We Took the Dog to Kentucky Horse Park

While researching this trip, I came back to the Kentucky Horse Park FAQ several times, each time surprised anew to see that it STILL read that guests are welcome to bring their dogs into the park.

It didn't necessary strike me as a good idea, but whatever. They said we could, so we did!

Despite my misgivings that surely it's a TERRIBLE idea to take a dog (especially our dog, whose awfully great but sometimes acts greatly awful), to a horse-themed amusement park, Luna actually did pretty well. We first took her to the police horse barn, figuring that police horses are likely to be a steady lot, no matter what Luna took it into her head to do.

Because this was Luna's first time seeing a horse in person, at least under our care. So, you know, OF COURSE we had to do it in the world's largest, most expensive horse park. Of course we did.

She seems fine, though! Look at her--just happy to be out on an adventure, completely ignoring the genuine horse in its stall just behind her:

In the below photo, however, she has just embarrassed herself by barking at the draft horses pulling the trolley, so we're taking it in turns to do the trolley tour while someone else sits far away with her and puts peanut butter in her mouth:

After that poor showing, I refused to let Luna do either the Hall of Champions or the Parade of Breeds, instead sitting outside each arena with her, putting peanut butter in her mouth whenever she so much as looked at a horse. I did sneak inside the Parade of Breeds during the meet-and-greet, however, and Luna seemed fine, so maybe it's just draft horses that freak her out.

Luna even did the jump course!

So did this miniature pony:

I like the way that the Kentucky Horse Park organizes its day. There's a succession of shows, each one starting about 15 minutes after the previous one ends, so that you can walk from show to show and don't have to miss anything. Then there's a couple of hours with no shows going on, so you can eat and check out the museum and the barns without feeling like you're missing anything, and then they rerun the shows, but with some different horses, so you can go to them all over again, if you like, or, if you're like us, you can dog swap so that someone else keeps Luna well away from the thoroughbreds while you go look at them:

There are a couple of different horse graveyards on the park grounds. I'm pretty sure that we saw Cigar in the Hall of Champions show during one of our previous visits!

Here's the draft horse barn. I don't know why we took Luna here:

She was fine, though...

...well, until an actual draft horse walked by. Then she tried to run off with her tail between her legs so we noped out and went to eat some peanut butter.

Draft horse debacles aside, Luna had behaved well enough that we decided we could risk taking her to the afternoon Parade of Breeds, but only if Will sat on the ground with her and kept all her treats at the ready:

Luna's favorite foods are apples and peanut butter.

 This is our third visit to the Kentucky Horse Park, and every single time I come here, as soon as I walk in the gate I'm thinking secretly to myself, "Ugh, why did I come here? This is going to be so boring," and then ten seconds later I'm all, "OMG an APPALOOSA!!! COME HERE AND HUG ME YOU ANGEL I LOVE YOU!!!"

Here's my Appaloosa!

And quite a few more pretty horsies!

The Parade of Breeds is actually super interesting, because they'll send out a horse and ride in traditional costume for the breed, and then the announcer will tell you all about the breed while it prances around and looks pretty:

And there's usually something really unusual and unexpected. The whole crowd went "OOH!" when this carriage came rolling in!

Here's our good girl eating enough peanut butter to forget that the horse meet-and-greet is happening RIGHT BEHIND HER:

I really like to take the kids to new places, but there are some other places that I love to take them back to again and again, and here's one of the big reasons why. Here's Syd at seven:

And at thirteen!

Will at nine:

One of my all-time favorite photos of Will was taken at the Kentucky Horse Park when she was just six. Do you think it looks like she had a day full of fun?

I would say that fifteen-year-old Will had a pretty great day, too!

