Tutorial: Coffee Filter Tie-Dye (Sorta)

I've mentioned before that my Papa's house contains all kinds of bulk goodies that my house doesn't--white flour, cake mixes, paper towels, paper plates, paper cups, etc. The girls would add to this list pudding cups, Pringles, Cheez Its, American cheese, cream soda, Reese's Cups, Wonder bread, etc., etc., until I tear my hair out, but let's stick to my list so that my shoulders don't get all tense, shall we? Mmmkay.

So even though we try to be pretty eco-friendly in our crafting at home, when we're at Papa's house we can experiment with perhaps some crafting projects that I've been tempted by in my various readings but that call for ingredients that I'm not comfortable buying. Papa's house was where I first made play dough, which calls for white flour, and now I actually own a stock of cheap white flour that I use just for crafting. I also made my first rainbow cake experiments there, and you all know that I am now the rainbow cake queen of the universe.

Guess what? Papa also owns coffee filters, and I have been wanting to try this wet marker tie dye project for FOREVER. And it turns out that it IS awesome, so you do it, too. Here's what you need:

• 
  
  coffee filter
• 
  
  markers, but probably not the washable kind

• 
  
  water
• 
  
  eye dropper or spritzer or, as we did, a fingertip to dip and then shake

1. Flatten out the coffee filter with your hand, then color a big, bold picture in it with your markers. Don't bother for anything too elaborate, but feel free to be super-colorful:

2. Drip or spritz water lightly over the entire surface of the filter, taking your time so that you can enjoy the sight of the ink running and spreading and mixing. This is the same concept that we'll use when we revisit coffee filter chromatography in a couple of weeks (on account of I put some of Papa's coffee filters in my suitcase--thanks, Papa!). Put a paper towel (shout-out!) underneath the filter to catch any ink that washes completely out of the filter, and keep in mind that if you pour on too much water, the ink WILL wash out completely. You'll have a pretty and colorful paper towel then, I suppose

3. Lay your coffee filter flat to dry, then enjoy!

Did I mention that Papa's house also has all the popsicles that you can eat?

Horses! Horses! Horses!

Kentucky Horse Park? Has a lot of horses.

Lots of different breeds of horses, with their riders dressed in appropriate costumes:

Although this rider, during the horse-and-rider meet-and-greet after this show, did respond to my eager nerd questions about her bareback riding of her Appaloosa by smiling, putting her finger to her lips, then lifting up her saddle blanket to show me the real saddle hidden underneath.

The saddle set-up on this Frisian doesn't look authentically medieval, either, but there was JOUSTING!!!

JOUSTING!!! Five points if you knew before this very moment that I have a master's degree in English with an emphasis in medieval studies.

I mistakenly brought only my telephoto lens, assuming that all the horses would be in pastures or shows and thus far away. I regretted this for the entire day, as we were invited over and over again to pat draft horses, carriage, horses, saddle horses, and show horses. A trainer walking by with a horse, if one of the girls showed the slightest interest (and of COURSE they did), would invariably stop and encourage the girls to pat that horse, while gamely engaging in horsey nerd-talk with me. I now know several very interesting things about horses, from the reasoning behind giving draft horses very short names to the fact that if a thoroughbred is retired to breed and it turns out that he's sterile, he gets infertility treatments.

The Kentucky Horse Park is also a working establishment, not just a tourist destination, and we were welcome to walk down to the arena area and watch this dressage competition:

It was a hot, sticky, horse-filled, day, wrapped up by a trip to the gift shop for horse trading cards and postcards.

In other words, it was horse heaven:

 The early bedtime that night didn't hurt, either.

The Monkey Bars on our To-Do List

It's long been a goal to put some hard-core playground equipment down in the basement playroom, so the girls and I were all three pretty excited to see these hard-core mini monkeybars at the Arkansas Museum of Discovery in Little Rock:

Definitely buildable.

P.S. Check out my weekend blog posts over at Crafting a Green World--a tutorial for oven-bake salt dough, and a step-by-step tutorial for DIY postcards.

Mud Island, and the Miniature Mississippi

One of the most amazing things that I've ever seen while traveling is the Mud Island River Walk. It's a five-block-long scale model of the Mississippi River, made with reference to topographical maps, where 30" equals one mile and granite ridges measure depth in 5' increments.

