Candles, Soap, Gem Mining, and a Cave

Another homeschool field trip! This time we drove down to Squire Boone Caverns waaaaaay down south in Indiana.

How far south?

Well, we had about half an hour before we had to meet our group, so we popped over to Kentucky for lunch.

That far south.

And talk about fun. Squire Boone is a whole working pioneer industry-type center, and since we were on the group tour, we got to try it all. The girls hand-dipped candles--

--and we learned that the bump on the bottom is how you know that they're hand-dipped.

We played with the ground corn at the grist mill, and learned that it's the size of the sifter that separates the cornmeal from the corn grits from the cracked corn.

The girls mined for gems--

--and Willow, in particular, learned that the reason that she only found, like, two gems in her sifting while Sydney found something like fifteen is that the California Gold Rush, like life, was not fair.

I missed the soap demonstration since I had to perp-walk the screaming four-year-old out and stand with her by the car while she got her tantrum out of her system, but Willow tells me that it was very good.

And of COURSE there was the cave tour:

Growing up so near the Ozarks, I've done my fair share of amateur cave exploring, so I thought that I'd find it lame to be walked through a cave, but an experienced guide capable of answering all sorts of nerdy questions, and lighting well-chosen to show off the best features of the cave, were well worth the herding. It made all the difference, of course, that Squire Boone Caverns isn't hugely on the tourist scene, and that clearly a very careful job was done to build walkways and bridges that minimized damage to the cave.

At the end of the trip, I let myself be suckered (it didn't take much, let me tell you) into the purchase of two slingshots, two Squire Boone Caverns activity books, two gemstones, one fossilized shark tooth, two gemstone necklaces, and two sticks of rock candy.

And now, when you ask Sydney what her favorite part of the whole trip was, she says immediately, "Candy."

The Plaster of Paris Volcano Erupts!

This week seems to have been filled with craft fair prep and swimming lessons, but in the midst of that chaos (Last-minute shopping trips! Swimsuits still in the wash and we have to go! Do I have enough record bowls?) we made time for our latest and greatest obsesssion...

Volcanoes, baby!

Willow's desperate desire to create the plaster of Paris volcano (from a kit purchased at Goodwill for two dollars) using the plaster of Paris that we scored free at the Monroe County History Center garage sale one year was the premise behind my plaster of Paris tute over at Crafting a Green World last weekend. The numerous little plaster tchotchkes that Sydney and I created  during that tutorial went over far better than I anticipated (HINT: They make GREAT gifts), and the plaster of Paris volcano?

Clearly, it's awesome.

When the plaster was set the volcano was painted--

--it was nearly disaster time in Pompeii (We listened to Vacation Under the Volcano during our road trip).

We're not afraid of vinegar, so Sydney and I poured four teaspoons of baking soda into the volcano, put some food coloring into a quarter-cup of vinegar (I've also seen recipes that cut the vinegar with water or dishwashing soap, but like I said, we love ourselves some vinegar in this house), and, Sydney's choice of color notwithstanding (she chose purple), had ourselves a hell of an eruption:

Surprisingly, Will wasn't interested in participating in our morning eruption, but when we got home after swim class (flutter kicks and ice cream scoop arms for everyone!) she played out alone in the backyard for over an hour with the volcano, an entire gallon of vinegar, an entire box of baking soda, and a few assorted sundries.

Needless to say, cleaning up her activity entailed, in part, putting the completely empty bottle of vinegar and the completely empty box of baking soda in the recycling bins. Such is the low cost of awesomeness in science.

How's Our Homeschool This Week?

Let's see...

In the past week or so, we've:

visited the Wonderlab; read books about dinosaurs and animals and outer space and volcanoes; built and erupted a plaster of Paris volcano--

--watched a David Attenborough Wildlife Special and a dinosaur documentary that has convinced Willow that the T-Rex was primarily a scavenger; did a lot of gardening; and played a lot of Zoo Tycoon:

played guitar and took guitar lessons; listened to lots of kids' songs and lots of the Old 97's; and went to a frankly mediocre concert in the park

listened to a lot of Magic Tree House and read a lot of The Scrambled States of America

made plaster of Paris figurines; played with clay-

--painted with a lot of acrylics--

--and drew lots of pictures and stuck on lots of stickers and made one excellent collaged United States flag

had family time with far-flung relatives, as well as other miscellaneous field trips:

put together puzzles; played computer games about physics and computer games about shape identification; cooked a lot of meals; and completed the odd workbook page

read a lot of picture books; read a lot of chapter books; listened to The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Paddle-to-the-Sea, Hank the Cowdog, and the first three Bunnicula books; and had a lot of bedtime stories

wrote some letters--

--copied the partial lyrics to "Somewhere over the Rainbow"; kept up with summer reading program book lists; solved a code or two; and played a Dr. Seuss computer game

walked downtown a lot; rode bikes a lot; went to the playground a lot--

--and went swimming a lot, including each child's very first swim lesson EVER:

And that's how we homeschooled this week.

P.S. Check out my weekend posts over at Crafting a Green World--a review of Found, my favorite store in Ann Arbor; and a tutorial for making that plaster of Paris that we did so much of this week. That plaster of Paris tute also got picked up by CraftGossip--yay!