Our Nutter Butter Horse Cupcakes

Everybody has a different capacity for helping out with different kid activities, you know? Like, I am deeply involved in Girl Scouts and our town's inclusive homeschool group, I'm willing to pitch in practically full-time during Syd's performance rehearsals, I do fencing with Will, I'm occasionally on volunteer duty at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, but I'm that mom who just drops off her kid for horseback riding lessons and Pony Club meetings. I have no presence to give there. It's the kid's social time and horse time, anyway--I have no desire to be there to distract her from the very few hours a week that she's willing to look away from her books and be out in the world.

I'm telling you all that so that I can tell you that when the leader of Pony Club sent out an email with a list of parent volunteer positions that she needed help with, I did not choose co-leader or accountant or hostess or any of the other duties that are what she really probably *actually* needs help with, but rather, I snapped up the volunteer position of Snack Mom.

I, who hate to cook, whose husband will sometimes bring home pizza for dinner without even calling me first, because he rightly assumes that of course I didn't cook, who, when I do have to cook, will half the time "cook" by simply heating up leftovers for the children and then hours later make myself Ramen, or a microwaved baked potato, volunteered for Snack Mom.

It was the job on the list that looked like the least work.

The job also appealed to me because I sensed in it the potential to create adorable, horse-themed snacks, and that's exactly what I did for my Snack Mom debut, the Pony Club Christmas party.

Normally, I wouldn't throw sugar at a bunch of overexcited, horse-loving little girls, but the Pony Club party included a pizza dinner, so I volunteered to bring both a healthy fruit salad (my "I'm too lazy to cook for your potluck" specialty!) and the dessert.

I'm really going to be in business once I make or buy a horse-shaped cookie cutter, but until then... well, I don't know how people made adorable things before Pinterest, but I'm sure glad that I have it now!

The kids helped me make these horse cupcakes, with a couple of modifications:

1. Matt's one job was to buy the Nutter Butters before he left for his business trip, and I don't know how he possibly managed to screw up buying a cookie whose main claim to fame is that it's nut-shaped, but he somehow purchased the ONE package of Nutter Butters that weren't nut-shaped, but round.

???

I was already stressed that day, and when I opened the package and saw those round cookies I just blinked at them for several seconds, then thought, "Well, now what?" We only had an hour, tops, to get the dang cupcakes and the fruit salad and the gift that I'd JUST learned Will had to bring ready, so I couldn't drive ten minutes to the store, spend ten minutes buying the perfect cookies, and drive ten minutes back.

As Tim Gunn might say, however, desperation is the mother of making it freaking WORK, so I chopped a bit off of one side of each cookie, stuck them together with frosting, and called it adequate:



It probably would have looked better if I'd used the transparent gel that the original tute calls for, or if I'd covered the seam with a licorice bridle as this tute for no-bake horse cookies does, but I don't own either of those things, and ten minutes to the store. Ten minutes in the store. Ten minutes home. We're making it work.

We did have candy eyes and black icing (I have never been able to find a food coloring that does a good black for me), so at least the other essentials were covered.

The kids were so excited to decorate these cookies like horses that the cookies had to be strictly divvied out. I showed them the photos of the finished cupcakes from the tute, but didn't give them any other instructions, so they happily made the project their own:

And here are the finished cupcakes!

I can't decide if they legitimately look like horses, or if they only look like horses if you know that they're supposed to be horses. I was supposed to add cashew halves for ears, and probably shouldn't have let Syd color the frosting pink, but that's what she wanted, and she's the one who made the frosting from scratch AND frosted all the cupcakes that she baked herself, so there you go.

Anyway, if these showed up at your Pony Club party, even if you couldn't tell that they were horses, at least you could tell that they were homemade!

P.S. A message from Syd: "Hello. Last year, I used the cookie money I earned from selling cookies to spend the night at the zoo with my troop. We spent the night at the dolphin tank, and we got to see the zoo before anyone else got to see it that day. Then we spent the whole day at the zoo! Here is a picture of me being groomed by a flamingo:

This year, I hope to use my cookie money to buy toys for the pets at the animal shelter. You can help me reach this goal by buying Girl Scout cookies on my Digital Cookie by asking Mom for the link. If you want to donate cookies to the soldiers [Mom note: through Operation Cookie Drop], then here's the link. Thank you!"