Oh, and you can wade in it:

A few of the biggest cities along the Mississippi are also mapped to scale, including New Orleans, and looking at New Orleans topographically and the Gulf of Mexico, which is represented by a paddle-boat pond...yeah, it seems obvious in hindsight. The girls didn't care about New Orleans, but they did really enjoy that the representations of all the biggest cities along the Mississippi also included the city bridges across the Mississippi: 

It was the perfect weather for running and jumping and playing and exploring, and I'm pretty sure that some geography got mixed in there somewhere, too:

VERY IMPORTANT: When you go wading, don't forget to hold your dress up out of the water: 

Otherwise it might get wet, and then you'd be embarrassed.

Postcards from the Trip

Because Momma is cheap.

And because we like to make art.

Because it's homeschooling in geography.

And because gift shops don't usually sell postcards of our favorite weird stuff that we saw, or the random imaginary stuff that we thought about.

Hence our DIY postcards, drawn in fine-point Sharpie on Bristol board that I cut to USPS standard postcard sizes. Thus Sydney was able to draw a Gateway Arch with sunflowers growing almost up to its top, a sight that I'd REALLY like to see in real life:

And Willow was able to send her impressions of the Real Pirates exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center back to one of her little playmates, who she knows would enjoy the idea of the swordplay:

I sent Matt a postcard of the Gateway Arch on which I diagrammed the location of all the mean/nice people and weird overheard conversations that I encountered--it wasn't as good as being able to poke him and hiss, "Oh, my God! Look over there!", but it was close.

One night, when we were working at the dining room table in my parents' house, I asked the girls to draw a postcard of their absolute favorite thing from the past couple of days of travel that we'd just finished. Here's Sydney's postcard:

It's the hotel pool, of course.

My Child as a Confederate Soldier

Do all history museums let kids dress up like a Confederate Soldier, or just the history museums in the South?

It definitely takes a special kind of history musem to have a real, live, working soda fountain:

Although sprinkles may be a more modern invention:

But after eating a lot of ice cream (with an old-fashioned cherry coke for me and a strawberry coke for my mother), there is nothing better than to run around outside on the grounds of the old Fort Smith, chasing covered wagons--

--and doing a happy little jig next to the gallows:

Unfortunately, it wasn't the anniversary of any executions, and so the noose wasn't up. Can't have everything, I guess...

I Rawk at Tetris

I accepted, met, and EXCEEDED the challenge put out by the St. Louis Science Center, which sadly did not put its money where its mouth was:

I love Tetris. LOVE it. I can remember sitting in civics class in junior high, playing Tetris in my head the way that I've heard that really smart people play mental chess, or mental baseball. Of course, I was a really smart 80s Nintendo nerd who'd never even touched a chessboard until I bought one myself with my own money at Wal-mart later that year, so I played mental Tetris.

The girls, too, enjoyed these Tetris magnets--

--which reminded me that I totally have some magnet-backed felt at home (bought at clearance from Joann's, and likely put on clearance because it's such an odd item), and I am TOTALLY going to make my own set of Tetris magnets when we're done with our road trip.

Speaking of road trips...I showed the girls how to use a rotary dial telephone at the local history museum today. They did NOT get it--Sydney kept just poking her finger at each number, no matter how many times I demonstrated the dial procedure, just poke, poke, poke, and I was all, raising my voice, "You have to DIAL it, that's why it's called a DIAL telephone, because you DIAL the number!!!"

When is the last time that you actually dialed a telephone number?

630 Feet, Straight Up

Was our visit to the Gateway Arch wonderful? I mean, was it crowded and touristy? Was it tiresome and tedious? Were the kids whiny and bored? Was security a pain in the butt, and also worryingly lax?

Sometimes, but also?

Yes, it was WONDERFUL!

Will thoroughly enjoyed her every second, from start to finish, parking garage entrance to parking garage exit. Syd was a bit more of a challenge--she's a child who enjoys her comforts, and a long walk on a warm day, a long wait in a long line, are nearly intolerable to her. However, there are three things in her favor: 1) She rarely throws a fit in public, 2) She perks up readily when the scenario changes, and 3) she can often be settled down with a Sesame Street podcast on my ipod. So she watched a lot of Sesame Street while we waited.

And the wait? Worth it. The crazy tram-ride was apparently super-fun, and as soon as we got all the way up and out of our tram at the top of the arch and the girls saw what it was all about, they were thrilled.

THRILLED.

Universally and unequivocally thrilled.

