My Latest: A Very Light Bulb Christmas

a round-up of wedding dress crafts

a round-up of light bulb crafts

and a tutorial to make a light bulb Christmas ornament

There will likely be a lot more ornament tutorials coming your way--we went over to the Christmas tree farm down the road yesterday and brought home a lovely pine, but even after decorating it, it's pretty sparse. You're going to think that I'm a monster, but  I often trashed the kids' handmade ornaments at the end of each season--I know, I know, but we really didn't have much storage space in our old house. 

If it makes you feel better, I promise that I'll hoard EVERYTHING from now on.

The 2015 Butterfly Garden

For her Girl Scouts Animal Habitats Junior badge, Will created plans for a butterfly garden:

We are both VERY novice gardeners, and 2015 will be the first year that we've had a real, sun-filled space on our own property to do so. I'm worried about getting too ambitious so that the whole thing looks like crap, and I'm also pretty sure that Will is trying to get us all stoned with her 18 square feet of poppies, but still, it's going to be very exciting to have a property of our own to play with.

Will also wants a koi pond. Syd wants a sunflower house. I may not have time to grow actual vegetables this coming year.

The Two-Paragraph Essay

Will has written several of these for her Minecraft Homeschool class, and they're pretty brilliant. She's a reluctant typer/handwriter (her fine motor skills ARE improving, so I no longer *despair*, exactly, but nevertheless... sigh), but that two-paragraph limit is somehow short enough that she will willingly do the work without complaint.

Two paragraphs are also plenty of space to create some pretty sophisticated compositions. Here's an example from her first week of class:

The instructor generally gives them the topic for each paragraph (for this one, obviously, they were to write facts about their Wonder in the first paragraph, and then explain why they chose that Wonder in the second paragraph), but all of the information, of course, as well as the structure, transitions, and authorial voice, are crafted by the student.

The class also provides its own resources, via a written lesson and links to documentaries on Youtube, and Will has become quite adept at looking back at these references as she writes, rewatching specific scenes from the documentaries and rereading specific paragraphs from the lessons to find the information that she wants. It's not note-taking, but nevertheless, that kind of recall ability is a great research skill to have.

Although these short essays don't require Will to practice introductions and conclusions--there simply isn't enough room--I'm finding that I quite like the way that they're structured, regardless. It gives Will a chance to practice a few very specific research and composition skills, so that when she does write longer essays for me--well, that's a little less that she'll have to work on then!

Work Plans for the Week of November 24, 2014: Visual Organizers and Thanksgiving

We're all excited about the short week ahead of us, and I'm using that enthusiasm as my wedge to pack in a good bit of productive work before our break.

MONDAY: We've got Math Mammoth today (Will's last week of long division; Syd's second-to-last week, I think, in telling time), our usual volunteer gig, and First Language Lessons, but we had to return Song School Spanish to the public library, so we'll have a couple of weeks of hiatus from Spanish before we can get the book back and return to our lessons there.

Will begins another week of Minecraft Homeschool today; her class is six weeks long, and Syd has already informed me that she'd like to take the class when it resumes in January. We only have one Minecraft log-in, so taking turns at the class seems fair.

Our endangered animal study is still going REALLY well! I'm happy to continue it for as long as the children remain interested, because they're doing some great researching and reporting. I've become quite enthusiastic about visual organizers--posters, infographics, timelines, etc.--lately, since they still involve the same research and reference skills, but the kids are happier to produce them.

TUESDAY: The kids are still enjoying their Hoffman Academy keyboard lessons, and I'm still enjoying their independence in completing them. I know that for an instrument to be successful, I really need to get involved, but... baby steps. I'm already handling about all I can handle right this second.

Next week the kids have a brunch with our Girl Scout Co-op, in which they're going to receive the badges they've earned this semester, so I need to sit down soon and look at what they've done, and encourage them to finish up the last bits on their own, but for now we'll continue the First Aid badge work that I'm guiding them through. Mind you, this biography and report on Florence Nightingale is a requirement that I've added to the official badge work, but my additions are designed to turn each badge into more of a unit study, and I think that it gives the activities, overall, more of an impact.

Will has a Robotics Workshop on this night, so she'll be having fun programming LEGO Mindstorms, and Syd has a playdate that overlaps the workshop, so she'll be having fun, too!