Visual Literacy: Kid-Made Horse Breed Infographics

One of my goals for this school year was to have the kids become comfortable reading, analyzing, and creating infographics.

I mean, a research essay is all well and good, but if you can't distill your idea into a one-page visual reference, then maybe you don't understand that idea as well as you thought that you did, and you're certainly not doing any favors to others who are trying to understand your idea, too.

To that end, I switched the horse breed research that the children were asked to do each week as homework for their horseback riding class from a pre-printed infographic to one that I required them to create each week from scratch. I use the free version of Piktochart for this, and although the kids have a lot of trouble uploading their images to the correct site so that they'll stay with the infographic when it's downloaded or published, on the whole it's an acceptable infographic creator that's helped them learn the basics of graphic design.

Here's an example of what they create each week. You'll see that the children (originally both in collaboration, but now only Will, since she's the only one taking horseback riding lessons) include both facts and graphics in their infographics. You'll also see that I do not require them to edit misspellings; the research and presentation itself is quite enough to get on with here:

I'm very happy that both kids are comfortable creating basic infographics now. I would like Will to begin to create more complicated, more informative designs, but it's a struggle to get her to modify her particular technique that she's got down pat and can use to whip out a complete infographic in the half an hour before we leave for horseback riding class. We'll soon be skipping a horseback riding session, however, to accommodate various summer travel and camps, so perhaps by the time that more infographics are required, I can work out a study for creating them, ideally outsourcing it to Matt, who's a graphic designer and thus really ought to be handling this entire project for me in the first place, don't you think?

Work Plans for the Week of February 16, 2015: Mongolia and Hoosier Heroines

Half an hour into our Monday, and the schedule's already blown, thanks to a combination of snow (yay!) and car trouble (boo!). We'll actually be having a little staycation here at home today and Tuesday, and I'll just wait and see if I fill up those out-of-the-house spots with schoolwork here, or simply let them be. After all, one must have ample time for snowmen and sledding, mustn't one?

In addition to the written schedule, each day the children also have independent practice in typing, piano keyboard, and Chinese, and they each have a book assignment, ranging from Mongolian folk tales to picture books of Chinese characters to a bizarre 1950s-era children's how-to manual, which actually explains, step by step and remarkably clearly, how to do things like clean the house and write a thank-you letter and make a grilled cheese sandwich, etc. I usually just have the children talk to me about the book that they've read, but this week I'll also be asking them to write Chinese characters and make me a grilled cheese sandwich.

MONDAY: No Hub, no Girl Scout meeting. However... snow! In math, I'll be demonstrating to both children the Girl Scout cookie booth essential skill of counting back change. Next year, I'll be demonstrating this skill to all my Girl Scouts BEFORE our cookie booths! Our troop's two oldest girls (both named Willow, incidentally--it was wonderful, at our last cookie booth, to call out "Willow!" and have TWO big helpful girls at my disposal!), can handle money and make change with an adult standing at her elbow to supervise, but they both simply subtract--fine for the easy math of multiples of four, but one day out in the world the math won't be so simple.

This week's horse breed is the Abaco Barb. I'm really pleased with the infographics that the children have been producing for their horse research; I feel like this is a useful skill well learned!

Syd is starting a block of short story writing; I'd like her to produce a few written and illustrated picture books this spring. Will is engaged this week in another odd little essay prompt for a local contest--she's really improving in her ability to write to a prompt, and after this season of essay contests is over, I look forward to asking her to choose her own subjects for essays, as well.

TUESDAY: No Robotics Club. However... snow!

