Movement and Grace: Scenes from the Ballet Classroom

Syd has been dancing ballet since the age of four. It's one of the governing passions of her life. It's the only extracurricular, other than Girl Scouts and our volunteer work, that she chooses. She loves ballet, and I love watching her dance.

Indulge me in the matter of a few photos, then. Syd's ballet program only invites parents into their classroom for one week every semester. I agree with this policy (me!!! Who NEVER agrees with anyone else's rules!!!) because Syd, at least, finds the presence of parents, in particular her own, super distracting and does not enjoy Parent Observation Week, but for me, it's the only week each semester that I get to watch my kid in class--AND take photos and videos of her!

You're luckier than my friends and family, in that here I'm only going to #mombrag with the rare photos that I could catch of Syd without her peers identifiable in the frame, an especially challenging strategy in that I highly suspect that Syd chooses her placement during Parent Observation Week to be as far from her Mom's giant camera as possible.

As if there aren't three other Moms with giant cameras sitting right next to me. She's not the only embarrassed kid, I assure you!

This is one of Syd's ballet teachers this year. She was her sole ballet instructor last year, and Syd and I were absolutely thrilled that she got her again this year, too. Honestly, out of all of the ballet teachers that Syd has ever had in this program, both faculty and college ballet majors, this college student is the best teacher that Syd has ever studied under. She is the best teacher, in any subject, that I have ever seen. She's extremely demanding but still encouraging, she motivates the kids, is quick to correct and to praise, gives each of them tons of attention, tells them stories about her own ballet experiences, and teaches them the choreography that she's learning for her own performances. She hands down leotards that she thinks might fit them. Sometimes she even does their hair. She advocated with the head of the program to cancel pre-pointe class on Halloween so that the children will have time to trick-or-treat. Every time she interacts with the children, it's easy to observe what a gifted teacher she is, and how invested she is in the kids' growth and well-being, and how she enjoys their company and really sees them for who they are as individuals. She is exactly the mentor and role model that you would want for your tween girl in the world of ballet.

Also, my kid is the best stretcher in class. Just saying.

Excuse how grainy and blurry my photos are. You would think that a ballet studio would be well-lit, wouldn't you? Well, I'm here to tell you that it most certainly is NOT.

Jazz is a new class offering this year. Syd does not prefer it, and likely wouldn't choose to go if I didn't encourage her to, but I LOVE it. They dance to music that has a drumbeat! And guitar! And a melody with words! And I usually know the words! Because it's usually Weezer!

Ballet at this time of year is even more exciting, because we are well into rehearsals for the university's yearly production of The Nutcracker. Syd will be dancing the role of a party guest this year, and although she's pretty bummed to be cast as a male character for the second year in a row, meaning that she has to wear pants and a wig instead of a beautiful dress and her long hair styled into ringlets, the silver lining is that I don't have to learn how to use a curling iron yet, and my well-practiced performance bun is a thing of beauty and majesty.

And even if she's not dancing the part that she most wants, she's still dancing--on the big stage, to the music of a live orchestra, in front of hundreds of people, and with her friends. It's the thing that she most loves to do, and whether I'm backstage or in the audience, I'll get to do what I love most, too, which is watch her being happy.

The Endless Possibilities of Retired and Council's Own Girl Scout Badges, IPPs, IPAs, and Fun Patches

It's an open secret to those who invest ourselves in Girl Scouting that our kids can still earn retired badges. Badges come and go as interest and society dictates, and badges such as Invalid Cook and Beekeeping went, and badges like Robotics and Digital Movie Maker came.

Rather, those retired badges are still there, they're just not being made.

The rule of thumb in Girl Scouts is that once official, always official. Mind you, there are a couple of naysayers (in every group, aren't there always?), but the vast majority of us hold to the rule of thumb that this tradition of badge-earning is one of the treasures that connects the community of Girl Scouts across time, and if a Girl Scout in 1957 was able to earn the Dressmaker badge, then so can her sister Scout in 2018.

The main advantage to this is that one can choose badges from over 95 years of Girl Scouting, offering kids a much wider variety of topics to study and skills to explore. Girl Scouts are guaranteed to find something that they're passionate about. Highly-motivated high achievers can't possibly max out the possibilities for their level.

