.

Of course they were all in and out and all around, shrieking and giggling and fighting with balloon swords, but it gave me time to swallow some ibuprofin and sit down in the kitchen with Matt for a while. I'd had a nice, long break by the time the pack of them came barreling in for good, reporting that there'd been some drama with the Freeze Tag game, and I declared that if there were some tempers that needed to be sweetened, then it must be time for cake!

I can't get over that perfect, perfect cake that she made for herself, all by herself:



And her sweet face, surrounded by her family and friends, just having been sung to, just about to make a wish:


She couldn't have had a better birthday--


--or a better bunch of kids to share it with.

I'm curious how her birthday parties will change as she gets older. The last time that Will requested a birthday party, she was nine (and there were also balloon swords at that party, and a kid-decorated castle cake, AND the candles on this cake are the same ones that I made for that first castle cake!). I'll happily have giant birthday parties for Syd as long as she wants them, then, with the sure proof that one day, whenever that day may come, she will no longer want her mommy to throw her a birthday party. I did suggest to Syd, though, that perhaps next year she might want to host her birthday party all by herself, without Mommy to organize the games and demonstrate the craft.

As soon as I said that, though, I bit my tongue in regret. Because sure, I'd have an easier week the week of her party, if I didn't have to do the prep work for games and activities, and an easier day the day of, if I wasn't cutting out a million little sandwiches into cute shapes and making fruit wands and watching yet another balloon sword-making tutorial on YouTube, but to not be there to watch every single kid take her turn at kissing the Frog Prince? To not be the emcee for the Toilet Paper Princess runway walk, for every single princess?

Not having to take double the dose of ibuprofin that night would NOT be worth missing out on all of that sweetness.

The Ballerina, on Her Eleventh Birthday

As far as I can tell, this is the first picture that I ever took of Syd dancing ballet:



She is four years old, and her teacher is helping her leap over the alligator pit.

Even then, she had excellent form.

Over the years, she first wore the pink uniform of the youngest dancers (they've since changed that level's color to white, and thank goodness that was after our time, because I cannot even fathom having to keep a three-, four-, and five-year-old's leotard WHITE for an entire school year...)--

Spring 2012

--and then graduated to the blue uniform of the beginning ballet student--

Spring 2015

--and as of this year, wears the much more sophisticated black uniform of the intermediate ballet student:





Except for during this year's spring recital, when everyone wore white:



The spring ballet recital always conveniently takes place near Syd's birthday and Mother's Day, so it makes for a handy occasion to take some decent photos of the lot of us when our hair is brushed and we're not wearing clothes with paint stains or muddy knees:





Watching the relationship between these two is my absolute favorite thing about parenting sisters. Never remembering a time without the other, they're best friends, near constant companions, and supporting their relationship so that they'll always have each other even when they don't have Matt or me, is one of my most important jobs:



It's a job that comes with some pretty great perks, fortunately, because there's nothing that could ever be better than these two kids:





Even when their father can't manage to get a decent shot of the three of us all looking decent, sigh.

Work Plans for the Week of May 8, 2017: King Arthur, Telling Temperature, and the Authentic Greek Experience

Last week was probably the last week of busy prep for kid events that we'll have for a while. Because now that Girl Scout cookie season, the Trashion/Refashion Show, Syd's birthday party, AND her ballet recital are complete, we can relax until my Junior Girl Scouts begin to ramp up their work to earn the Bronze Award.

That should give me a few weeks, at least, to kick back and get some stuff done for ME!!!

After getting too stressed with this prep work plus a heavy school load the week before last, school the last week was more manageable, as I made a point to communicate more with both kids, asking their opinions and getting their buy-in, making sure they knew that they could tell me if they simply wanted to skip an assignment, and enforcing the rule that on a school day, Syd is done with schoolwork after three hours, and Will after four. That's how the kids finally admitted that they simply didn't want to make the next project in their cooking curriculum, so we're taking a break from that this week to make a traditional Greek breakfast instead, and how they exhibited so much enthusiasm during our futhorc lesson about the thought of engraving runes--possibly even making words!!!--that I separated the activity out into its own lesson for this week. I need to buy more rocks, for one thing, and perhaps cut wood slices and ask for my wood burner back from the friend who's borrowing it.

This week, I'm keeping our school load fairly light. I, for one, would like some time to rest from birthday party prep and driving a kid back and forth to hours of ballet rehearsals every night, and I'm sure the kids won't say no to extra free time! We've got three more weeks after this one to get more academics done before the summer activities start.

Books of the Day for this week include Norse myths, this novel for Will, a couple of leftover books on the Civil War, and a couple of books about the Girl Scouts and Juliette Gordon Low. Memory work for the week includes reviews of Sonnet 116, helping verbs, the Greek alphabet, and the Platonic Solids, and more work on the most common prepositions, the Pythagorean Triplets, and the first eleven lines of Beowulf in Anglo-Saxon. Other daily work consists of ten minutes of journaling for Syd and some cursive copywork for Will (who has once again decided that she's done with creative writing, sigh...), typing practice on Typing.com, SAT prep on Khan Academy for Will, Wordly Wise for Will and a word ladder for Syd, and progress on the kids' MENSA reading lists.

And here's the rest of our week!



MONDAY: In Math Mammoth this week, Will is graphing equations, and Syd is doing more with fractions--converting them to decimals, exploring ratios, etc. We had to bring out the Cuisenaire rods last week to help her understand dividing fractions, but now that she's got that figured out the rest should follow more easily.

Syd is almost done with Junior Analytical Grammar, and doesn't always complete an entire lesson a day, because she sometimes gets VERY frustrated with that parsing and diagramming. Will is still between Seasons in Analytical Grammar, and so on this day she's working a mind bender for a little logic reinforcement. I'm going to give her a mind bender from the middle of the book today, and if that one is too easy for her, too, I'll have to buy her the next book up, dang it.

On this day, as well, the kids are expected to take a new music lesson from Hoffman Academy. Syd is fairly into the keyboard, and sometimes even spends her time trying to learn a pop song or composing, but Will is the most reluctant pianist who ever half-heartedly tickled the keys. She and I were goofing around and exploring the buildings on our university campus this weekend, when we came across a piano and I asked her to play her most recent song. Here you go!



Two years of learning keyboard, and she can half-heartedly, and without musicality, pick out "Hot Cross Buns." She claims that she's willing to continue her Hoffman Academy lessons, but you can believe I'm glad that I haven't been shelling out real money for lessons from a real human!

We're learning about the physics of temperature and temperature change this week, and the Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin scales, but as we'll be doing plenty of hands-on experimentation with temperature in the next few weeks, I also want to make absolutely certain that both kids can read a thermometer with complete accuracy, so I'm having them make a model thermometer today, using a clear straw, pipe cleaner, and thermometer printable, so that I can test them.

We're still catching up on the history of Ancient Greece with Story of the World before we pick back up with Story of Science. We'll move through this more quickly starting next week, but for this week,  we're just going to cover the exit of the Mycenaeans and the Dark Ages, reinforcing the lesson with the quiz questions from the Activity Book and the mapwork, done on the actual map of Greece that we'll be taking with us TO Greece! Although we could take a deeper look at Homer here, we studied Homer for the National Mythology Exam, and considering that both kids bombed that section in the exam, those poems are still too complicated for them--might as well save the fun for later, when they can really enjoy the literature.

For fun this morning, when both kids get up (it's already after 9:00, but my post-birthday and post-ballet girl is sleeping in!) we're going to prepare and eat a traditional Greek breakfast of yogurt, fruit, walnuts, and honey. I was supposed to start bread dough last night so that we could also have fresh bread, but oops! Perhaps tomorrow...

