Coral Reef Sketching

So the chores list has evolved again. Instead of a schedule so much, I changed it to more of a list, with the same number, roughly, of chores and schoolwork activities on it (although that will soon alter, as well, since Matt's about to deem the children the official Daily Cat Litter Scoopers, as soon as he does a few days of litter scooping lessons).

After debating for quite a while, I also tied it to their allowance, in that completing the list of chores earns each child one dollar in her hand, and one dollar put away to save for Walt Disney World (do not even get me started about this, please). It's not an ideal solution to the allowance situation, but 1) I wanted the girls to perform work in exchange for their money (mean Momma, I know), 2) they don't care enough about money to do extra work to earn it, and 3) I want them to have money regularly, so that they can experience saving and spending it (and so I can have a good reason to tell them to stop griping for stuff in stores), so I needed to tie it to work that they were already expected to do, basically. If they ever get motivated enough to complete their entire responsibilities list every single day I may have to rework the system, because that's more cash than I'm willing to put out, but for now it works well.

Each child can complete her list at her leisure, coming to me when she wants to do a project that requires an adult's help, but if she takes longer than one day to finish all her responsibilities (and she does), then on the second day and thereafter she can no longer have access to her media entertainment--no computer, no TV choice, no music or audiobooks. She can still play pretend ponies for four hours at a time, for example, but no Usborne Quicklinks.

The girls can still choose to add their own things that they want to do to the list, of course, but we're on a tight budget, so they can't add something like getting ice cream or going out to eat, for example, but the Wonderlab, the public library, and playing Quirkle are all fair game.

The last change that I've made is that although I still assign projects for Syd to do with me or ask her for suggestions or give her choices, Will is now responsible enough to choose her own schoolwork subjects each day, and think of a project that she can do on that subject, and complete it with or without my help, as necessary. So when she added "coral reef sketching" to her list, she helped me clear the living room table to use as a workspace, got out the crayons while I got out the drawing paper (mental note: need more drawing paper), did a Google Image search with my supervision, chose the coral reef images that she wanted to copy, and got down to work:

Syd, of course, is not to be left out of any activity. She sat down and chose to sketch her toy cat:

A masterful representation, don't you agree?

Will created at least a dozen different sketches of different coral reef scenes that she found via Google Images. I was surprised, however, to see how impressionistic each one is. This, for example, is a reef scene that includes a starfish:

This one included a large brain coral and a school of colorful fish:

Each image that she drew from was teeming with color and life, and so it's fascinating to me to see how she distills each one:

Although I recorded this activity under Science and Art in Will's records (the requirement for record-keeping isn't clearly laid out in Indiana law, but I do know of one couple who went through a lot of very upsetting hassle because of their lack of records, so I keep them), it's one of those projects that is so clearly her own that I really don't know what she got out of it, exactly. It would be easy to look at these drawings and think that she'd just put in the bare minimum of effort, but I saw her carefully select each image to copy, study it thoroughly, concentrate on every line in her drawing, and most importantly, I saw how proud she was of every finished sketch--clearly they are masterpieces in her eyes, and therefore they're clearly masterpieces in my eyes, as well.

It's one of those projects that helps remind me how important it is for my children to own their own educations. If Will hadn't completely owned this entire coral reef sketching project, from start to finish, how would it have ever come to be?

Battle of the Home-Sewn Shorts: Oliver + S Bedtime Story Pajama Shorts

Near-ish the end of summer: the perfect time for a kid to have a growth spurt, wouldn't you say?

Will has spent years at almost the same waist size, shooting up primarily in height. This means that each summer she could wear the shorts of the summer before, if they hadn't gotten TOO short, and the pants of the winter before, only we called them capris.

In the course of just the last month, though, the kid has not only shot up again in height, but also gained an entire inch in her waist measurement. All those old shorts and pants? They're gone, baby.

These days, I generally only buy kids' clothes if they're 1) dirt-cheap (think garage sale), 2) vintage (think Syd's Partridge Family dress--squee!), 3) ridiculously fancy and therefore impractical to make at home (think party dresses for Syd), or 4) cheap but with an awesome print (think all of Will's dinosaur/Star Wars/comic book T-shirts), and even then only if they're thrifted.

Everything else, from underwear to pants to pajamas, I've been trying to make myself. So in the next few weeks, I'll be testing out a few of the kids' shorts patterns that I've gathered here and there, to find the ultimate pattern for home-sewn picky child shorts.

