Work Plans for the Week of April 25, 2016: Indiana, California, and the Thirteen Colonies

Despite the three-day school week and the lack of weekly work plans, last week was actually quite productive. We spent a couple of days in the woods, then got back in the game by catching up on the children's correspondence, working on some science projects--

The kids are attempting to crystallize epsom salts, borax, and alum, and are of COURSE making rock candy.

--completing Junior Ranger badges by mail, reading LOTS of books, working through Math Mammoth and cursive copywork, and delving deeply into a Girl Scout badge that's also secretly a cross-curricular unit study on biomes and the animals that inhabit them--

Here, they've made labels for six major biomes and are sorting animals by biome. We're using Usborne's 100 Animals to Spot at the Zoo, which is a deck that I highly recommend if your kids are studying biology or world geography.

--as well as doing all of our regular fun stuff, like hiking (we've scored a total of three morels on our various hikes last week, but also saw a rat snake digesting something nummy, a corn snake basking on a rock, and lots of frogs and fossils), baking epic baked goods--

She used three different shades of blue for these ocean cupcakes, and put a sour gummy shark on top of each.

--helping me in the garden, and, yes, reading LOTS of books.

This week, however, we're back to a full school week, albeit with one full-day field trip, so it's back to weekly work plans. For one thing, I think it's easier to structure our routine when I know by the week what we're doing each day, and for another, there are several long-term units that we're working on whose lesson plans really only work when I plan them out by the week. I've dropped our human anatomy unit for now, but we're still studying units on California, rocks and minerals, the Revolutionary War, and the 2016 elections! I've also put Project of the Week back on our schedule, even though our schedule is already pretty busy, because I think that overall, the kids enjoy working on something entirely of their own choosing for "school" each week, and because I'd like them to get used to the idea of choosing their own unit and method of study.

Books of the Week include primarily living history books on the Revolutionary War and pioneer times, but also a couple of living science books--we're into Liberal Arts AND STEM enrichment in this homeschool! The Open-Ended Play Material of the Week is the Lite Brite.

And here's the rest of our week!

MONDAY: Normally, we're up and eating breakfast while watching CNN Student News by this time, but the younger kid is still snoozing, the silly girl. Interestingly, she and the older kid are both finishing up their Math Mammoth units this week--she in long division, and the older kid in exponents and the order of operations in algebraic equations. Now that the younger kid has mastered long division, both of these units have been pretty easy-breezy--in fact, she liked one of the lessons so much that I am now officially on the lookout for other math worksheets done in the form of cross-number puzzles. Apparently that makes drilling computation legitimately FUN!

The kids are studying the spelling of the words in their latest Wordly Wise chapter this week, and today we'll also be finishing up our listen-through of Making Thirteen Colonies, while the kids create a 3D, interactive map that shows the major routes of the slave trade. It seems like a lot of our historical and geographic studies lately have brought forward our country's tragic history with slavery, and it's a bummer, but it is something that I want to always inform the kids' understanding of our history. For instance, we've been looking a bit at the exploration of California by the Europeans, and the missionaries, in particular, and so I've already told the children several times that when they're in California this summer with their grandparents, they should be carefully on the watch for signs that claim that a certain European "discovered" a place that Native Americans had known about for thousands of years, or that a certain European "built" a structure that was likely rather built by enslaved Native Americans, etc. While I didn't necessarily agree with the premise behind every essay in Lies Across America, it has absolutely improved my ability to think critically about historical markers.

We've got our regular gig at our local food pantry this afternoon, to which the kids are also bringing their Scouting for Food food drive donations in order to earn a Girl Scout patch. We've got another Girl Scout event this evening--a tour of an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, and then a make-your-own sundae bar! We can't wait!

The younger kid is still working through the secular version of New American Cursive 2, but a couple of weeks ago, the older kid FINISHED Teach Yourself Cursive! And Friends, I have news: her cursive handwriting is good!!! You might remember that I despair daily over the older kid's print handwriting, and frankly, I can't escape the idea that her Montessori preschool/kindergarten was to blame for not providing her enough direct instruction. They had handwriting work for her to model, but it seems that for the most part the children were left to recreate those models on their own. The older kid worked out her own way to write all of the letters, and it's an efficient, effective, readable way, but it's not lovely. I probably should have worked with her at home, but frankly, after three hours spent at school, the last thing that I thought about doing with my five-year-old at home was more school--she was too busy rolling around outside or making toy dinosaurs roar at each other.

Anyway, blame-throwing aside, it is very important to me that she at least develop good cursive handwriting, and hallelujah, it has happened! She's still reluctant to use cursive for her daily writing, and so I'm still requiring her to practice her cursive every day as schoolwork. Currently, she's enjoying A-Z Mystery Flags, completing one page a day. After that, I'll start her on some meatier copywork that I've created with StartWrite; using Story of Us, I turned quotes from famous colonial and Revolutionary War individuals into cursive copywork. 