The little windows along the top of the arch are perfect for children, because they're on a well-carpeted slant that even a little kid can easily scramble up, and two kids fit perfectly at one window:

I was worried that the kiddos would look out the window for two seconds and then be done, and that I wouldn't get much of a chance to sightsee, but that wasn't the case at all. The girls visited every single window in the arch, and spent long minutes at each one, excitedly pointing out to each other objects of fascination such as Swimming Pools! On roofs! Satellite dishes! On roofs! A chair over there! On that roof! And lots and lots of debris floating down the flooded Mississippi.

I thought that it was pretty cool to watch a Cardinals game from the top of the arch:

And those tiny, tiny people?

They're 630 feet straight down from us.

We had a looooooong drive after that, which encompassed the final book in our Geronimo Stilton trilogy and the first seven audiobooks of the Magic Tree House series (book 8 is waiting for us on the way to Memphis, and then we'll move on to The Mouse and the Motorcycle), and today has been mostly about tantrums and junk food and dark circles under little eyes, but Willow did draw a picture this evening that looked a lot like this photo:

630 feet, straight up from us.

Next on the Agenda

Guess where we're going today!

Full Circle

First Day of School:

Last Day of School:

Now, let's go on a road trip!

Studying Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky

Our first unit study is considerably more seatwork oriented than I'd normally choose, but in my defense, it is meant to be done primarily in the car, where the children will be seated, so there you go. The activities, however, are just as eclectic as my kiddos.

First we have the binder:

I covered each girl's binder in a brown paper bag book cover, and let them decorate them. Willow actually chose thematically-appropriate decorations:

This unit study is on each of the states that we'll be visiting during our upcoming road trip--Missouri, Arkansas, Tenneessee, and Kentucky--so Willow drew the Gateway Arch, a horse, and the Mississipi River (with sailboats, because she hasn't seen a real live riverboat yet, silly girl).

Now, the girls aren't actually required to do any of the activities that I'm about to show you, but I do know what they tend to like, so I'm guessing that Willow will do quite a bit of these, and that Sydney will do a few and goof around with a few more. Both binders are also identical, even though the girls are at different academic levels, because they still tend to get jealous when they see that a sister has something that they don't. So some of the stuff in the binder is too easy for Willow, and a lot of stuff in the binder is too hard for Sydney. Thankfully, Sydney doesn't get frustrated at Willow-level stuff, and Willow doesn't get bored by Sydney-level stuff--if they don't want to do something, they just don't.

Each binder has a US map from AAA and a ton of copy paper tucked into the front cover, a clipboard clipped to the inside cover, a notebook tucked into the back cover, and a mesh bag of supplies clipped onto a binder ring:

Of course, all this stuff will immediately get completely disorganized, but I plan to ask the girls to bring their binders in with us each night at our various motels, so I can neaten them then.

Each binder has a set of matboard stencils for all the states we'll be visiting; US map and flag coloring pages from Super Teacher Worksheets; state maps for each state from Megamaps; cut-and-fold three-dimensional animal pages for various animals we might see, such as thoroughbreds or Indiana bats--

--from Form Wild; coloring pages for horses and the Gateway Arch from the Dover Sampler series; and downloadable children's activity books for various places we'll visit, such as the Fort Smith National Historic Site, and places that we won't visit but that are still AWESOME!!!, such as...

The Arkansas.gov site has a terrific children's activity book which offers coloring pages for ALL of the state stuff. State gem? The diamond. State bird? The mockingbird. State fruit/vegetable? The vine ripe pink tomato. State rock? Bauxite. State cooking vessel? The dutch oven. And yes, I COULD go on.

More on Syd's level, the binder also includes a file folder game of sorting fruits and vegetables, from File Folder Fun, and a set of Betsy McCall paper dolls highlighting Betsy's trip down the Mississippi on a riverboat:

More on Will's level are some Spanish flashcards of words like horse, duck, grandma, and grandpa, from Boca Beth; and 20 or so mazes from KrazyDad--navigational skillz, you know.

Among the books that the girls have chosen for the trip are numerous children's books about Appalachia, other geographical locations we'll visit, tall tales, horse books, and a biography of Elvis (I can't resist!). Some of the DVDs include a children's Spanish documentary of St. Louis, more horse movies, more tall tales, etc. And some of the CDs are folk songs, Elvis hits, and audiobooks that take place in some of the places we'll visit, although audiobooks tend to be very hit or miss, love it or absolutely hate it, with the kiddos.

