Keeps the Dragons out

Syd spent most of the other day building and playing with her Kapla blocks and a few of her small plastic animals:

I know that for us, it's partly because our house is so small, but does it ever seem as if your children always choose to build their large, all-day-play creations smack in the middle of the main thoroughfare of the house?

Anyway, I spent most of that day walking around and stepping over this giant thing as Syd played, and it wasn't until she'd gone to bed that night (after negotiating its survival for at least another day) that I really stopped and noticed it:

So there's a corral of horses, with a couple of stables inside, and it looks as if the kids have hot glued some stash Scrabble letters to one of the Kapla blocks over the corral's gate to give the corral a name: Crosswood. One of Will's dragons is parked just outside the gate, trying to get in--

--but all of the horses are safe in their enclosures, with LEGO people to guard them.

Here's how we hand-dyed some of those Kapla blocks. I think that I should dye more sometime, and I think that I should keep an eye on the sales to beef up our Kapla collection.

Maybe the horses would like to have TWO corrals to choose from, you know.

Work Plans for the Week of January 13, 2014: So Much Science!

MONDAY: Our homeschool Science Fair is in three weeks, so it is time to get cracking! Ideally, I'd like the kids to get most of their research done this week (hence all the research and reports on the work plans), and their big project done next week, leaving that last week for them to have plenty of time to finish up their work and prepare their oral presentation and display board.

So science will be a big part of three days this week--fortunately, our other work for today is fairly cut-and-dry. The kids LOVED Roll 'n Multiply (and don't tell them, but I *may* let them play it for their multiplication table memory work this week, instead of the plain old tedious study that I made them do last week), Will once again balked at learning one more new line in "It's Raining, It's Pouring" but found it simple to do once she focused (when she begins to have the self-awareness to realize this pattern and cease it, I swear I will buy her a present!), and we are all eagerly anticipating heading back to our weekly volunteer gig in an hour or so, after our long holiday hiatus (as was exclaimed over breakfast this morning, "We haven't been to the Hub since LAST YEAR!!!).

TUESDAY: For their Science Fair project, the kids need to research paleontology, the skeletal system, and chicken anatomy, so on this day they're going to use our human skeleton model kit to create a plaster of Paris model of the human skeleton, glue it to a cardboard base, then use paint or embroidery thread--we'll see what they prefer--to key its bones to the identical bones on a diagram of a chicken skeleton. Both humans and chickens have mandibles, and femurs, and clavicles, etc.

That big project, plus a continuation of the work for the Girl Scout World Thinking Day badge (Will still needs to research another country's educational system, Syd still needs to watch a couple of international Sesame Street episodes and compare them to the US version, and they both need to begin their big service project), should intersperse nicely with the book work that they've got for math, grammar, and logic, leading to a pretty nice, if full, school day.

WEDNESDAY: Finally, we're horseback riding again! The kids are so excited to get back on their horses. I'm sure Cody and Lola have missed them terribly, too!

THURSDAY: We're going to move ahead to the next chapter of The Story of the World next week (mental note to ME to request library books and get the prep work done for that!), so we're working on the last two mummy and pyramids projects that I wanted us to complete first. For this day, there are SO many great interactive games about Ancient Egypt online, and the kids are going to think it's a real treat to get to explore them all for school. On the next day, they're going to transform Mason jars into canopic jars--I'm really eager to see how that project turns out!

Last week, Will loved using Scratch to play Spacewar, and spent more time goofing around on Scratch afterwards, even finding some games based on some of her favorite books (she's a big fangirl over the Warriors series, just so you know). She mentioned that she might like to try programming something of her own, but then never got around to it, so I put it on her schoolwork as encouragement. Syd also had a blast planning her fashion show design last week, and claims that she's going to sew it completely by herself this year (YES!!!), so I may have her sew a muslin of a shirt pattern that I think will be easy enough for her to use. Of course, I thought I had a pants pattern that was easy enough for her to use, but I sewed the muslin for her myself, and she didn't care for the style, so it's back to research for me! Maybe if she has to sew her own muslins she won't be so picky...