For the first day of our Alcatraz unit, I've printed out the Alcatraz Junior Ranger book and am asking the children to complete what they can of it at home. Pro tip: if you do not have an entire day to lollygag around a national park while your kid completes her Junior Ranger book agonizingly slowly, but with such great pleasure that you simply cannot bear to step in and rush her, printing the book out ahead of time and doing this is exactly the way to go. Most activities will likely still need to be completed on site, sure, but do you really want to spend an hour sitting on a park bench while your kid completes a maze and a word scramble and colors in a picture? Seriously, me, neither!

TUESDAY: Although the last lesson's tamale pie was acceptable, I am genuinely excited about this week's Your Kids: Cooking lesson: quiche! Learning how to make pie crust is a skill they'll be happy to have for their entire lives, and we have so many eggs that I am pretty darn excited every time we're able to get through a dozen of them in a single meal. 

I have time set aside for an Indiana history lesson on this day, but frankly, I don't yet know what I'm going to do there. I'll give a lecture that briefly covers the history of Indiana from prehistory through the Civil War, for sure, but I like to include a hands-on component to every lesson, ideally, and right now, I have no ideas. You might think that we're studying state history here because that's what fourth graders do in their schools, but I don't give a flip about state standards. Instead, we're studying state history, albeit briefly, because 2016 is Indiana's Bicentennial! On Wednesday, the kids and I will take a day trip down to Indiana's first state capital in Corydon for a day of hands-on activities for homeschoolers--we'll visit with some actors playing conductors in the Underground Railroad, learn about pioneer farming, tour the capitol building, make some crafts, and hopefully my two children will be able to raise their hands high to answer any questions asked about Indiana history.

We've got our homeschool group's playgroup on this day, as well as a children's cooking class at our food pantry--word on the street is that one of the children's friends will be leading this day's class on the topic of wild edibles. Dandelion greens for dinner!

WEDNESDAY: FIELD TRIP!!! We always have an audiobook in the car, and currently, it's Forge. I'm hoping that we can finish Forge on this trip, however, because I REALLY want to get started on Al Capone Does My Shirts while we're still in this week's Alcatraz unit. The kids' grandparents Skyped them last night and told them that they'd already gotten tickets for their Alcatraz tour this summer!

THURSDAY: Before we pick back up with our Earth science textbook, I want to spend one more lesson talking about crystal structure. We have several Petri dishes of crystals that we started growing last week that we can examine, and I'll be printing out these paper models for the kids to construct. The textbook that we're using is for upper middle school, but I've found that it works for us as long as I'm careful to also talk through the topics and add in lots more hands-on activities. After this extra enrichment on crystals, we'll be ready to pick back up with the textbook next week.

I should probably be doing the same for the NaNoWriMo Young Writer's Workbook, but honestly, the only reason that I chose that particular writing curriculum is that I need *something* that's grab-and-go for a change. The kids would probably enjoy it more if I put more effort into making sure that they did, but they're carrying on, regardless, and if necessary I can remember that our next writing curriculum needs to be more teacher-engaged. Sigh...

The kids' Math Mammoth is also meant to be grab-and-go, but even when the kids are happily zooming through a particular unit, as they are right now, I simply will not shake my deep conviction that math should be hands-on. It should be sensorial. It should be something whose processes you understand, not simply something whose rules of calculation you follow. Last week, when the older kid began exponents, I showed her how cool square and cubed numbers are (they MAKE squares and cubes!), and so on this day, the kids will be working with some square number models that Matt created for me in Adobe InDesign. It's going to be really, really awesome.

FRIDAY: It took a lot longer for the kids to administer their poll than I thought that it would, but finally, this Friday they should be ready to compile and evaluate the results. I think that they're going to discover some really interesting things about how polls work and what they are--and are NOT--able to tell us.

Our Alcatraz unit is less involved than some of our other California units, as I mostly just want the children to know its history so that they get more out of their trip. To that end, I'll be having them read an informative article on the history of Alcatraz, written for their age range, and then answer some reading comprehension questions from the article. It will be good practice in reading non-fiction in order to learn specific facts, something that most people do multiple times a day. At some point this week, Matt, who's our resident history buff, is also going to give us all a lecture on the history of Alcatraz; his lectures are always a big hit, and always inspire the kids to ask great questions and participate in some really great discussions.