This Oliver + S Bedtime Story pajama pants pattern wasn't intended to be sewn as shorts, but since the pants are pretty much straight-legged, I just measured up 12" from the bottom hem and then folded the pattern there to make the longer shorts length that I prefer--shorts that cover the knee are obviously going to suffer a lot more wear at the knee, but I prefer my fair-skinned babies more covered than not, generally. Not that you'd know this if you lived near me, since I struggle on a daily basis to keep a single stitch of clothing on them as they play out in the yard, but sun protection is always a good thing in my book.

The Oliver + S pants pattern was really simple to work up, which will be great if I want to make multiples, but my favorite thing about Oliver + S patterns is how no matter how simple the pattern, there are always some special details, such as a separate waistband and binding for the bottom hem, allowing me to do them in a coordinating print:

Again, I just really like the length of these shorts, and the fit is roomy without being TOO roomy, you know?

Of course Sydney, wearing a leotard and cut-offs of last winter's pants, also feels the need to model:

How did I come to have children this unutterably ridiculous?

Will prefers to wear her shorts with a plain white T-shirt (oh, the agonies that I suffer to keep those damn things white!):

The shorts have clearly passed her test, because she can wear them unimpeded as she climbs every single thing in creation, which is her second-favorite pastime:

The shorts also work well with her most favorite pastime, of course:

Also in contention, to be duked out in future blog posts, are a vintage Simplicity pajama pants pattern, the pajama pants pattern from Heather Ross' Weekend Sewing, and a second Oliver + S pants pattern, all cut down into shorts.

Homeschooling from the Dollar Bin at Target

I shop at Target seasonally--after Halloween when the costumes are cheap, after Christmas when the twinkle lights are cheap, after Valentine's Day when the heart-themed crap is cheap, and during the back-to-school sales, during which this year I bought 60 Elmer's glue sticks for $10, each girl's very own choice of notebook for a quarter each, and a handful of boxes of crayons, also for a quarter each.

That, plus my big purchases in other places of all four volumes of the Story of the World activity books, both of the Minimus Latin books, and the balance scale, and my school shopping is done and done!

However, and y'all probably know this already, but Target? Right when you walk in the door they have all these bins of cheap-o junk that costs a buck! Mostly I zip on by the cheap-o junk, thoughtlessly repeating in a monotone, "No, no, no, no, no, no..." as my girlies ask for every single thing in every single bin as we walk by. But this time...this time!

Cheap-o educational junk!

And that's how my school shopping also apparently includes six different types of flashcards, everything from astronomy to the presidents (the girls enjoy looking through these on car trips), dice, dry erase boards (which, honestly, are of such low quality that I now regret having purchased them, but if they can stand the daily use that I'm subjecting them to through Christmas, I'll be happy again), playing cards (add hot glue to your mental picture of these cards--stand by for a post on that fun project!), and puzzles that diagram the Earth's make-up--

--and give the name and face of all the presidents of the United States:

Which has apparently locked me into a second trip to Target this season, since we now need to buy a set of playing cards to use as playing cards, not building materials.

Might as well buy some more crayons while we're there.

Playing with Play Silks at the Park

I've seen a lot of methods proposed by the crafty mommy bloggers for getting good photos of the kids with your handmade stuff, but the strategy that works best for me when I need to set up a photo shoot, such as this one for my Dharma Acid Dyes review over at Crafting a Green World, is to take the kids and the stuff to the park, then simply stand back and click my shutter a lot:

Seems to work well, yes?

Poetry Speaks: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

The memorization of the girls' second long poem was a long time in coming. Unlike the process of memorizing "A Visit from St. Nicholas," which they probably could have listened to eight times a day for the entire Christmas season, the girls got tired of listening to "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," by Robert Frost, before they had it memorized, so we set it aside for a good, long while.

I imagine that another factor is the fact that "A Visit from St. Nicholas" is available at our library in a dozen different copies with different illustrators, so that each repetition had new aspects, and I was even able to download a coloring book version of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" so that the girls could make their own book. Our library only had one picture book of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" for us to work with, unfortunately, so eventually it got a little old and we dropped it.

I keep checking the book out, however, and recently it occurred to me that Willow absolutely, and Sydney to a lesser extent, really have the poem almost memorized, so I brought the book back out and suggested that if they worked to read it over just a few more times, they could probably finish learning it by heart and be ready to recite it.

