My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Natural Food Coloring and Toy Charm Necklaces

a tutorial for charm necklaces made from the kids' small toys

and a review of India Tree food coloring

I'm now trying to no longer bake with our formerly dearly beloved Wilton food coloring, so it's good that Wilton has so many non-food uses, one of which turned out to be a weekend activity, as Matt and I got together in the basement to clean out the chest freezer, only to discover that one of the (many) reasons it was chock-full was that I had, months ago, set some giant ice molds in it to freeze and then forgot about them (or covered them up with whole chickens and hot dog buns). 

In other words...

It's giant colored ice mold time!

First the girls used up all the salt in the house--

--and then this happened:

It belatedly occurred to me that all that salt is probably bad for my shaggy garden. Remind me to blame this when I start complaining that nothing is growing right later this summer--it'll make for a good excuse. 

I Let My Kids Wear Makeup

Despite my own hang-ups about the outward manifestations of gender, the girls both see makeup as another form of art play, and they enjoy it as much as they used to (and still sometimes do) color on themselves with markers, only, since I never bought washable markers, makeup is much easier to wash away at bedtime.

Because I don't want the kids to associate makeup with "looking pretty," it was really important to me to find makeup in full color palettes, not just what's trendy right now. Specifically, Sydney wanted blue lipstick, which I found on etsy, and blue eyeshadow, which in itself wasn't too hard to find, but I also wanted the girls to have green eyeshadow, and orange eyeshadow, and purple and pink and black eyeshadow.

I did finally find excellent color palettes for makeup for the kids. For the eyeshadow, I ended up buying a SHANY eyeshadow palette, which yes, does have blue and green and orange and purple and pink and black. It ended up in the girls' Easter baskets, and I actually used it for the fashion show, too, blending red into pink above the black and silver glitter line that Syd's makeup artist put just above her eyelashes. I also bought the girls a set of eyeliner pencils, which turned out to be really too delicate and fussy for children to use, but I don't use makeup myself, so what do I know? Add to that one blush and all the body glitter that a kid could care to make for herself, and you've got yourself a pretty thorough makeup exploration set!

Although the kids do love to do themselves up like clowns with their makeup, I was feeling at a loss for any technique or tips to provide when they asked, since not only do I not wear makeup currently, but I've also never worn it--I don't even have the tips of a twelve-year-old self to pass on! Fortunately, one of my friends who has a teenage daughter told me that her kiddo, who is great with makeup, spends tons of time watching makeup tutorial videos on Youtube.

What the what?!?

Well, let's check it out!

Seriously, how cute is that? The kiddos do seem to enjoy copying some of the simpler tutorials, and I feel like they have, without making them feel like they have to be conventional, gotten them to have just a little bit lighter of a hand with the application:

Just a little bit, mind you.

And yes, their father and I do patiently sit for makeovers:

Yes, that IS a paintbrush. Only recently have I figured out that you have to buy special makeup brushes separately.

Considering that the girls ALSO have a thing for nail polish in funky colors--

--they are quite the colorful crew these days.

Trashion/Refashion Show 2013

It's been epic over here, y'all! Last weekend the littler kid and I finally, after rehearsals and dress rehearsals and practicing and tons of prep work, performed in the 2013 Trashion/Refashion Show. It's so hard to remember what you're supposed to be doing right as you pop onstage in front of all those lights and sounds and people, so I really encouraged the kid to practice her runway walk a LOT this year. She taped a mock runway with painter's tape right onto our living room floor, and practiced on it every single day, taking constructive criticism and Momma suggestions like a champ, and creating almost entirely by herself a perfect routine that involved her showing off the best features of her dress, holding her marks for the proper time, and memorizing the announcer's cues, all while staying energetic and happy toward the audience.

Seriously, that kid worked HARD.

I think she could see how well it paid off, though, as yep, she always knew her cues, and she always knew where to go and what to do there, and that kind of confidence feels good.