The kids are working faster on their Greek language practice than our family can take Greek language lessons from our curriculum (Matt is the weak link!), so for their daily Greek practice they can choose to work ahead in the online tutor, or work on workbook or Greek handwriting pages, or watch some of these Greek alphabet pronunciation videos. I'd also love to find some live-action children's programming in Greek on YouTube, if any of you have any suggestions.

As part of her Girl Scout Junior Scribe badge, last week Syd set up a SurveyMonkey survey to interview her friends. This week, she needs to write a newspaper-style article on the information from this survey in order to complete her badge. She'd rather start her Art in 3D retired badge, because girls would always rather do the first two fun activities of a badge than the last two not-as-fun activities, so I'll see if I have the energy to redirect her, or if I'll just let her go. I'm feeling a little draggy this morning, myself.

TUESDAY: For the culminating activity of Will's Budgeting badge, we played around a bit with the idea of asking her to create a budget for saving for Greece, but as I was, in my own free time, playing around with the necessity of creating a budget for usefully utilizing our Girl Scout troop's cookie profits, I had the epiphany that the Girl Scout who's meant to be becoming proficient in budgeting should of COURSE create her Girl Scout troop's budget! So this week I'm now playing around with how much assistance she'll need--I'm going to see how it goes to ask her to independently obtain the skills in Microsoft Excel to create a simple budget that calculates percentages. This is how adults manage--we figure out what we need to do, figure out how to get the skills we need to do it, then get the skills, then do the thing--so I want her to try, but if she struggles, then I'll mentor her more next week.

Since Will is between Seasons in Analytical Grammar, she's also working through the first season's review work in her Review and Reinforcement book by completing two review lessons a week. They're going smoothly, and introducing her to some good books that she hasn't yet read, so it's a success all around.

For the next couple of weekends in their art classes, Matt is going to be exploring the art of Ancient Greek vases with the kids, and in conjunction with that, the kids and I are going to be making model Greek vases out of air-dry terracotta clay. A lot of projects have the children make mock vases out of papier mache, because it's challenging to make a larger clay coil vase, but we're at least going to try, because both kids love working with clay. We can always resort to making the papier mache models or two-dimensional mock-ups when it comes  time for the kids to place their designs.

Although Will doesn't usually love baking, she's enthusiastic about this project of baking dog treats. I've never baked animal treats before, so I'm curious to see how they turn out--they're made of wholesome, real food ingredients, so I'm also curious to see if *we* like them!

On this evening, Syd has a webinar that should teach her how to go about earning the Bronze award. She has some preparation for that, and the webinar itself will be another new experience for her.

WEDNESDAY: The kids are both really excited about making moveable alphabets for the futhorc. As part of our lesson on the futhorc last week, I also showed them how some people use the runes to pretend to tell fortunes, and we watched a few YouTube videos on the subject with much entertainment, so that may be part of their enthusiasm. I'll talk more about pronunciation of the runes as we work, and show them some more works that are written in runes.

We can't leave the Anglo-Saxon period without discussing King Arthur! The kids are familiar with his legends, and we've even listened to one of my favorite books, The Once and Future King, years ago, so all we really need to do on this day is discuss him further and place his mythology into geohistorical context. I'll also remind the kids of contemporary works that we've explored that deal with Arthurian legend, The Dark is Rising series being the most recent.

THURSDAY: As part of our explorations of the physics of temperature, I'm going to show the children how to make a working model of a thermometer on this day. We'll use it in the coming weeks as the kids begin to take their own temperature readings and come to their own conclusions.

Syd has her baking project on this day, as well. I don't yet know what she'll create, although she's required to figure it out by early in the day on the day before, so that we can buy any needed ingredients. Last week, she made us blueberry scones, the last of which I ate this morning with my coffee. They were absolutely delicious!

