At the Wonderlab

For Christmas, my Matt gave me a certificate for six months of once-a-month housecleaning. You ought to know by now that my house is really messy--I tidy maybe one room a day, although it's certainly untidy again by evening, and perhaps I'll do some dishes or laundry, but mostly I play Quirkle with the girls, and make Barbie clothes with them, and cook them play dough, and read to them, and build them books out of their artwork, and go to the park and the library and the YMCA and the other park and maybe still another park with them, etc. Seriously, I barely even cook dinner anymore--I feed the girls leftovers of whatever concoction they've asked to make with me during the day (The latest? Mashed potatoes and freshly juiced orange juice), and then later that night Matt gets out the George Foreman and grills us veggie/non veggie burgers.

Matt's scheduled us a housecleaning before on a couple of special occasions, and it's always been this totally retro awesome experience--The whole house! Clean at once! And it smells of pine! And the floors are mopped! And the dishwasher is running! And all the junk is picked up off the floor! And the toilet is SO clean! And I didn't have to do it!--that I have been deeply looking forward to my once-a-month deep cleaning treat, and yet somehow, it's just not working out this year.

The first little company that Matt called just never answered their phone, and never called him back. The next little company scheduled a cleaning and then cancelled because it was snowing, and then re-scheduled, and then cancelled because one of the cleaners woke up with the flu, and then rescheduled. Each time the girls and I are required to evacuate the house, which can be a little annoying depending on our mood for the day, but hey! The whole house is gonna be clean at once!

In our latest evacuation in hopes that the housecleaners actually come and clean our house this time, the girlies and I hit up our regular hang-out spot, the Wonderlab:

Playing with a Parachute

Grapevine Climber

Rocks to Covet in the Gift Shop

Interactive Artwork in the Garden

Shoots!

Kinetic Ball Machine

Wind Tunnels

We had a marvelous time, as usual, and then came home, eagerly anticipating the glory of a clean house. And yet, when I opened the door--Alas! The house is just as filthy as before! The housecleaners did not come! Again they did not come!

Apparently it's a great time to be a housecleaner, with so much business to pick from that you don't even have to show up to a place if you don't want to. And, desperate and all, we've come up with a Plan B that's frankly vastly better than this Plan A, anyhow:

This Sunday, and one Sunday a month thereafter, I will leave the house all by myself. I will leave at my leisure. I will visit establishments of peace and pleasure, such as coffee shops and book stores. While I am gone, Matt and the children will deep-clean the house without me. They will not be paid.

Money-saving AND accomplishes the same goal! And Plan B gets me a soymilk latte, too!

I am sold.

A Colored Pencil Roll with Superpowers

I'm entering a whole new target audience of kid-crafting. Will's attending the sixth birthday party of a little guy friend this weekend, and for a little while, I was stymied about his present.

He's a little too old for play dough, at least as a birthday present.
Same for a superhero cape.
I doubt he'd appreciate a patchwork quilt.
Same for a dress.
How would I go about constructing a Beyblades carrier?

Fortunately, the little dude likes comic books (don't we all?), and I do happen to have this particular thrifted fabric just waiting for me in my stash:

This old fabric is slightly lame, because it's from that period of time when they killed off Superman in the comics (gasp!) and tried to replace him with a couple of dorky alterna-superheroes, but still, Superman's on the fabric, and I love its retro look.

While I sewed this particular colored pencil roll, I took some photos for an upcoming pdf tutorial, because I think that I finally have this pattern ironed out and it's ready for Matt to design and make into a pdf package for my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

 
 
 
 I'm in love with the final product, a retro comic book colored pencil roll with superpowers:

 
 
I've already got a few more cut out and hemmed, which I'll put in my pumpkinbear etsy shop when they're finished, but I still do have some leftover fabric...

I'm thinking this could be my new traveling Sharpie roll.

Crayola Crayon Encaustic Art

This is the one project guaranteed to get my kids excited again about their old, broken crayons! We've melted and remolded crayons so often that that's not really new anymore, and they both know that if they wheedle enough I'll hand them a brand-new box of crayons for their art activities, so you might guess that our tub of old crayons is a large tub, indeed.

