Beginning the 50 States Project

We're off and away into our 50 States Project, even though I'm still not sure how we'll continue.

We'll call it a work in progress, then, I suppose!

I know that I want the girls to be able to pick out each state on a map of the U.S., and identify each state by its outline alone, so one day Willow and I printed out and assembled a giant United States map and duct taped it to a wall in the kitchen. When we begin a new state, the kiddos find that state on the big map and color it to match our Montessori map set:

When the girls have more states under their belts, we can add in weekly memory drills with flash cards, our Montessori puzzle map, our Montessori pin flag set, and Stack the States.

I want the girls to memorize the capital of each state, so they mark that on the map, as well, and add it to their weekly memory work. Willow LOVES the other assorted trivia of each state--state nickname, postal code, state flower, state bird, etc.--so they've been noting down that information, doing a couple of themed coloring pages, and adding that info to their memory work, as well, but I'm not really invested in all that extra info, so we can easily drop it if the girls tire of it.

Where I'm sticking a little bit is in the fact that I REALLY like to include "living" sources for our studies--books, videos, music, etc.--and enrichment activities, but studying a different state each week makes for a lot of prep work if I want to include those things, and a lot of kid work, considering that we're only actively studying our state one day each week. I got around it the other week by having the girls make these Philly cheesesteak sandwiches with Matt over the weekend (yum!)--

--but I may have to resign myself to spending TWO weeks on each state, one week for the facts and one week for an enrichment activity. But even then, we didn't even get into the Pennsylvania Dutch, or Crayolas or Hershey bars, or the Liberty Bell or Ben Franklin.

A month on each state, spending almost four years to get through the country?

Or maybe I'll just plan according to what interests us? A month on Pennsylvania, a day on Nebraska? More time on states that we're visiting, less time on states that we're not? Skip around from Pennsylvania to Connecticut and back to Pennsylvania to revisit Hershey bars and Crayolas?

Maybe one day for the basics, and then if anything intrigues us we'll stay with that state, and if nothing strikes our fancy we'll move on.

And don't even get me started about how I SO want to take a field trip to each state, because I also love field trips, and also I'm crazy.

Our Giant Cookie Map of Egypt

Chapter two of Story of the World discusses the geography of Ancient Egypt, as well as its gods and goddesses, so I wanted to do another map project, but we did salt dough maps of Egypt in 2011, and paper maps as part of The Story of the World Activity Book for chapter two just a couple of weeks ago.

We got into the habit of turning things into giant cookies way back with the Giant Cookie Solar System of 2010, and we've discovered, since then, that many, many, many things make EXCELLENT giant cookies.

Egypt, for instance? Turns out that it makes an EXCELLENT giant cookie.

We used this cut-out sugar cookie recipe for our dough, although I'll warn you that it needs to be more exact than the recipes that I usually use for kid cooking are. Syd accidentally poured in 1 cup of milk instead of 1/4 cup, and I futzed around to try to save the recipe any other way than quadrupling it, but in the end we actually had to dump it out and re-make it. Normally, I only give the kids recipes that are very forgiving for that exact reason, but this recipe DOES result in a great cut-out cookie, so there you go.

For the template, I printed this 2x2 Egypt map, which, when assembled and cut out, was the perfect size:

We printed and cut out the one-page map first, but it was way too small for a shared project, so I told the girls that if there was enough dough leftover, they could each make their own personal Egypt cookie and decorate it silly.

The dough, rolled out--

--and cut to shape with an x-acto knife--

--looks like this!

It's very important to roll it out and cut it over parchment paper; otherwise, I don't know how on earth you'd get the damn thing on the pan.

Obviously, you're never going to be able to figure out the baking time for this beforehand. I just keep an eye out, and even then there was no way not to burn the area of Egypt east of the Red Sea inlet, but otherwise the cookie was perfect about 20 minutes in. 

Decorating the cookie was a family affair, with the adults researching on computer and ipad, and the kids, with their messy fingers, calling out monuments to be researched, modeling them out of marzipan (other edible play dough would also work), icing, and M&Ms, and placing them on the map:

checking her work on Google Earth as she places the Nile

Setting M&Ms to follow the course of the Nile

Here's the finished masterpiece!

The Nile Delta is done in green icing and green M&Ms; modeled in marzipan are the Sphinx and the larger three pyramids of Giza (the three small ones are made from M&Ms alone):

The bent pyramid, the Valley of Kings, and the Tomb of Ramses II are also modeled in marzipan; modeled in marzipan and red M&Ms is the red pyramid:

And Syd made a valiant attempt to write "UPPER" in M&Ms and icing to label Upper Egypt.