As a side note, Syd plans to use the following types of fabric for her garment:

• orange jersey knit--We're talking orange T-shirts here, or orange graphics on T-shirts, or even orange notions to embellish the garment.
• green formal fabric with sequins--Wish me major luck here, because who on earth would have a formal gown made out of green sequined fabric?!?
• green bottomweight--I'm tacking this one on myself, because I plan to STRONGLY encourage Syd to piece the inner thigh portion of the green sequined pants that she's planning on making with a regular green bottomweight fabric. I mean, walking the runway with sequins between your thighs--can you imagine?

So if you have any orange T-shirts, green curtains, or green sequined prom gowns that you're dying to get rid of, send them over to our house! 

FRIDAY: This may end up being more work than we can do on this day--I'm still playing with how to incorporate the kids' math class into their schedule--but if everyone can get focused, we *should* be able to create lapbooks based on G is for Golden: A California Alphabet (I LOVE the Discover America State-by-State series, as well as the lesson plans that go with the books), sculpt canopic jars, make some progress on the World Thinking Day badges, and write a report on chickens, chicken anatomy, and the life cycle of the chicken. I'm curious to see how these reports go, actually--I'm going to ask the kiddos to collaborate on each of their reports this week, instead of writing two separate reports. Will they realize that this makes the project much quicker and easier to complete, or will they fight the whole time and make it take ten times longer?

We'll see!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY/MONDAY: Here's to another holiday, another long weekend, and another short work week to come! I'm pretty excited that we have NOTHING scheduled for Saturday or Sunday; I hope the weather will allow us to take a long hike or go mountain biking. On Monday, I'll be doing our regular volunteer gig by myself while Matt takes the girls and some friends to a different volunteer gig with the Girl Scouts.

Also in the plans: yeah, they'll probably be boiling down a whole chicken carcass, bleaching the bones, and then beginning to re-articulate the skeleton.

Yay, science!

Draw Me a Bird

That's a really oblique reference to Let Petit Prince, so don't worry about it.

I mean, to even understand the reference properly, you'd have to be in my head, imagining the voice that I use for the prince when he asks the narrator to draw him a sheep. I can't do that voice out loud, because I'm not a little French boy/space alien, so... yeah.

Also, we didn't even draw sheep, we drew birds, so it's an impossible reference, written only to amuse me, and maybe Matt, for whom I WILL attempt the voice, and he won't even get it, either, and he's my husband and used to the random phrases from books and movies that I pretend are references that another person should get.

Anyway. Birds!

In this lesson of Drawing With Children, the author talks us through drawing a bird on a limb. I'm supposed to read the instructions out loud while modeling them with my own drawing, and the kiddos follow along.

The activity went... okay, but on the fly I made some modifications that made it, and hopefully the future activities from the book, go much better. For instance, Will's first bird drawing was pretty miserable for her to both produce and look at. I couldn't figure out if she was doing the worst possible job on purpose, because sometimes if you ask her to do something that she doesn't want to do she WILL do the worst possible job on purpose to prove a point, or if she was genuinely struggling with the oral directions, because as Matt often reminds me, Will's a very visual learner. So I asked her to draw the bird again, but this time had her read the instructions for herself:

Much happier kid. More more satisfying drawing (see her first attempt there at her elbow?). For future lessons, I'll photocopy the directions and she may read them herself as she follows along with me.

Syd has her own struggles. Although Drawing with Children is adamant that we do not start over and we do not erase (that's why we have to use pens), I did permit Syd to start over as many times as she liked AFTER we'd done the entire drawing properly together one time:

I'm still making them both use Sharpie, however, because I think Syd would be even more of a perfectionist with that thin, erasable pencil line that shows every bump and bobble. Because the Sharpie is that much thicker, I think it plays off a few unsteady strokes or slightly messed up bits that she'd be tempted to fuss about otherwise. In a few more lessons, when they're ready for more precise strokes, I might graduate them to the much thinner black Flair pens.

Thanks to Drawing with Children, I always remind the children now, when they begin an artwork, that it's the details that make a picture "more." I usually reference a famous piece and we discuss the work, the time, and the thought that must have gone into that piece, and how that makes the piece different--not better, but definitely "more"--than a quick sketch.