Because, of course, why wouldn't you encourage a kid to explore outside of what's currently on the market, if she's interested? Why would you hold a child back from adding depth and breadth to her accomplishments, if that's what she wants?

And then you end up falling down the rabbit hole, too, because you have to research retired badge requirements, figure out what's level-appropriate as the level ages changed over the years, and before you know it you've ended up joining several Facebook buy/sell/trade groups for Girl Scout stuff, and you keep your used copies of old Girl Scout badge books at hand so that when someone lists something, you can look it up real quick in case you need to snatch it up before someone else does.

It does help that nearly all of the badges that I've bought in this way are cheaper than the new current badges. I have bought a couple of more expensive ones on ebay, because I'm of the opinion that if my kid is interested and motivated enough to do all the work to earn a badge, then I can shell out the occasional Hamilton to buy it for her. But I'm pretty sure that even those I could have scored for a couple of bucks if I'd just waited and kept my eye out.

In my opinion, if your kid is super interested in earning retired badges, you do need copies of the old badge books. I mean, there used to not be a Cadette level. And then there was, and you could tell which badges were for Cadettes because they had a yellow border. And then they didn't, but they did have a tan background. And then there were Junior badges that came out, and some of those had yellow borders. And some of them were also identical to the Cadette badges, but they had different requirements. And then Interest Projects came out, and they were rectangles, and Cadettes can earn them, but so can older Girl Scouts.

You see why I prefer to just check the old badge books?

Here are my go-to badge books for the Cadette and Senior levels:

• Cadette Girl Scout Handbook, 1960s-1970s. This is mostly a girl guide, but includes badges in the back. These are the yellow border badges, but the later Junior badge book, below, has many of them reissued with different borders and backgrounds and requirements. If I find a Junior version of a Cadette badge that my girl wants to earn, I buy it and have her use the Cadette requirements. 
• Girl Scout Badges and Signs, early 1980s. This book has both Junior and Cadette badges in it, with the Cadette badges differentiated by having tan backgrounds. By using this book and the previous one, I can generally identify and find the requirements for all the Cadette-level badges that one tends to find available to buy.
• Cadette and Senior Girl Scout Interest Projects, 1980s. Here is where the IPPs enter the picture!
• Interest Projects for Girls 11-17, 1990s. The badges in this book are basically identical to the ones in the 1980s version, BUT the requirements are different. 

Here are a couple of good (and free!) online resources:

• Badge Fairy. Badge Fairy isn't interested in the Cadette or Senior levels, and so the pdfs of badge requirements are for Juniors, not Cadettes, but you can buy the tan-background Cadette badges here and use one of the Cadette badge books to get the requirements.
• Palo Alto Girl Scouts. This old website has text versions of the requirements from Interest Projects for Girls 11-17. 

Every now and then, I'll hand the badge books off to my kids and ask them to look through them and tell me any badges that they want to earn. I make note of those and keep an eye out for them. These old badges, though, tend to just get listed in batches by whoever is wanting to get rid of them on whichever of the Facebook groups that I'm in, so I also will buy badges that I just think that my kids would be interested in, or that I know will fit into our upcoming studies. I buy many of the science-themed badges, for instance, and many of the outdoor skills ones. I buy a lot of the craft-centric badges for the younger kid, and the animal-centric badges for the older kid. 

Here is what I actually have on hand right now, waiting for a kid to earn them:

 

These are Cadette level, so they're for the younger kid. From the top left, they're Dressmaker, Conservation, Animal Kingdom: Water Life, Animal Kingdom: Reptile and Amphibian, World Heritage, Swimmer, Eco-Action, Rock and Mineral, Wildlife, Science Sleuth, Do-It-Yourself, and Computer Fun.

See all those varied science selections? They'll be incorporated into our schoolwork. Dressmaker and Swimming fit into the kid's current interests, and Conservation and Eco-Action are good outdoor badges.

The below badges are IPPs, so both girls can earn them through age 17:



From the top left, they are The Lure of Language, Architecture and Environmental Design, Horse Sense, Textile Arts, Outdoor Survival, All about Birds, Museum Discovery, Computers in Everyday Life, Inventions and Inquiry, Invitation to the Dance, Folk Arts, Games for Life, Water Sports, Digging through the Past, and Rolling Along.

