Magnetism Unit Study: Ferrofluid

The girls' interest in magnetism has primarily served as my excuse to spend all our homeschooling budget on all kinds of awesome magnets--teeny-tiny magnets, square magnets, spherical magnets, magnets that form a perfect circle when you link them just right, magnets so powerful that they have to be stored separately and played with carefully.

Along with the magnets, I've discovered a whole world of magnet accessories, not the least of which is this incredibly awesome material known as ferrofluid. Ferrofluid consists of nano-sized ferromagnetic particles suspended in a fluid and coated in surfactant--it's a magnet-loving fluid that flows.

I put a healthy dollop of ferrofluid into a Mason jar, filled the rest of the jar with a water/glycerin combo, and then glued the lid on (I've heard that ferrofluid can be QUITE messy, of the leaping out of its container and splashing all over the wall because you've got a magnet stuck there kind of messy).

To play, you run a magnet along the outside of the Mason jar, and the ferrofluid will be attracted to it, the power and shape and location and number of the magnets all adding new variables to explore:

Of course, there are a million more ways to play with ferrofluid--some of them involving open containers, gasp! And no, I'm STILL not done buying magnets!

The Homeschool Shelves

One of the best things about switching the kids' bedroom with our study/studio is the mindful reorganization that has taken place. Fabric is neatly folded and visible, reference books are accessible, the paint is all together in one place, what was once lost is now found, etc.

In our NEW study, I've been paying special attention to how we store and display our homeschool supplies. I try to follow the kids' interests from week to week, which means that most of our homeschool work is done in unit studies, which means that the more I can keep like-minded materials together, the better.

The big and unwieldy stuff sits on the floor, so here we've got the conventional globe and the chalkboard globe, a model rocket kit, a crate containing all the base ten blocks (nine thousand cubes, nine hundred flats, and loads of ten bars and unit blocks) and the Cuisenaire rods, and the state quarter map.

Above that is the math shelf--math games and boxed activities, a Playskool abacus and a traditional Chinese abacus, playing cards and dice, a binder for worksheets and flash cards (I'm a big proponent of math fact memorization), lots of workbooks (I'm also a big proponent of math drills), and math manipulatives, such as pattern blocks, tangrams, mosaic tiles, and a geoboard. To the right side of each shelf I've glued little magnets to hold the various accessories of homeschool work--scissors, bar magnets, drawing compasses, staplers, etc.

Moving to the left and up a level:

That lower shelf is science stuff--magnets, board games, the plaster of Paris volcano, science activity books, the microscope and its accessories, and a chemistry set. Above the science shelf is the art shelf--specialty markers and crayons, extras of the crayon, marker, and colored pencil sets that we use regularly, the stapler and extra glue, books for cutting up, extra lined paper and dry erase boards, pipe cleaners, the UV-reactive beads, and the acrylic-dyed school glue.

To the right, on the same level:

The lower shelf on the left has biology stuff, with the plaster of Paris skeleton mold, the human x-rays, a couple of anatomy books, and several biology and medicine DVDs. Then we've got some environmental science stuff, with sun-reactive paper, a kite, and wind energy stuff. In the front is ferrofluid and iron filings for more magnet play, then biology encyclopedias and children's magazines, and then books on all branches of the sciences.

The top shelf is still art, with a glass bowl of acorns on the far left, then Waldorf window star paper, professional-grade art supplies, and modeling beeswax in the front. To the right is language arts, with workbooks and mad libs, sticker letters and sight word flash cards, and Scrabble and Boggle on the far right.

Higher on the shelves is the stuff that requires my prep work, or the stuff that the kids don't usually choose without my encouragement:

The lower shelf there is history on the right, with Magic Tree House books (the kids have these memorized, and regularly re-read library copies, so I usually only bring our own copies down when we're studying something relevant), all the Story of the World activity books and other children's history books, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, U.S. presidents flash cards, and the ink that we use with our quill pens.

To the left on the lower shelf is geography--a map quilt project of the big kid's, some atlases, a blank U.S. map paper pad, and a sailor's valentine kit from Florida. Above that is the art materials that require either adult prep or adult supervision--powdered tempera, professional-grade artist's acrylic paints, watercolor paints, things like gesso and sealant, and beads.

The top shelf is stuff that we're not ready for yet--higher-level workbooks, and cut-and-assemble paper model kits. There's also a bag containing a ridiculous number of little paper bags, good for goodness knows what.

Here's what the shelves, or most of them, at least, look like in panoramic, including one show-off and a colored dinosaur picture:

And when the kids aren't simply digging around in the dirt or playing with toy ponies all day, that's some of what we have to do!

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!

Her First Embroidery Project

Mind you, I'VE never done an embroidery project before.