[Tangent: The last time we discussed this--yesterday, in fact, as the kiddos were beginning to work on creating sarcophagus art--Will asked, "Well, what if a painter put a bunch of work and time and thought into making a painting, and he put a bunch of details in, but it was all black, and it just looked like black paint?"

And I said, "Ooh, well if that painter did put a bunch of work and time and thought into doing that, then of COURSE it could hang in a museum and be art, even if it was just black paint! It would be a fascinating statement about the artistic process!" And then we talked about modern art.

Also, I really hope that Will creates that black painting one day.]

As well as the Drawing with Children advice, though, I also always reference the Waldorf concept of "closing the windows"--of course, we're not bathing every inch of our paper in wet-on-wet watercolor here, but I find the idea of covering your surface with your art helpful for them to think about as they work.

Also helpful, I believe, is that fact that their end results are ALWAYS worth of display on the wall:

Next week, art will consist of something from one of the Draw Write Now books, which I think work GREAT with Drawing with Children, and I'm also realizing that I really should get us back into the regular trips to art museums that we used to be in the habit of.

And y'all, I don't want to brag on myself too much, but I think that my own drawing skills are improving tolerably, as well!

Homeschooling Social Studies and Creative Writing through Girl Scouts: A School Day Storyboard Project for World Thinking Day

The kids have both been working very hard on their World Thinking Day badges, and although our excellent-at-the-time discussion of how children perceive their educations, particularly in places where academics are a privilege, not a right, has not stopped them from fussing about math or whining about having to figure out how to spell their names in hieroglyphics, as I'd unaccountably hoped it would (sigh), they've never-the-less been working happily and enthusiastically on projects that would make them gripe if I asked them to complete, but that fill them with excitement and inspiration since it's in pursuit of that badge.

And that's how the younger kid spent the other day practicing storytelling and sequencing, composition and handwriting, design and decoration, etc., while creating a storyboard illustrating a typical school day for her. The day before the "typical day," she looked at our work plans for the next day and wrote a list of the photos that she wanted to take--her feeding the chickens, completing her math worksheet, practicing the keyboard, and so on:

The next day, every time she started a new subject, she gave someone her instant camera, told us what to shoot, and then "posed" herself, which was pretty hilarious since, although I do sometimes ask them to hold up something they've done and show me so that I can take a photo, I have never posed my kids to take a photo. But the kid, for each photo, was intent on doing something very specific, like holding up her test tube of litmus solution that she'd just made in a way that made it look like she was shaking it, looking at it curiously, and then freezing so I could get the shot, or holding her multiplication tables up very high as she "studied" them:

The school day starts early around here. Some people are even in their bathrobes!

The big benefit to using the instant camera is that she got her photos immediately without fuss, and she could keep them organized throughout the day, as well as handle them, study them, and thus come up with more ideas about refining her project.

At the end of the day, she created her storyboard by labeling the photos, gluing them in order to a large piece of Bristol board, then decorating it:

Obviously, it now has pride of place on the wall:

As I watched my younger kid complete this project, I was fascinated, shocked, and disappointed at what *I* learned from it, namely that she has a very strict definition of what comprises her "school" day. One of the reasons why I thought this storyboard project would be so fun, and why I encouraged her to choose it, is that I imagined the photos that we could take of the kid making waffles for breakfast in her pajamas, meeting a friend at the park for an impromptu midday sledding date, playing ponies with her sister, designing a pillow for the cats out of fabric scraps and then sewing it, going swimming at the Y, going to math class, ice skating--all the things, in other words, that she actually DOES on typical school days. It's not all "school" stuff, sure, but it's all made possible by the fact that we homeschool.

And yet the kid did not see it that way! She was adamant that she should only photograph and include the actual school stuff--math worksheets, science experiment, spelling practice, etc. For some reason, she also wanted to include her chores, but refused to include anything outside the housework and formal academics that I think comprise the least amount of her day. I think this makes her school day actually look kind of dire, always at that table or put to work:

I find this so interesting, because I have so many conversations with the kids (mostly the older one) about their attitudes to schoolwork, how I'm not sitting right next to them for an hour talking them through word problems because I'm mean, or asking them to memorize fifty spelling words because I want them to be unhappy. 

