She Earned Another Made-Up Badge: The Girl Scout "Homesteading" Badge

 

When my Girl Scouts were younger, I'd hear the leaders of older Girl Scouts gripe about the small selection of badges available for Cadettes, Seniors, and Ambassadors. I didn't get it at the time, because goodness, there were more badges around than my Brownie and Junior could ever possibly earn, and a whole slew of retired badges and fun patches, to boot!

But now that I have a Senior and an Ambassador Girl Scout, I see that the problem isn't so much the smaller selection, because there are still more official badges than my kids could do during their time in Girl Scouts, but the variety. Kids are always going to be super excited about some stuff and not excited at all about other stuff, but if you take out the not-so-exciting badges from the official GSUSA line-up... well, those gripey leaders had a point.

So I've been happily, unabashedly letting my entire troop remix or just plain make up badges. GSUSA doesn't have a current older-level basic camping badge, so I bought a set of retired Camping IPs and we made up the requirements to earn it. GSUSA doesn't have a badge for encouraging kids to have an immersive experience with books, so when a subset of my troop was into Percy Jackson, we bought a made-up Percy Jackson badge and made up the requirements to earn it. GSUSA doesn't have a travel badge for Ambassadors, so I'm right now in the process of collecting some retired Traveler IPs and later this year... yep, we'll make up the requirements to earn it!

Will is interested in various homesteading skills at the moment. Some much older retired badges do cover some of those skills, but there was nothing that was affordable, not too precious to put on a busy Girl Scout vest, and covering the skill set that interested Will the most. However, we thought this made-up badge would work quite well as a Homesteading badge, so I bought it--and we made up the requirements to earn it!

And here they are!

1. Research the square-foot gardening concept. Create and grow a square-foot garden for one season. 

For this step, I gave Will several cinderblocks, bags of soil, and newspapers, and showed her how to make a quick-and-dirty raised bed garden. She raised herself a fine crop of strawberries in it!

Other possibilities for this step were creating and growing container gardens, or helping an adult build a cold frame and using it to grow out-of-season greens.

2. Learn how to make your own jam. 

What to do with that fine crop of strawberries? Make jam, of course!

For this step, I taught both kids how to make freezer jam and cooked, canned jam, and the additional trick of laying out washed, topped strawberries on a cookie sheet, freezing them, and then tumbling them into a larger freezer container. Since they're already frozen, they won't stick together in that larger container, and you can just scoop some out whenever you want smoothies or muffins.

It's that life hack that has become an unconscious standard practice!

3. Learn how to use the dehydrator. 

I'd thought that Will might like to learn how to dehydrate her own dried fruit and fruit leather, but instead she ended up helping me deal with a sudden bounty of herbs and greens. I'm going to be really happy this winter that I have so much raw kale in the freezer and all those jars of dehydrated kale and dehydrated oregano in the pantry. 

Other possibilities for this step were learning how to make pickles or sauerkraut, both of which are super easy to do, and my kids LOVE them. 

4. Carve something useful from wood.

Here's Will at our most recent troop camping trip working on her wooden spoon:

She used her pocket knife while at camp, but mostly she used this wood carving kit that is probably the best gift the Easter Bunny's ever brought the kids!

She carved herself a quite serviceable spoon, lightly polished with olive oil and beeswax and absolutely perfect for all of our rustic culinary adventures. 

Other possibilities for this step were learning how to knit or crochet and making a washcloth to prove it!

5. Learn how to make cold-process soap from scratch.

This was definitely our most time-consuming project! I came into it with a big head on my shoulders, having made cold-process soap a few times before, and having taught Syd to make it just a few years ago, but I definitely got knocked down ALL the pegs when our first TWO batches of soap didn't turn out!

What I finally learned after doing the Googling that I should have done in the beginning is that it was my decade-old lye's fault. And now I own a brand-new five-dollar giant bottle of lye, so I guess my goal is to use it up in soapmaking sometime BEFORE the next decade...

Well, we got a good start this summer!

Will made a lovely soap with olive oil, coconut oil, and powdered milk--

--and that lye, of course! Check out its pH, because you KNOW we never pass up a chance to test some shocking pH:

If you don't try to use sus lye, cold-process soap actually IS very simple. It's mostly stirring--

--until you reach trace--

--pouring it into an empty oatmeal canister to finish saponifying--

--removing it from the container when it's hardened and slicing it--

--and then leaving it to cure, every so often admiring how beautiful it is:

Isn't it gorgeous? It's actually inspired me to want to try some different recipes, but I've got to figure out what I'd put it in, because that was our only oatmeal container!