 The great geographers are very proud of their work:

They're quite fond of how it tastes, as well:

I tidied away the excess dough, and on another day, the girls were ready and willing to make their own personal "silly Egypts":

I might personally think that they look a little less appetizing than the carefully constructed extra-large version-- 

--but the girls reported that they tasted just as yummy.

Our Florida Shell Collection

I don't want to be a person who collects things and then never does anything with my collection.

And yet, up until Willow expressed a desire to study mollusks, I admit to having a plastic grocery sack down in the basement carelessly and neglectfully holding all of the shells that I took such pleasure in collecting from Sanibel Island last year. How wasteful, right? I constantly have to fight my hoarder desires, I'm afraid.

I have therefore declared this study of mollusks to be the PERFECT opportunity to deal with these shells, ideally sorting them, organizing them, setting some up for academic reference, crafting with the rest. To begin, I chose a lovely, sunny autumn day, herded the girls out to the back deck, and brought up the grocery sack of shells with the simple goal of transferring them from the bag to a nice storage bin.

How much fun we had!

I encouraged the girls to differentiate between univalves and bivalves--this turned out to be a little silly because 99.9% of our shells were bivalves, but at least I was assured that they understood the concept, after looking at the three univalves in one pile, and the five thousand bivalves like this little cutie in another:

Have I ever actually told you about our Brock Magiscope? I did a ton of research before I bought it, and I have to say that we couldn't love it more. It's the perfect microscope for kids, and the perfect microscope for field work. The kiddos looked at our shells through it--

--and then we all got to experience the singular shock of looking at sand through a microscope for the first time:

I won't spoil the experience for you if you've never done it, but instead I'll just say... wow.

One of the souvenirs that I hadn't known that I was bringing home was LOTS of sand in that grocery sack full of shells. The girls had such a fine time with the sand that you'd never know they had a little sandbox of their own, perfectly ignored for several weeks over by the side of the house. I have such happy memories of Sanibel Island that I dug out a set of plastic test tubes (thank you, Target dollar bin!), filled one with Sanibel sand, and stoppered it up as a keepsake, similar to my Pebble Beach pendant, but destined perhaps for a scrapbook or memory box, not a necklace: 

Look at how much sand had sneaked its way into this one half shell!

Eventually, most of the shells did make their way into the storage bin set aside for them:

I scattered a big handful of broken shells in our front yard garden, and the girls brushed the rest of the sand between the floorboards of the deck and down to the likely haunted space underneath:

Thankfully, we have tons of plans for this nice bin of shells:

• identifying and nicely mounting one superior example of each shell
• making sailor's valentines
• sketching and diagramming each shell
• doing TONS of cheezy kids' shell crafts (think googly eyes!)
• shell fossils
• shell mosaics

Don't worry that there are ONLY six things on that list--my Biology of Mollusks pinboard is constantly being obsessively compiled.

This post was shared with Friday's Nature Table.

Disney Day #2: EPCOT

One of the sadly inevitable facts about my children is that they do not sleep in. Well, Syd seems to have the potential to sleep in, but the sadly inevitable fact about her is that she shares a room with her sister, and her sister always wakes her up. Therefore, no matter how late we may have gotten in after Fantasmic the night before, when the alarm went off in the master bedroom at 7:15 the next morning, Matt and I trudged sleepily into the living room to find both girls wide awake, watching Disney Junior (yay for condo cable!) and eating leftover frozen pizza.

That inability to sleep is what makes me worry that the girls are not well-rested after a late night, but it does make getting to EPCOT by its 9:00 am opening, Hot Pockets in three hands (I still think they're gross!), travel coffee mug in the remaining hand, classic Disney songs playing on the ipod hooked into the car stereo, MUCH easier:

EPCOT is the one park in which, even with absolutely zero lines for even the most popular attractions like Soarin'--

--I left at the end of the night feeling like there was a lot of stuff that we simply didn't get to. It's a big park, for one thing, and some attractions close early (we missed out on "Captain EO" and "Journey into Imagination with Figment", which closed two hours before the rest of EPCOT), but there are also so many OTHER things to do in EPCOT that you could probably meander and browse and sight-see happily for a week without getting bored.

For instance, EPCOT is character heaven!