Perhaps partly because of all the practice, and partly because her grandparents had flown in from California to visit us that weekend, this is the year that the kid really seemed to grasp what a lot of work goes into being a runway model, and part of a major show like this. Not only did she miss her Science Fair for a dress rehearsal, but on the day of the show, while her grandparents, Matt, and the bigger kid built model rockets and launched them at the park, this littler kid and I were getting her hair and makeup done:

While the grandparents, Matt, and Willow hit golf balls on a driving range somewhere, the kid and I were waiting at the theater, doing yet another full-dress run-through, and waiting some more:

The entire time, the kid was deeply conscious of the fact that her dearly beloved grandparents were somewhere just out of reach, having loads of fun with her sister, and yet she was a great sport about it. She's got a killer game face, that kid.

One HUGE treat that made that weary time of waiting around at the theater a lot more bearable was the Bloomington Flight Club, which performed at the Trashion/Refashion Show and thus needed to practice their routine in that venue several times over the course of the day. I've never been to a Cirque do Soleil show, and I have NEVER seen anything like this before, and I (and everyone else hanging around in the theater!) was flat-out amazed by their performance:

It was just crazy stuff--climbing that silk, and tangling it around their feet to do some tricks, and winding it around them to do some other tricks, and then unraveling it and falling a long ways and yet still hanging on and everyone in the audience shouts "YAY!!!!" kind of stuff. Seriously, wow.

Eventually, though, we were backstage for real, with me trying to touch-up the kid's makeup and her being super picky about how she wanted it to look (Thank god for baby wipes!), and me putting my foot down about her definitely wearing the ton of red body glitter that we'd made together for the show and her changing her mind about wanting it and surreptitiously trying to wipe it off when I wasn't looking and me saying, "Dude, I can SEE the cloud of glitter at your feet," and her smiling and being like, "What?":

Meanwhile, in the audience:

The Skullduggery Pleasant love is VERY real!

The official Trashion/Refashion Show video will come out later (and will be shown off and on all year on local access TV, which makes me super happy, because back when we had cable a million years ago, local access was my favorite channel), but until then, I woo you with home videos of the event:

my favorite of the two Flight Club performances:

the runway walk:

As per usual, my kid was calm, cool, and collected, and I was so nervous for her that I wouldn't have been surprised if I'd had a heart attack or a stroke or something (well, maybe a *little* surprised, because I've been working hard on my health lately, but you get the idea). As I stood near the back of the theater, waiting to make sure that she made it safely up one aisle of the audience, then to meet her in the lobby and escort her back down the other aisle and through the stage door and backstage again, I experienced her runway walk completely differently. Also, completely incorrectly. When she first walked out onstage, I experienced her standing at her first mark FOREVER. I was sure that she'd missed her cue and was going to stand there like a rock the entire time! Foolishly, I even lost my head and began to wave "Come on!" gestures from the BACK of the DARKENED theater. I let out a deep breath when she finally began to move forward, and felt light-headed from apparently holding my breath for the entire time that she'd just stood there.

Yeah, that didn't happen at all the way that I experienced it. Even if you don't want to watch her entire walk, watch, like, the first five seconds, because that's all it takes for her to walk onstage, hit her first mark, wait for her cue, and then skip forward. That's also exactly how long it was supposed to take.

This is why she's the runway model, not me.

It was a great night, of course, but also a long night, and for the first time ever, the kid didn't want to stay through intermission and watch the second half of the show. She wanted to collect her congratulations--

--to change her clothes, to get the heck home, to take a shower, and to get into her jammies.

Interestingly, the kid's been saying that she might not want to do the fashion show next year. She thinks she might try roller derby when the bigger kid tries it in September, and is also considering not taking ballet again next year (although the fact that this is recital weekend, with MORE dress rehearsals and stage makeup and fancy hair and stress over missing uniform parts and a missed practice that was hidden on page 20 of a 25-page recital handout--seriously, WHO gives out a 25-page recital handout for a children's recital?). She's been saying that she's tired of going to ballet class on Saturdays, when she could be playing instead, and although that's kind of rich from a homeschooled six-year-old who spends the vast majority of each day in active, immersive, imaginary play, it's still her experience, and if that's how she feels, then that's how she feels.