I have a lot more of these, and a lot more variety, because the kids can be earning these until they graduate--who knows what the older kid is going to be interested in three years from now, or the younger kid five years from now? I generally try to get what I think they're interested in now--animals and history for the older kid, crafts and games for the younger kid--and I also collect IPPs that have academic possibilities or will get the kids outdoors or active.

Since the younger kid is a Cadette and the older kid is a Senior, and by the time the younger kid is a Senior the older kid is going to be an Ambassador, these IPPs are also really nice because they're badges that they can still earn together. That's fun!

Other things that they can still earn together are the fun patches that have requirements. A fun patch isn't official, so it goes on the back of the uniform vest, but many councils offer patch programs that have requirements, and these have been some of the most valuable learning experiences for the kids. They spent more time earning the I Promised a Girl Scout I Would Vote patch than many Girl Scouts spend earning official badges, and the Solar Eclipse patch was an entire summer's worth of study, culminating in a two-day pilgrimage to the total solar eclipse.

You can buy council's own badges and fun patches by calling a council, or sometimes online, but I like to buy them when I travel. The older kid has already earned all of the council's own horse badges that I bought from Middle Tennessee when we were on our Spring Break trip to Nashville last year (and if I'd been thinking ahead, I would have bought her the Senior ones to earn, too!), and the kids have almost finished earning that Hurricane Relief patch from Texas (they just need to finish our personal disaster kits).

I bought the sewing and space patches from the Girl Scout shop in Huntsville, Alabama, right before we went to the older kid's Space Camp graduation. I bought the wildflowers patch in Columbus, right before we went to the GIRL 2017 national convention. They all have requirements to earn them, and the space and flowers patches, in particular, will be easy to incorporate into our studies. The Senior badge at the top is sort of a council's own Aviation badge; both kids earned the Cadette version this year, and it was amazing and they loved it.

The main problem with council's own programs are that they're hard to find and the council doesn't always keep up with them or stock the badges/patches. Here is a fairly recent list of council's own programs, but lately, my again, my main strategy is just to check out any council shop where I'll be traveling, and see if they have any programs that the kids might like.

Here's what the older kid's vest looks like with all of the council's own and retired badges mixed in with the current badges:

You don't have to organize your Girl Scout's vest just like this, because the badge police aren't real. But you can easily see the retired Cadette badges with yellow borders, and the three council's own IPPs that I decided to place with the Senior badges, since they're similar in shape. In with the diamond Cadette badges you can see three council's own badges, and an official Make Your Own badge, which the older kid designed on the official site two days before it shut down. The Make Your Own badge is still official, however--it's even included in the Senior Girl Guide that the kid bought last month!--so I'm running an experiment. I bought two sets of blank Cadette and Senior badges from Rae's Creations, and I'm hoping that my kids can hand embroider on them, or maybe just draw their badge design on with Sharpie. Or use inkjet printer iron-on transfer sheets?

Stay tuned!

Just for funsies, here's what the back of the older kid's vest looks like:

You can see that her fun patches, which I have absolutely crammed together, overlapping when possible, are a combination of event patches, rewards for service projects, a couple of souvenir patches from troop activities, incentives from the product sales, and patches that had requirements to earn them. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Float patch was fun to earn, as was the Garfield Trail patch, and the Country Music Hall of Fame patch. There are a lot of happy memories on the back of that vest!

Our Girl Scout troop runs co-op style, and the kids do most of their badge-earning independently, or sometimes in small groups. My own two kids always have at least one badge that they're working on. When they finish earning it, they choose another! I present all of their badge options to them simply by having them included in the badge section of their Girl Guide to Scouting. Each girl has all of the badge books for all of the current badges in her book, alphabetized, and I photocopy the badge requirements for every retired or council's own badge that we own and put each one in, also alphabetized, AND I do the same for the fun patches that have requirements to earn. I really like that it gets them involved in new interests and doing new activities that I wouldn't necessarily choose for them. For instance, right now the older kid is working on the Senior Cross Training badge, and is therefore working out independently four times a week(!!!), and the younger kid is working on the Cadette Screenwriting badge. She wanted to watch the original Jurassic Park last night, ostensibly so she could take notes, so we did, and tonight she wants to watch Jurassic World, but this time she thinks that we should make dinosaur-themed snacks to eat while we watch.