I feel a little guilty about focusing so much on the younger kid's Girl Scout badges lately, as she already has earned more badges than the older kid, but the fact is that the younger kid's Junior Animal Habitats badge is an excellent cross-curricular unit study on biomes, animal biology, and the environment, and it's worth spending the time on. Last week, the kids watched several BrainPop videos about biomes and then did an animal sort, and on this day I plan to have them focus on one single biome each, researching it and creating an informative brochure on it. Perhaps we'll get it printed when they're done!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Lots of ballet! A student-choreographed modern dance recital at our local university, one that has proven year after year to be VERY weird! I've dropped art as a weekly lesson, because Matt has taken up the task of giving the kids an art lesson every weekend, so there's that. I'm also attempting to create some kind of LARP Alcatraz game, perhaps something with Matt and I as guards and the children as prisoners who have to escape, and hijinks ensue, and that will hopefully happen this weekend.

Stay tuned!

Car Camping, Because We Win at Life

On Monday night, filthy and sitting by a campfire that my kids had built (I provided the cigarette lighter), drinking homebrew that Betsy's husband had made, chatting with other adults whom I genuinely like and who like me back, I thought to myself, "Hey, I am officially the type of person who goes camping with my friends!"

Life just keeps getting better and better, am I right?

I have no shame in admitting that while I went camping as a teenager with my JROTC group, with someone else handling all the infrastructure, and while I went camping as an adult before marriage and kids, with my only concerns being a tent, a sleeping bag, some friends and some liquor, I have never gone camping as an adult with kids. Kids who need to eat regular meals (and snacks, and more meals, and more snacks, and more meals just after you've cleaned up the previous meal, etc.). Kids who will whine and throw a fit if they're cold or tired or hungry--always hungry! Kids who need sunscreen and bugspray regularly applied, and who need their shoulders watched for pink and their armpits checked for ticks. I was a little nervous to camp with them, without my co-parent in residence, but hell--worst case scenario, town was just an hour away.

In any case, I needn't have worried. Kids are surprisingly resilient in the woods, and having other families with you makes for a helpful tribe who is more than a match for keeping a bunch of kids safe and happy and fed.

She sketched the dam using mud and a stick. My little artistic genius!

A dead tree fell over in our backyard during a windstorm a couple of weeks ago, conveniently allowing us to bring loads of super-dry wood for our campfires. In related news, Will also found an old snake's nest below that tree, with over twenty hatched eggs!

I bought the kids this portable hammock for Christmas, and it is the best. Thing. EVER.

very interesting rock, brought to me for inspection and admiration

On the second night of our trip, the kids asked if we could host the community campfire at our campsite. There's something to be said for having ownership of the flames, you know! The kids did the entire fire business all by themselves, and Syd even baked everyone doughboys, a recipe that she learned at Girl Scout camp.

See? Safe and happy and fed!

I'd thought that I was going camping for the kids' benefit, because I didn't realize how much I, personally, would enjoy all of this communal, social time with my adult friends. It wasn't quite perfect without Matt there, but still, having entire days of leisure just to hang out with and chat with other friendly adults, and eating yummy food with them (and by yummy, you of course realize that I mean half-charred, half cold sausages stuck on a stick), and hiking around in the woods with them.

It wasn't perfect without Matt, but it was still bliss.

Pom-Pom Pals: Our Obsession Begins

As of now, knowing what I know, having done what I have done, I cannot fathom how, until last week, I have NEVER made a pom pom by hand. 

I mean, what?

I LOVE making stuff by hand! I LOVE quick and easy little crafties! I love cute little crafties! I love kid-friendly little crafties!

Friends, how have I NEVER made pom poms before, and even more outrageously, how have I NEVER introduced the children to pom pom making before?!?

Fortunately, as of last week, that has all been rectified. A publicist sent me a free copy of Pom-Pom Pals: Animals, and as the kids and I are winging our homeschool for these couple of short weeks (grandparent visits, big fashion shows, and a multi-day camping trip with friends have been keeping us quite busy without my set-in-stone by-the-week lesson plans, thank you very much), one day last week it, along with a documentary on the brown bear of Alaska, a Math Mammoth lesson and some cursive copywork, a couple of books about rocks, and a long hike through our woods to hunt for morels seemed like just the way to spend our school day.

It's not often that we start a craft with me just as ignorant about how it's done as the kids, and it was fun to see them read the instructions, more or less, grab the yarn, and set off making pom poms without looking to me for direction:

Syd let me help her make one of the pom poms for her lion--

--but Will worked completely independently the entire time--

--taking breaks only to snuggle the cat:

I mean, of course.

We actually don't work with yarn that often, which made this particular project much more of a process-based, explore-the-yarn-and-all-its-possibilities project than one in which a specific result must be obtained, and yet, with the addition of hot glue and felt and more miniature pom poms--

 --adorable results were obtained:

We spent part of today making more pom poms, just for fun--

--and I have to say that when I searched Pinterest for "pom pom crafts," because of COURSE I searched Pinterest for "pom pom crafts!!!", I found so many ridiculously cute things to do with them that I see no reason to ever stop making pom poms.