I do, however, have the habit of purchasing, when they're on enormous sale, or acquiring, when I find them for free, craft or homeschool supplies that I think will be useful "someday," and then putting them on our craft or homeschool shelves. I find that with my creative, busy, industrious children, someday does come, and so I wasn't really surprised when Willow pulled Sublime Stitching off a shelf one evening, spent some time flipping through it, and then asked to do an embroidery project.

I bought that book, or perhaps received it as a Christmas present, years ago. This is how it happens here.

I think I could have pulled together all the needed supplies--fabric, embroidery hoop, embroidery floss--here and there from my stash of freely acquired stuff, but I also have, also bought years ago, also at a good price, a Sublime Stitching Stitch-It Kit, complete with two tea towels, an embroidery hoop, and embroidery floss.

And that's how, twenty minutes after she first professed her desire, without a lot of fuss or stress or searching about, Willow was here:

We read the directions and properly set up the embroidery transfer on the fabric and in its hoop, and organized the floss in an untangled manner, but I didn't see a good point to asking Willow to master any particular proper "stitches," so I just let her have at it:

Yes, the transfer is on the dark and thick side. It's meant to be transferred lightly, but I wanted Willow to have a good outline to follow.

And so onward, towards a swan with a blue beak and pink feathers, and a plan for green wings, I believe:

Like any good embroidery project, this one is set aside and taken up again at leisure. It lives, in its free time, on a shelf here in the study, right next to the embroidery book and the stitch-it kit and Sydney's embroidery project, because of course she took one look at Willow working away, and realized that she, too, had always longed to embroider.

It's Always a Fine Day for...

...sidewalk chalk paint!

Homemade sidewalk chalk paint is a VERY easy recipe, but it's more of a niche art supply here, in that the girls tend to forget all about it for months at a time, and then, goofing around outside while their dad cleans up the front porch (it had reached the point where, even though I'm not all feng shui and I don't always tend to the appearance of our home from the outside, I was starting to worry that trick-or-treaters would be too frightened to approach our house!), one of them discovers the sidewalk stencils, and then it's as if a lightbulb goes off--

"Sidewalk chalk paint! Yeah, let's do it!"

And there goes the afternoon!

WIP Wednesday: Flannel Kid Pajamas

It's my new study's inaugural sewing project--flannel pajamas for Willow:

The pattern is McCall's 6535 (which means that I could also make Willow a karate uniform!) in a seven--no, I did not bother to consult the finished measurements, but nevertheless I'm shocked to tell you that this pajama top is just massively too big. Willow is lost in it! I don't know what seven-year-old would fit into that top, but whoever it is, they're actually ten years old, at least.

At least I can adjust the pants size using the appropriate elastic, and I'm thinking of making them reversible, simply to make them look nicer when they're (inevitably) cuffed, and to give them more wear, because apparently Willow will be able to fit into these pajamas for YEARS.

Do you like the fabric?

The purple flannel with hearts was in my stash, but there wasn't enough to make a full pair of pajamas, so I gave Willow a piece of the fabric and let her choose a complementary pattern at the fabric store. I am LOVING my educator's discount there!

When these pajamas are finished, Sydney has her pair all lined up--pink flannel princesses and pink flannel hearts in an Oliver + S pattern--and then I think I'll make them drawstring pajama bags to match.

I wonder if I could talk them into wearing Little House on the Prairie-style nightcaps to bed if I sewed those to match, too...

Homeschool Field Trip: Peden Farm

Our hometown is the kind of town where yes, there is an entire working family farm within the city limits, an historic homestead that's only a few minutes' further drive than the house of one of my kiddos' best buddies. Every year, usually in the spring but this year in the fall (this last spring was rainy!), the Pedens generously--SO generously!--open up their farm to visiting schoolgroups--including homeschool groups, of course--of little tykes.

It's called the Children's Farm Festival, and we love it.

Collecting Feathers from the Free-Range Poultry

Blacksmith Demonstrations

Chickens!!!

Admiring Hand-Painted Gourds

Willow made a rubbing of every single leaf on display. There were a LOT of leaves:

Hay Ride

Shearing the Sheep

Old-Time Toys

Hand Pumping Water

Hand-Grinding Corn

So Many Chickens!!!

And yes, for the sake of my child, also interviewed, I even put aside my own horror of interviews and spoke a series of benign inanities to the very nice reporter:

Not bad for a schoolday!

Making Beeswax Leaves

This is the time of year when the crock pot dedicated to crafting sits in near-permanence on the living room table, a pound-ish of beeswax solidified at the bottom. It's required to live there so that every day, when the girls and I come home from whatever walk or adventure or woodsy parking lot we've just enjoyed, we can turn the crock pot on, melt the beeswax (sweet honey scent!), and make beeswax leaves out of the bounty of our most recent collection:

My full beeswax leaves tutorial is over at Crafting a Green World.