Gee, being a Girl Scout is SO hard!

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

Upcycle A Valentine Candy Box into a Concrete Mosaic

I freelance over at Crafting a Green World, an eco-friendly crafting blog. Every now and then, on a non-regular basis, I'll share one of my favorite tutorials with you..

...such as this one! I originally published this concrete mosaic from a Valentine candy box tute here at Crafting a Green World.

Whether your Valentine's Day consisted of a romantic evening with your loved one or an evening alone with your pain, it very likely involved a box of chocolates. Even if you make an effort to avoid frivolous expenditures and excessive packaging, that heart-shaped box of chocolates is hard to avoid.

No matter your best intentions, you'll likely find yourself on February 15 with an empty box larger than your head, made from bleached cardboard, with a non-recyclable plastic tray (topped with another non-recyclable piece of corrugated cardboard) inside, and non-recyclable paper wrappers inside that.

I don't have a ton of help for the paper and the plastic, but that heart-shaped cardboard box? I know exactly what you should do with that! You are going to make yourself a concrete mosaic for your garden or yard. Here's how you're going to do it!

Supplies

Empty Valentine Boxes. The heart-shaped Valentine boxes automatically make awesomely adorable molds, but any sturdy cardboard box will work. Be warned that a box made of flimsy cardboard will bend and bow and likely give way under the weight of wet cement, so stick to super sturdy cardboard.

Portland Cement Or Another Comparable Brand. I like Portland cement, and I know exactly what ratios I like best with it, but you're welcome to use your own favorite brand of cement. Even better, hit up your local Freecycle and find someone's half-used bag of cement that they're giving away for free--that can become YOUR favorite brand!

Playground Sand. You don't necessarily have to mix your cement with sand if your mosaic will be decorative only, but you should mix in two to three parts sand when making a mosaic stepping stone.

Chicken Wire (optional). I did not use chicken wire for the concrete mosaics in this tutorial, but if I'm making a larger stepping stone, I will put a layer of chicken wire on the bottom of my mold, then pour the cement onto it. It makes a stepping stone just that little bit stronger.

Tesserae. These are the little doohickeys that you embed in the cement to make your mosaic, and you can use anything! In this tutorial, my kids and I are using a combination of store-bought glass tiles and a bunch of multi-sided dice from my homeschool stash. You can also see a broken plate in a couple of the pics; every time my kids break a piece of my Fiesta Ware (sigh...), I set it aside for a future mosaic. I didn't go for it this time, but at the rate my kids are going, I'm going to be able to mosaic a full-on Roman bath by the end of this summer.

  

Directions

1. Mix and pour the cement. Mix your cement according to the directions on the package. My Portland cement calls for sand in a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio with the cement; I used a 1:2 ratio for this project.

2. Place the tesserae. This is time-sensitive, in that you can only place the tesserae while the cement is wet enough to place them, but you don't have to move as quickly as you do with plaster of Paris, say. Unlike with plaster of Paris, however, here you do have to make sure that you've embedded each tile well enough for the cement to grip it; give each one a wiggle and make sure it's worked in well.

    

3. Let cure. This takes quite a well, depending on your weather. When we made these particular stepping stones, it was the one nice day before another string of cold, wet days, and so it took these stepping stones two full weeks to cure, even though they were kept indoors. Be wary, as the stepping stones will get more fragile before they strengthen--try to unmold them from their candy boxes too soon, and you'll be bummed when they break apart in your hands.



4. Unmold the stepping stones. By the time your cement is mostly cured, you can safely peel the wet cardboard away from the sides of the mold, and then remove the bottom of the candy box when the cement is fully dry. Buff any dry cement off of the tiles and shine them up, and your stepping stone is ready!

  

 If you want your stepping stone to last indefinitely outdoors, you'll want to seal it, but even without that added measure, your mosaic should happily endure for several seasons.

Homemade Leggings for Nearly All of Us

Because Matt said that he didn't want leggings, the silly boy. Leggings are way more comfortable than basketball shorts and tracksuit bottoms, Dude!

I just want to say right off that you don't sew your own leggings to save money. Sweatshop leggings bought from big-box clothing stores that earn an F on their Fair Trade practices are waaaaay cheaper. Like, WAY cheaper. And when I can find thrift store leggings that don't have holes or grass stains, I snatch those babies up!