As for the traveling, I really do intend for it to be pretty low-key. My goal is to see at least one site that is meaningfully geographically or historically every place we visit, and to also do at least one super-fun kid thing. So in St. Louis I plan to take the girls to the St. Louis Science Center (Willow is really looking forward to the pirates exhibition), and also up in the Gateway Arch (this will be a first for me, too). In Fort Smith, where we'll spend a few days with my family, I plan to take them to the Fort Smith Museum of History (which has a real, honest-to-god working soda fountain), and there will also be lots of playgrounds, cousin and grandma time, cable television watching, candy eating, etc. While I'm in Ft. Smith I plan to plan where to go in Tennessee and still stay out from underfoot of the flood recovery efforts, but Willow is already talking about the Kentucky Horse Park, and thanks to the Wonderlab being an ASTC Passport participant, we get free admission to pretty much every hands-on museum in the country that we walk ourselves into, and we may walk ourselves into several on our trip.

But if all of THAT gets boring, don't worry--the girls will still have their other workbooks, and their other DVDS and CDs and picture books, and Hank the Cowdog and toy ponies aplenty, and computer games and indoor pools and stopping to pee and lots of snacks...

We are going to have an excellent time together.

Road Trip Checklist

Approximately 17 hours after we officially graduate into homeschooling, the girls and I are going to do one of the things that I've been most looking forward to doing as a homeschooling family.

 

ROAD TRIP!!!

 

The kiddos and I are going to tootle on over to St. Louis for a day, then spend a few days with my folks down in Arkansas, then hop over to Tennessee, and we'll meander our way up to Kentucky and back up to Indiana eventually.

 

This is going to be our first road trip EVER without my Matt, and here are just a few of the many changes that will have to be made:

• I'll have to actually figure out the GPS, because Matt's the only one who knows how to get anyplace.
• Bathroom visits will be strictly enforced, because when one person gets out of the car, EVERYONE has to get out of the car.
• Must find the wheely suitcases in the basement, because that huge duffle bag is something that only Matt can carry.
• Children's entertainment must be able to be completely child-operated, because no adult hands will be free to fetch ponies or open baggies of granola.
• Unlike in previous trips, most of the driving can't be done late at night, when little people are snoring instead of screaming, because I can't figure out the logistics of dragging two soundly sleeping children and our luggage into a hotel all at the same time. Maybe one of those wheely carts?

Long gone are the days when a week-long road trip meant throwing fresh underwear and a couple dozen paperbacks into my backpack on the way out the door. The logistics of this trip are...well, welcome to my life:

• Must move car seats over from minivan to smaller car that is slightly less likely to break down on the road. A roadside breakdown remains quite likely, however.
• The girls' unit studies on Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky (more on this later) are organized and ready to be collated:

These kits include my latest masterpiece--a Cricut-cut set of matboard state stencils:

 

I'm VERY excited that I figured out how to make these, because large, sturdy, thick stencils (usually made of metal) are extremely important in Montessori young child work--absolutely more on that later.

• Necessary groceries include one jar of peanut butter, one loaf of bread, two boxes of cereal, and a batch of vegan carob chip brownies. 
• Willow successfully edited the stack of Hank the Cowdog books that she was insisting on taking down from about 30 to about six. Sydney, however, is taking every single toy pony that she owns, and the toy stable, and will brook no argument.
• The milk crate of picture books that they're allowed to bring is chock full, and the arguments over its selection have turned physical.
• For the first time ever, I'm letting the girls have full access to the portable DVD player (garage sale, ONE DOLLAR!). I plan to catch up on my podcast listening while I drive.
• Am waiting for the inspiration that I need to write all my Crafting a Green World posts ahead of time. Waiting...Waiting...
• Am also waiting with bated breath for the Elvis CD box set to be held for me at the library. Of COURSE the girls' unit studies include a downloadable activity book about Graceland.

And I haven't even gotten to the clothes packing. We'll probably just throw some fresh underwear into our backpacks on our way out the door.

P.S. Check out these free(ish) wooden building blocks that I bought the other day, over at Crafting a Green World.

Do Not Eat This Cake

Have you seen my new felt cake playset?

It's inspired by Sydney's rainbow birthday, and by the Montessori pink tower, which Sydney also loves--she dreams about the pink tower sometimes, and draws pictures of the pink tower in which it is surrounded by rainbows. I wanted something colorful, that could be played with creatively, but that could also be used as a mathematical activity. Stacking the cake layers teaches the order of smallest to biggest, and each of the trims will match only with the layer that fits its length exactly.

The cake stand is just for cuteness.