Syd got frustrated and dropped the project after one try (which is fine--the poem will always be there), but Will happily took up the challenge:


Rote memorization is good for our brains, but--and this is super cheesy, so get ready--that's not really why I want my girls to memorize poetry. Poetry connects us all on an emotional level, allowing us a shared outlet for feelings that we all may own, but rarely have the sophistication to voice. Because of that, to memorize a poem isn't just to know it in your mind, but also to hold it in your heart. Poems are big things for little girls to hold in their hearts, but out of all of the lifetime's worth of things, both good and bad, that will eventually reside there, their hearts will always be the better for being tempered by a heavy dose of poetry.

Our version of the poem:

• Poetry for Kids: Robert Frost

Dancing to Dvorak with Daddy

Or, How One Man Wins the Household Father of the Year Contest. Every. Single. Year.

Balance Scale

The best way to introduce the girls to a tool like the balance scale without having to, you know, INTRODUCE them to it is to just leave it out enticingly on the table, all the little brass weights that go with it shiny and bright in the sun, and then to simply ignore it.

Little girls will weigh their shoes in it.

They will use it to compare their breakfast smoothies, to see who got more.

All the toy ponies in the house will ride in it.

It will be an all-encompassing activity at playdates:

And eventually it will be put away, and its coveted spot on the coffee table will be replaced by, I don't know...the microscope? Stethoscope? Watercolor pencils?

Decreeing the next week's new obsession is a heady power!

Here are the brass weights that we use, when we're not weighing ponies and coffee cups and LEGOs:
 

Maker Faire Detroit 2011

That's where I've been!

Ostensibly, we went to Maker Faire Detroit primarily for this:

Really, though, by the time that I've made everything and we've lugged it all there and Matt's hauled everything inside and I've set it all up exactly as I want it, you pretty much only need one adult to sit there and smile and sell things.

Everyone else, well...

can swing on the water pump swings:

There's a motion sensor on the swing that stops the water right as you pass underneath it, but perhaps because the girls are so small, or their swings are so short, the makers were horrified and the girls were THRILLED to discover that this sensor did not always function accurately for them. My soaking wet girls went back time after time after time.

and build spinning things at the gears table:

Don't you love those wooden gears?

and admire the fire-breathing robot pony:

and work industriously on our scratch block:

I traced the girls' handprints overlapping the block (because I was too cheap to buy two of them), and then they decorated, proudly:

The iron pour was another entire amazing event in itself, but I'll have to show you our wonderful finished iron tile later, on account of I was too excited to take pictures. Here's our waste block, though, there in the middle:


The girls constructed marshmallow shooters:

I think they're kind of gross, and I really want to sanitize the pieces in the dishwasher, but the girls have discovered infinite ways to blow a mini marshmallow into another person's mouth, so there you go, physics

Don't worry, you fans of Matt, he got to get his fanboy on, too:

We also spent some time just tooling about in the Henry Ford Museum, which has a genuine Oscar Meyer Weinermobile!


Including a D.I.Y. hot dog station:

I did have a really cute video of Willow putting all the toppings on top of Sydney as she lay in the bun, but right in the middle of it, somebody walked by behind me and shouted out to my child, "Be still, wiener!".

Fortunately, heckling is quite welcome at the modified Power Wheel races:

I did not buy the buttery leather steampunk chic superhero mask that I REALLY wanted, but I did buy a chainmail and rubber gasket stretchy arm cuff, and the girls made themselves some superhero masks to go with it:

Will was a little disappointed that she didn't get chosen to operate the crank to start the giant Rube Goldberg machine:


(listen carefully--did you hear the windshield crunch?), but tell me if I'm wrong, but does it or does it not look like she has a future in driving an iron scrap fire-breathing jungle gym disco station dragon welded to the top of a dump truck?

Don't worry--it's not breathing fire at the moment!

So you may be thinking, "Yeah, that looks fun and all, but where's the big Vegas-style finale? And also, it doesn't look like you got sticky at all!"

Well, you know what?


We got sticky.

Independence Day Unit Study: The 13 British Colonies in America

Labeling maps is one of the hallmarks of Montessori work, and even now, after over a year of homeschooling in which they have the pleasure of choosing all their own school activities, mapwork is still something that both the girls really enjoy.