So why DO you sew your own leggings?

So that you can make dreams like this come true for your kid:



I mean, it helps if your kid's dream is to own leggings made from holographic blue mermaid scale fabric...

This particular fabric (actually, as is all of the fabric that I'm going to show you) is from Spandex World. Yes, I shopped at an online store named Spandex World. I really liked them for this project, in particular, because they offer the stretch percentages for many of their fabrics. If you're just starting to sew leggings, so you can't yet tell what will work just by feel, that's even more helpful than shopping in person in a place where that info isn't offered, in my opinion.

Also, I feel like half the craft bloggers out there have a free leggings "tutorial," but they generally all consist of "Step #1: Trace around a pair of leggings that you already own. Step #2: Sew those leggings," and I call hijinks. That nonsense works for little kids, when their bodies are just straight little noodles, but it's not happening for tweens, teens, and adults.

My own personal Step #1 was to search for a digital pattern that I liked, and buy it. For Syd's leggings, I bought the Felicity Sewing Patterns Children's Leggings pattern, and I'm perfectly happy with it. I had to fiddle with it a bit--which is another thing that's MUCH better than "trace your clothes," because with a real pattern, it's so much easier to make the waist a size 10 and the length a size 12, with a low-rise waist, like so:

Here are my new favorite things about sewing leggings:

1. You don't have to hem the bottom of full-length leggings. I do hem the bottom of the biker shorts that I've made Syd, but when they're ankle length, I think they look nice unhemmed.
2. There's only one pattern piece. It's super quick to cut out.
3. They sew up so quickly! Yesterday, I was able to whip up a new pair of leggings for myself in the hour between when we got home from the apple orchard and when I had to leave for the Girl Scout volunteers meeting, and that included the time  that it took for Syd to dress her doll in a complete outfit to complement the doll leggings that I also sewed in that time and to do a photo shoot of me and the doll wearing our leggings.

Another favorite thing?

This kid was absolutely THRILLED about her new mermaid leggings, and *I* made that happen!

I wanted to do a photo shoot of Syd's new leggings, because if I'm going to buy the fabric and make them and they're going to turn out awesome then heck, yeah, I'm going to show them off! Excuse how much eye makeup Syd is wearing in these photos, because apparently mermaids just wear a lot of eye makeup.

Do you see how she laid out her play silks to look like a mermaid's fin? This kid.

I don't have an immediate use for four-way stretch fabric scraps, so I've been trying to use up every square inch in this leggings project. There was enough leftover from Syd's full-length leggings to make her a pair of bike shorts--

And you might also have noticed that her American Girl doll has her own pair of mermaid leggings. The American Girl doll leggings pattern is from Artsy-Fartsy Mama, and I've sewn it a billion times now. I don't always put elastic in the waistband, and in consequence, I've cut several inches from the waist of the pattern.

Of course, if I'm going to make special leggings for Syd, then I've got to make leggings for Will, too. Will is probably the worst person to sew leggings for, because she's crazy rough on clothes, and unlike her sister or I, will not take pains to keep something nice. Sigh. Nevertheless, here are her brand-new leggings (along with bike shorts for Syd and leggings for the American Girl doll from the scrap fabric):

Will's pattern is the Patterns for Pirates Peg Legs pattern, which is so good that I absolutely cannot believe that it's free! I would pay good money for such a terrific pattern! There are even free add-ons so that you can do even more cool things to the leggings! The sizes run pretty small, but they go up really high, so it works out. I used an XL for Will, and she claims that it fits well and didn't even want me to put elastic in the waistband.



And here are the leggings that I made for ME!

I need to do some troubleshooting on my pattern, grr. I didn't cut the waistband that it wants you to cut, fold in half, and then attach to the leggings for Will, because I thought I'd end up adding elastic but then she didn't want it, so I forgot all about the waistband for me, and now that my leggings keep wanting to slip down, I'm wondering if duh, that fold-over waistband might have helped! So that will be another little project to try before I'm confident that I'm confident with my own leggings pattern.