6. Bake bread from scratch.

Have you noticed yet that most of Will's activities are ones that are suspiciously very helpful to ME?!? Mwa-ha-ha! But yeah, I hate to cook, so I am always looking for ways to encourage someone else to cook instead of me. I taught Will to make this no-knead bread, which also happens to be the easiest, most delicious bread in existence, so now that she knows how to make it, I hope she makes it for us lots!

Other possibilities for this step were learning about rain barrels and helping her dad reinstall and maintain ours, or letting me teach her how to sharpen knives. I would appreciate having someone else around who can sharpen knives, but it's also nice to eat homemade bread that I didn't have to bake myself!

7. Level up your animal husbandry skills.

I left this option kind of open, mostly because there are, in my opinion, SO MANY animal husbandry tasks that need to be done around here! The pets are about as feral as the kids!

Will chose to focus on her chickens. She spent a lot of time making a nursery area to keep the pullets away from the big chickens (they defeated her gatekeeping system almost immediately, but so far the big chickens just seem to ignore the little ones), and then giving the whole flock more entertainment options for those days when she doesn't allow them to free-range. Got to be unpredictable so you foil the foxes!

And that's how Will spent part of her summer learning some very useful skills! Now she can start and grow a garden, preserve what she grows, bake herself delicious bread, make herself gourmet soap, and carve the spoon she can use to spread that homemade jam on that delicious bread.

OMG and now I'm realizing that I should totally go and have her do exactly that! If you can celebrate completing a badge by eating bread and jam, then you really HAVE made up the perfect badge!

Homeschool History: Make a Gingerbread Stonehenge on Top of a Cookie Cake

This is what happens when you write lesson plans while you're hungry.

Chapter 2 of the high school kid's astronomy textbook covers the history of astronomy, and we've done some really cool projects to extend that information or contextualize it--with even a couple more planned, because I freaking LOVE the history of astronomy.

The most elaborate of these projects--so far--has been making a gingerbread Stonehenge, something that I have wanted to do approximately all my life. 

Modeling is a great way to help a kid really dig into the geography and physicality of an artifact, as well as encourage them to look more closely at it. I mean, yes, you probably know what Stonehenge looks like more or less, but how many stones are there actually? What is their exact configuration? How many are currently standing? What, exactly, do we think it looked like when first constructed?

Making a model, whether it's out of clay or gingerbread, means that you've got to put the research in to answer most of those questions, and the answers will likely stick in your memory, too.

The gingerbread is just the bonus!

For this project, I first made this M&M cookie cake. I've baked this cookie cake a few times, and although it's not my favorite cookie recipe, it IS a reliable and tasty-enough cookie cake, which is why I keep it in my repertoire. But if anybody knows a reliable cookie cake recipe that also tastes so super amazing, please let me know! We eat a lot of cookie cakes over here!

For the gingerbread, I used the construction gingerbread recipe from Serious Eats. This is what we used for our thousand and one gingerbread cookies--and houses!--last Christmas, and anyway, Serious Eats would never steer me wrong. I made royal icing using this Wilton recipe, which is convenient since that's the brand of meringue powder I own! Even halving the recipe I made WAY too much, but the recipe claims that you can freeze it, so, remembering last Christmas Eve when I forced everyone together to decorate cookies at 6:00 pm and THEN realized that we were out of powdered sugar, I was pretty stoked to freeze the rest. Cross your fingers that it's still delicious at 6:00 pm on Christmas Eve!

Add some green cream cheese frosting to the top of the cookie cake (I thought about floating the idea to the high school kid that we pipe it on using the pastry tip that looks like grass, but even I know when I'm going too far. Sometimes), and it was ready for Stonehenge!

The high school kid decided independently how to size and cut her Stonehenge pieces, and she did a terrific job, considering that when she had all of Stonehenge laid out on the cookie sheet, there was just enough leftover for a couple of gingerbread people (which I also froze, because you CANNOT have too many Christmas cookies to decorate!). 

If we had this project to do over again, I'd encourage her to use royal icing to place the gingerbread on the cookie cake before frosting it--maybe that piping bag would have been the best idea, after all! The toughest part was definitely making the stones stand up on the cookie cake, but fortunately that royal icing made easy work of placing all the cross-pieces:

I LOVE how Stonehenge turned out. It's delicious, historically not entirely inaccurate, and delightfully festive for the time more or less around the autumn equinox.

I'm not going to guarantee that we're not going to make another one for the Winter Solstice.

If you're interested in a more sustained study of Stonehenge, check out my other favorite resources!