Of course, the kid's not planning to quit all her previously cherished activities in order to go and live under a rock next year. It took about five minutes after we were all back home from the fashion show for each kid to ask me if they could learn how to do what they saw the Flight Club do. I did some research, and why, yes, the Flight Club DOES offer children's classes!

So after this horseback riding session, and after the softball season, and after the kids and I take a road trip to Connecticut and back, I promised them that I would sign them up for aerial silks classes. Perhaps next year, BOTH kids will be at the Trashion/Refashion Show--if not on the stage, then maybe 30 feet above it.

Animal Classification Using Crayon and Paint Wash Skeletons

The girls and I have been wending our way down to human biology (we actually wended to horses, but we started off intending to study humans) through the order of classification. My main goals for studying the order of classification as thoroughly as we have so far are to have the girls understand that each level of the order tells something important about the living thing (whether or not we quite understand what that thing is--order Perissodactyla, or the Odd-Toed Ungulates, for instance, has given me and Willow fits trying to figure it out: odd number of toes? Per limb or total? Oddly-shaped toes? Odd that they're called toes? The research continues!), and to have them memorize some key classification terms and what they mean--the class Mammalia, for instance, and knowing what a mammal is, or the infraclass Marsupialia, and what that means.

Hands-on learning always makes memorization easier (which is probably why the girls are having to work so hard to get their Latin vocabulary to stick), and so before completely settling down with horses for a while, I had the girls do a couple of research projects involving the classification of other animals.

We own a set of animal x-rays, and now we own a giant lightbox upon which we can look at them!

Willow and I placed a bunch of our animal x-rays on the lightbox at random, and then put a sheet of tracing paper over the entire lightbox, taping it snugly at the sides. I gave each of the girls a white crayon, and they used it to trace the skeletons of each of the animals:

You can see the white crayon if you look carefully.

On a different day, Sydney watered down some black BioColor paint, and the girls painted a black wash over the skeletons on the tracing paper. This made the skeletons stand out really well, although it took a couple of tries to get the paint to the right consistency--too thin, and it just soaks through the paper without leaving much color; too thick, and it covers the paper and the crayon, too.

I hung the giant painting out on the laundry line (and then on the shower curtain rod when it started to rain) to dry, and on a different day we used it to inspire a research project.

I had the girls choose their favorite skeleton from the painting, cut it out, and spray mount it to a large piece of construction paper:

Spray mount is FUN!

The animal x-rays set also includes photos of the living animal that each skeleton belongs to, and its name, so next the kiddos matched their skeleton to its animal, drew the animal--




--and then researched its classification. Normally, I encourage the girls to use Encyclopedia Britannica for their reference questions, but Wikipedia has this great feature of including the entire order of classification for each living creature that has an article about it on their site:

Each level also includes a link, so it's pretty amazing. The girls copied the order of classification for their animal--

--and then together we went through that order, clicking on each level in Wikipedia to learn more about that type. Kingdom Animalia and Order Chordata are reviews, because we've already studied what makes an animal and what a spinal cord does, but it was fun to see what Class Reptilia comprises, and then narrow it down to Order Squamata, which is just the lizards and the snakes, and then we go down to Family Iguanidae, which is just the iguanas, and so on and so on:

Although the girls LOVED this activity, and I thought that it had a lot of value in improving their understanding of animal classification, we actually didn't do this for the horses that we're now studying, simply because we don't have any horse x-rays!

What we DO have, however, are the real-live Cody and Lola, the horses that Syd and Will ride during their weekly horseback riding lessons. And though there aren't as many hands-on projects for studying horse anatomy as there are for, say, human anatomy, it turns out that having a real-live horse buddy to think about when memorizing parts, or talking about classification, is just about the best thing ever.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Cupcake Flags and Earth Day Crafts

a round-up of kid-friendly, no-prep, stash-only Earth Day crafts

and a tutorial for making re-usable scrap fabric cupcake flags:

Yes, there is a dinosaur-themed party in our future. Sydney has decided that she wants her seventh birthday party to be a dinosaur party (AND a surprise party, which I had expected, since she's never stopped talking about her half-birthday surprise party of a year and a half ago).