Encaustic art is the art of dripping wax onto canvas. In other words--it uses up crayons! If your canvas is sturdy, if your work area is covered, if your hair isn't hanging in your face and your sleeves aren't drooping over your hands, if your crayons are long-ish and so is your candle, and if your children can follow simple instructions, then seriously, there is no reason on this earth not to hand the kiddos a lit candle and let them go to town.

First, you'll need to unwrap yourselves a goodly number of Crayola crayons. I'm recommending Crayola crayons not because they pay me to (I wish), but instead because I know that this project works with Crayola crayons, because that's what we use. Wax will catch fire at a certain temperature, and while I am certain, from personal experience, that you can hold a Crayola crayon to a lit candle and it will not catch on fire, I am not prepared to make the same claim about that three-pack of crayons that your kid scored at the steakhouse last night.

Unwrap a large number of crayons, because encaustic wax art uses them up quickly, and it's a drag to stop in the middle of your work and have to unwrap more crayons. Also, a shortage could tempt you to continue using your crayons even as they're growing too short to be used safely, and that would be a mistake.

Lay a canvas on your work table, and make sure that your child is at a comfortable height over the work table. Establish to your own level of comfort that your child will obey your instructions, will work calmly, will stop working if told to do so, and will not jerk away if you lay a guiding hand on her. If you're not sure that this will be the case, I'd suggest that you save encaustic art for another time. Go melt and remold your crayons instead!

Otherwise, tie your child's hair back, put her in short sleeves, and off you go!

Have your child comfortably hold a crayon in her dominant hand, keeping her hand at the very end of the crayon. Light a candle, and give it to the child to hold in her non-dominant hand. Your child should hold the candle and the crayon over her canvas and, keeping the candle and crayon either level or pointed slightly up (not down), should touch them together. The crayon will begin to melt and drip wax onto the canvas, and your child can begin to move the candle and crayon together to create her art:

Supervise to make sure that your child is touching the candle and crayon tip-to-tip, and that the candle is not pointed down (which would put the flame close to your child's fingers), or that the candle and crayon aren't pointed sharply up (which would cause the wax to drip down them onto your child's fingers). If you see your child beginning to do these things, then correct her in a calm voice, or by gently guiding her hands with yours. Don't shout or do anything to startle your child, and end the activity if she begins to get goofy with the materials.

Your child can switch colors whenever she chooses, to add to her artwork:

The more decorated the canvas is, the easier it is to appreciate the beauty of the dropped wax.

Notice how long the crayon is here:

You don't want to let the crayon get too short, or the child's fingers will get too close to the flame.

My younger kid is four, and so I hung out at her elbow for the entire two hours that she worked, intently focused on her art. My older kid, however, is six, and has excellent form, so she sat across the table from me where I could see her, but not necessarily in arms' reach. 

I didn't tell the kids that the majority of encaustic art is really about manipulating that wax once it's on the canvas, but the older kid nevertheless did some experimentation:

 

After a while, we ran out of my cheap-o candles (must remember to add them to the shopping list!), and since the kids were enjoying themselves so heartily, I sighed a what-the-hell sigh and brought out the much nicer beeswax candles for them to use:

 

The little kid fell in love with the sweet scent of the beeswax candles and covered canvas after canvas only in beeswax candle drippings, calling them her "Smell Paintings":

 

And so behold! Encaustic art in all its glory:

It's a little over-exposed because I hate my scanner, but you get the idea. Stay tuned, for I am mounting an exhibition of encaustic art canvases on the wall directly above the stereo cabinet--you'll want to come to the opening reception, I'm sure.

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!

Play Dough Portraits

a recent sunny day, I brought out all of the different kinds of play dough that I've been cooking up recently, and Sydney and I had ourselves a private little play dough party, culminating in an etsy play dough photo shoot, complete with light tent and sunny window. It was a Play Dough Portrait Party!