In fact, I kinda hope to make it to the craft store this weekend to buy yarn in Girl Scout colors, because I'm thinking pom pom hair bands would look SUPER cute with their Girl Scout uniforms, right?

Homeschool STEM Fair 2016: The Kid Built a Table

The main reason why I wanted to host a STEM Fair for our homeschool group, rather than a Science Fair, is the options. Kids could do a typical science project, but they could also do something with engineering, technology, or math. I encouraged the kids to interpret the theme as broadly as they'd like, in order to make the fair as accessible as possible to the wide variety of homeschooling kids who we have in our community, and so when the little kid said that she wanted to build a table as her STEM Fair project, I was thrilled at her interpretation.

You probably know by now that when this kid makes a plan, she makes a PLAN! There is a detailed vision behind everything that she creates, whether it's a four-page itinerary for her birthday party or a full-color, multi-sketch mock-up of a dress design. You shouldn't be surprised, then, that the little kid's table design was impeccable. I'll let her tell you about it, but be assured, before you hear her build notes, that she came up with this design completely on her own, and built it, other than asking for some assistance with figuring out the drill, completely on her own:



And yes, I DID carry that table back and forth from the car, across the library, weaving my way carefully through the security gate, and into the conference room where the STEM Fair was held.

But back to the kid--isn't that table incredible? I let her pick out exactly the lumber that she wanted from the hardware store, and her speech doesn't lie--she knew exactly what she wanted, in exactly those lengths, and she sat there on the garage floor and fiddled around with layout until she discovered, completely on her own, how to screw the table planks onto the end supports and then the table legs onto that. It was cold outside, though, so I let her do the actually construction in the family room:

I mean, we still have sawdust everywhere from the construction of the built-in shelves, so why not?

This table now stands outside on the back deck, and is a crucial component of the little kid's mud kitchen. I had myself a perfect moment yesterday, as I was on my way across the room with a mug of green tea spiked with honey and lemon, and I spotted the little kid through the sliding glass door, deeply immersed in her mud kitchen play. She had a couple of toy ponies out there, and she was talking to them, or making them talk, as she patted down a moss-covered mud pie into a metal tin that I'd bought her specifically for mud pie making from Goodwill a couple of weeks ago. I looked at her, looked at my mug of tea, thought about my other kid on her way with her father to go clean tack at the stables with some other Pony Club kids, and thought, "Hey, I'm doing this right!"

There's a lot of self-doubt involved in parenting, and a LOT of self-doubt involved in homeschooling, but for that one moment, watching a kid play at a table that she built herself, everything, including me, was perfect.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Trashion/Refashion Show 2016: The Phoenix

My kid has designed and modeled a garment in our town's Trashion/Refashion Show for SIX YEARS now. Here, I'll prove it to you!

Fairy Princess: 2011

Rainbow Fairy: 2012

Rose Dress: 2013

Upside-Down Orange: 2014

The Awesomes: 2015

And now, for 2016, I give you The Phoenix!

The photo above shows the basic garment that Syd and I sewed WHILE I HAD THE FLU. I am hard-core, my Friends! I later added a double petticoat made of sheer curtains from Goodwill and the sash from Matt's high school graduation outfit.

I did my best to recreate Syd's original design, below:

Syd's designs are always this detailed, but fortunately, she gets the fact that construction is a totally different ballgame, and feathers can't always be found at Goodwill, and vat-dyeing corduroy yellow apparently makes it turn green--we did lace instead of feathers, and a red velvet bodice instead of a yellow one. I'm not as pleased with it as I'd like to be, but honestly, I did pretty damn good considering that I had the flu!

Syd, of course, always gives it her all. Here she is practicing onstage the day of the show:

The red Converse that her grandmother bought her kill me with cuteness.

 Tricoci University (formerly Hair Arts Academy) students generously donated their time and expertise to do hair and makeup again this year; Syd's hair designer thrilled her by creating exactly the tri-colored, half-up/half-down impossible hairdo that Syd asked for, and although the makeup artist wasn't able to create the impossible (Syd really wanted this exact look, bless her heart), she did the red flames that Syd later had me fill in with metallic orange and gold, with gold accents:

Who knew that metallic orange would bring out the green in her hazel eyes?

 Syd did her own lipstick, of COURSE:

Every year, this kid amazes me onstage, and this year?

She amazed me:


When the audience starts to cheer so loudly for my baby that the emcee has to pause her spiel? Ugh, my heart can't handle it.

Unlike last year, when I had TWO kids in costume and thus didn't manage to get a single photo of them in the flurry of "stop touching your face, here let me get that smudge, please don't step on your cape, your boot is untied again, pee now so you don't pee on the runway," I actually managed to get several photos of my kid this year!