Mary Poppins

Snow White

Tigger and Pooh

It was in this park that, to my surprise, both girls got REALLY into meeting the characters. After carefully watching other children's encounters, Willow used some of her spending money to buy herself an autograph book, too, but even without it, with just hugs and hand-shaking, character encounters were so engaging for everyone! I knew that the princesses and other "face" characters would carry on small talk with the kids, and that was really cute to watch, but I had no idea how interactive the costumed characters would be, too. Everyone was completely delighted by every character that we met, and we met a lot!

In the past both girls have had trouble answering even simple questions on the fly when conversing with strange adults (Willow is notorious for answering, when asked what grade she's in or what school she attends, "I don't go to school"). After our first Disney day, when I saw how engaging everyone at Disney is, I actually drilled the children on their ages, their home state, their schooling situation, and their grades (When I first did this, Sydney said that she was from Arkansas and was a kindergartner, and Willow had to think about how old she was, sigh). One of the really unexpected results of our Disney trip is that both girls are now very good at answering these questions, and introducing themselves, and thanking someone when complimented, etc. My shining moment was when Snow White asked Willow what school she attends.

"I homeschool," said Will.

"Oh, you must be very smart!" said Snow White.

"I am," Willow replied.

We had lunch reservations at Les Chefs de France, which Matt had wanted to try. I had expected the food to be more French, I suppose, or maybe just to have more French options, but the adults' quiches and Willow's flounder were quite tasty (as were Sydney's pasta and chicken strips, after she refused to order anything French)--

--and Les Chefs de France is also special because it's the restaurant that Remy, the rat from Ratatouille, now cooks at. Why, yes, we DID meet him! 

One of the waiters rolls him around on a serving cart to greet diners, and although Remy was pretty darn cute, this waiter was way funny.

I was too close to get Sydney and Remy in the same frame, but here she is interacting with him. Just look at the expression on her face!

In the World Showcase, both girls got really into Kidcot, a free program that lets kids color a big cardboard bear on a stick and then take it around to the Kidcot tables in all the other countries to get it stamped. In many of the countries, the docents would also write the child's name in the language of their country on the bear, or draw their country's flag on it. I would have vastly preferred if the Kidcot locations had always been in the cultural areas of each country--

Morocco

 --rather than mostly in the indoor mall area of each country, which meant that, in my opinion, we spent WAY too much time in gift shops, but the kids LOVED the program, and Willow even insisted on spending part of our evening going partway back around the World Showcase, to get stamps from the couple of countries that we'd passed before starting Kidcot.

Sydney did a lot of shopping in the World Showcase. I saw a lot of stuff that I'd like to buy, but managed to abstain--I actually came out under budget for souvenirs, if you can believe it, never finding the perfect giant coffee mug for myself, and spending less on the couple of souvenirs that I'd planned to treat the girls to than I thought that I'd spend.

 There aren't as many rides in EPCOT as in the other parks, so we rode them all--Spaceship Earth, Living with the Land (we rode this one with only one other family, who seemed profoundly unamused at our delight with the ride--"Look, cotton bolls! Papaya! Ooh, giant chard!"), Soarin' three times, The Seas with Nemo and Friends twice for Syd and Matt (Willow flatly refused to ride it a second time, and I was happy to accompany her to the aquarium instead), Mission: Space once without spin and once for Matt and the girls with spin (spinny rides make me vomit, so I window-shopped instead), the Gran Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Caballeros, and Maelstrom, which I do believe wins the award for most rides. We all rode it three times in a row, then Matt and Syd rode it another three times while Syd and I did Kidcot--they'd only planned to ride it once more, but they couldn't refuse the CM's invitation to keep jumping back on board through the exit, since there was no wait for the ride. Throughout our entire Disney trip, the only thing that we got sick of was retracing our steps through seemingly miles and miles of empty queue every single time we wanted to re-ride a ride.

 Overall, I think that The Seas was our favorite building--

--and we probably could have spent most of our EPCOT day there. The kiddos LOVED the aquarium--

--and we ALL adored Turtle Talk with Crush. I wish that I'd prepped the girls ahead of time with questions for him, but still, you should have seen their faces when he swam down, looked right at them, and said "Hello, little dudes." 

This day was Sydney's hardest day, mostly because, although she liked all the sight-seeing, she really just wanted to go on rides, and so there were a couple of tantrums to help break up the day, and a couple of benches upon whom I'm sure hers was not the first time-out to be held. 