WEDNESDAY: YES horseback riding! You'll notice that aerial silks hasn't been on my list of weekly classes for a few weeks. At a recent Family Meeting we discussed extracurriculars; although I'm willing to enroll the children in whatever they're interested in and want to work at, I've noticed that the children lose their appreciation for these opportunities when they're signed up for more than one a day, and so I asked them to make some choices, assuring them that they could revisit these choices at the end of every session. Both children chose to drop aerial silks classes for the time being (they still spend ages of time on our at-home rig each day, and I might explore Youtube to see if there are any demonstrations or tutorials that might appeal to them), and Syd also chose to drop horseback riding. Instead, she'll be taking gymnastics on Thursdays. I found these choices so interesting because, of course, both children could have continued in horseback riding, and both children could have taken gymnastics, and in previous weeks I think they'd both have been eager to. I think they took our discussions of their schedules and their commitments to them that we'd been having in preparation for our Family Meeting to heart, however, and I could see them really thoughtfully choosing only what they really wanted to do.

For whatever reason (probably because I kept scheduling it for Fridays, which is the least productive time to put the "serious" schoolwork), we keep not listening to the Story of the World chapters on Mongolia and working on the comprehension questions. We MUST do it this week, however, as World Thinking Day is on Sunday, and my Girl Scout troop, thankfully led in this by another mom, is presenting on Mongolia. The mom has done an incredible job teaching the children about Mongolia and organizing their displays and presentation. My two need to create displays on Mongolia's map and flag this week, and I can't pass up the opportunity presented by this unit to cover those Story of the World chapters. After all, who doesn't like learning about Genghis Khan?!?

Syd's Minecraft Homeschool session is over, so while Will is working on her essay, I'm filling in Syd's extra schoolwork slot with activities that I know that she'll especially like--playing a game with me, and doing a craft project. I'll also need her help with her Trashion/Refashion garment off and on this week, so easy, fun little "assignments" like those won't interfere with any work that I need her to do on that.

THURSDAY: After the madness of the past few weeks, I'm relieved that this looks to be our only hectic day this week. Gym Day will likely include some extra World Thinking Day rehearsal, and the start of gymnastics class overlapping with a Girl Scout cookie booth will definitely require some juggling. Math Mammoth (decimals and geometry), a keyboard lesson with Hoffman Academy, and, for Will, the writing of a rough draft are the only added things to this day.

FRIDAY: I was pleased that the children rated math class as one of the extracurriculars that simply couldn't be dropped (ice skating is still also on Fridays, but only until the end of this session. Our rink is only seasonal, sigh); they love their teacher, and many of their closest friends also take the class, which devotes a full hour to board games at the end--how could that NOT be a hit?

We're still using First Language Lessons for grammar. In addition, these Word Ladders are a fun way for a kid to practice a little logical deduction and stretch her spelling skills while her sister is on the ice.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: The children love their Saturday tradition of Sydney's ballet class, something "fun" with their father (last week it was Wonderlab, and the week before I believe that it may have been a buffet restaurant), and then Chinese class. Our local indie theater is showing all the Oscar-nominated short films as a film festival this weekend, so we'll likely be attending that, and then Sunday is World Thinking Day!

And hopefully by Sunday, I'll also have this Trashion/Refashion show garment in hand...

Work Plans for the Week of January 19, 2015: Essays of Unusual Size

Will was NOT thrilled to write her essay last week, and she will be equally not thrilled to find yet another essay for this week. Write it she shall, however, and I shall attempt to regird my patience for the inevitable upcoming struggles.

Writing, or the battle about writing, took up much of last week, and, as I'd suspected I would, I did need to delete a couple of the smaller, unimportant lessons from our plans--experimenting with watercolors can happen anytime, and Syd, at least, will be pleased to be asked to get messy dyeing Great Northern beans with me during her leisure hours.

This week's plans, however, are all important and unskippable, although I did cull them down as much as possible. I include the children's extracurriculars into their plans, but I don't include the daily book assignment, keyboard practice, memory work, and the chore chart--that's all on top of school, but the reading they'd do for pleasure, regardless, the keyboard practice takes only minutes (although they often remain at the keyboard for much longer--yay!), the memory work takes place in the car, and chores are chores; everyone in the world has to do their chores!