I did NOT say that the photos would necessarily be in focus, just that they would exist.

I even managed to get a good photo of sisters together--

--just before they started fighting:

And pics with total strangers! Yay!

And just like that, there goes another year of the fashion show. Personally, I am stoked to be done with couture runway design for another eight months.

Syd, however? I kid you not, in the scrum to exit the theater after the show, she began with her patented "I was thinking..." and then proceeded to tell me her design plans for next year's Trashion/Refashion Show garment. 

Something about pop tabs, I think, and silver lame...

Earth Hour 2016 and 1980s Trivial Pursuit

We LOVE Earth Hour, and diligently celebrate it every single year. The tradition involves candles, of course--lots of candles!--

--but also the Playing of a Board Game. During this Earth Hour, I introduced for the very first time the game Trivial Pursuit. I have my Junior edition from the 80s, so it's partly perfect, because a lot of the questions are at their level, and partly ridiculous, because it's from the 1980s. Here, for example, is a small selection of the questions from my edition:

• "What cheese spread is a whiz to put on toast?"
• "How many Vikings landed on Mars in 1976?"
• "What country is the Leaning Tower of Pisa in?"
• "Was The Police's debut album titled Zenyatta, Mondatta, Outlandos d'Amour, or Magilla Gorilla?"
• "What horse does Alec Ramsey tame when he's shipwrecked on a desert island in a popular novel?"
• "Could the world champion men's high jumper outjump the champion jumping horse?"
• "What letter adorns the flag of the Legion of Super-Heroes?"
• "What are Chesterfield, camel's-hair, raccoon and Burberry all styles of?"
• "What's a person who doesn't eat meat called?"
• "What's the highest mountain in the world?"

We skipped any questions that we thought the kids wouldn't possibly be able to answer, but I was surprised at how many questions were relevant--my children have a good-enough background in history, geography, literature, and science to hold their own in 1980s children's trivia games!

Trivial Pursuit wasn't a great game to play by candle-light, as the light was a little dim for reading tiny print by, and we spent an awful lot of time asking each other "Did I land on a pink or an orange? Oh, a yellow!":

We played it again the next day, and found it much more comfy!

Although we do Earth Hour every year, this particular Earth Hour was especially appropriate, as we'd only recently completed a 24-hour electronics fast for Will's Cadette World Thinking Day badge. In the past, I'd been treating Earth Hour as purely environmentally-motivated, but World Thinking Day is all about using these experiences to make connections and think globally, so it was a great chance to discuss the lack of electricity in many communities in many parts of the world, and how that might affect people, in both good and bad ways. Lots of time to play games together in the dim light. Awfully hard to read your textbooks or complete your schoolwork. If you're motivated to cover global issues with your kiddos, I highly recommend incorporating an electronics fast into your overall Earth Hour experience. And if you're feeling especially motivated, there's also a World Water Day!

Why You Should Adopt Animals: The Documentary

Y'all, the long-awaited, long-anticipated, long-dreaded, much fretted about documentary on "why you should adopt animals" has finally happened!

Geez, this thing was hard to manage, despite the fact that it ended up being pretty simple--IF you have the equipment and know what you're doing with it. Way back last May, Syd proposed a service project for our Girl Scout troop: she wanted to make a documentary about the animals at the local Humane Society, to get people to adopt them. The other girls liked this idea, and then.... nothing. I just could not figure out how to get five (then six, then eight) girls to film a documentary at the Humane Society, then actually make it into a movie.

I did NOT study filmmaking in college, my Friends.

Finally, I decided that we'd skip, for the moment, the logistics of even asking to film at the Humane Society (all those children, all those barking dogs, all that hand-held video...), and just film animals that had already been adopted, and maybe interview their owners about their experience and why one should adopt.

Even that, of course, was hard for me to figure out, and I went way down the rabbit hole of amateur filmmaking forums before I finally figured out that the equipment that we have--a digital SLR with video recording capabilities, a USB-compatible microphone, Audacity, and Nero--would work just fine for this. We won't be submitting to Cannes, but we could make something that would please and delight little Girl Scouts.

We still have to present this particular idea to the rest of the troop (which means that I still have to figure out how to do it with eight little girls and assorted animals), but as a test case, and for Will's Cadette Digital Movie Maker badge, my two kids made a documentary about Gracie and Spots, fostered and then adopted from our local animal shelter.

Considering that this documentary was Syd's idea, and that Will spent most of an entire year being vocally NOT on board with it, it will probably surprise you to learn that Will did the vast majority of work on the documentary. It doesn't surprise me, as I know that Will tends to get very deeply immersed in projects, but I was nevertheless VERY relieved that she did not just all of the compiling and editing--

--but also the filming of the interview, which was something that I'd expected Syd to be excited about.