• Stonehenge Skyscape. I really like this site because it gives an accurate simulation of the position of the sun, moon, and stars and planets visible from Stonehenge, based on the current local time.
• sand clay Stonehenge. This homemade sand clay, with some black food coloring added to the recipe, makes the model Stonehenge look really realistic!
• coloring page. These Education.com coloring pages are often surprisingly good. If you print them extra small, they're perfect for adding to a homemade giant map.
• British Prehistory. This BBC page is a good way to get some more geographic and historical context for Stonehenge and other henges from the same time period.
• Stonehenge visitor information. The official website for Stonehenge is SO GOOD! It tells you a ton of background information about the site, has excellent photos of artifacts in the attached museum, and links to a bunch of other prehistoric sites in the UK. 
• Stonehenge audio tour. Do you like to close your eyes and use your imagination? This audio tour, meant to be listened to actually at Stonehenge, will make you feel like you're there!
• Stonehenge: The Story of a Sacred Landscape
• If Stones Could Speak: Unlocking the Secrets of Stonehenge
• A Brief History of Timekeeping

Next up: the high school kid and I follow in Galileo's footsteps and observe the nightly positions of Jupiter's moons!

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!

Making Bubble Tea with My Teenager

You guys, I cannot afford bubble tea.

Rather, I can afford it on Syd's birthday, and after her ballet recital. Maybe on Mother's Day, but definitely not as often as Syd would like to drink bubble tea, which is daily.

Seriously, Friends, bubble tea is something like $4.50 here! It's not a steak dinner, sure, but I have a hard time paying that for a beverage. I don't buy steak dinners, either.

You know what's cheap, though? I'll tell you what's cheap:

Tapioca pearls. Matcha powder. Almond milk.

None of those ingredients are even close to $4.50 a serving, and what's better is that I don't have to get out of my pajamas to turn them into bubble tea!

All the credit goes to Syd for this experimental process. Back in the spring she requested tapioca pearls, and I helped her play around with them some, mostly putting them into cold-brew coffee spiked with chocolate milk, which I let her drink, because whatever.

But Syd wanted more the restaurant-quality, $4.50 per serving type of bubble tea, and what we were making wasn't nearly cutting it, so off and on over the past few months, she's kept experimenting. And finally, just this week, she's nailed it, and now we can make ourselves absolutely delicious matcha bubble tea whenever we want.

I get to be in charge of the tapioca pearls. They're super easy to make, which is good because they don't keep AT ALL, so you have to make them fresh whenever you want them. You just follow the instructions on the bag, but instead of scooping them into simple syrup when they're done, I stir a whopping spoonful of honey into them and that makes them perfect and delicious.

Since we have a Vitamix (I remember having an anxiety attack about the cost of that blender once upon a time, but I've had it by now for well over a decade, and the only thing that's ever gone wrong with it is the pitcher cracking back in April, and I'm almost positive that happened when I accidentally blended the plastic cap a little bit, oops), Syd uses this recipe from the Vitamix website, but I know for a fact that she doesn't bother with blooming the matcha. She says she can't taste the difference, and I sure as heck don't care!

When the separate ingredients are ready, Syd divides the tapioca pearls between our cups--

--and then adds the matcha milk:



I feel like vertical videos are supposed to be gauche, but I don't care. You're lucky I didn't do it vertical AND in slo-mo or as a time-lapse!

You guys, this matcha milk tea is DELICIOUS. We've had these exact metal straws since May (and I LOVE them), and they're the perfect diameter for slurping up boba!

See, even Gracie likes it!

Right now, Matt's in the other room giving the kids a lesson on how to use Powerpoint (I'm eavesdropping, which is how I know that he's assigned them to create a presentation about tacos to prove their mastery), and I am just about to fall asleep in my chair, but I'm toughing it out, because as soon as he's done Syd and I have HUGE plans.

We're going to jammy up, make a double batch of matcha bubble tea, and then settle into my bed to watch the 1976 version of Carrie, which Syd has been longing to see since October. It's a cheap date, and one that I am very, very, very excited about.

Teach Your Kids to Make Applesauce (And Then You Never Have to Do it Again Yourself!)

Homemade applesauce is one of the official Things That We Do with Apples in the Fall.

It's tradition! I mean, you know, as far as tradition states that we buy waaaaaay too many apples at the apple orchard in the fall, and then have to find useful things to do with the ones that even we couldn't stuff ourselves with (in this family, we are VERY into apples).

I know that store-bought no-sugar-added applesauce is inexpensive, but our applesauce also has no sugar added, and it's fresh, and local, and we know where all the apples came from, and it's incredibly delicious, and it's good for the kids to learn how to make their own food.

Especially when it's this easy to make!

1. Peel and core the apples. You can prepare as few or as many apples as you want! I think it's a good way to use up any apples that are unsightly enough that the kids won't eat them as-is, mwa-ha-ha.

This bushel of apples did not keep as well as I'd hoped it would (I think it's because I let them all sit at room temperature, when I should have kept most of them stored somewhere cooler), so I had the kids pick through the entire bushel, taking out every apple that had a bad spot or was looking pretty bruised.