Nevertheless, even though it was late, both kids perked way back up for IllumiNations, which, you probably don't want to hear, I found enjoyable, but not necessarily impressive enough to warrant the late night and the standing at the edge of the lagoon for half an hour, etc. This was the only park that we really walked around in the dark in, though, which was an additional adventure for my kids who all summer have been going to bed while it's still light out:

They were happy enough to hop into their own beds at the end of it, though, and here's what I saw when I went into their room to kiss them goodnight:

Two kids, sound asleep, ready for Animal Kingdom in the morning!

Driving to Disney World

Finally, our long-awaited, much anticipated, and well-deserved vacation to Florida commenced!

I'm not ashamed to tell you that I spent a full year planning and saving for this trip. Seriously, I was checking prices a year ago this September to get an idea of what things would cost, I paid in full for the tickets to Walt Disney World in February, and the condo that we'd be staying at not long after. I paid for our character breakfast in Cinderella's castle about six months before the trip, made reservations at the couple of other Disney restaurants that we wanted to visit, and paid for a condo on the island off of the Gulf Coast of Florida that I had my heart set on visiting for a few days after Disney.

And then I started saving money for our actual trip.

I knew that I wanted to visit Walt Disney World in the off-season, but I wanted to go when it was still hot, so that we'd enjoy our few days at the beach afterwards. My friend Jenny suggested that the first week in September after Labor Day would be good, because nearly all schoolchildren would be back in school by then, and even parents who would pull their kids out of school for a vacation probably wouldn't do so at the start of the school year. The parks still had a good contingent of international families, perhaps because of the weather, so it wasn't completely dead--I've heard, though, that in times when the parks ARE really dead, like late January and February, a lot of rides get taken down for maintenance, so I'm pretty confident that we went to Walt Disney World at just about the best time of the year for a homeschooling family to go.

The tickets that I bought are through Disney's YES Program--highly educational, and sold at a deep discount  from traditional tickets. To be eligible for the tickets, the girls and I signed up for a class for 5-8-year-olds to be taken one morning inside the Magic Kingdom. The flip side to the YES Program tickets is that they don't work with Disney's Magic Your Way packages--you can buy a room at the Disney resorts, for instance, without purchasing a package, but you can't buy a dining plan, nor are you eligible for the Free Dining promotions that Disney offers during these off-seasons. This threw me for a while, because I'd had it in my head that we'd do the dining program and then use all our table service credits for character meals, an extravagance that I otherwise wouldn't choose.

However, as I was shopping around online, I discovered that giant resort-type condos, with full kitchens to cook in, separate bedrooms for the kids, giant swimming pools, and locations minutes from Walt Disney World were available at this time of year for rates less than the cheapest Walt Disney World resort rooms. Considering that we could cook for ourselves for basically the cost of our regular grocery budget (it turned out to be a little more, since I chose only quick-to-cook and easy to clean up meals, but not much more), and that honestly, most days we all prefer quick and easy homecooked food to sitting down in a restaurant, we ended up being a lot more comfortable in our accommodations outside of Walt Disney World than we'd have been inside, and for less money, and the deep discount on our YES Program tickets more than made up for missing out on the free dining promotion. I also budgeted in paying for parking every day at Walt Disney World (even with this, the outside accommodations were cheaper), and that was us all set!

The other moms in my homeschool Park Day group spent many Thursday afternoons helping me plan my grocery list for the trip. My friend Betsy convinced me to take our cooler again--I took it on our Florida trip last year, but with just me and my girls it was a lot of extra work just to have refrigerated food--since Matt would be on the trip to help, so we shopped a couple of weeks before the trip for granola bars, cereal, disposable dinnerware (ugh, I know--but SO easy!), chips, juice boxes, peanut butter, jelly, and the energy drinks that Matt feels like he can't do a road trip without (I've never tasted one, but they smell like cough medicine), and then a couple of days before the trip for fruit, fresh veggies, sliced cheese, lunchmeat, yogurt cups, sandwich bread, guacamole, and deli cookies for the road trip.

And so we ate sandwiches for two days! The kids didn't give a flip--they're used to eating nothing but sandwiches and fruit while traveling cross-country with me--and Matt, who otherwise can be really picky about mealtimes, was encouraged by my pep talks about how much time and money we were saving over fast food, and comforted by nobody saying a peep about his giant sandwiches stuffed full with a ridiculous amount of lunch meat (normally I tease him, because seriously, who needs to eat a solid inch of turkey in a sandwich?).

