DIY Clay Rings from The Sparkle Factory

Futzing around with clay is a big pastime around here. The girls like it enough that I've occasionally considered signing them up for a pottery class, but ugh--scheduling! I HATE scheduling extracurriculars! I can't believe that I used to actually gripe that my kids never wanted to try anything new; now they want to try ALL. THE. THINGS, and I gripe about having to either deny them opportunities or overschedule our precious free time.

Anyway...

We were talking about futzing with clay. A publicist sent me a free copy of The Sparkle Factory, and the girls and I have spent a surprising amount of time in the last week playing with the surprisingly addictive process of making clay rings, using the tutorial from the book.

It looks a little like this:

And then you have this!

My ring is pretty sedate--

--but the girls' rings are AMAZING! 

Sydney's ring has a top embellished with clay discs.

Willow's ring has an embedded crinoid fossil!

The project has inspired us, as we've since crafted bracelets, pendants, beads, and other little trinkets, all from our Sculpey stash. I have plans to see if our cat paw prints that we usually do in salt dough would work equally well in this medium, too.

Would the chickens tolerate having their footprints made in clay, I wonder?

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Winners and Chair Covers

the winner of the Soaps to Live by giveaway

and a tutorial for DIY chair covers

otherwise known as the cat's new favorite place to sleep

Ideally, I'll make two sets of these--one to wash and one to wear. This project, of course, joins the to-do list of imaginary things that will never be completed, such as just one more set of cloth napkins, a guest set of cloth napkins, a guest set of felted wool Mason jar cozies, the second set of mattress pads...

Backyard Archery

Will's Lil' Banshee bow only has an 18lb draw, but it's just about too much for her.

Thank goodness for a patient Daddy!

He helps her draw her bow Every. Single. Time, and has an attention span for it that's at least 20 minutes longer than mine.

Because we need more weird things to do in our yard? I guess the hay bale target can live next to the chicken tractor and the DIY aerial silks rig.

The Prismacolor Completist

Yes, this is crazy:

We really, REALLY like Prismacolor colored pencils and markers. Even though the girls and I, at least, aren't the professional artists that they're marketed to, we quickly stole for ourselves and rarely let Matt use the complete sets of each that we bought for him several holidays ago.

Well, they *used* to be complete sets...

The girls are reasonably careful about where they use our really quality art supplies, but they do get taken outside, they do get dropped, they do get forgotten mid-project and abandoned with caps left off markers, etc., and so our supplies have dwindled. Since we're going to be putting a special emphasis on art instruction this semester, however, and since Drawing With Children emphasizes quality art materials, I downloaded coloring pages of the complete sets of the Prismacolor markers and colored pencils, and then went through our stock, testing all the markers, sharpening all the colored pencils, recording each one on its page, and then re-purchasing the missing, too-short, or dried-out ones.

We've already got a great set of chalk pastels, we love our Crayola and Stockmar crayons, I need to re-stock the acrylic paints but Drawing with Children doesn't use them so it's not an emergency, and we've got plenty of cardstock and drawing paper and watercolor paper and Bristol board and newsprint.

I think we're all set!

Hamster Study

The section of the girls' animal biology portfolio inspired by hamsters (this sweet Russian dwarf hamster, in particular) has been more challenging to put together than, say, our sections on butterflies or frogs or horses. I'd assumed that since hamsters are fairly popular classroom pets there would be tons of children's material about them, but nay. There's a lot online for university students who use hamsters in science experiments (shudder), and several hobby sites, so the girls and I have done a lot of... cobbling.

For the order of classification, we always go to Wikipedia, which has each animal's complete order of classification, hyper-linked, in a sidebar at the top right of the entry. The girls and I always follow each link and discuss it all the way down--it's a terrific way, I think, to internalize the way that the order narrows down at each level so that you start, each time, with a group that includes every animal in the world and end, each time, with a group that includes only your exact one animal (unless you're interested in breeds, of course, which we discuss more with cats and chickens).

The realistic drawing of each animal is easy, too, since the girls' portfolio only includes animals that they have direct physical access to and have cared for at some point this summer:

feeding China a pea pod to lure her over

On a drawing-related tangent: We've got everything we need (thanks to a friend who regularly stalks our public library's book-sale space and scored me a copy of the book!) to start Drawing With Children! Perhaps next week?

For each girl's report on the hamster, I gave them access to the following resources:



In addition, the kids really liked these fun books as pleasure reading:



Since we didn't have China long enough to create a maze or toys for her (via my poor, dis-used hamster pinboard!), the girls' creative project for the hamster will probably be either a book report of one of these fiction books or a story of their own.

For anatomy, I combined the hamster anatomy printable from Enchanted Learning with a far better hamster drawing found on Google Images--the girls colored the better drawing, then copied the labels from the Enchanted Learning printable, then identified those parts on their real hamster. None of the anatomy is obtuse, and there's nothing to memorize (unlike with horses--geez!), but the girls had a lot of fun and said a lot of things like, "Awww, look at her teeny wittle earies!"

We didn't watch any hamster birthing videos (oh, those horse foaling videos!), and the hamster life cycle business, in general, is less involved than the creatures we studied who undergo metamorphosis, so for their hamster life cycle study, I printed all the photos of a baby hamster's day-to-day development from this hamster forum, then asked the girls to paste them to a poster and label them--it will take some creative folding to get that into their portfolios!

The girls SUPER want a hamster of their own, now, but I don't know--a hamster's lifespan is so short, and I really don't want to deal with a dead hamster two years from now.

But our animal shelter does often have pet rats... I wonder how long they live?

Aerial Silks, at School and Home

The kids who've been doing this in class this summer--

--have been doing this all summer at home:

Some of it is actual "practice" for silks class, I suppose--

--but it turns out there are lots of creative ways to channel that new confidence:

Not only are the girls growing stronger and, in Sydney's case, working through some of her perfectionism (She didn't even throw a fit after her last class!), but they've also really been inspired to experiment with the physics of bodies and fabric. That DIY swing was probably inspired by the silks, and I've grown accustomed to bringing along that one six-foot-long play silk every time we go to the park. The kids have found all-new things to tie that silk to--I've seen them thread it through the zip line and then knot it into a seat, mount it to the monkey bars and use it to swing from one end to the other, hold it at the top of the slide so that the other kid can use it to climb up, hand-over-hand, and put it to countless other very useful uses.

This one play silk is getting so much use that I've bought a few 12-foot-long play silks to dye and add to their collection--I can't wait to see what they do with all that extra length! If they stay interested in aerial silks, perhaps an entire DIY aerial silks rig is warranted...

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Soap! (and a Giveaway of Soap!)

a write-up of the hand-crafted soaps of Soaps to Live by

and a giveaway!

Hop over right now and enter that giveaway, because I want you to have some nice soap as a present.

Kid-Made Tree Swing

Apparently, all you need is--what is that? Two yards?--of fabric (fortunately, it was a piece that was given to me and that I don't especially care for, but that was just happy chance) and a willing mulberry tree that has two branches at just the right distance and angle. These appear to be the factors that the kids used when making this, their now most beloved tree swing:

The first that I knew of this creation was hearing the ungodly scraping of branches against my study window, running over to check what the hell the kids were doing to the house this time, and seeing Will happily swinging here while Syd was telling her a story of what sounded like what adventures might ensue if the chickens escaped.

The girls have been going through a phase of experimenting with tying their play silks to any and everything and hanging and swinging off of them (thank goodness for sturdy silk!), so I wasn't *too* surprised to see this latest invention. I've recently finished up dying them several new long rainbow play silks (I did a terrible job on the color transitions, and they look horrible, but fortunately my kids are easy to please--in THAT area, at least), so I'm eager to see what new wonders of engineering they'll come up with.

Fossil Walk

Fossils are a big thing here in Indiana. Because we used to be an inland sea, basically our entire subsurface is bedrock that used to be ancient sea floor. You're probably not going to dig that far down in your yard, but any big roadwork around here tends to have a few fossil hunters sneaking around after hours, and nearly all the creek beds flow against that bedrock, so they're always fair game for finding fossils.

A couple of weeks ago we went on a guided hike through our Parks and Rec Department to a creek bed that isn't usually accessible to the public, all for fossil hunting:

We know pretty much all the common fossils to be found here, but it was nice to have our own tour guide there to help us identify the fiddly bits ("That's mud," he told Matt, who had just presented him with what he considered to be the Great Fossil Find of the Century). He also identified a salamander that we all thought was a snake, which is his fault since he'd just given us a lecture on the Dangerous Snakes of Indiana, although he did reassure us that nobody on one of his walks had ever been bitten by one (sitting on the ground and confronted by something slithery, I called out to him, "Hey, look at me! I'm about to become your first person to be bitten by a Dangerous Snake of Indiana!").