FRIDAY/SATURDAY/SUNDAY: On Friday, the kids have their all-day nature class that means that I can get some real work done while they're gone. On Saturday, the only one of us with an extracurricular is this girl--



--whom Will and Matt are taking to her first day of obedience school. Sunday is Mother's Day, and although we usually just celebrate it with breakfast in bed, a couple of presents, and a day in the garden, if you don't hear from me next week it means that my family has instead decided to surprise me with a trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

A girl can dream!

2017 Trashion/Refashion Show: Supergirl of the Night

Syd had big dreams for her Trashion/Refashion Show design this year. She wanted it to have a wrap skirt that she'd unwrap, mid-runway walk, to reveal as wings. A giant hood. Black velvet and silver sparkles.

And she wanted it to be covered in twinkle lights.

We went through several iterations of this dream, she and I, in between selling Girl Scout cookies like our lives depended on it, especially with that skirt. Twinkle lights, AND a transformation from wrap-around to wings, which means that we obviously needed two skirts, because she can't be skirt-less when her wings are revealed.

I did eventually figure out a way to make it happen using prodigious amounts of Velcro, but in the meantime I transformed a pair of black pants and a fancy dress into an underskirt so nice that Syd decided that maybe the wrap-around skirt part of the wings (and most particularly, with the wing fabric being so plain) could be ditched. The outfit, to be sure, did already have enough going on.

Instead, Syd cut out wearable wings--



--and decided on a runway move that would hide them until a big reveal.

Fortunately, the rest of the outfit went more according to plan. Syd thrifted a couple of pairs of black velvet pants and a single silver blouse that I used every inch of for the hooded shirt that I sewed her--I'm especially proud of the epaulets that used to be part of the shirt's bottom hem. The rest of that hem was used to flesh out the hood, and I cut the shirt's body into two three-quarters-length sleeves.

The twinkle lights were also tricky. For the photo shoot to accompany our application, I safety-pinned on a couple of packs of battery-operated twinkle lights, but it didn't give the effect that Syd really wanted:





She wanted white lights, and more of them. I got the idea to perhaps hook up a long string of conventional plug-in lights to a converter and then a battery pack, a set-up that's not very energy efficient but is upcycled and would, I believed, give the effect that Syd wanted. The problem, though, is that it was also heavy, with a converter box and two 6v lantern batteries. A friend helped me set the rig up, but when I tested it I realized that I'd need at least one more battery for a workable system, and the rig was already so heavy that I had to toss the plan altogether.

That night, another friend messaged me to tell me that she actually had a couple of strands of battery-operated white LED twinkle lights. Did I want to borrow them?

Reader, I DID!

For the first time this year, Syd filled out her own application. I don't know why it never occurred to me before to ask her to do that part, since it's her design through-and-through--some things only seem obvious in retrospect.

And I *should* have been having her fill out her application all along, because the kid nailed it! Here's what she wrote when asked to describe her design:

While average super heroes wear capes, REAL super heroes wear wings! Supergirl of the Night is crafted from four different pieces of thrift-store clothing including velvet pants transformed into a skirt and hooded shirt, shirts repurposed into silver sleeves, and wings made from an old blanket. The hood allows cover from rain and helps blend into the shadows. The sparkly silver sleeves reflect all bullet blasts and blend into day as well as night. The wings allow easy gliding and provide a cover of darkness for surprising enemies. The black shiny skirt hides many epic weapons to protect the innocent. Finally, Supergirl of the Night has a multi-colored string of lights to light up the night, from old Christmas lights with portable battery packs.

I tried to convince Syd that she should paint an old pair of black tights that I'd cut the feet out of back when the kids were modeling The Awesomes, but she had her heart set on wearing the tacky fishnet tights that I've owned ever since I went to that Halloween street party with Mac at least twenty years ago, probably 21 or 22 years ago by now. He dressed as John Hinckley Jr. in a bloodstained T-shirt that he'd used iron-on letters to put "I LOVE JODIE" on. I was dressed as... I don't even know what I was supposed to be, but a friend let me borrow this weird net dress that she said she'd got in Mexico, and I put on black lipstick and fishnet tights, so I think I was supposed to be some sort of sexy murder Goth or something? I have a photo that she took just before we left, with me attempting to vamp in a sexy murder Goth sort of way (I had no idea what I was doing, bless my heart) and Mac standing next to me looking bemused.