Perhaps I should also be having conversations that sound more like, "Yes, you two can run over to the park for an hour at 1:00 pm on a Tuesday just to stomp around on the frozen creek, come home frozen yourselves, take an hour-long hot bath, then work on those spelling words with a mug of hot chocolate at your elbow because we homeschool," or "You know, you were able to spend the morning outside reading in the chicken yard with a chicken on your lap because we homeschool," or "We only have the free time to allow you to enroll in horseback riding and aerial silks and ice skating class and nature class and chess club and Girl Scouts because we homeschool." 

I don't know if I've ever really pointed out to them how much of our whole lifestyle revolves around the fact that we homeschool, how we could only go on that November road trip to see wild ponies and Washington, D.C. because we homeschool, how all those spring afternoons spent at the park with their friends are actually homeschool playgroups that take place while their schooled friends are at school, how the fact that they've never been woken up in the morning in their lives (do they even know that other kids get woken up in the morning?) has only been possible because we homeschool.

So much education for EVERYONE is going into this Girl Scout badge!

Homeschool Math: Pascal's Triangle for Addition Review

Will's Math Mammoth text asked her to complete a Pascal's Triangle the other day--

--and the Pascal's Triangle has since become one of my favorite mathematics concepts. First of all, it's just a great addition review or test for kids who've mastered addition with carrying and/or mental addition, since building the triangle requires lots of great addition. You start with a 1 at the top of the triangle; to build the triangle downwards, add the two numbers in the two boxes above to arrive at the sum in the box below; if there is no second box above (as with the sides of the triangle), then that spot counts as 0. That's how the sides of the triangle build as the same number as the top box--they're all that number + 0.

Because you can put any number at the top, the Pascal's Triangle is a good enrichment activity to use when learning the multiplication table (see the 2x table hiding down there in that triangle?)--

--but we'll be able to keep revisiting just that simple Pascal's Triangle with the 1 at the top as the girls move into more advanced math, since there are a lot of interesting patterns and calculations hidden in there. But even with just the math that the kiddos know now, there are some really cool math games to play, based on this triangle:

• Quincux: It's a probability engine, with the pegs set up in the same triangular formation as Pascal's triangle. It's also PLINKO, which Will and I studied for her History of Video Games unit study.
• Worksheets: You don't have to build your own Pascal's Triangle boxes!
• Pascal's Triangle on Scratch: The kiddos haven't shown a ton of interest in making their own programs on Scratch (yet), but I love searching it for other users' programs related to ideas that we're studying. There's actually an entire studio on Scratch dedicated to Pascal's Triangle!
• 3D Pascal's Triangle: This LEGO model illustrates the multiplication table, but could just as easily (with the addition of many more LEGOs, of course...) build Pascal's Triangle.

Hmmm... that 3D LEGO model may actually happen next week. Stay tuned!

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Chocolate and Flowers

the Make Your own Chocolate Kit giveaway announcement that also includes a bunch of candy recipes

AND a round-up of DIY flower ideas--great for wedding bouquets, yes, but those button flowers are just fun anytime

All these snow days have been giving me more time (and impetus, since I don't really want Matt to have to take his life in his hands just to go out and get me a burrito) to do all the cooking and baking that I ought to be doing every day. Here's what I've been making:

• I make a double-batch of pumpkin sauce for nachos and pasta pretty much every week when we're NOT snowed in.
• Same with vegan chocolate pumpkin muffins.
• The kids liked making (and eating!) these shredded wheat haystacks, but I didn't think they tasted worth all the chocolate that went into them, so we won't be making them again.
• I make a double-batch of this tofu salad just for me, so that I have something non-crappy to eat for lunch.
• Beans. Nom. And beans. Nom.
• Everyone raved about this hash brown casserole, and I was all, like, "Yeah, that's because it's got a quarter-cup of oil and two cups of cheese in it!"
• Sausage, potato, and cabbage steam pot with the cabbage left over after making red cabbage pH indicator. Is there a way to keep people from sneaking extra sausage and not taking their fair share of cabbage?
• I've made bread machine raisin bread several times without incident, but this time I woke up to a baked, floury, rocky, unrisen mess in the bread machine. The kitchen was too cold for the dough to rise, perhaps?
• The most decadent hot chocolate EVER. Gotta keep our strength up, right?
• I used up the rest of the milk making this crock pot rice pudding, but I think it curdled--gross! And now we're out of milk.
• This no-knead pizza dough is in the refrigerator right now, ready for DIY Pizza Night after aerial silks.
• Refrigerator oatmeal in Mason jars. And overnight steel-cut oatmeal in Mason jars (Mason jars allow me to put blueberries in three, peanut butter in two, raisins in one, and half the sugar in one):

Since I've already got dinner planned, I can do a little baking and meal prep today (which helps SO much for other days). Perhaps we'll try that raisin bread again. I could use another couple of Mason jars of low-sugar, peanut butter and raisin overnight oatmeal. And there are a couple of manky bananas just hanging out on the counter... banana bread muffins, maybe?

Boiling Water Freezes Faster Than Cold Water...

... at least when it's -10 degrees outside!

We boiled a giant stock pot full of water, then convinced Matt to toss it into the air for us. This is what happened:


That big cloud isn't steam--it's snow! Or rather weensy little ice crystals, same difference. Because the boiling water wants to be steam, when you toss it into the air it breaks apart into droplets so tiny that they freeze instantly and then waft in the air around you like a cloud.

I didn't take photos because my fingers were already numb, but I also blew bubbles for the girls. I had to stand in the open doorway of our house to do this; otherwise the bubble solution would freeze on the wand as I was bringing it to my mouth. But if I blew the bubbles while standing somewhere warmer, towards the outdoors, then they'd float for a few seconds, hit the freezing air, then drop like rocks as they froze themselves. The girls could actually find and pick up the plastic-looking, popped bubble membranes.

It's a smidge warmer today--seven degrees, instead of -10, but I must leave you now, since Syd just walked past the window next to where I'm working, allowing me to see that she's hat-less. It probably takes a total of two minutes longer to get frostbite on your ears at 7 degrees than it does at -10 degrees!

Works Plans for the Week of January 6, 2014: Back in the Game

It's another week when it's easier to be a homeschooler than not--our part of the country is stymied under record, dangerously low temperatures, and our city has basically shut down and ordered everyone to stay home and snuggle up. Public schools are out--and will be out tomorrow, too--but it's probably not so much a novelty for those kiddos coming on the back of their two-week break, and I think they're going to have to make these days up at the end of the year, anyway--yuck (Ooh, I just discovered that Indiana schools are NOT going to make up this snow day, but it will result in them not meeting their flat-out minimum 180 days of instruction this year. Interesting...)! For us, though, it's business as usual (minus our volunteer gig and aerial silks class, both having been cancelled), and the children, having had enough of vacation and staycation in the past two weeks, are happy to get back in the game.

MONDAY: I knew ahead of time that our outside activities would be cancelled today, so I snuck in an extra subject--and the kids didn't notice, whee! Our pattern blocks activity today was focused on square numbers, which ties nicely in to our current memory work of memorizing the multiplication table (Will's late to this, which doesn't bug me, and Syd's early to it... which also doesn't bug me!). In Latin, we're onto animal names, which the kids are finding super easy to memorize--a refreshing change from the struggle to keep those darned tricky words in their heads! I found some good Youtube piano lessons that are making Syd's keyboard time much easier; Will threw a fit over having to practice her recorder piece until she actually got it right, but then was stoked at having gotten it right, so there you go.

Our big project this week has to do with the kiddos' first Girl Scouts badge! We are just at the beginning of this journey, I know, but already we are all so excited about all the opportunities that come with being a Girl Scout. I registered the kids as Juliettes, which means that we can work independently and with our friends who are also Girl Scout Juliettes, but they can still attend all the TONS of Girl Scout activities and workshops and camps and classes in our area. The badge activities are excellent, too--I like that there are choices, and that they're all so cross-curricular, and the kids like that they're all so hands-on and varied.

