Drawing Dinosaurs

As Beanpole, my favorite part of our Independence Day parade, announced this morning, "Every day is Independence Day. Happy 3rd of July!".

Today has been a napping in the hammock, biking downtown and back, painting the basement hallway (the Great Timeline commences!!!) day. The dad and the Syd left this afternoon for hours' worth of errands, leaving the Willow behind--who was distraught to discover this, once her head popped up from her book and she was informed that her father had ASKED her to come with them over an hour ago as they were leaving, but she was so busy reading that she had declined. She has no memory of this refusal, silly girl. As a former reading child myself, I've mentioned to Matt that the only way to gain a reading child's real and true attention is to put a hand on her shoulder and wait for her to look up and maintain eye contact. If she makes eye contact but her eyes keep darting back to her book, she's still not paying attention.

Will's idea for how to pass the dreadful time until the dad and the Syd came back was to decamp with a blanket and numerous supplies out to the backyard where we would--guess what?--read. Of course, there was also lots of tree climbing, running around, laying back (this is where I got my hammock nap in), and drawing:

Ammonite

Icthyosaur

Ankylosaurus and Plesiosaurus

Stegosaurus

These are all Willow's creations, by the way, with pencil on white sketch paper and pastel crayon on black sketch paper, copied from how-to-draw books and picture books and her own clever mind, of course. She did sweet talk me into producing an apatosaurus and a gallimimus with pastels on black paper, and she praised them amply to be supportive, but those illustrations aren't still around to scan, alas--it's about the process, not the product, you know.

In other news, Will is also recovering from a raging case of swimmer's ear. As her pediatrician was washing a build-up of earwax out of the affected ear, he both announced that Willow is definitely the year's record-holder so far of earwax removed, and mentioned in passing that he was surprised her hearing hadn't been affected, her ear was so clogged. As we left the doctor's office later, I commented on what he had said, and Willow replied, "Yeah, I can't hear you a lot."

Just when you think that you have a reasonably bright child on your hands, one who is smart and sensible, you turn around and discover that she's neglected to tell you that she's been half-deaf for who knows how long. Really, sometimes I wonder if there is anything inside a child's brain other than fireflies and crayons and the desire for candy.

I Spy Sydney in Progress

Here's what my work table looks like this week:

I have been planning to sew an I Spy quilt for Sydney for quite a while, and now I need to hop to it lest she outgrows it before I even begin!

Here's Our Homeschool This Week

This week-ish, we...

swam and swam and had swim class, rode pedal bikes and balance bikes and scooters, picked blueberries--

--picked blackberries, went to a carnival, learned how to slip 'n slide, hiked some nature trails and hiked downtown, scrubbed the basement steps something fierce (the giant timeline preparations are in motion!) and wrestled and raced and goofed around a lot.

did workbook pages and many puzzles, played more of that inane Dragon Tales computer game, played pick-up sticks and dice (Willow made up a dice game that is a KILLER for anybody else but her to win), used little plastic toy bugs as math manipulatives for addition, subtraction, and pattern-making, and stamped with number stamps.

read, read, READ--Willow read Abigail's Drum, several Dinosaur Cove books, a mystery that takes place at Niagara Falls, and a Boxcar Children book that I was supposed to be reading TO her but it was so dull that I kept dozing off, oops; together we read many picture books, including the beautiful Blueberries for Sal, and began Fantastic Mr. Fox. We also watched the film of Fantastic Mr. Fox, spent entire afternoons at the library more than once, and did some workbook and played some Starfall.

made more sand art--

--decorated toilet paper tubes in preparation for the Great Refrigerator Marble Run, made some collages, worked with Sharpies, tried out a very odd Hello Kitty plastic toy-making oven--

--colored in coloring books and colored plenty free-form, painted loads of watercolor paintings--

--learned from cake how to make plastic bottle votives, and made princess jewels, pirate jewels, and labels for my baby bags together using the Cricut:

practiced guitar and took guitar class, listened to plenty of CDs and vinyl record albums, and goofed around amply with the keyboard, recorder, and other miscellaneous musical instruments.

wrote workbook stuff, kept the girls' library reading program lists all up-to-date and orderly, Willow took a journaling class and made her own journal to write in, and both the girls cracked this week's secret code, also at the library.

watched a documentary on Plimoth Plantation (we leave next week!), played My First Amazing History Explorer over and over and over again on the computer, and read lots and lots and LOTS of books about Pilgrims and First Thanksgivings and the Boston Tea Party, etc.

practiced the ASL alphabet some more, again courtesy of Starfall.

made butter in a Mason jar, and also blueberry muffins and cookies--

--which tasted delicious; watched Mythbusters and Dinosaur Train and a documentary on tornadoes; gardened rather helpfully; worked several works in the official Squire Boone Caverns activity books; and took excellent, loving care of the sweet little baby tadpoles.

And that's how we homeschooled this week--whew!