I miss him so much. I miss him all the time, so much.

So Syd wore the fishnet tights, and I bought her a pair of black Chucks to go with them (I bought myself a gorgeous pair of blue Chucks at the same time, and they're fabulous and I love them). And when I got the email that we were accepted in the show, we were in our hotel room in Atlanta, and Syd was so excited that she hyperventilated and I thought she was going to pass out for a second.

Even after you've completed your garment and you're accepted in to the show, there's still so much to do! It works best for Syd as a model if she creates and then practices an actual runway routine--and yes, I DID get this idea from watching Toddlers and Tiaras on Netflix, but I swear, it works so well! When we lived in town, Syd would draw a runway in chalk on the basketball court of the local park and we'd practice there every day, but now we have enough room that we can have a chalk runway on our own driveway, and a miniature masking tape runway in our family room. At our first rehearsal for the show,  the showrunner demonstrates a proper walk, including the points where she'd like every model to stop and for how long--I videotape that as a reference, and we use that to help Syd craft her routine. When she gets the routine the way she likes it, I videotape that, as well, and she watches it before she practices every day.

It's a lot of work being a runway model!

Syd also had to figure out her hair and makeup. Her hair, she was disappointed to realize, wasn't going to show from underneath her wide hood, so she focused her attention on Googling makeup ideas, and asked the volunteer makeup artist from Tricoci University to give her smoky eyes.

Which she did!



The rest of the makeup--blush and black lipstick with a silver vertical line running down the middle of her bottom lip (which people remarked upon the most out of anything, even though it took me five seconds to do with a small paintbrush and our clown makeup palette)--we did backstage before the show.

Even though the show doesn't start until 7 pm, Syd and I spend the whole day together, first getting her hair and makeup done, then at the theater:



The dress rehearsal takes FOREVER (and this year we rebelled by making Syd the only model who didn't dress for the dress rehearsal--in my mind, it's just one more chance to mess her garment or her makeup up and to wear down the batteries in her twinkle lights), and then we watch the opening act's dress rehearsal, and then we find somewhere to hang out and watch a movie (Beauty and the Beast this year) while doing each other's nails, and then pizza is delivered so Syd chows down on that for a while--


and then, surprisingly, it's already time to get Syd dressed and get the rest of her makeup on.

While we're doing that last bit, the rest of our family is doing this!



The Trashion/Refashion Show is recorded and plays on our local public access TV station a few times a year, but Matt always makes a bootleg video recording of Syd's walk from his spot in the audience. I present to you, then, Supergirl of the Night!


 My heart can hardly handle watching Syd perform. I love watching how enthusiastic the audience is, and how happy they are to cheer her on. Every year she's more confident on the stage, and every year she enjoys it more.

Me, though? My favorite moment is this--



Because we do that photo at intermission, when we are DONE! We just have to walk around and schmooze, show off the battery packs to interested audience members, let Syd answer questions about her process and the materials she's used, have her pose for photos with people, and then we get to sit and watch the runway show dedicated to the Trashion designs.

And even later than that, we get to walk down the streets of our town with one of us looking like this:



And because our town is the way it is, nobody even bats an eye. I don't even think we were the weirdest-looking group out there that night.

Syd has already told me that next year, she wants to apply for the Trashion part of the show. This worries me, because Trashion design is trickier, using more unusual materials that can be harder to source (although really, I suppose that we should have been put in the Trashion half that year that I made Syd's garment out of a sheet). Syd has also, however, told me something else that makes me far, far, far happier.

Next year, she says that she wants to sew her garment herself.

Hallelujah!