So now, without further ado, I present to you the world premiere of the original documentary short film, Why You Should Adopt Cats:



Thank goodness that is figured out and over! Now all we have to do is figure out how to do it again, this time with six more little filmmakers. And I have to buy the patch for my now officially certified Cadette Digital Movie Maker!

Homeschool STEAM: Whole-Body Pendulum Painting in an Aerial Hammock

Why, no, I DIDN'T write lesson plans for this week--hooray for me! The kids will still have Math Mammoth, a page of cursive, a Book of the Day, their Memory Work, and a hands-on project of my choosing each day--more crystal-growing, perhaps, or more chemical reactions, or maybe some craft projects that I've had in the back of my mind for a while--but we have so many BIG things going on this week that it just didn't make sense to block out half of each day in advance.

Our homeschool group's STEM Fair is tonight. I anticipate that the kids will spend fully half a day on finishing their prep and refining their presentations for this.

Their grandparents arrive for a visit tomorrow night. I'm sure they'll want to do things with them other than watch them color in maps and make salt dough models of the spleen or whatever all week. Not to mention that we should probably tidy the house at least a little before they get here.

Oh, and the Trashion/Refashion Show is this weekend! Not only do we have to practice and figure out runway shoes and hair/makeup, but, um... yeah, I also still need to sew the belt and the petticoat that Syd wants for her garment. Oh, and hem the skirt. Nothing like waiting until the last minute to get super productive!

But that's for later, as soon as I get off my butt and outta this chair. For now, I want to tell you about the STEAM project that I did with the kids a few weeks ago, on account of it was so awesome!

You know that we have an at-home, DIY aerial silks rig, right? Several months ago, the kids asked if I would re-rig it into an aerial hammock. I did, and we all love it. I'm about to rig it back because Syd has been wanting to do some actual aerial silks on it, not just lounge around in it and read all comfy (silly girl!), so before I did, and concurrent with Will's Math Mammoth unit on geometry, I set up a whole-body pendulum painting activity on the aerial hammock.

You, yourself, don't have to have an aerial silks rig to do this, of course. You can do it from a tire swing. You can do it with your feet from a playground swing. You can take your regular hammock, double it, and hang both ends from one hook in your ceiling beam or from one carabiner latched onto a rescue rig and looped around a strong tree branch. Hell, you could do it from an actual hammock if you didn't care about having a full 360-degree range of motion. As long as your kid can comfortably reach the ground with a paintbrush while lying in the rig that you've set up, you're good.

Along with the rig, you'll also need this stuff:

• large-format paper. Giant sheets of newsprint work well (we have this exact thing), but you could also use actual sheets of newspaper. This project is about the process more than the product, so who cares that there are already words on it? An alternative to large-format paper could be a drop cloth, tarp, or huge canvas or curtain, etc.
• paint. Use something cheap, with a good flow. We used Biocolors for this particular project, but I can also recommend tempera. I put the paints into separate pots, each with its own brush.
• giant paintbrushes.
• duct tape.

1. Duct tape the large-format paper under and around the rig. You don't want the kid to feel like she has to reign herself in so as not to paint on the floor, so really cover the area.

2. Settle the kid in and make sure that she gets herself comfortable with facing down in the hammock, extending an arm. This is a pretty heavy core exercise for some kids, and they structure it for themselves in different ways. Will chose to lie prone in the hammock, while Syd chose to crouch and lean--both ways exercised their muscles in ways they weren't used to.

Since we were using our aerials silks for this, and aerial silks are quite expensive, I also emphasized at this time that no matter what, they were not to touch the silks with their paintbrushes. I'm sure I'll wash them before I re-rig them, but I just do NOT want to deal with paint stains. Fortunately, the kids both know already to be careful to not soil the silks--no shoes on the rig, no food, no filthy hands--so this wasn't hard for them to remember.

3. And off she goes! You've got to play facilitator for this entire project, as the kid can't swing herself, nor can she reach the different paint pots without you. The kids took turns in the hammock (Syd nearly beside herself in anticipation for her turn), and I sat right next to each when it was her turn, pushing her and handing her the paint colors that she requested. 

Both kids had SO much fun with this! It was interesting to see what a different approach each had to the activity, as well. Will was completely abstract from beginning to end, enthusiastic about simply swinging and letting the paintbrush move with her:

Syd, however, had a goal from the start. First, she tried to paint a face while swinging, and even managed to do so, but even when she moved on from that to painting in the abstract, she wasn't content just to swing, but really wanted to cover all of the paper, not missing any corners:

Regardless of the differing intents, and my emphasis on process over product, both kids' paintings turned out absolutely gorgeous, and they're both hanging in the kitchen right now, where they'll stay until I get around to buying the giant piece of sheet metal that I want to make the giant magnetic display board that I want to live in that giant space.

So... geometry, art, body awareness, muscle strengthening, maybe a little engineering, some of that spinning that's so good for the inner ear. Not a bad way to spend an hour on a Saturday afternoon!

We played with pendulums some during Will's History of Video Games unit study a few years ago, so if you're interested in exploring more with pendulums, have I got some great resources for you!

• Pendulums are fun for knocking things over! Build up a collection of cardboard boxes and toilet paper tubes, and your kids will probably never want you to put this set-up away again.
• Giant pendulums paint on the driveway! If you happen to have a portable coat rack, this would be a fun way to explore pendulums outside. 
• Pendulums are fun for painting! There are several different depictions of pendulum painting online, all with mostly the same basic set-up. I like the PVC pipe rig the best, though. A kid isn't going to knock it over the way that she will a lashed-together bamboo tripod, and yet PVC pipe is nearly as light to transport and just as easy to disassemble. Here's how to build the rig, although I'd put a hook or a carabiner at the end of the string, not a cup. Don't you want to attach a whole bunch of different kinds of pendulums, not just one?
• Here's how Foucault's pendulum works. I know that you've always wanted to know!

Homeschool Science: Measuring Pad and Tampon Absorbency

Fair warning: I am going to write the word "vagina" a LOT in this post.

As you might have seen me discuss a few times before, we're undertaking a health unit this year. It's a curriculum that I'm compiling on my own, which, by the way, I also encourage YOU to do, as well, with any subject that you want, as it's awesome and totally do-able and creating it yourself means that you can make it exactly what you want it to be.

Anyway, the health unit is really a human biology study, but with an emphasis on healthy habits and personal safety and self-care. Although now the kids are taking turns telling me which body system they want to study next (I'm currently researching Will's choice: the lymphatic system/immune system), I insisted that we begin with the reproductive system. The kids learned its anatomy, coloring diagrams and creating and labeling salt dough models. We discussed sex and pregnancy, but mostly I wanted to focus on puberty and menstruation.

And I wanted to science it!

This following science experiment, in which the kids measured the absorbency of various commercial pads and tampons, had three goals, none of which really had anything to do with measuring the absorbency of pads and tampons:

1. I wanted the kids to become familiar with them, handling several kinds and increasing their comfort level with what is a pretty basic hygiene item. I do NOT want to raise kids who see menstruation as taboo!
2. I wanted the kids to understand how both pads and tampons work, what the absorbency rating means, what that looks like, and practical usage information. 
3. I wanted the kids to ask me lots of questions about puberty and menstruation, whatever questions they had. If you've got a question about menstruation, and you're not sure how to ask it, well, if you're not going to ask it while you are in the process of dipping a tampon into blue water and then weighing it, then you're just going to have to wait until you're grown up and take the SafeSearch setting off of your computer to Google it, I guess.

So while you're secretly working towards those three goals, here's how to actually do the experiment that you're supposed to be doing:

1. Gather your supplies.

You will need a scale that measures in grams, a large jar of water that the kids can dye in any color of their choice (I did ban red, pretending that it would be more "fun" to dye the water a "silly" color. I guess the menstruation taboo is hard at work in me!), a small ladle or measuring cup to dip the water, the kids' science notebooks, and several different types of pads and tampons. 

You might notice with disapproval that I have no homemade or eco-friendly solutions on offer here: I lost my Diva Cup in the move (could it possibly be in the same box as my wedding album? I've never found that, either!), and the boyshort underwear that I now wear doesn't work with the style of pads that I used to make. I actually do own a pair of Thinx underpants that I'm trying to figure out how much I like, but I didn't pull that out, either. In our first-world country, disposable store-bought pads and tampons are a universally available supply, so that's what we're learning about. As we talked while doing this experiment, I did mention Diva Cups, homemade pads, AND the bleaches and dioxins that make some people unwilling to use conventional products, if that makes you feel better.

2. Make a chart. I had the kids write down the name of each exact brand that we were going to test, and its stated absorbency level. This was a good exercise in label reading, and noticing that different pads and tampons have different absorbency ratings:

2. Set up the scale for the first test. We decided that the pad or tampon would fail if it did not meet its maximum absorbency as stated on the box, so the kids put a container on the scale, tared it, then measured out the correct amount of liquid. This was also good practice in accurate measurement:

3. Test the pad or tampon. This step required some good trial-and-error problem-solving for the kids. On the face of it, all you have to do is introduce the pad or tampon to the liquid, see if it absorbs it, and if it does, add more liquid in measured amounts. However, the process definitely required some troubleshooting. Firstly, I'd just randomly gotten out our Erlenmeyer flask to hold the liquid on the scale, as it's lightweight and "scientific." However, the Tampax Pearl tampons, when wet, began to unfurl and they ended up quite wide, so much so that pulling them out through the narrow neck of the Erlenmeyer flask caused them to squeeze out some of their liquid:

This was actually an interesting phenomenon, because the non-Pearl Tampax tampon did not get wider when wet--it got longer. The kids and I had an interesting discussion about the elastic walls of the vagina, and expressed many theories about which model of tampon would possibly work better to stop any menstrual fluid from leaking past them. I also modeled how one uses a tampon, and here is how you do that:

Remind the students that they should have clean hands, and make a loose fist with your non-dominant hand to imitate the vaginal channel. Model the correct way to hold the tampon for insertion in your dominant hand. Remind the students that in between their labia they'll find the bump of the clitoris toward the front, then, inside the folds of the labia minora, there are both the opening to the urethra, again, more towards the front, and then the vagina behind that. Suggest that the first few times one wants to insert a tampon, one might want to gently put a finger into the vagina first, to help visualize the path. Model how to insert a tampon into your fist, then make note of the tampon string, and model how to use that to remove the tampon. Tell the students VERY firmly that used tampons must be wrapped in toilet paper and put in the trash--we don't flush tampons, because we appreciate having working sewer systems!

Anyway, after the failure of the Erlenmeyer flask, I brought out a Petri dish, and the kids used that, instead:

Measuring the absorbency of the pad was also problematic, as introducing liquid too quickly would cause it to just roll off of it--a good opportunity to discuss what an actual menstrual flow would resemble (not that!), but less helpful in accurate measurement.

Interestingly, each item absorbed nearly double what was listed as its maximum absorbency on its box, and a couple of items absorbed more than that! The kids then had to figure out how to accurately measure how much more the item would absorb, and Will is the one who figured it out--you weigh it! She measured out a known number of grams, absorbed away all that she could, weighed the liquid again, then subtracted to find how much liquid was absorbed.

The only real problem that we had was determining the appropriate saturation level of each pad and tampon. The kids introduced liquid until not only could each item absorb no more, but it also would drip when picked up--this, obviously, is beyond the item's maximum absorption, but for this particular activity I didn't get too fussed about it.

This activity leaves plenty of time for kids to familiarize themselves with the pads and tampons--

 --and ask whatever questions occurred to them. Will's question about Toxic Shock Syndrome (she read the instruction sheet that came with the box of tampons, of COURSE!) was an excellent opportunity to again emphasize that one should use clean hands to insert and remove a tampon (bacteria is bad for vaginas), one should change a tampon at least every six hours, and if a tampon doesn't "need" to be changed at least every six hours, that's a sign that you should switch to a tampon with a lower absorbency rating, as you should always use the tampon with the smallest absorbency rating that will meet your needs.

Other excellent discussion topics included the usage of pads as back-ups, if you can feel a tampon after it's inserted, predicting one's period using a calendar (or app--I am told that all the cool kids use apps these days), why one would choose to use a pad vs. a tampon, swimming while menstruating, and many other practical subjects that it would surely have not occurred to the children to ask about if we were discussing menstruation without manipulatives.

A final note: making the focus on science made it MUCH easier to have all the discussions that you need to have with a kid about menstruation and puberty and sex and self-esteem and all that stuff that you have to discuss. The kids loathed just about every book that I offered them on the subject of puberty, because they were all too touchy-feely and focused on Big Questions about Feelings. My kids don't operate like that, and neither do I--there's a running joke between me and some of my friends that basically consists of the not-too-farfetched image of me desperately texting Matt to come save me from various social situations because "people are having emotions, and I can't escape!"

Anyway, putting the focus on Science, not feelings, let the kids actually find a way to think about things, including feelings, in a way that felt dispassionate and safe to them. And if Mommy had an extra glass of wine with dinner that night after all of these discussions, well... Mommy needs a safe way to deal with feelings, too!

Here are the books that we used for this study; you can find the videos that we used in my Homeschool: Science: Human Biology pinboard. I have a ton of old-school "hygiene" videos in there, too, that I'd thought would be funny (and sneakily instructional) to show the kids, but I didn't end up using them this time. I also didn't do as much with menstrual hygiene issues around the world--it's important to ME, but the kids weren't super into it, so we'll go into it another time.

Again, I didn't end up loving most of these books (notable exceptions: I LOVE Julie Metzger, and I LOVE the It's Perfectly Normal series, and *I* think The Care and Keeping of You is good, although both kids hated it), but I did successfully get the kids to read them by inviting them to snark on them as hard as they could. We all sat there, reading these books and making fun of them--"Ugh, Mom, they're talking about self-esteem again!"--but at least we read them. Mwa-ha-ha!