TUESDAY: Yesterday was our free day! Matt was off work, so he took the burden of shlepping the kids around while I slogged through my work at home; the kids skipped our weekly volunteer gig to go to a special volunteer opportunity with the Girl Scouts, and they took their weekly aerial silks lesson, happily freeing up a little more Wednesday for us.

Today, then, as I write Will sits next to me and reads her book assignment, a biography of Charles Darwin (she has just informed me that we MUST go visit the Galapagos Islands one day, although sadly we are no longer permitted to ride the tortoises, and did I know that "galapagos" is the Spanish word for tortoise?), and Syd eats breakfast and reads in the other room. Their math this week is all review drills from our Kumon workbooks--more subtraction with borrowing across zeroes for Syd, and calculating volume and area for Will. I expect that after this extra practice, we'll move back into Math Mammoth next week.

The commencement of horseback riding lessons is also the commencement of the horse breed research that their instructor always gives them for homework. I believe that my emphasis, this session, will be on efficient, effective, and informative displays of their research, so that the children become easily able to reproduce infographics and posters, as the case requires.

Will has by this moment found and looked over the essay requirement for this year's Black History Month essay contest, and already pouted about it. It's another biography from a dedicated pool of names, with some first-person analysis, as well. She's going to loathe it.

She will like better our plans for a swimming date with some friends at the gym this afternoon, and like best of all the first session of this semester's Robotics Club tonight. While she's there, Syd will be able to have some quiet time to work on her design for this year's Trashion/Refashion Show. I REALLY hope that she creates a design that she's able to sew by herself this year!

WEDNESDAY: Song School Spanish is a painless lesson to get through each week, especially as much of the work for it takes place as our daily ten-minute memory work in the car every day. I also enjoy having someone else in charge of horseback riding lessons and Magic Tree House Club (the kids were meant to attend their club meeting earlier this month, but were so busy playing that they didn't want to settle down for it; this is the last meeting for this month, so they'll definitely need to attend this one); I can get some writing done during the former, and have time to cook something a little more involved than frozen pizza or stir-fry during the latter.

THURSDAY: First Language Lessons is scripted, so sometimes I'll save that to hand off to Matt in the evenings. I won't be surprised if I need to on this day, because both kids will need my assistance as they complete pre-writing activities for upcoming essays. We have ice skating plans with children from our homeschooling group, however, so hopefully that will keep them in a good enough mood to stave off the most excessive of the fits.

FRIDAY: I usually try to keep the kids' keyboard lesson early in the week, so that they can use the rest of the week to practice, but it just wouldn't fit into the schedule any earlier than today. Fridays tend to be busy, though, with both math class and Will's ice skating class getting us up and out of the house, so this quick, independent lesson will be a helpful breather for me.

I generally let the kids cook independently these days, but since these cookies are for other people, I'll probably need to be on hand to supervise. I need to remember to set aside time earlier in the week to have the kids choose a recipe so that we can shop for ingredients, unless you think that I can convince them to find a recipe that allows me to use up the random bits of candied cherries and chopped pecans that I have in the pantry?

All this essay writing--or rather, essay dictating, to me--has made it very clear to me that it's high time for the kids to learn keyboarding. I've got several software programs checked out of the public library, so ideally the kids will like one of these well enough to at least learn the functional basics.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: The kids don't have any responsibilities on Saturday, but I'm having friends over that night, so I suppose that I should do some cleaning and cooking. On Sunday, Will has Chess Club, and the cookies need to be delivered to our town's homeless shelter. I imagine there will also be Girl Scout Cookie selling. Perhaps Trashion/Refashion Show material shopping. Minecraft playing. Chicken spoiling.

You know, typical weekend stuff.