The kids peeled and cored each apple, and cut away any remaining bad spots. Then they tossed them directly into that big pot there in the middle of the table:

2. Cook the apples on low in a lidded pot until sufficiently done. The kids put the lid on the pot, then put it on the stove on low heat. This cooks down very gradually for most of the afternoon, and the kids just have to remember to check on it every hour or so:

 
Each time they check on it, they stir it with a wooden spoon and start to mash it down when it's soft enough, and when it reaches a consistency that they both like (chunky is yummy!), they take it off the heat and spoon it directly into large Mason jars.

The kitten helps, because of course he does!

Notice that I had them leave plenty of head space at the top of each Mason jar--we leave one jar in the refrigerator to eat right away, and store the rest of the jars in the freezer.

Well, except for two giant bowls full of applesauce that the kids eat piping hot, of course!

The kids made another, smaller batch of this applesauce a few weeks later, with the very last apples remaining from that bushel, at least the ones that Will didn't juice, and that was it for our orchard apples!

We like this applesauce recipe enough that I've never experimented, but sometime I plan to get enough time on my hands that I go a little stir-crazy and decide to try out something like these spiced or fruit-blended applesauce recipes. I'm also interested in the fact that the author doesn't peel the apples first; instead, the applesauce is blended afterwards, which apparently breaks up the peels enough to hide them? I'd love the nutrition and fiber boost of including the apple peels, but the one time I did try to make applesauce with the peels on, I was definitely left with woody bits of peel all through the applesauce, so I dunno.

P.S. For those of you playing the homeschool game, here are the boxes that we checked off with this activity!

• Both kids used this as a step for the Girl Scout Senior Locavore badge (Syd is only a Cadette, but I let her earn Senior badges. Feel free to call the Badge Police on me!).
• Will used this as an enrichment activity for the Girl Scout Senior Sow What Journey.
• I'm also looping the Sow What Journey into Will's AP Environmental Science class, since food issues are intrinsically tied into land use.

Homemade Halloween Treats: Marshmallow Monster Cupcakes

You've probably noticed by now that my favorite thing to do in October is make Halloween treats! Some of them, like the mummy dogs, mummy meatloaf, and vampire margaritas, we make every year, and some of them, like the trick-or-treat cookies, we make once, wipe the sweat off our brows, and tell ourselves to enjoy the heck out of them because we are NEVER MAKING THESE AGAIN OMG.

Seriously, I still wince when I think about making those trick-or-treat cookies.

This October, I've so far been trying to make treats using just the supplies that we already have. So what can you make from cake mix and white candy melts leftover from your Girl Scout troop's Bridging party, marshmallows leftover from the latest campfire night, candy eyes probably leftover from Halloween 2018, and sprinkles that I surely need to use up this year because they've been on our shelves for... a while?

Marshmallow Monster Cupcakes, that's what!

These marshmallow monster cupcakes are loosely based on the Spooky Boo Brownies from the Betty Crocker website, except that the Spooky Boo Brownies look Pinterest perfect and these marshmallow monsters are horrifying and hilarious.

The marshmallow monster cupcakes are made from plain cupcakes turned upside-down and set on a cooling rack over a baking pan. Syd and I put a marshmallow on top of each, then poured melted candy melts over the tops of them. It was SUPPOSED to make the marshmallows look like ghosts, but I think it made them look more like grotesque squid beasts, so we decided to make them look even more monstrous by means of the liberal application of candy eyes and sprinkles:

Fun fact: these little monsters were also DELICIOUS! You could definitely elevate the quality of flavor by using, you know, NOT the cheapest store-brand ingredients like I did, but we loved biting through the crunchy layer of Kroger-brand candy melts into the soft Kroger-brand marshmallow and sweet Kroger-brand cupcake, and these monsters did not last long.

And then Syd and I used up the rest of the candy melts by skewering marshmallows, dipping them in candy melts, and rolling them through the sprinkles. And then I think I jumped on the trampoline for 20 minutes while Syd ran laps around the house with the dog, we were so buzzed on sugar.

She Made Homemade Gummies

Our Syd has looooong been obsessed with gummies. Like really. They're her favorite thing EVER. She's always thinking about them. Every time I ask for grocery shopping requests, that's the first thing that comes out of her mouth and I have to make her tell me something more reasonable to eat for lunch. She collects the empty wrappers from whatever gummy candy she does manage to manipulate people into buying her. She traded away lots of premium Halloween candy to Will in exchange for all of Will's gummies.

She LOVES gummies.

Obviously, the kid's obsession with store-bought junk food is no end of annoying to me, and so every now and then we've tried different DIY versions. We've done the Glee Gum's Make Your Own Gummies kit twice, and working with carageenan is pretty awesome, but Syd did not find the texture or flavor to be similar enough to her junky, yummy, store-bought gummies. For a while Syd was also pretty into trying to make her own gummies (mostly inside soda bottles, because she REALLY wanted a giant gummy soda bottle) using flavored Jello and extra gelatin, but those always tasted like lightly-flavored plain Jello--barf!

I thought that I had the ultimate solution when I read Confectionery House's gummy recipe, especially because they also sell a starter kit with all of the ingredients included. I splurged on the kit, had Syd pick out a couple of molds and a candy flavoring, and one evening (which explains the crappy lighting in these photos--sorry!), Syd made herself a batch of gummies:

mixing the gelatin 

pouring the gummy solution into the molds

The recipe was super easy to use as written, although I think that the instructions to add the flavoring oil "to taste" really made us go wrong. Syd was squeamish about tasting the liquid gummy solution and stingy with the flavoring oil that she knows is super expensive, and so although the gummies looked perfect--

--and their texture was absolutely spot-on--

--she did not like the way that they tasted:

Without enough flavoring oil, they basically taste like straight glucose, which is not a taste that I recommend:

the face of a man who does not like what he is tasting

Syd solved the problem somewhat by adding powdered citric acid to make the gummies so sour that you can't taste anything else:

We have enough of the supplies left to make another batch, although Syd isn't very enthusiastic, discouraged as she is by this first try. When we do try it again, however, I'll supervise better and make sure that she uses plenty of flavoring oil--I'll even taste test it like you're supposed to!--and I'm hoping that more flavor, combined with the spot-on texture, will be a winner.

I mean, I guess? It's not like this recipe is health food, although I guess we're avoiding the preservatives and most of the food dyes. But I do think it's valuable to show Syd that good homemade versions of whatever she likes CAN be made, even if the store-bought crap is still cheaper and more convenient.

Personally, I'd still love to play around with other DIY gummy recipes, especially ones that use natural sweeteners and healthy ingredients, although I'm not in love with the idea of putting in all that work only for the kid to turn her nose up, as I suspect she would, due to the fact that they're not going to look and taste like sour gummy worms or whatever. 

But winters are long, so maybe we'll give it a try one gloomy, chilly day. If so, here are the DIY gummy recipes that I've been collecting for us:

• gummy polymer chemistry. I like that this recipe includes the science lesson that explains polymer chemistry. That would make it a good science enrichment for our gloomy, chilly day!
• homemade healthy gummies. I like the idea of using these gummies to sneak in ginger, cod liver oil, or whatever other superfood I want the kids to have against their will. You think they'd notice if I made them some raw garlic gummies?
• Jello soda bottle. This is one of the kinds of YouTube videos Syd watched that made her really want to make her own. I do feel like we could use this recipe to make a gummy soda bottle--maybe that will be Syd's motivation to try the recipe again! Or possibly the giant rainbow gummy cake would be more her speed these days...

So that's the order of operations, the next time I can tempt Syd away from the candy aisle and into the kitchen with me:

1. Retry this recipe with more flavoring oil, until we have a good, authentic gummy recipe in our pockets.
2. Try out healthy gummy recipes until we've got one that Syd likes, even though she'll never admit that she likes it as much as she likes sour gummy worms.
3. Use one of those recipes to make some of the ridiculous gummy novelties that make the kids eyes grow big. I will not stop until someone has said "Wow!"

Adventures in Geocaching with the Girl Scout Junior Geocacher Badge--And Beyond!

I've now taken two sets of Girl Scouts through the Junior Geocacher badge, and every time it gets more fun!

This is also one of those Girl Scout badges that goes way beyond the badge, opening kids up to a new life skill and a fun new hobby. The first time we geocached, it was so that Will could earn her Junior Geocacher badge, and though the kids forget about it for months at a time sometimes, we've never really stopped geocaching in the years that have gone by between then, and Syd earning hers, and our newest crop of Juniors earning theirs.

But check this out--the first time we geocached, back when Will was ten and Syd was eight, I didn't even have a smartphone! There we were using a Garmin GPS receiver that the kids' grandfather gave them, and if I wanted to be able to read the clues for each geocache, I'd have had to print them before I left.

It's a LOT simpler these days, with the Geocaching app on my smartphone--when I knew I needed to take the whole troop out geocaching a few weeks ago, I even sprang for a month of the premium membership, and Friends, I think I'm going to keep it!

And geocaching, I should add, is the PERFECT activity to do with kids. They are way better at finding the actual caches than I am, probably because they're closer to the ground or something, I don't know, and it's a great way to have them burn off excess energy, as you not only have to hike to the spot where the cache is hidden, but then wander all around that spot with your eagle eyes on to actually find it.

