Primary Colors Play Silks

A simple set of play silks

 30"x30" set of three, one each in red, yellow, and blue

wide enough to tie around a child's waist, light enough to braid into a child's hair

they stream satisfyingly behind you as you run

they certainly don't slow you down

perhaps, if you twirl with them, they'll make you feel giddy

superhero cape? you bet!

because imagination is, of course, a superpower

There's a primary colors set of 30"x30" play silks up in my pumpkinbear etsy shop, joining the multi-color play silk canopy, to be joined, ideally sometime soon, by a full rainbow set of play silks. 

I can't imagine the circus it'll be to attempt photographing a full set of seven play silks all in action at one time.

Mapwork: Haiti

Along with sewing sundresses for Haitian orphans, the girls and I did a few more activities to round out a brief unit study of Haiti, one meant mostly to contextualize their understanding of their service project.

I've been surprised since we began homeschooling to learn how much I value, and therefore emphasize (and therefore assign!) memory work. It's far from the former mental picture of public schools in which everything was learned by rote and nothing internalized by doing, but I certainly have seen that in the large days of work and play and study and rest that homeschooling allows us, there is plenty of room for plenty of memory work. And thus we memorize poetry, and spelling words, and Latin and Spanish vocabulary words, and math facts, and geographical locations.

Mapwork goes along with whatever other study we're doing of a location. Along with their sewing project on Haiti, for instance, I showed the girls the location of Haiti on the globe and asked them to memorize it so that we could play the "globe spinning game." In the globe spinning game I spin the globe, and when it stops I ask the girls to find a location. Each girl can now find Haiti consistently on the globe, no matter their starting point.

I also think that map labeling is a valuable activity--it's all about context! Instead of a country-specific map, I usually choose a more regional map from Megamaps, so that the girls can color and label not just their country, but the countries and surrounding oceans:

Each girl also has a one-page world map (also from Megamaps) in her geography folder. As each country (or state, or ocean, or continent) comes along, she colors and labels it on that world map. We reuse the same map until there's an overlap (Africa, for instance, and then Egypt), and then I print them a new map to start on.

Labeling the maps and initially memorizing the geographic location takes...hmm, less than half an hour? Maybe around that, depending on the complexity of the location. After that, reinforcing the location on the globe by playing the globe spinning game takes probably 30 seconds every now and then, certainly not a significant time-suck for such a valuable piece of memory work.

Now, when they're older, I'm going to print them a giant world map, and then we're all going to start learning how to draw in countries freehand. An entirely freehand map of the world is an accomplishment that I'm quite looking forward to.

In our study of Haiti, we also used:

A Day at the Ohio Renaissance Festival

...which nearly did not happen, because it was so rainy. However, the troops were rallied with the pep talk that REAL medieval villagers would not have let a rainy day run their festival. Hell, if the sun was out, that's the day that they'd probably stay indoors, blinking in fear at that unfamiliar bright orb raining the unwholesome glow of dragon's fire down upon them.

And so, accompanied with many lectures on the differences between a historically fair medieval representation and what is more accurately referred to as a medievalism, all coming from the mouth of the resident stay-at-home mom who has the Master's Degree in English with an emphasis on Medieval Studies (ahem), we had a fabulous day at the Ohio Renaissance Festival.

There was stage combat, bawdiness included:

(I have also trained in stage combat, as well as fencing the sport, on account of I am a dork.)

Magic:

Fairies:

Dragons:

and pirates, wenches, serfs, barbarians, plenty of royalty, etc. I dressed in my Goodwill Ren Faire dress, while Willow dressed as a wizard and Sydney dressed as a fairy. Willow was often asked to perform various spells for various residents of the village (SERF: Please, Miss Wizard, perform a spell to give me a pot of gold. WILLOW: No, I'm going to turn you into a frog! SERF: AAAAAAAH!), and Sydney was often queried about whether she was a good fairy or a bad one. Matt was boring in his T-shirt and shorts, so we improved him:

There were tons of shows going on all the time and a million other things to do that were absolutely free (not least of which was petting the jousting horses)--

--but I hadn't realized that there would also be tons of really fun rides and other activities (throwing tomatoes at the wretch, anyone?) that cost money, and so it really wasn't in the infernal budget. We permitted each girl to choose ONE activity, therefore, out of all the possibilities. Willow chose a life-sized walk-through maze, Sydney was beside herself at her inability to choose between the maze, riding the jousting horse, riding the camel, going on the carousel, throwing tomatoes at the wretch, trying out the climbing wall, etc., but then finally settled on possibly the wildest ride in the village. It looked so impressive that Willow spent her own money to ride along:

Barf, right? The girls loved it, though, and I think it was their favorite thing at the fair, along with the moderately-priced handmade wooden sword and shield set that I bought for each of them. Matt's favorite thing was the smoked turkey leg, hands down (also barf), and I think that I was the fondest of this juggler:

Dorky dreams do come true:

Carrot Cake Bake-Off

With our budget being so...well...budgeting, I've been trying to cook more. As in every day. And my own personal rule for when we cook around here is, "When you cook something, double the recipe." That way the girls and I can have leftovers for lunch for the next couple of days, or the extra can be frozen and served for dinner next week, and when you don't enjoy cooking (as I don't), that's a big deal!