WEDNESDAY: Syd pitched a giant fit during last week's spelling test, so I don't think that Matt was even able to establish then which words she knew and which she didn't know, sigh. Perhaps he'll have better luck this week...

We're going to complete a quick Nutcracker unit study this winter, just to help the children put Syd's peformance in it into context. The revised Hoffman book is our current bedtime read-aloud, and this activity, in which we'll watch George Balanchine's version of the ballet and then the kids will create a timeline with that, a coloring book that we own, and a short performance summary as their references, will nail down their understanding of the ballet's events and its "plot."

The kids are still working very hard at aerial silks. Matt and I are working hard behind the scenes to figure out an at-home rig that we can all play on--any advice is welcome!

THURSDAY/FRIDAY/SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Hello, long weekend! We're not traveling for Thanksgiving this year, because next week is just going to be incredibly busy and stressful. Instead, we're going to focus on relaxing our hearts out this long holiday weekend. On Thanksgiving, each person is going to prepare two favorite dishes for our feast--almost all sweets so far, but oh, well. Life is tough. On Friday, I imagine that we will do some shopping, because there are things that we need and if Black Friday can bring them to us at a discount, then so be it. Friday night is a huge celebration downtown. Saturday is aerial silks rehearsal. Sunday is a children's show at the public library.

And then Monday through Sunday is hours and hours and hours of Nutcracker. Performance hair. Tech week. Dress rehearsals. And five shows in four days. But we're not going to think about that on this long holiday weekend, are we?

My Latest: Light Bulbs and Origami

a write-up of the Fold the Flock origami project

including just a little of the antics of these ridiculous chickens. Here's what else happened backstage:

the chickens approach

they investigate

they give me a look that I cannot interpret 

they destroy!!!

destroy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!

Who knew that the domestic chicken is the mortal enemy of the passenger pigeon?

a round-up of other easy origami projects

and a tutorial for hollowing out an incandescent light bulb

I have been doing this a TON since we moved here, and setting the bulbs aside, because I know that at some point (very soon, actually--incandescent light bulbs do NOT last long!), we'll have finished replacing all the bulbs in the house with LEDs, and then I may never see an incandescent light bulb again.

The children have been enjoying these bulbs, as well. We actually have a light bulb Christmas ornament craft that will be posting on Crafting a Green World tomorrow; the kids had to get an early start on their Christmas crafting, since they were creating an ornament for the Indiana Statehouse Christmas tree. Just between you and me, the ornaments that they made will probably be hung in the back of the tree, against the wall, but it matters not, because they had a fabulous time, and they crafted an extra ornament of the same type for our own tree.

...yay...

Play Update: October and November

I've never been one to track my children's play. Even when they were toddlers, their time of happy engagement in play was my time to get my own work done. Bad mom ignoring my kids, I know, but I've always been reluctant to distract their concentration or break the flow of their immersion in an activity--I'll even stay out of a room if I can hear them playing together with full concentration, because I know that my presence will bring them out of it.

I don't, therefore, collect many photos of the children at play, or what they're playing with, but if I happen to have my camera as I pass by I'll snap a photo, if I can do so without calling their attention to me, and sometimes I'm asked to photograph a completed project or film a skit in action. Here, then, is what I've happened to gather in the past month or so:

This is the Temple of Artemis. It's technically a project for Will's Minecraft Homeschool class, but if you saw her fussily trimming the plants in the Garden of Babylon that she built, or creating a Redstone-powered trap in the Pyramid of Ghiza that she also built, you'd know it's as much play as work.

Lately, both kids have been VERY invested in building the tallest tower possible with their Kapla blocks.

She's done it! She's used up all the Kapla blocks, but both kids have been reluctant to add our large stores of other building blocks into this play. If this keeps up, it's possible that Santa might bring the kids another BIG set of Kapla blocks for Christmas...

I believe this slime and dino set is a souvenir from La Brea Tar Pits gift shop? I've found it all over the house, including once IN. MY. BED.

Syd plays with her dolls every day. Most often she'll make outfits for them (sticky-backed Velcro is WONDERFUL as a kid-made doll-clothing fastener, in case you're interested), but on this day I found these dolls dressed in the, like, two actual Barbie outfits that we own, but matched to our color viewers. I never did find out what the game had involved.

 Will made this plaster of Paris volcano FOUR YEARS ago, and they still play with it often. On this day I'd just taken a delivery of some liquid watercolors that I'd ordered, and the kids immediately commandeered the neon red, fetched all the baking soda and vinegar volcano supplies, and happily made neon red volcano messes at the kitchen counter all morning. At some point I was called in to film this skit they'd been repeating, and finding super hilarious, for many, many rounds of play:

When I unpacked this room, I had Matt move in that shallow set of shelves from the garage, and I've been using it as open storage for the children's toy animals. The whole set is filled when they're all properly put away, so you can see at a glance how many animals the kids had scattered around in play in this room! I don't know how the Geomags were involved--animal cages, perhaps? Zoo?

For Christmas this year, my primary gifts to the children are going to be expansions to some of the open-ended toys that they love the most (this set of Kapla blocks, I think, and theseand these Geomags). Matt, I think, plans to buy them an actual decent computer, because their lack of one, and the resultant difficulty that they've been having connecting to online classes and Minecraft Homeschool servers, and using online reference sources, and working with graphic design and composition programs, is affecting the efficiency of our school days.

The stockings will need to be stuffed, however, and probably with a few more small things than the alarm clock and stock certificates and flash card sets and tools that are already set aside for them. If you've got any good ideas for small, open-ended playthings suitable for upper elementary kids who absolutely are not tweens and absolutely do still play like mad, I'd love to hear them!

Mandalas of Circles and Hexagons

This week I'm part of an online mandala-making class from Julie Gibbons Creative. I've found that mandalas suit me quite well as something that I enjoy drawing enough to really sit down and spend the time practicing/improving my very eensy drawing skills. It helps that this particular lesson, drawing circles and hexagons within them, uses a compass and ruler, so that I don't have to rely on my own spatial reasoning skills to make pleasing, regular patterns.

And who doesn't love playing with a compass?

Here's mine. The lesson included instruction on placing the adjacent circles, so I could use their intersections to make my hexagons and rectangles.

This was actually Syd's first time really playing with a compass. She got the hang of it quickly, and also enjoyed placing the circles and making patterns.

The lesson also included tips on how to paint with watercolors without having the colors bleed into each other. This was new information to me (I also learned how to correctly use bobby pins this week; it's been a good one for learning new skills!), and Syd and I both found that the technique worked perfectly.

Ravenclaw colors, on account of I'm a nerd.

I'm not so into the "magical" power of the mandala (this is shallow of me, but I tend to veer far away from self-reflection and all other emoting of the feels), but I'm finding it really, really fun to doodle them, so yay for a new hobby!

Ooh, and it's just occurred to me that I could pretend that mandala-doodling IS me doing the magical self-reflecting on the feels! When people begin to talk about their meditating and guided reflection and other weird stuff that I don't understand why I'm always around when people talk about, I'll just say, self-importantly, "Hmm? Oh, I have a practice drawing mandalas. It's quite powerful actually. Very circular... and... hexagonal. Yes, very self-reflective, don't you know?

And that's me just nailed down conversation at all of this year's holiday parties, so double yay.

Pumpkin+Bear: Beeswax Manipulatives

I've been trying to pay more attention to my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop this autumn (or is it winter now? It's 19 degrees outside, and there's snow on the ground. That's probably winter, right? But I'm still in denial, so I'm going to say it's autumn still), since my goal is to buy Matt's and the children's Christmas presents solely from my earnings, so I finally made myself get around to squatting out in the snow with my camera to prep something that the kids and I have had around forever: these beeswax alphabet and number manipulatives:

If you like to work with beeswax and you've got children the right ages for moveable alphabets and numbers, these would actually be a great choice to DIY--they're non-toxic, waterproof, absolutely perfect for tactile and sensory learning, and although they're breakable, you can simply recast the broken ones.

And when you're done with moveable alphabets and numbers (we finally are--can you believe it? Where did my little preschoolers GO?!?), you can recast the whole lot into something new rather than having to throw anything away. 

I use these silicone alphabet and number molds, and I love them. I've used them to mold in beeswax, crayon, and plaster of Paris so far. Any other ideas for a molding material? I'll do it!

Work Plans for the Week of November 17, 2014: Minecraft, Math, and SNOW!!!

MONDAY: We woke up to SNOW this morning! It should stick around through Tuesday, so there's plenty of time to explore all the good sledding spots, and play in the snowy woods, and build a family of snowmen. Fortunately, the roads are all clear, so we'll have no problem making our volunteer gig later today--I'm holding off on deciding on aerial silks for today, though; Will said she wanted the extra classes this week after struggling during her Saturday rehearsal (so much to learn!), but when it comes down to it, the kids might rather fly on the sled than the silks this afternoon. We'll see...

Math is also extra exciting this week, because the AMC 8 math exam is tomorrow! My expectations for Syd are that she'll be able to answer the first couple of questions, and then should spend her time working on strategies for the other problems, but after all the review that Will and I have done, I wouldn't be surprised if Will was able to solve several problems correctly. Either way, the children are sitting the exam primarily for the practice at sitting exams--it's the first formal exam for both--so the results are less important than the experience of working hard, remaining focused, and conforming to proper test-taking behavior.

The children have a more sophisticated research problem with the Appaloosa today, as their riding instructors would like them to be able to differentiate the Appaloosa from other, similar horses. Piktochart is working well for creating infographics, and I expect that's what they'll use to display the results of their research.

We were so busy with extracurriculars last week that we neglected both Spanish and music; hopefully, I won't have to do that again, because otherwise, they're progressing well.

Will has settled into her Minecraft Homeschool class, and Syd has already asked if SHE can take the class next session!

TUESDAY: Dialing 911 and providing relevant, accurate information are skills for the Brownie First Aid badge, but the kids are mainly studying emergency and medical personnel as our focus for this and the Junior First Aid badge, so they'll be reading a couple of books about EMTs and paramedics, as well, to make their memory work relevant. There are a couple of tricky parts of the memory work, though--you should try to give the operator the number of the phone from which you're calling, even if it's not your own phone, and you should try to give the operator your exact location, even if you don't know the street address. It's a good thing that everyone in our town mostly uses landmarks for navigation, anyway!

Hoffman Academy is still going well, as well. I like that these lessons are mainly self-directed--I need to make sure that the kids are practicing, of course, but it's Mr. Hoffman who's teaching them, not me!

I suspect that the kids' horseback riding lesson will be cancelled on this day due to cold weather. Maybe this is the day for the extra aerial silks class, if Monday is too busy with snowmen and sledding.

WEDNESDAY: Aerial silks and play. Lots of play.

THURSDAY: It's kind of crazy that this is our only Math Mammoth day this week, but it's a busy week for math enrichment. More time telling, more long division.

We're not doing a formal "Thanksgiving" this year (I think we may have a Feast of Pie and Much Lounging, instead), but nevertheless, this is the month for Thanksgiving crafts! The kids are going to read an online article about what the first Thanksgiving feast may have looked like, then they're going to cook--each of them, I think--a corn pudding to have with our dinner.

Will LOVED this endangered animals project last week! She researched the Hispaniolan Solenidon, spent hours raving about how cute it is and its venomous teeth and those awful feral dogs, and then we all watched some Youtube videos of it waddling around looking adorable. I can't wait to see what animals the kids choose this week!

This might be the better day for our extra aerial silks class. Gym Day with our homeschool group, library for a couple of hours, then aerial silks class? Negotiating extracurriculars is so tiresome, sigh.

FRIDAY: The kids love their weekly math class, and I love the time that I spend working in the library while they're there.

Spelling has been going quite well since I've moved its practice to our daily memory work time in the car. This day is to test what words we can remove from regular study, and to give the kids some extra handwriting practice.

We're not doing well with First Language Lessons, frankly. I am so bad about making an excuse for why we can't get to it during our busy day, and all our days are busy, so there's always an excuse. I want the kids to know the content, however, so I keep trying to tell myself that if I just muscle through it, one day it will be done.

The kids ran out of enthusiasm halfway during their ice skating classes last week. I'm curious to stay observant and see if they were just having an off day (we fought colds ALL last week) or if they're reached skill levels where they're simply happy to be where they are. We do a lot of extracurriculars, I know, but I'm very firm about the kids only doing an extracurricular as long as they're committed to working hard at it. Ice skating classes will only happen as long as the kids really want to improve their skating. If they're no longer interested in improving, well, that's what the public skating hours are for.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Hallelujah for the start of Thanksgiving break! Our local university has a week-long break, which means TWO WEEKENDS with no ballet for Syd--she needs this breather, poor kid. I had to remind her yesterday that all these rehearsals are just for a short time, just through performance weekend. She's still really excited about performing, of course, but she's definitely feeling the pressure--costume fittings, regular classes, long rehearsals, and practicing on her own every day. She's very aware of her responsibility, and being a perfectionist the way that she is, it's stressing her out. It's good for her, though, and helping her build a great work ethic.

Without ballet, then, our only weekend activities are Will's--aerial silks rehearsal on Saturday,and chess club on Sunday. And then a short week. And then a long weekend!

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Antique Drawers and Detox Baths

a round-up of herbal recipes for kids, including a "detox" bath

a round-up of drawer projects

and a look at my own antique drawer storage system

The whole family has been fighting a nasty cold, probably originating from the kids' plane trip, all week. I actually put Syd in that detox bath that's mentioned in my first link one afternoon, hoping to relieve some of her annoying symptoms, poor kid, and she LOVED it! She spent four hours in that bath, listening to audiobooks of A to Z Mysteries, running more hot water whenever she felt cold. 

The rest of the family prefers showers, so we've been regularly steaming up the bathrooms, trying to relieve congestion. I've made soup with garlic and ginger, we've had some extra home time, and although I haven't fed it to the kids, I've happily indulged in my Pappaw's homemade recipe for cough suppressant: whiskey and honey.

I don't know if whiskey and honey actually suppresses my cough all that well, to be honest, but it does make me feel better about it!

Homeschool Math: Find the Area of Irregular Polygons

I had expected Will to have some trouble with this task, which I simply handed to her, or to at least have to do some experimenting while she worked out the most efficient way to complete it, but as soon as I gave her the graph paper with the large, irregular polygons that I'd drawn on each page, and told her that she needed to find the total area of each shape, she was off! Within minutes she handed these back to me, and here's what I saw:

What Willow immediately noticed is that to find the area of these irregular polygons, you must first decompose them into rectangles. Find the area of each rectangle by multiplying the length by the width, then add all the areas together to find the total area.

Since Will had been fussing about not seeing the point of the order of operations, I also had her write down the final equation that one would use to solve this problem. She could then see that 1) you couldn't get the correct answer without using the order of operations, and 2) there is no more efficient way to record this equation without relying on the order of operations. Mwa-ha-ha!

She still hates the order of operations, mind you. But now she uses it!

Howl Night

My little wolves met some real wolves on a full moon night recently:

We trekked with them (and about a hundred other Girl Scouts, many of whom were poorly supervised and EXTREMELY ill-behaved--yikes!) up north to a wolf sanctuary for their Howl Night, an evening program with the wolves and some of their caregivers.

We had a lecture on wolf behavior, a demonstration of handlers' interaction with the wolves (The two wolves who were interested in participating were growling and fighting, because one wolf wanted the other wolf to submit, Julie of the Wolves-style. The wolf would submit, but not really, and then when he would be chastised again he would run right up to the handler's feet and the wolves would start fighting again, so the handler would move carefully away, and then the submissive wolf would run back up to him, etc., just like a couple of fighting kids trying to get Momma to take sides), a hike around some of the animal enclosures (Will now adores foxes, on account of how cute the foxes Hunter and Eva were. Eva had a part of a squirrel carcass that she really wanted to hide, but every time she found a good spot she'd look up, see us all staring at her, be like, "Well, crap!", and run around to find a better spot), some campfire marshmallows--

--and, of course, some howling:
Some of the wolves across the lake howled back at us, although the wolves right there sort of looked at us like, "What are you howling at me for? I'm right here, Dude!"

Wolf species are listed as endangered in certain areas, and some have been "delisted" in certain areas because of their recovery, but that doesn't mean that the animals are safe. I was resistant to the kids' wish for an endangered species study at first, because I think it's sad, and I'm not entirely comfortable with them, at the young ages at which I still see them, studying the sad evidence of human wrongdoing, but the kids seem to love endangered animals even more than they love most other animals, and if they want to study them, then it's my duty to facilitate that study.

And who knows? Perhaps I'm facilitating the study of the two people who will grow up to save these animals from their endangered status.