It's also a great activity to do with tweens and teens. Kids this age--or at least girls, since that's who I've worked with--can start to get more squeamish, more reluctant to get dirty, more hesitant to turn over strange sticks and see what's underneath. That's a detriment to their lifelong physical activity level and to their courage and sense of adventure and stoicism and ability to enjoy nature. I was out on a trail hike with a group of girls recently, teaching them to geocache. Each girl in turn was the leader, in charge of the clues and the GPS receiver, but all the girls were meant to be looking for each cache. However, some of the girls were practically diving into the woods to look, wading through the underbrush and turning over sticks, getting wet and muddy, while other girls were "looking" by standing on the trail and sort of gazing around helplessly. After a few caches had been discovered, a couple of the stand-and-gazers complained that the same girls were always finding the caches. It was true, and so I pointed out to them that they should observe those girls who were always finding the caches. Where were those girls right now? Off in the underbrush, squatting to examine rocks and poking around the bases of trees. Where were the girls who weren't finding any caches? Standing right there and not committing to the search.

At our next geocache stop, I observed that every girl was engaged in the activity--yay! After all, I told them, you don't know that you even had fun if you don't come home dirty, sweaty, and with one to three small injuries!

Mostly, though, I geocache alone with my own kiddos:

We get sweaty and dirty and always come home with at LEAST one to three small injuries, but that's a small price to pay for the experience of finding and then rehiding treasures, like this Mason jar covered in camo duct tape!

Here, then, are a couple of my pro tips for geocaching with kids--Junior Girl Scouts, especially, because those are my specialty, but really just any kids.

1. Check out the activity log for the geocache before you begin. You'll see this in the Geocaching app, and you'll want to click on it to see a timeline of who's searched for that particular cache and found it vs. who's searched for it and hasn't. Warning signs consist of either no recent activity or recent activity in which the cache has been marked "DNF" (Did Not Find). You don't have to abandon this cache before you begin if you see these warning signs, but you should at least point them out to the kids, tell them to manage their expectations, and set a time limit for hunting for the cache before you, too, mark it "DNF."
2. Privilege the caches that involve a nice walk or some nature activity vs. the "quick grab" caches. The latter are fine, especially if you're already in the area, but kids are less amenable to getting in and out of the car over and over if you're making an afternoon of geocaching, and in my mind, the more nature and the more physical activity the better--hence my preference of the nice walk outdoors over the hopping in and out of the car. Kids don't realize what good a walk in the outdoors does to their mood, and the more chances they have to get distracted by trees and wildlife and the beautiful environment, the more chances they have to associate being outside and active with feeling happy and well.
3. Try travel bugs. They're not always successful, but if they do take off, then it's absolutely thrilling to a kid to follow their journeys. I bought this set of travel bugs for my Girl Scout troop, and they're perfect.
4. Make your swag by hand, and always have it with you. Not all geocaches have swag containers, but the ones that do are always the most fun for the kids! Shrinky dinks and painted rocks make awesome swag, in my opinion, but when I've earned the Junior Geocacher badge with a troop, I've encouraged the girls to make Girl Scout SWAPS for it. Hand-stamped dog tags with cute geocaching-themed phrases on them would also be treasured by their finders.
5. If you don't have a smartphone, try letterboxing. It's a LOT more old-school than geocaching, and so a lot of letterboxes have gone dormant, but many are still around, and there are still some good communities for it. Additionally, it's still a Girl Scout Brownie badge, so if there's a Brownie troop near you, then kids are for sure letterboxing!
6. If it's possible to bring a dog, then bring a dog!

Now, here are some geocaching activities that the kids and I are still hoping to try!

1. We've never geocached while we've traveled before. Most of our upcoming road trip will be just me and the girls, and I'm hoping that we'll find plenty of free time to try geocaching. Perhaps on the nights when we get to our motel at a reasonable time, we can have an after-dinner adventure!
2. Travel bugs aren't super spendy, but the cost adds up, especially when most of them get absconded with by some scrub out on their third ever cache. I LOVE the idea of making our own homemade travel bugs with codes that we didn't have to pay for.
3. When we find a swag cache, I let each kid who has something to put in also take something out, which means that the kids are gradually collecting lots of little trinkets and treasures. Honestly, the only thing that makes those objects NOT crap is the fact that they were found in a geocache, so wouldn't it be cute to make the kids each one of these geocaching shadow boxes to store their swag and get it out of my way?

I'm going to swing for the year's premium membership to the geocaching app, which means that we'll be out and about geocaching even more, and I think I'm more excited about it than the kids. If you've got more good tips or know of any super geocaches in Nova Scotia or on Prince Edward Island, let me know. I'd freak out if I found an Anne of Green Gables-themed geocache!!!

Throw a Birthday Party For Your Dog

I'm trying to organize all kinds of files and folders on my computer this week (generally when I get a new computer I just dump everything from the old one to the new and then forget about it, which is I suppose why, now that I'm finally organizing, I found a folder, nested probably five folders deep under various titles like "Backup" and "Julie's Old Computer" and "C Drive," entitled "FLOPPY DISKS." And in that folder? Like, essays that I wrote as a freshman in college! Treasures!), and going through some photos, it occurs to me that I never showed you pictures of the birthday party that Will threw for Luna!

Yes, we are apparently the people who throw a birthday party for their dog. But it goes like this:

Will isn't what you'd call a "people person," but it's important to me that she be comfortable practicing all the social conventions, including playing party host. I mean, of course! She hasn't wanted a birthday party since she was nine, which is totally cool, but I always offer. And so when the one-year anniversary of Luna's adoption date started to roll around, I asked Will if she wanted to throw a birthday party for her dog, expecting the same polite refusal that she gives me every year when her birthday starts to roll around.

I was stoked, and SURPRISED, when she said, "Sure!" and was super into the idea!

But it makes sense. Don't you always want to do more for the ones you love than you want to do even for yourself?

Nevertheless, I pointedly helped Will plan a pretty chill party, just a few people, just a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon. Just about the perfect amount of social time for the world's most introverted introvert. Will took care to invite the people she knew who she knew liked Luna the most, and I did a girl and her dog photo shoot with her so that we could make postcard invitations, which is by far my favorite type of invitation.

It was one of those parties that was so chill that I didn't even take many photos, and the ones that I DID take are terrible. Here, for instance, is the birthday cake halfway through the party, apparently, and also poorly lit:



Sydney made it for the party. The number above the bone is a 4; the shelter told us that Luna was probably around 3 years old when we got her, so we decided that this was her fourth birthday party.

Will made Luna a homemade birthday pupcake, frosted with peanut butter and decorated with a big dog bone:

Luna normally LOVES people, but unfortunately there was a severe thunderstorm that lasted the entire evening of the party, and Luna is absolutely terrified of thunderstorms. She spent nearly her entire party under Will's bed, with the children leading pilgrimages of guests to go pay homage to her. They lured her out for birthday cake, but all she was able to bring herself to do was lick the frosting some before going to hide again.

To be fair to Luna, the tornado sirens actually went off about five minutes after the above photo, and I herded all the child guests, plates of cake and all, into the girls' bathroom in the center of the house, while we adults stood around and listened to the weather radio and wondered if we were too lazy to get everyone outside to the root cellar.

We were too lazy, and the kids seemed just as happy to stand shoulder to shoulder eating cake in a tiny bathroom while a siren blared as they were to do it sitting on the carpet in the playroom. 

For dinner, Matt grilled hot dogs (thankfully before it started storming!), and we had a DIY hot dog bar. We printed this poster of different styles of hot dogs--which still fascinates me, by the way, and my goal is now to go through them all--and offered a lot of random toppings, including this, the BEST chili for a chili dog.

During a two-hour birthday party, I figured there'd be just enough time to eat, do one activity, have cake, and hang out for a little while before everyone went home, so Will and I decided that for the activity, we'd let everyone metal stamp their own dog tags:

It's one of my favorite all-purpose crafts, because kids and adults like it and can do it, and the dog tag blanks are really cheap, so after you've spent the money once for the metal stamps, you're golden.

For those of you who are in Girl Scouts, these also make terrific SWAPS!

On the invitation, Will had told everyone that no presents were necessary, but they could bring a donation for the Humane Society if they wanted. Sweet friends, but they pretty much all brought donations AND a birthday present for Luna, and if that isn't the nicest and cutest thing that you've ever heard of, then I don't know what is. Will's grandparents even heard about the party and sent her a card and gift by mail from across the country!

The village that this kid has just astounds me. She doesn't exactly hide her light under a bushel, but in a lot of ways she's very different from other kids, and so solitary and independent by choice that it amazes me to see that people do know her, and do accept her for who she is, and do like her. I wouldn't call this one of the gifts that Luna, specifically, has given her, because I've seen many people come to know and love my brilliant introvert for who she is without a dog by her side, but I will say that Luna is a gift that makes Will more accessible to know and love for who she is. Not everyone wants to talk pop culture semiotics with Will, or national and world politics, or about books, even, although honestly, who wouldn't want to talk books? Not everyone wants to spend all their time with someone sitting next to them and reading, occasionally looking up to comment and briefly converse about what one is reading, but then continuing to read. 

But when Will is with Luna, she isn't so much just the brilliant introvert; she's also a kid with a dog, and just about everyone knows how to interact with a kid with a dog. You know how to talk to a kid with a dog, and you know what you have in common with her, and if you're the kind of person who'd happily attend a birthday party for a dog, well, then you probably can accept that kid for who she is, too.