We were each allowed to choose two of our fossils to keep. I swear that Matt took his mud; I took two excellent examples of ancient sea floor:

See all the embedded fossils in those two sea floor fragments? And I didn't even notice that crinoid to the right!

 Will, who is a really great fossil hunter and has been since she was a toddler, took home a large segmented crinoid and a partial horn corral, the best that we've found in Indiana to date (we found better ones at Penn Dixie, but that's in New York). Sydney found loads of little crinoid segments (forgive me when I tell you that they are commonly called "Indian beads"... sigh), and then, with the clock ticking down, drove herself to near mania attempting to choose just two of these to take home. She solicited many opinions--

--narrowed the selection down some, got frustrated and nearly tossed the entire lot into the creek, declared that she was just going to steal them all, simply sat and contemplated them with grief in her heart--

--and then, thank the lord, finally chose two at random and had done with it.

Another benefit of the guided tour was learning some other great locations to search--roadcuts, railroad beds, side-of-the-highway embankments--the locations of which are mainly spread by word of mouth. If we can decipher the townie-style directions (off-road parking instructions, where to climb from there, etc.), hopefully we'll be taking some weekend day trips to visit a few of these places.

I hear they may have trilobytes!

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Mason Jars!

a felted wool sweater Mason jar cozy

and a review of Mason Jar Crafts, including this Mason jar lid photo frame

I've got it on my to-do list to make multiples of both of these items this week--the felted wool Mason jar cozies to put aside as Christmas gifts, and the Mason jar lid photo frames to put up in multiples on one wall in the hallway. 

And, quite unusually for me, I may actually get these projects done! I have been QUITE productive this week, sponsored in part by both children's absence at day camp every afternoon. The camp ran through the start date of our local public school system, which meant that we couldn't have our "Not the First Day of School" party this year (doughnuts and a movie), but since the girls happened to be outside skateboarding and biking in the street as the school bus drove by, I consider it a first day of school success, regardless.

Summer 2013: Android Version

So I may only dump the photos off of my phone when I need the space for audiobooks from the digital public library and biology lectures from my MIT Open Course class, but whenever I do, I'm always so interested to see what I wanted to photograph when I didn't have my DSLR around. Contrary to the mommy blogger work ethic, I don't often drag my camera with me these days, so my phone photos capture completely different memories of our summer:

And now I'm curious to dump the photos off of the ipad and see what ELSE we did this summer!

Sydney Won't Dive

After asking to take this diving class, and asking over and over when it would begin, and jumping up and down and squealing with excitement when she was FINALLY told that it would begin tomorrow, and being completely ready to go, towel in hand, hours in advance...

The poor diving teacher couldn't get Sydney to jump off that diving board for nothing.

Well, to be fair, Syd dove the first day of class. She dove--a little more reluctantly, but she dove--the second day of class.

Third and fourth day of class, though? No deal.

My part in the process was to sit in a chaise longue and bury my head in a book, giving off an air of "I'm not watching you! I attach no judgment nor value to your performance or lack thereof! Don't you dare go to therapy in 20 years and tell your counselor that I forced you to jump off huge diving boards at age 7!", while sneaking peeks at her out of the corner of my eye, and noting uncomfortably how long the poor teacher spent with her each turn (I clocked two minutes, one time) while four other damp children shivered in line behind her, waiting their own turns that would take all of 15 seconds each.

If I was the kind of mother I'd like to be, I would have asked her, before that third class, and perhaps halfway through it, and then again after it, if she wanted to keep taking diving, or if she was all done. She might have said she wanted out, she might have said she wanted to stay in. Who knows? Not me, because I didn't ask her. I didn't want her to quit. I wanted her to keep taking the class that I'd paid for, and I wanted her to participate, and I wanted her to obey her teacher and concentrate and do her best.

I wanted her to be a good girl.

But the thing is, I don't want her to be a good girl. I want her to feel free to change her mind if she makes a decision she regrets. I want her to do or not do uncomfortable things because they're her own choices, not because she's obeying someone else. I don't want her to feel like she has to be the most attentive, most diligent, most talented person in the class, in every single class she ever takes.

I might have stopped talking about her and started talking about myself as a kid there.

Now, how to combine these skills that I want my daughter to have with the skills of work ethic, good sportsmanship, and, yes, attentiveness and diligence that I also want her to have, I do not know. Does every parent stress this much about swimming lessons?

Kid-Made Rainbow Waffles

Waffles, oatmeal, boxed macaroni and cheese, biscuits from scratch, and coffee mug eggs comprise much of what the kiddos cook independently. Occasionally, they'll be inspired to cook something more elaborate, but in the one to two meals that we all make for ourselves every day, these, combined with such uncooked fare as sandwiches, fruit, yogurt, and cold cereal, are what they eat.

Every week, I try to make a quadruple batch of waffle batter, a double batch of pizza dough, a giant bowl of pasta salad, a pan of whole grain muffins, a Mason jar full of marinated tofu, a crock pot's worth of beans, and whatever else I think might help the week out. Often it's refrigerator pickles, these days. Oven-dried tomatoes. Kale chips.

Most of the other food is eaten throughout the week, and it does help make the days easier, but that quadruple batch of waffle batter? Man, it's gone in two days! And not by me or Matt, either--those kids will plug in the two waffle irons, and then just stand in the kitchen, making and eating waffles. For hours. For real.

Last week, combined with a clearly insane desire to spend even MORE time in the kitchen, I divided the quadruple batch into thirds and dyed it in the primary colors. We've made rainbow waffles before, of course, as a one-time treat, but I've never just made it and stored it that way.

Would it make kid-made waffles even MORE nommy and fun? You BET it would!

I put some of the batter into big jars that the kids could spoon into their measuring cup.

I put the rest of the batter into squeezie bottles.

The kiddos REALLY liked using the squeeze bottles to make waffles funnel-cake style.

I've been trying, lately, to think of more foods that the girls could cook independently, and ideally foods that would work as dinners, because not having to cook dinner all the time would be AMAZING. The kids have made dinner before, so I know they can do it, but I feel like they need some more meals under their belt before it becomes a regular thing--I can only eat so many waffles and coffee mug eggs, you know?

Here are the ideas I've got so far:

• grilled cheese sandwiches
• hamburger soup
• rice and veggies in the rice cooker
• spaghetti

Any other ideas? To make it more complicated, they're both still too short-armed and timid to really use the oven independently, and when I say I want them to make dinner independently, I MEAN it, as in they're in the kitchen cooking dinner, and I'm over across the room not cooking dinner, so we're talking kid-friendly stovetop, crock pot, microwave, and rice cooker meals here.

Fine, I'll let them use the blender, too, so now we're up to waffles and coffee mug eggs AND smoothies every week.

Adventures in Letterboxing

I understand that geocaching is the big thing now, but my kiddos and I are pretty old-school.

We like letterboxing.

It's like searching for pirate's treasure, this following of clues to find the letterbox cache. And it's really kid-friendly! The girls each have their own hand-carved stamp--

Willow's stamp

Syd's stamp

 --and once I get them to the correct starting location, they can follow all the clues independently.

Of course, since letterboxing is old and somewhat out of style by now, not all the letterboxes are current. The girls were REALLY disappointed, for instance, when the letterbox for The Bridge behind the Child simply wasn't there anymore, and they kept coming back to the spot over and over, searching again and again just in case they'd missed it the last time. Fortunately, all our local letterboxes are in pretty great spots, and often in places where we've never been before, so even though they didn't get to find a letterbox here, they did get to stalk deer--

This is Willow, stalking a deer.

--and do some creek stomping--

--and play on a playground:

It's even more exciting, though, when the letterbox pans out, and after following all the clues and a bit of searching--

--you find one!

You have to carry your own ink pad for the stamps, and a pen or pencil to write the date and a short message in the logbook:

The girls stamp the letterbox's stamp into their nature journals, and add a few sentences about the adventure while I look through the logbook and check out everyone else's stamps--

the founder of this letterbox

--and then we sneakily hide the letterbox again in the same spot, and surreptitiously make our way back to the well-trodden path.

I considered letterboxing on our recent road trip, but a friend who also tends to take long road trips said that she and her kids used to geocache on their trips, and it turned into a huge time suck for them--they'd think they were stopping for fifteen minutes to check out a quick geocache, but then that would turn into forty minutes, and then there'd be another cool-looking geocache just right near by that they might as well check out since they were in the area, and all of a sudden that fifteen-minute break to stretch their legs while finding a geocache had turned into half the day, and there was no way they were making it to their camping site that night.

That sounds SO like something that I would do, especially considering that one of our fifteen-minute local letterboxes can easily take half the day, what with climbing trees, following interesting-looking ants, playing on a strange playground, eating a snack on the grass, drawing dragons in the nature journals, grubbing in the dirt, etc.

That's a productive day for a couple of homeschooling kids, but a letterboxing road trip is probably out of the question.

For now...