Fortunately, free maps of the thirteen British colonies in colonial America are easily available online:

• I printed this printable of each colony on its own page (from A Kid's Heart) at 1/4 size so that the girls could make it into a mini coloring book, to later be mounted into their Independence Day unit study book (I order these big bare books in bulk straight from their web site).
• I printed this labeled map of the 13 colonies for the girls to use as a reference while they completed--
• this unlabeled map of the 13 colonies:

I recopied the names of the colonies onto a separate sheet of paper, but otherwise, the printout was perfect for an old-school Montessori map-labeling activity. After it Willow, who admittedly has done a lot of extra reading on the subject, could recite nearly all of the colonies, and Syd of course will learn more with repetition, which she enjoys.

Other 13 colonies resources that were much enjoyed:
     

Tie-Dyed Socks on our Feet

Nobody, and I mean nobody, matches socks around here.

A giant hamper of clean socks lives in the closet. When my partner and I need clean socks, we dig through the hamper until we find a matching pair--it's very annoying. The kids are far less troubled, since when they need clean socks, they simply dig through the hamper until they find two socks that fit--no matching necessary, apparently. Well, the little kid, who is our clothes horse, does tend to search until she finds two "pretty" socks, but again, they definitely won't match.

For a long time it's been my dream to make sock matching an occupation of the past. To that end, for the past year or so I've allowed our sock supply to dwindle drastically, neglecting to replace holey or outgrown socks, until we each have just a few left. Then, I restocked us all with plain white socks from Dharma Trading Company.

Then, I set up the fabric dye in squeeze bottles--

--and spent an afternoon on the living room carpet with the kids tying off socks with rubber bands, and then we dragged them all outside and off we went:

The kids each also tie-dyed white turtlenecks, hand-me-downs from an acquaintance that had just a couple of light stains on them, because yes, I accept free stuff even if it's messed up. That's how my kids will be wearing tie-dyed turtlenecks this winter!

My poor partner arrived home from work that afternoon to the horror of a backyard full of fabric dye and mess and just more mess. I won't say that he was thrilled to jump in, but he let himself be persuaded to join in the family mess-making artistry. 

I know you're supposed to wear gloves and all, but I don't like the feel of them, and what am I supposed to do with the kids? Encase them in head-to-toe plastic aprons like serial killers wear to chop up their prey?

Eh, we were just colorful for a while:

I let the socks fester in plastic bags in the yard for 24 hours, then gave them a good rinse--look how pretty!

And after a wash and a dry, we have a new season of socks!

P.S. If you want the fun of tie-dye without the mess, try tie-dyeing coffee paper filters with markers!

P.P.S. Love family-friendly crafts? Then you'll love my Craft Knife Facebook page!

The Baby Likes Her Body Art

I drew the rainbow butterfly, and she drew the sun and the sky and the blowing wind:

Perhaps next time I can convince her to draw a Sharpie temporary tattoo on her arm INSTEAD of sticking one on her forehead.

Countdown to Maker Faire Detroit!

Who has two thumbs and a Pumpkin+Bear booth at Maker Faire Detroit?!?

MATT!!! Because it's a sure bet that the girlies and I are going to make our Matt booth-sit for us so that we can spend our weekend doing this:

Craft Faire, inside Maker Faire, is hosted by Handmade Detroit, and I was super-bummed because I actually didn't get in at first, but thank you to whatever crafter did get in and then turned down their spot, and yay for me for apparently being high up on the waitlist, which is almost as good as getting in outright, because I got in anyway!

I am especially thrilled to be going because Maker Faire is one of those events that I have always really, really, REALLY wanted to go to anyway. Since I've written for MAKE magazine, I got free tickets to the Maker Faire Bay Area, and I was super bummed that I could not think of a single legitimate method to get us all on a plane to California without putting a second mortgage on the house.

Detroit, however, is vastly more do-able, and with a Pumpkin+Bear booth for Matt to sit at and vend handmade homeschool crafts for us, the girls and I will have a place to keep our water bottles and drop off our cardboard robots and personal hovercrafts and other awesome stuff that we've made.

And I'm not even going to start telling you about the Maker Mixer, or the Ignite session, or the marshmallow shooters that the girls are going to make, or the fire-breathing pony, or the dragon dump truck jungle gym, or the giant Rube Goldberg machines, or the Bellagio-style Coke and Mentos fountain show, or how I'm totally going to do the iron pour, and get my picture taken on the recumbent tricycle, and rock out to nerdcore...