We shot green pine-scented play dough:

 
 Pink peppermint-scented play dough:

 
 
 
 And naturally white, unscented play dough:

 
 
My favorite part of making a big batch of homemade play dough is dumping the essential oil and coloring on top of the finished play dough into my Kitchenaid mixer with the dough hook inserted. I turn the mixer on high and let it knead the dough smooth, blend the color, and infuse the essential oil, which wafts throughout the entire house while it's working. A few days ago a friend came over and commented, "Your house smells so good!"

Yeah, it's from the play dough I made a week ago. Fringe benefits, you know.

From A to Z in the Evening

Willow thought that it would be fun to organize all her library books alphabetically by title:

 
The funny thing is that I remember doing the exact same thing as a kid--I'd drag out all my books and spend a whole Saturday, halfway organizing, mostly browsing and reading and flipping to find favorite chapters.

So I sat down with Willow, and taught her not to alphabetize with "The" or "A" or "An," but mostly she and I halfway organized, and mostly browsed and read and flipped to find favorite chapters. We spent the whole evening that way, and then I sent her off to bed.

The Way that the Writing Gets Written

In longhand.

In a notebook.

In several different colors of inkpen.

For a couple of paragraphs, in magic marker.

Over the course of weeks.

Sitting in the back of the room during Story Time.

Sitting on a stool next to the Grapevine Climber at the Wonderlab.

Sitting on a quiet section of the bleachers, away from all the other parents and all the action, at the girls' homeschool Valentine's Day party.

One page at a time, sometimes one paragraph at a time, sometimes one sentence at a time.

Sometimes not even that much.

In a way that looks like this:

It may not look like much, but it's excellent. And I'll tell you what--following my girls around while I write, asking them to hold on for a minute before they speak so that I can finish my thought, stopping in mid-sentence when I'm called away so that I'll know exactly how to begin again when I have time, putting the period on a final sentence and then startling the child playing next to me by exclaiming, "Finished!"?

Really, there's nothing that beats it.

Homeschool Science: Mentos Takes the Gas out of Soda

This would be a more relevant experiment for children who drink soda. It would help them contextualize the science behind the sensations that they experience when they drink soda, and aid them in internalizing that the laws of science lie underneath even the smallest aspects of our lives.

My girls don't have much experience with carbonated beverages, but we still find ourselves performing this experiment at least weekly, simply because it's cool.

So the idea behind the Mentos and Coke experiment is that soda contains carbon dioxide gas, and Mentos releases that carbon. Mentos has lots of teeny-tiny little pits on its surface, something that I think that we could see on our pocket microscope (I'm not completely sure if that's what we saw, or if it was artifacts from the light source + shiny candy surface). The teeny-tiny little pits have teeny-tiny little air bubbles in them. It's exposure to air--sort of--that releases the carbon dioxide from the soda. Really, since more carbon dioxide is dissolved in the soda than the soda can support in typical atmospheric conditions, it doesn't take much to make the carbon dioxide escape, and so although Mentos isn't much, it is enough.

Mentos drops into the soda, the nucleation points (those teeny-tiny little pits) attract the carbon dioxide, and the carbon dioxide gas goes up while the Mentos fall down, crossing the entire depth of the soda. Add six more Mentos to multiply the effect, and you're in business.

We've done this experiment before by just dropping the Mentos into the two-liter bottle of diet soda (sugar-free=less sticky), but because the effect occurs so quickly, the person who did the dropping was far too busy running away from the spew to actually observe it. I finally sprang for the depth-charge tube from Steve Spangler Science, which our big-box craft store stocked, in preparation for science fair season, I suppose--and I could use my 40%-off coupon!

The depth-charge tube sports a trigger pin system, and that was all it took to convince Sydney, who'd watched the previous experiments from the safety of the house, to actually come outside and run the experiment herself (this video is a little loud, because I'm shouting across the street to Sydney, but I'm about a foot away from the video recorder):

The passerby, whom I didn't notice at the time, is actually my next-door neighbor taking a walk, and just after this experiment she came over and basically asked, "Why are you always doing crazy stuff outside your house?" It turns out that she, too, used to homeschool!

It's a small, small, awesome and small world.