Syd, however, loves her doll's new galaxy leggings, which came out just perfect:

Like I said, these are NOT money-saving leggings, but they're not too terribly expensive, either, especially considering that I can make two kid leggings plus one doll pair from one cut of fabric, so there will more than likely be at least one more order from Spandex World in our near future.

After all, they do make that holographic mermaid scale print in several colorways...

AND Syd says that she'd also really like a skater dress, also in mermaid scale fabric, so there's another fun sewing project to get to!

P.S. Want to follow along on more of my crafting adventures? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page for lots of pics and WIPs!

Bridging, Rededication, and Something Silver

It's a new Girl Scout year, and you know what that means:

A party!

Will was the only Girl Scout in our troop to Bridge this year, and yet it was no problem to get every girl in our sweet, generous Girl Scout troop to come together to celebrate:

Our Bridging ceremony includes one of the girl's parents talking about all that girl has accomplished at that level. Being reminded of everyone's triumphs is my favorite part!

This apparently includes the cat, who also made it into half of the portraits that I took afterwards:

Here's my girl who has two more years of being a Cadette and yet is just one Take Action Project away from earning the Summit Award:

And here is my brand-new Girl Scout Senior!

In her three years as a Cadette, Willow earned 32 badges and completed three Journeys, earning the Summit Award. She beat her own record every cookie season, selling over 800 boxes last season. She served as a page in both the Indiana State House and Senate, performed a flag ceremony at our local women's history month luncheon, and earned both her Leader in Action Award and the President's Community Service Award (under President Obama, of COURSE). 

I couldn't be prouder of these two:

That above photo felt weirdly familiar to me when I looked at it, and then it suddenly occurred to me: Christmas 2013, the year that I enrolled them in Girl Scouts and gave them their brand-new uniforms and Girl Guides as one of their presents:

I promise you that Syd is better versed in the Girl Scout signs and salutes these days...

Anyway, here's the guy who makes all of their big achievements possible:

And here's me, because I do that, too!

Just before our Bridging ceremony, Will finally completed all of the requirements and the application for the Girl Scout Silver Award, the second-highest award in Girl Scouting. She'd been working on this project since last October, and for a while it had been coming together like magic. She built a Little Free Library, negotiated with our local Parks and Recreation Department for permission and help to install it, and got it all set up and loaded with books.

And yet, as I mentioned before, her Little Free Library kept getting vandalized. Someone cracked the back so that she had to replace it. Tore off the door multiple times, so that she eventually had to engineer a different type of door entirely. Every time Will wanted to go check in on it and restock it I dreaded the trip, anticipating whatever would have happened to it this time.

Until she went to restock it the day after we got back from our Canada road trip, and it was gone. Someone had stolen it. They'd torn it completely off the post, even, leaving one of the boards that made the floor behind on the post, so they'd even broken it in the process. Honestly, I think that I was more upset than Will was. It SUCKS to see someone hurting your child's heart and harming their faith in humanity.

Will, fortunately, rebounded quickly. She'd always intended to build and install a second Little Free Library in another park, so this meant that although she wouldn't have the two Little Free Libraries she'd wanted, she at least had a plan in place to have A Little Free Library by the end of her Silver Award project.

She negotiated with Parks and Rec for a second space, and this time, although she still wanted to install her Little Free Library in an economically disadvantaged area, she took care to make sure that it was in a family-friendly location, where there would be a lot of benign foot traffic and watchful parental eyes.

In fact, she installed it right on a playground!

The above photos were Installation Attempt #1, during which time Will discovered that the post was too wide and the Little Free Library wouldn't sit flat on it. So home we went and I brought Will back the next day, this time with a saw!

She'd also brought the dog, but she annoyed me by bringing not the dog's leash, but her tie-out. Will's reasoning was that she'd set Luna up under a nearby tree while she worked, but there was a small child playing pretty much unsupervised on the playground when we got there, which means that if I'd let her put Luna on the tie-out, I'd have had to watch/assist Will AND keep an eye on the dog, who is known to slip her harness occasionally, AND keep an eye on someone else's kid to make sure they didn't pester Luna. Luna is the gentlest dog that I have ever known, but still. You don't leave small kid unattended with dogs.

So I annoyed Will by insisting on holding onto Luna's tie-out while I helped Will, and because she was annoyed, she later admitted to me, she didn't tell me that the way that I was holding the tie-out, which is nothing more than plastic-coated wire, was dangerous. I had it wrapped several times around my hand, and Will knows from her horseback riding lessons that you shouldn't do this.