We ate sandwiches, listened to audiobooks (Peter and the Starcatchers and Longitude) and podcasts (Freakanomics and This American Life), let the girls watch Magic School Bus on my laptop (I used my homeschool budget to buy the complete set, and I've been thrilled with it on this road trip), and posed with freaky coin-operated rides outside of gas stations:

Seriously, that thing is crazy, right? And you'll never guess who it's supposed to be:

Casper the Friendly Ghost!

We drove as far as we could in one day, stayed in a hotel that we got a coupon for out of one of those coupon books that you get from visitor's centers at the borders of states (I LOVE those places--we always stop at them, and the girls and I collect dozens of brochures to pore over in longing to visit the Cabbage Patch Museum, or the Coca-Cola factory, or some Six Flags or other), swam and ate the hotel's free continental breakfast in the morning and were STILL out of there by 10:00 am, and were safely checked into our condo in Orlando by 2:30 pm.

I'd planned this early afternoon arrival so that we'd have plenty of time to grocery shop, pick up our park tickets, and get to bed nice and early, but since the girls and I had spent so much time studying Africa last spring, one of the things that I'd REALLY wanted to do and so reserved a table and budgeted for was to eat at Boma, the African-themed restaurant at the Animal Kingdom Lodge on the WDW property. There isn't an African-themed restaurant in our hometown (there IS one in Indianapolis, an Ethiopian restaurant, but I'm the only one in the family who's eaten there), so this was kind of the last remaining thing to do on my list of unit study activities for Africa.

The Animal Kingdom Lodge itself is also nice to sightsee in on a day when you can't go to Disney, because it's immense, full of African museum pieces, has docents and interpreters and demonstrations and hands-on tables, and has a backyard that abuts a savanna of herbivores--we spied ostriches, and giraffes, and zebras, and various other hoofed little guys while walking around and stretching our legs, waiting for our reservation. The girls ran and ran and ran around, barely able to take anything in because of their excitement, and that still counted as good behavior in this place just full of families.

We had the earliest dinner reservation in Boma, so although we had to wait a bit for the restaurant to open (in both of the other restaurants that we ate at in WDW, we were seated early when we arrived early), we entered the restaurant through a line of drummers on one side and clapping waitstaff on the other side--it was both super-cool, and over after just a few minutes, so that only the first few families got to experience it.

As I write about our days in WDW, I am going to constantly bemoan the indoor lighting--it's unilaterally dim, and in some popular places seems designed so that only the WDW Photopass photographers, with their extra-bright on-camera flashes, get good photos--and because the rotten lighting often turned me off I was surprised that I came home with fewer photos than I'd anticipated. I bemoan the lighting here, as well, but the food was so amazing that I took photos of it anyway.

Boma is set up as a buffet--good for picky eaters, and also good for tasting every single thing on the menu, nearly none of which I'd ever tasted before. Here we have watermelon rind salad, salad with jicama and apples, fruit, curried pasta salad, couscous with raisins and apples, and, my new most favorite food ever, coconut rice:

Here we have fufu, bobotie, salmon with pistachios, flatbread with two different kinds of hummus, veggies, more coconut rice (NOM!), and in the background to the left, a zebra dome containing rum-soaked cake:

It probably wasn't the perfect day to visit a buffet restaurant--I tasted a lot, and got super-excited over our paper straws, but after two days of sitting in the car I wasn't really hungry, and I don't know if the girls ate ten bites between them (fortunately, although I have MANY flaws, one of my gifts as a parent is that I don't care what/if my kids eat, as long as they're offered healthy foods at conventional mealtimes)--but it was the only day that worked into our schedule, and Matt and I had a ball, anyway. As our WDW days went by, I did become extra grateful that I didn't pay for or try to finagle my way into a Disney Dining Plan, since because of the hot days and, I suppose, nonintuitively because of how tired we always were from all the walking, none of us had much of an appetite, and I can't imagine that we'd have made use of all the food that the dining plan gives you. Picking at sandwiches, eating up all our chips, and enjoying a mid-afternoon ice cream was plenty for us on our park days.

At a Publix on the way back to the condo, we bought frozen pizzas, Hot Pockets (I can't stand them, but Matt and the girls just adore them, ick, and they did turn out to be a much more practical breakfast choice than the cereal and oatmeal that I'd brought, since they could be eaten in the car on the way to the parks), frozen margarita pouches (ahem) and frozen fries and chicken strips. Then we swam, put the kids to bed, soaked in our jetted tub, watched cable, and went to bed early with the alarm set for our day in Hollywood Studios!