A birthday party is such a small thing to give back to a creature who's given so much.

My Kid Made Soap All By Herself

I mean I was there, obviously, talking her through it, but from start to finish, my kid's hands were the only ones to touch this entire batch of cold-process soap.

Imagine. Eleven years old, and she can already make her own soap from scratch! Can you think of a more authentic homeschool credential?

To be fair, there was an actual academic reason to set the child up to make cold-process soap. Syd and I are studying the history of fashion together this year, and it's mentioned (although I'd loooove to see the primary source...) in our textbook that the Celts introduced the Romans in Britain to both soap and pants.

I'll be teaching Syd how to sew leggings after Christmas, but way back in September I taught her how to make soap. It's what a good little Celt knows how to do, you see.

We used an easy beginner's recipe, mostly coconut oil and olive oil in simple ratios, something that you'd have to work hard at to screw up.

When you're just pouring distilled water and measuring oils, you don't have to wear any protective garb:

But when you're ready to get the lye out, on go the goggles, the breathing mask,  AND the rubber gloves!

You can see that she's wearing long sleeves, as well, in this photo--

--although she's not in this one:

Her gloves went almost up to her elbows, so when she got overheated in our early-autumn kitchen and wanted to change, I let her. Probably a mistake, but she didn't receive any chemical burns, so there you go.  I wish I could find kid-sized lab coats for a reasonable price somewhere!

She stirred the lye to dissolve it into the distilled water (you always pour LYE into WATER, never water into lye!)--

--then took its temperature. It is hot, because yay for exothermic reactions!

I didn't photograph the oils for some reason, but imagine them warming on the stovetop, and Syd moving from checking the temperature of the lye water to checking the temperature of the oils, waiting for them to approximately match.

When they do, the fun begins! She poured the oil mixture into the lye water, then blended and blended and blended:

I had previously dug up some of last season's Girl Scout cookie boxes (I keep the empties as much as I can for projects, because it's important to Use Resources Wisely!), reassembled them, and taped them back up, so here Syd is pouring her soap into the Girl Scout cookie boxes,  standing up inside a larger box, to serve as her soap molds:

When the soap has cured enough that it's solid and able to be cut, Syd extracted them from their molds--

--and cut them to size!

I had a half-batch of soap to cut and trim, too:

That wavy knife makes everything cuter! The soap should cure for a few more weeks after it's cut, and even then, the longer it cures, the harder and longer-lasting it will be.

Soapmaking with children is an enrichment activity that can serve all kinds of studies. When the kids were little, they made simple glycerin soaps, and even laundry soaps, as a practical life activity, and an exercise in measurement and a practice in philanthropy:

• kid-made glycerin melt-and-pour soap
• kid-made laundry soap

That latter tute actually reminds me that we haven't made homemade laundry soap since moving into our new house! As you can tell in that post, my process was quite organized, and without that same scaffold in the new house to remind me, it just slipped my mind. 

Mental note to make time this winter break to make laundry soap!

If you're studying history, then hopefully you'll run into the Celts, because they're a fascinating people. We studied the Celts back in April of last year--most notably, by painting ourselves in wool and then having a giant battle with the Romans over the sheep that we'd been stealing--but here are a couple of other resources on my radar for studying the Celts:

• Celtic knot templates. These could be coloring pages, but you could also use them as templates for shrinky dinks or clay.
• BBC Celts. The BBC Schools website is great for any topic that affects Great Britain. They have plenty of information about the Celts, as well as several hands-on activities for enrichment.

And, of course, if you're making soap with kids, you'll surely want some more interesting soapmaking resources!

• Explode Ivory soap. This is a fun rainy day activity, and perhaps an interesting tie-in to a consumer science study.
• Felted wool soap. The kids and I have felted wool around rocks and wooden Easter eggs before, so I know that it's a great kid-friendly activity!
• Paint with bubbles. This is a way to get younger kids involved, but even my 11- and 13-year-old still love sensory activities like these.

Here are the books that Syd and I explored as part of our soapmaking study. Some are more on my level and some more on hers, and I have some bookmarked recipes still to try out in several of these!

• Homestead Blessings. This DVD is kind of amateurish and they don't use safety equipment (gasp!), but it's still helpful to see the process of soapmaking from start to finish. Just wear goggles, though.
• Dirt: The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life. I like to learn more about whatever the kids are studying, so this history of our conception of "dirt" in our cultures was super interesting.
• The Natural Soap Chef. Here's one of the books that Syd looked through to find the recipe that she wanted to use. I still have a couple of recipes bookmarked in here!
• Handmade Soap Book. Here's another good one for recipes.
• You Wouldn't Want to Live Without Soap! The kids both love this series, and I'm often surprised about how frequently they have a title suited to something that we're studying.