The first badge that we're working on is the one for World Thinking Day, which is coming up next month. I love this one, as it's focused on the issue of childhood education and access to it. We've already had some great conversations about education as a right and responsibility versus education as a privilege, and how that affects children's attitudes about their education (Ahem!!!). Among other activities, both girls will be comparing girls' educations in other countries (namely India and in Africa) to their own education, and planning and executing the creation of a children's literacy corner in the local food pantry where we volunteer. For this latter project, they'll need to write to the volunteer coordinator and ask permission, design the spot to fit into the cramped area already set aside for children there, source and obtain all the supplies, set it up, and maintain it weekly. Today we talked through some of the planning, and then Will watched a video about a little schoolgirl in India and wrote a rough draft of her comparison/contrast list, and Syd created a storyboard for a photo diary that she's going to create about her typical school day.

TUESDAY: I want to start Science Fair prep as soon as possible--can you believe that it's next month?!?--but until our library books are ready for us to pick up (and the library is closed today AND tomorrow, probably, sigh), we can finish up our acids and bases study with a few more of the experiments from the kids' chemistry set. I'm back to scheduling grammar only once a week, leaving time for more projects, and I think that I'll keep the kids with word ladders for logic until after the Spelling Bee--every minute of practice counts!

WEDNESDAY: I still don't know what the weather will be like on this day, frankly, and if we'll even get out to aerial silks. Free days aren't quite as fun when the temperature is so dangerously low that your friends can't even come over for a playdate, and you can't meet them for sledding.

THURSDAY: Surely we'll be able to go ice skating with friends by then... although it is supposed to snow again on Thursday. Otherwise, we'll keep ourselves busy with chemistry experiments and drawing lessons. Will is going to master the first videogame ever, and Syd is going to sketch out some plans for her Trashion/Refashion Show design. I really hope that she designs something that she can sew for herself this year!

FRIDAY: We didn't finish the California facts during our last week of school last year, so we'll finish them now. We'll probably do a few geography-based projects next week--the vacation scrapbooks, California lapbooks, etc. I also need to remember to do the prep work this week so that we can work on some bigger Ancient Egypt projects next week, but especially after we saw those real-live versions at the Rosicrucian Museum, I think the kids will have a lot of fun creating their own model sarcophogi in cardboard.

Over break, we listened to audiobooks of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and saw the play and movie versions of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, AND made chocolate from scratch. I wanted to bring the topic back around to our summer studies of Hershey before we moved on, so I've got a documentary on Hershey for us to watch, and then the kids are going to design their own chocolate factories on large-format drawing paper. I wonder if their factories will be more Wonka-esque or Hershey-esque in nature?

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Nature class, chess club, and lots of playing in the snow and swimming at the Y, is my guess.

The Pom-Pom Snowball Fight (and other Children's Museum Adventures)

Do everyone's Christmas traditions look weird when written down, or just ours? For example:

• over-the-top synchronized-to-music Christmas lights display
• Christmas train ride around the park
• cherry bread, cranberry salad, and deviled eggs
• Santa walking on the roof and scaring the kids half to death
• homemade mix tape of bad Christmas music
• the whitetail deer Christmas sweater

Of course, we do have some normal traditions. We cut down our tree at the tree farm every year (the day after an ice storm this year, and the van got stuck on a patch of ice on the dirt road, and I had to drag all the floormats out to give the wheels some traction). We make gingerbread houses from scratch. We eat too much fudge. And we go see Santa, this year at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, which also may have my newest, most favorite, weirdest Christmas tradition of all traditions:

Yeah, it's a pom-pom snowball fight.

Syd took one look at this snowball fight made of chaos, and popped her reindeer ears of "Do not throw pom-pom snowballs at my head":

Will, however, was holy freakin' cow all OVER this game! She plays to win, too, as I can well attest after having several pom-pom snowballs thrown at my face in the kids vs. parents round:

Seriously, I don't think she looked as happy on Christmas day itself as she did while contentedly throwing pom-pom snowballs at children's heads. 