I've got a Dinosaur Party Pinboard up, and I'm continually updating it with ever-more-ambitious projects--volcano cupcakes! Miniature watermelon dinosaur eggs!--as well as some brand-new ideas that I'd have to be crazy to attempt. Could I REALLY prepare ten plaster of Paris volcanoes for children to paint and erupt as a party activity? Should I REALLY conceal each child's party invitation in a papier mache dinosaur egg that must be cracked open to get to it? 

Do I REALLY have that much time, not to mention silliness, to expend in the next few weeks? I suppose we'll find out...

Number Cross

Although I think logic is very important, it's a subject that I haven't yet managed to work into the girls' regular school schedule. Logic is important, yes, but so far reading, grammar, math, Latin, music, science, history, geography, and art are more important. I always have in the back of my mind, however, that one day, sooner or later, Sydney will no longer need formal reading instruction, and then I could replace that spot with logic.

I have mentally replaced Sydney's reading spot with probably half a dozen different theoretical subjects by now. I hope that reading frees up a LOT of time!

I do occasionally include stand-alone logic activities in Will's schedule--she has extra space set aside for enrichment activities almost every school day, and when I don't want to assign an enrichment activity based on what we're working on that day, I sometimes assign her a logic puzzle or game, or challenge her to a chess or Othello match. She loves word ladders, and recently she's been REALLY into this book, Number Cross Puzzles: A Quick and Challenging Workout for Your Brain, that a publicist gave her:

Seriously, how cool is this?!?

Ignore her backwards digits. She still does that very rarely when she's thinking VERY hard.

The format is exactly like that of a crossword puzzle, except instead of clues, you're given the numbers that will fill in the blanks. Many seem interchangeable at first, and only by trial-and-error or a LOT of logical forethought can you tell which goes where.

I tell you what--I LOVE these puzzles. Will is such a words girl, but she's quick at math, too; she just rarely takes the time to immerse herself in math. These puzzles give her a fun experience playing with numbers, which is something that I would like for her to learn to take pleasure in.

Will is also a girl who hates erasing and re-doing. If she wants to avoid that in these puzzles, then she must stretch herself to think ahead and visit all possibilities, but the puzzles are fun enough to her that even when she must erase and re-write, she sticks with it:

My biggest surprise, however, was when Sydney got ahold of this Number Cross book. I fear that I am sometimes guilty of underestimating my Syd--she's younger than her sister, and not yet fully literate, and has a different learning style from her sister's almost invisible way of picking many things up, so sometimes I forget that she's a very quick learner, too, especially in math, at which I am convinced she will catch up to and then pull ahead of her sister someday soon, but that's a story for another day.

Anyway, it had never even occurred to me to show this Number Cross book to Sydney, but she found it on her own, took it to Matt, who explained how to work the puzzles, and then sat herself down at the table and did this:

Not too shabby for the kid sister, huh? She's got a mind for numbers.

Kid Meal: The Incredible, Edible Soft-Boiled Egg

When Matt was a little boy living in Germany, a common breakfast for him was a soft-boiled egg, served with butter and toast. He has such happy memories of those breakfasts that when we saw egg cups while browsing in a kitchen store we actually BOUGHT them--brand-new and everything!

Hey, big spenders, I know, but a combination of the novelty of a brand-new something-or-other and the fact that my kiddos are adventurous eaters (even more so than either Matt or me, I freely admit) made them absolutely giddy to try soft-boiled eggs for themselves.

And they're a hit! I use this soft-boiled egg technique, which is really different from the way that Matt remembers his eggs being cooked when he was a child, but the result is the same, from getting to crack open the egg at one end--

--to dipping in your spoon and scooping up the whites and the hot, runny yolks--

--to yum!!!