Matboard Stencil Tutorial, IF You Have a Cricut (Sorry)

You betcha stencils are important in Montessori education. Stencils allow for the precise reproduction of shapes whose forms should be internalized--not so much letters or numbers, which children must learn to recognize in a variety of scripts, but geometric figures, for instance, whose degrees and angles remain consistent. The premise lends itself well to my idea to make stencils of each of the fifty states: precise reproductions of consistent forms that the girls would do well to memorize.

Montessori stencils are generally made of metal, and are expensive. Metal, of course, is a logical material for a Montessori stencil. Montessori philosophy avoids the use of plastics, but a paper or cardboard stencil not only wouldn't be nearly capable of withstanding average wear, but it also wouldn't have the kind of high, very stiff edge that gives support to the child's pencil without becoming worn down over time.

Expensive, though...yeah. I'm saving up for a microscope for the girls, and I wouldn't dream of buying stencils. Good thing that I own a Cricut! I've used my Cricut to make everything from paper dolls to patches on my pants to felt board figures--pretty much everything EXCEPT scrapbooking.

Even on the Cricut, cutting matboard is a stretch. But with a little more effort you can make a perfect stencil, and matboard is the perfect material. It's very stiff and very sturdy, yet inexpensive, recyclable, and doesn't require so much fussing that if you wreck a stencil you feel angst about tossing it and trying again.

To make a matboard stencil, you will need:

• Cricut with the cartridge that you want. I'm using the 50 States cartridge to gradually make the girls an entire set of 50 states stencils. Any kind of geometric shape would also be very fun and useful.
• Cricut deep cut blade and deep cut blade housing. It's VERY easy to switch these out on your Cricut.
• matboard pre-cut to the appropriate size. I cut my matboards to approximately 8"x10", with the stencil being at least an inch smaller on all sides than the matboard that contains it.
• X-acto knife and self-healing cutting mat.

1. Install your deep cut blade and deep cut blade housing, and set it to its deepest cut. Then, set the Cricut's pressure dial to almost its highest point, and the speed dial to around the midpoint, if not a little slower.

2. Press the matboard face-up on the sticky mat, and load it into the Cricut. Manually set the paper size as a little smaller than the real size of your matboard, to prevent the Cricut from cutting the stencil too close to the edge of the matboard. Remember this exact paper size, however.

3. Set the size of your shape so that it is at least an inch smaller on its widest side than the size of your matboard.

4. Turn on the multi-cut function.

5. After the Cricut finishes its cuts, re-set the paper size exactly the way you did in step four, and re-cut the stencil, again using the multi-cut function.

6. Unload the mat and, using the x-acto knife, finish cutting out the last little bits that didn't completely cut in the Cricut.

And then you're done!

Now go tag somebody's building with Kentucky.

Raw Wool, 1/4 Fleece

Guess what I bought at the Ann Arbor farmer's market yesterday?

It has grass and twigs in it, and smells like sheep. The girls and I are going to have a blast this summer.

A Big Reunion for the Little Girl

She put on her favorite party clothes:

She wrote her name on her nametag so that all her former nurses and neonatologists could remember her:

Her father showed her an incubator like the one that kept her own life safe:

She got her face painted--

--like a purple pony, which was just what she requested:

She ate lots of party food:

She played lots of party games:

She did the bubble dance with her sister:

And she reminded us once again, as she reminds us daily, that we are very, VERY lucky people:

I hope that you had a lucky day today, too.

Tutorial: Coffee Filter Tie-Dye (Sorta)

I've mentioned before that my Papa's house contains all kinds of bulk goodies that my house doesn't--white flour, cake mixes, paper towels, paper plates, paper cups, etc. The girls would add to this list pudding cups, Pringles, Cheez Its, American cheese, cream soda, Reese's Cups, Wonder bread, etc., etc., until I tear my hair out, but let's stick to my list so that my shoulders don't get all tense, shall we? Mmmkay.

So even though we try to be pretty eco-friendly in our crafting at home, when we're at Papa's house we can experiment with perhaps some crafting projects that I've been tempted by in my various readings but that call for ingredients that I'm not comfortable buying. Papa's house was where I first made play dough, which calls for white flour, and now I actually own a stock of cheap white flour that I use just for crafting. I also made my first rainbow cake experiments there, and you all know that I am now the rainbow cake queen of the universe.

Guess what? Papa also owns coffee filters, and I have been wanting to try this wet marker tie dye project for FOREVER. And it turns out that it IS awesome, so you do it, too. Here's what you need:

• 
  
  coffee filter
• 
  
  markers, but probably not the washable kind

• 
  
  water
• 
  
  eye dropper or spritzer or, as we did, a fingertip to dip and then shake

1. Flatten out the coffee filter with your hand, then color a big, bold picture in it with your markers. Don't bother for anything too elaborate, but feel free to be super-colorful:

2. Drip or spritz water lightly over the entire surface of the filter, taking your time so that you can enjoy the sight of the ink running and spreading and mixing. This is the same concept that we'll use when we revisit coffee filter chromatography in a couple of weeks (on account of I put some of Papa's coffee filters in my suitcase--thanks, Papa!). Put a paper towel (shout-out!) underneath the filter to catch any ink that washes completely out of the filter, and keep in mind that if you pour on too much water, the ink WILL wash out completely. You'll have a pretty and colorful paper towel then, I suppose

3. Lay your coffee filter flat to dry, then enjoy!

Did I mention that Papa's house also has all the popsicles that you can eat?