Blueberries and Black Raspberries

The u-pick blueberry farm is a VERY important part of our summer.

The children's personalities really come into focus here. Sydney, whose penchants for fine clothing and hair pretties and small toy ponies might fool you into thinking her frivolous, steadily picked blueberries for two entire hours:

She ended up with three pounds of blueberries picked all by herself:

Willow, whose penchants for book work and dinosaur study and guitar practice might fool you into thinking that she's solidly industrious, picked perhaps fifteen blueberries, and then spent two hours happily floundering in various mudpits:

She collected this summer's stock of pampered tadpole babies to come live in our fish tank:

She's out on the back deck reading out loud to them right now, actually...

I forbade Willow to pick more blueberries after she got her hands so filthy in tadpole muck and refused to wash them. Fortunately, the child is a problem-solver:

We've never had the luck in our side-of-the-trail black raspberry picking that my blog friend cake has. We don't come home with many black raspberries, but this is probably a good thing since we seem to collect an equal number of chiggers as raspberries. The yearly outing does have two good things going for it, however, that our blueberry picking lacks...

Wildflowers:

And Daddy:

He's even better at collecting chiggers than the rest of us are.

Homeschool Science: Mason Jar Butter (and Whipped Cream!)

How one thing leads to another...

We're going to Niagara Falls in a couple of weeks, did I tell you? I am SOOOPER excited. Our house is chock-full of books and media products and activities and experiments and art projects having to do with the humongous road trip (such preparation has taken precedence over other mundane necessities as finding a cat sitter, a front garden waterer, and a community garden waterer, none of which we have, yet, yikes!), including one CD reader entitled Manny's Cows: The Niagara Falls Tale, which the girls listen to over and over and over again.

In the story, the cows discover how to make butter, and the book includes a recipe for Mason jar butter. Willow says, "I want to make Mason jar butter." And so we do.

You will need:

• clean Mason jar with tight-fitting lid
• heavy whipping cream

1. Fill the Mason jar about 3/4-ish full of cream.
2. Shake the crap out of it until it turns to butter with a little buttermilk on the side:

This project was actually a perfect complement to the oil vs. water science experiment that Sydney initiated the other week, because it's another example of the way that oil (or butterfat) wants to separate. If you unscrew the lid fairly often, you can watch the transition from milk to butter in several discrete steps. The girls were only interested in one of these steps:

Whipped cream! The air that gets shaken into the mixture as a preface to its separation is yummy, little scientists discovered, on chocolate chip cookies, ginger muffins, and, it turns out, straight from the spoon.

I've read that Mason jar butter requires perhaps 10-15 minutes of straight shaking. I wouldn't know, as we spent a good hour on this project. I dutifully shook when it was my turn, but I must report that the larger child merely gave the jar a desultory shake or two while reading comic books when it was her turn, and the smaller child refused to shake at all, merely letting the Mason jar keep her company as she watercolor painted on the floor when it was her turn.

The fate of the butter rested in my hands, then, but I'm happy to tell you...

...that it tasted simply delicious with my vegan blueberry/ginger spelt muffins.

This is What All the Fuss Was About

A friend of mine, who also was homeschooled as a child, warned me recently that summer is the busiest season for homeschoolers. In summer, you not only have all the regular active homeschooler stuff--and there's a lot of regular active homeschooler stuff!--but you also have all the out-of school schoolkid stuff, the day camps and reading programs and sports classes, etc., not to mention the super-fun extra summer stuff.

And that's how it's been this past week. We've had not just the regular active homeschooler stuff--guitar class and science experiments and playdates and art activities and workbooks--but the out-of school schoolkid stuff--swim class and library programs and movie screenings--and the summer stuff! Berry picking! Ice cream eating! Even more swimming!

The momma stuff, therefore--crafting and blogging and book writing--has been waaaaaaaaay on the back burner. I basically shoved a week's worth of work into a couple of stressful evenings, but the Crafting a Green World articles have been written, the babywearing class has been taught, and the baby bags...

Ah, the baby bags...

They're killing me, I love them so much. I mean, seriously--Guns 'n Roses?!? How could you NOT dress your newborn in a Guns 'n Roses gown?

Anyway, I actually have about four more baby bags all cut out and ready to be sewn, and I need to prep and upload a big update to my pumpkinbear etsy shop with the stuff from my new handmade homeschool line, AND I need to get my application in to Strange Folk 2010 pronto, and I'm totally going to get right on that, but for the next couple of days I think I have more pressing business to accomplish.

I should probably make several meals of stir-fried rice.

And watch this totally insane documentary about Dr. Bronner that I checked out of the library.

And paint the basement hallway in several shades of pink and purple.

Right now, however, there's a summer storm brewing, and I really need to go stand out in the middle of the street and watch it.

Til tomorrow...

What Have I Been Making This Week?

Baby bags!!!

Bring it on, emo babies!