The girls have been eating these as part of breakfast or lunch about three times a week for a while now--I'm a little skeezed about not thoroughly cooking the eggs, so I've been trying to buy local just for this. I have a friend who sells her surplus eggs, and there's a local dude who sells duck eggs, but later this afternoon I'm going to check out a little long-term dream of mine by attending a class entitled "Chickens in the City." Depending on just one particular regulation that I need to have clarified at the class (Is a "visual barrier" between the coop and the adjacent neighbors' properties simply a barrier that one can see, or is it a barrier that completely conceals the coop?), we *may* have some little chick babies of our own next month, when the thirty or so eggs that my friend's hen sneaked off and laid and sat on hatch.

Otherwise, I'm thinking of trying to get my friend to at least let us foster some babies, even if we have to eventually give them back for lack of a "visual barrier," whatever that turns out to be.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Tank Tops and Markers

a tutorial for art supply swatch cards 

and a tutorial for replacing tank top straps

I think I'm going to try to not buy the girls any clothes this summer. They're still so easy to sew for, in these ages before darts and careful fitting come into play, and they're thankfully still of ages in which they're thrilled with whatever I sew for them (I understand that this may NOT be the case in a few more years, but hopefully by then they'll be sewing some things for themselves!).

This decision will mostly affect Willow--Sydney has a HUGE selection of hand-me-downs from her sister, an older cousin, and a generous acquaintance of mine, but Will's main source of hand-me-downs, bless her heart, is a playmate who is several sizes bigger than her; when Will's a tween, she'll be all set with summer clothes, but this summer, for her, may well be the summer of cropped pants and homemade shorts. 

Recorder, Take Two

Our DIY music lessons have actually been working out pretty well. The girls dipped into and out of the instruments that we have here at home--recorder, violin, guitar, and keyboard--taking weekly instruction from me in whatever suited their fancy at the time, practicing that lesson for the week, and then holding a "recital" of what they'd learned, before picking again.

The lessons are fulfilling their overall purpose in that Willow has decided that she is quite interested enough in violin that she'd like to take formal lessons. Coincidentally (or not?), this is the instrument that, although I play a little, myself, I have the hardest time teaching, and thus I have a lot of newfound respect for actual violin teachers, and not a bit of a problem shelling out for one.

Just...not right this minute. Currently, our kid activity budget, both time- and money-wise, is full up: horseback riding lessons, softball, ballet, chess club, and, in a couple of months, science camp. And, yes, more of those activities are the younger kid's, but an even division isn't really the way it works around here. You do what you have a passion for, that we have a time for, and that we can afford. Sometimes there's a waiting list for one's passion, hence that year that it took to save up for these horseback riding lessons that are so beloved, and so appreciated, right now.

So after science camp we'll have the cash, and the time, for violin lessons, but until then, I wanted Willow to stay in the habit of regular music practice, and I thought that it would save some time and money during her lessons if she already had skills like reading music and clapping rhythms. Thus we're back to the recorder, the easiest instrument for her to learn and me to teach, and so the easiest instrument to make some real, inspiring musical progress in, and to teach related musical lessons with, until violin lessons begin.

Those little $1 recorders work great for the basic notes, but are pretty faulty in the lower register, so I upgraded to a nicer soprano recorder (still cheap enough that I can buy a second one later for duets!). I check out songbooks for the recorder from the library, or I figure out the simple tunes myself ("Hot Cross Buns" isn't rocket science, thank goodness!), and then I pass them on to the next generation:


This week, Willow is practicing a scale that includes all the notes she'll need to learn "Mary Had a Little Lamb" next week. When she knows an entire octave of notes, I plan to add reading music to her studies. We've also been researching woodwinds, in general, and this week in my free time (ha!), I've been working on a set of flash cards to identify members of the woodwind family, from the clarinet to the pungi.

Want to know what a pungi is? Ask Willow!

For our recorder study, we've been using--
 

--as well as the ideas from my Homeschool: Recorder pinboard. I've found some good fingering transcriptions from the links there, and I think that Willow will enjoy that kid-made recorder case project.

But don't worry...I've got plenty of violin projects planned out, too!