You know I'm leading up to something, and here it is: the perfect storm. Will was trying to balance her Little Free Library on top of the post so that she could attach it. The small child had taken an interest in us and had come over and asked me if I had ever read Green Eggs and Ham. And someone else at the park was letting their dog run around off-leash. I had my eyes on Will, was distracted by the kid, and the unleashed dog ran right in front of Luna, who lunged after it. She pulled me off my feet--seriously--I'm pretty sure I was entirely airborne for a second--then dragged me by my hand across the grass for a couple of feet until Will could get the Little Free Library put down and come to my assistance.

I have... I guess you'd call it a rope burn combined with a couple of crush injuries? Regardless, it hurt so badly that I had to call Matt and work to come and take over with Will, and I had to retreat to the car and cry. It HURT, and really, I'm just pretty excited that I didn't sprain anything, although it's shaping up to be a quite visible and QUITE ugly scar across the back of my hand.

Whatever. The back of my other hand has a big, ugly scar from a hot glue incident, so this one is at least a little bit more baller.

And look at what Will was able to complete with her father while I sat in the car, elevated my hand, and cried tears of pain:

Beautiful, yes? And a few weeks in, it hasn't been vandalized once, knock on wood! Will goes by to check on it and restock it, but it's clear that the community is also using it. It's just what she wanted.

And just this week Will was notified that with it, she's earned her Silver Award.

I'd say that those were Cadette years well-spent.

Homeschool Science Meteorology Unit: Condensation Demonstrations

Temperature and water are the keys to weather, and modeling how they work on the small scale allows you to more easily use your imagination to see them happening up large in the sky.

Here's where we modeled air flow.
Here's where we modeled how temperature affects the flow of both air and water.

And here's where we model how temperature causes water to change states!

If you've got younger kids, I'd spend quite a while on the water cycle with them first (I really, really, REALLY like this water cycle dice game!), but with my older kiddos, we just briefly reviewed it as a reminder of the big picture, then focused on our models and how they scale up.

First up is a demonstration of condensation that models the dew point. The dew point is simply the temperature at which water vapor condenses into liquid water, and it's simple to model just by forcing a liquid to drop to a temperature cold enough to cause condensation. You need a metal can, crushed ice, salt (optional) to lower the water's freezing point, and a thermometer to measure the liquid's temperature.

This textbook is Air Environment, Module 3 of the Civil Air Patrol's Aerospace Dimensions curriculum. With supplementation, it made the perfect spine for a six-week meteorology study.

Fill the can halfway with very cold water, then add crushed ice by the spoonful, stirring, observing, and measuring continually. I did not want the children to use their thermometers as stirring sticks, but it turned out to be impossible to stop them, grr:

When the outside of the can is cold enough, water vapor from the room will begin to condense. You want to notice the exact moment that condensation begins to appear on the outside of the can, then measure the water temperature.

Will also wanted to measure her body temperature. Goodness knows where these thermometers have been, much less the fact that they're currently actively involved in a science experiment. And yet, my little mad scientists are difficult to subdue:

I made a point later in the day to show them the "Can You Lick the Science?" memes...

We tried a couple of other condensation demonstrations that are meant to model rainfall. For the first one, fill a clear jar maybe a third full of very hot water--

--then rubber band a paper towel to the top and pile ice cubes on top of the paper towel:

You remember from our convection current lessons that hot air containing water vapor will rise. It will meet the cold air at the top of the jar, at which point the water will condense on the inside of the jar.

That demonstration ran okay, but as the kids were running it, I realized that a solar still would make an ever better  demonstration, and so we built one! Sort of...

This is the same as the previous demonstration, except that I had the kids put a layer of plastic over the top of the jar:

Now, when they added hot water and cold ice, none of the hot water vapor could escape, and it condensed on the plastic, resulting in genuine raindrops!

You wouldn't have ice, obviously, on a solar still, but would rely on the sun to warm the water enough to cause it to rise and condense. Make sure that the middle of the plastic is the lowest point so that all the raindrops fall from there, and put another container below that spot to collect the water, and drop by drop, you'll have dirt-free water to drink.