Syd much preferred the scavenger hunt, although the answer that she gave at the ice fishing station totally bummed her elf handler out:

No matter. They spread the love for animal rights, and they won their elf ears, anyway:

 I don't know if you can tell, but I explicitly instructed Will in the wearing of her elf ears to make her resemble as much as possible a Tolkien-esque woodland elf. In a few years, this kid and I are doing cos-play at Gen Con!

 And later, they were utterly baffled as to why they were earning a big, fat F in catenary arch building:

Don't worry, they eventually figured it out, and only one of them threw a fit.

Later, in the gift shop, I took each girl aside separately and told her that if she picked out a Christmas gift for her sister and sneaked it to me, I would buy it for her to give. I then had the pleasure of watching each kid become very invested in figuring out what the other would like best for Christmas, asking pointed questions like, "Ooh, what lovely stuffed animals! Which do you like best!" and "I just love Hot Wheels, don't you? Which Hot Wheel is YOUR favorite?" Will immediately figured out that I had just as secretly told Syd the same thing that I'd secretly told her, and cracked up at Syd's machinations, but my Syd, who NEVER suspects an agenda, just as happily and innocently answered all of Will's questions about which she liked better, the gold panning kit or the color-by-number book, as if she wasn't asking Will the same types of questions for her own secret purpose.

In the end, Syd chose a hydra-like three-headed dragon for Will (who collects dragons, did you know?), and Will chose for Syd the remote-controlled snake that gives me nightmares.

Just this morning, as I put my feet up at the breakfast table and again insisted to Syd that I did NOT want her to drive the remote-controlled snake into my feet ANYMORE because it CREEPED. ME. OUT!!!, Syd held up the snake and said, "Come on, Momma! It doesn't even look real at all! Real snakes don't have glowing red eyes!"

Yeah, thanks, Will.

Six Months to The Gettysburg Address

This one was a toughie!

Will started memorizing "The Gettysburg Address" in May, lost interest, got re-inspired in June after our trip to Gettysburg and memorized most of it, lost interest again, half-heartedly kept plugging away at it at my insistence, got re-inspired to really work at it so that she could recite it for her extended family at Thanksgiving, recited most of it but skipped a tricky couple of lines since no one would notice (one relative, a high school teacher, I think did notice, but told her that she'd done a wonderful job regardless, of course), tried to call it a day's work since it had been both mostly memorized and publicly performed, nevertheless bullied those last couple of tricky lines into her head as I told her to do, and then finally, FINALLY...

...MEMORIZED IT!

I won't say that she loves it (after working that hard at it for that long, she kind of understandably loathes it), but she does know it, can translate it, understands it, and can contextualize it for you if you ask her nicely.

And you know what? One day she WILL love it again. One day she'll be teaching a history class of her own, or running for office, or, more likely, chatting up a nice someone-or-other in a bar somewhere, and she'll pull some relevant section of "The Gettysburg Address" up out of her memory and use it, thoughtfully. She may or may not include the story of how her mean mother made her first memorize it at the age of nine, but she will definitely, after all that time, smile at the memory.

And if she can also work in how she knows all the presidents in chronological order, so much the better!

P.S. If you haven't yet entered my Make Your own Candy kit giveaway over at Crafting a Green World, do it today! Since holiday weeks make for slow blog traffic, the odds are in your favor!

Red Cabbage pH Indicator

The kids are fascinated with chemistry! We're still studying acids and bases, doing a lot of playing and demonstrating while reinforcing the concepts (mental note: I NEED to figure out a good, buildable molecular modeling system ASAP), and so the other week Syd and I made red cabbage pH indicator for us to play with:

(Don't you just love our manky kitchen? The top of the microwave is the official place to cram all the dish towels, and yes, our countertops are made out of genuine plywood, but not the kind that leaches chemicals into your food. I think...)

Red cabbage pH indicator is the BEST thing to make! It's super easy and super fun to play with, and the vividness of the reactions makes them really satisfying. And unlike a lot of what we've been doing for chemistry so far, we don't know what most of these reactions will be in advance, which makes this an actual experiment, not a demonstration--yay!

So grab a liquid from wherever, pour a little bit into a test tube, add a little red cabbage pH indicator, agitate, and observe. Did the liquid turn a shade of beautiful pink?

You've got an acid!

Did your liquid turn gorgeous blue?

It's a base!

Can you actually not figure out what it's doing?

Yeah, that happens, too.

See, who ever said that organic chem was nothing but a weed-out class, anyway?

The kids had a marvelous time collecting various reactions-- 

--so much so that they *almost* didn't mind me making them write down all their observations, scientific-like.

And when they were thoroughly done playing, we still had over a pint of red cabbage pH indicator left to put in the refrigerator for later play:

Although how we could forget about that when we were dissecting batteries yesterday, I do not know. Bummer!

There are still a few activities that we could do for further study of acids and bases:

• Acids are the electrolytes in batteries--build a penny battery and a lemon battery. 
• The acid+base chemical reaction can carbonate beverages--make carbonated water and chocolate soda.
• Acids can clean metal and dissolve rock. 

We almost need to do a unit on atoms and molecules, though, before really proceeding much further, since I know the kiddos aren't understanding my explanations of hydrogen and hydroxide and why they want to be given up and re-combined, and Will's been getting very interested in the periodic table of elements lately, so it's possible that we'll switch instead from straight chemistry to a unit study on the elements that encompasses chemistry and other scientific and historical concepts...

Isn't science so exciting? 

P.S. If you've know of a good, buildable molecular modeling system, hit me up with it! I *want* the Zometool Molecular Mania Science Kit, since I already have a billion other Zometools, but I'm wondering if I could just spray paint the spheres in the kit that I already have to be the correct colors and score a bootleg copy of the instructions, instead. Or I could use gumdrops and toothpicks, but I'd end up eating the gumdrops. Hmmm...

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Free Chocolate and Disaster Preparedness

a write-up of the Make Your own Chocolate Kit from Glee Gum

a re-post of a colleague's round-up of DIY prepper projects

and a giveaway of your choice of your very own Make Your own Candy Kit from Glee Gum

The giveaway, in particular, is something that I am SUPER excited about. I want you to go over to CAGW right now and enter it, because I really, really, really want you to win, and then I want you to come back and tell me which candy kit you chose and how yummy it was.

Because it's going to be so yummy!

Fire Requires Oxygen

The premise of this demonstration is the knowledge that a chemical reaction of an acid and a base produces carbon dioxide and a salt, so it's a good one to conduct after you've been studying acids and bases for a bit.

You know, make the volcano, mix citric acid and baking soda and then add water, play with litmus paper, make red cabbage pH indicator solution, and THEN light things on fire!

NOTE: I bought some long-handled matches just for the kids, because yep, I let them play with matches.

First, have the kiddos stick a match into an empty test tube, just to prove that putting a match into the test tube won't necessarily cause it to go out.

Next, put a teensy scoop of baking soda in the bottom of a test tube. Punch a hole in a piece of paper, then syringe up a teensy bit of vinegar into an eyedropper and poke the eyedropper through the hole in the paper.

Set the paper on top of the test tube, so that the gasses formed by the chemical reaction won't be able to completely escape, and drop a couple of drops of vinegar into the test tube. You should see the chemical reaction when the acid and base mix.

Light another match, then remove the paper from the test tube but tip it, so that the gasses still can't escape. Just as you did before, stick a match into the empty test tube:

This demonstrates two facts: fire can't exist in all gasses, and the result of the vinegar and baking soda reaction is one of those gasses in which fire can't exist. The textbooks tell us that this particular gas is carbon dioxide--on another day, we can do more playing to try to prove or disprove this claim.

After the kiddos finished writing up and illustrating their demonstration and its results, Will enjoyed trapping the smoke from lit matches in an overturned test tube and observing it--

--and Syd and I later went out onto the driveway so that she could light some small fires while I put branches through the wood chipper:

Frankly, most of our science classes end with starting fires.

And that's okay by me!

One Spoiled Cat

This is the kind of stuff that Syd does to sleepy cats:

On the one hand, Syd is an inveterate cat pesterer, but on the other hand...

Gracie DOES look comfy, doesn't she?