For my Matt's birthday, this meant carrot cake. I have a whole carrot cake Pinboard, just for dreaming about delicious carrot cake recipes to make for that Matt of mine. This birthday, however, I made him the ultimately simple carrot cake recipe from Made. And, of course, I doubled the recipe.

Goodness, that recipe makes a lot of carrot cake!

Inspired by our first Great Cookie Bake-Off that worked so well, every now and then the girls and I repeat the experience with some other amenable recipe. And it turns out that simple carrot cake batter, enough to make three dozen carrot cupcakes, is perfectly amenable to experimentation.

The bake-off rules:

1. We divide the recipe between us. 
2. We lay out every possible mix-in, from healthy to unhealthy and usual to unusual and just plain odd.
3. Every person is allowed to customize their own batter exactly how they want.
4. The results are baked and, inevitably, enjoyed by all.

The girls love this project--

--and always come up with excellent combinations, chock-full of pretzel M&Ms and dates and raisins and sprinkles and bits of candy.

When they were weary of experimentation, a good forty or so cupcakes later, I baked the rest up plain:

Yes, the recipe, doubled, made THAT many cupcakes!

My girls are excellent and creative chefs, of course, but I do have to say that this round decidedly goes to...ME! My carrot cupcakes with chocolate chips, candied ginger, crushed pineapple, and walnuts were scrumptious beyond compare.

Tutorial: Liquid Watercolor Spray Paint

You'll need:

• liquid watercolors
• teeny-tiny travel-sized spritz bottles
• masking tape and biiiiiiiiig paper
• a day suitable for outdoor play

Pour liquid watercolors straight into your teeny-tiny travel-sized spritz bottles:

I know that some people water down their liquid watercolors, but I don't--I love those super-saturated colors that the straight watercolors will give you, and even undiluted, a bottle of liquid watercolor lasts approximately forever.

If you have an easel big enough to hold big paper, go ahead and mount your paper there. Otherwise, use masking tape to tape it at the top and bottom to a fence or a tree trunk or, if it's started raining all of a sudden, to the inside porch railing. 

All that's left to do after that is to spray paint!

This is an excellent activity for strengthening your kiddo's hands, by the way--pre-writing skill-building!

I love how the colors combine--so much more interesting than conventional spray paint, which I also let my babies use:

Masking tape is also a really kid-friendly material, easy for them to peel and tear off and stick, so it's fun to encourage the kiddo to make some custom masking tape reverse stencils: 

--which you can then spray paint around:

When you're finished, peel off the masking tape--

--and pose with your masterpiece!

It's a star and the earth and outer space, says Syd.

We used:

Ancient Egypt Unit Study: Sugar Cube Pyramids

Shopping for sugar cubes involved a trade-off, unfortunately. I sacrificed the perfectly uniform shapes that more realistically depict the engineering of the Ancient Egyptians for these brown sugar cubes that more realistically depict the color of the sand blocks that they used:

Unfortunately, these brown sugar cubes don't have good regular edges, and since we were "between" kitchens during this project (we've since finally kicked the workers out of the mostly finished kitchen, choosing to suffice with plywood nailed to the tops of our cabinets and partly unpainted walls until we can do the work ourselves rather than just flat-out run out of money, which is what we were heading towards, sigh) I couldn't mix up a batch of royal icing to use as mortar. I therefore don't think, then, that this particular project achieved a good model of the engineering of an Ancient Egyptian pyramid.

Ask me if the kids care:

The girls had a fabulous time building with their little sugar cube building blocks, and were quite proud of their ungainly, tumble-down sugar cube constructions:

Of course, what kind of momma would I be if I didn't create along with them?

I hid these sugar cubes away until a day in the near future when I feel like mixing up royal icing and trying the pyramids again, and they'll also be perfect with our Halloween candy houses and Christmas gingerbread houses. I'm still on the lookout for uniform brown sugar cubes, but at least where we live, packages of sugar cubes in grocery stores seem to have mostly gone the way of the dinosaur.

Or should I say the Ancient Egyptian pyramid?

There is Nothing Like a New Box of Crayons

I bought these Stockmar beeswax crayons, then said the magic words:

"Hey, girls! I have a brand-new box of crayons for you!"

I've been experimenting with setting out more than one art supply at a time when the girls are creating, and nothing goes together better than watercolors and crayons:

Eventually these crayons will make their way towards leaf rubbings and headstone rubbings, etc., but it's good to know that they also make a pretty handy rainbow.

We used: