Math We've Been Loving

In this season, this week, this moment, we've been loving:

puzzles

Base 10 blocks and stamps

magnetic Fractiles (thank you, Santa!)

answering prompts and recording work in the girlies' math journals (thank goodness that they love these, because they've been incredibly effective!)

anything ipad app or CD-Rom. Anything.

doing chores to earn more money to buy more ipad apps (I'm a mean Momma, and I make them do the math to figure out how much tax they have to pay me back for each app, too)

computation--addition and subtraction and math facts up to ten!

computation--triple-digit addition and subtraction with borrowing and regrouping!

Khan Academy--finally I understand the concepts of borrowing and regrouping!

LEGOs

making recipes, almost always involving delicious sweetness (because who doesn't need a little more sugar in their diet?)

calendars--what's the day? What's the date? Is it still January? Will it be Spring tomorrow? No? Why not?

pogo stick and jump rope, and the oh-so-important Counting of the Jumps

Sometimes my girlies' minds are fairly quiet and restful--lots of quiet pretend play, lots of lounging with a lovey and listening to audiobooks, lots of looking at books and picture books and relaxing sorts of stuff. Lately, though, it's like both their little brains are exploding into new stuff all at once--it's lots of math, Ancient Egypt AND Ancient China AND Paleolithic peoples, Magic Tree House and Tales of the Frog Princess being played on two different CD players in two different rooms while one child also reads a different Tale of the Frog Princess and the other child works at a Dr. Seuss Kindgergarten CD-Rom, hiking and walking and hiking some more, swimming and ice skating and gymnastics and ballet, a playdate in the morning and a playdate in the afternoon, a documentary on the Great Pyramid before bedtime, the little one learning to read, the bigger one learning to borrow and regroup, making clay terra-cotta warriors and salt dough maps of the Fertile Crescent, chess club, and they both seem to have grown inches in days, so that all their brand-new fleece pants are just almost too short, sigh.

It's thrilling, and a privilege, a little startling, and a teeny-tiny little bit sad (where have my babies gone?) to watch these minds at work.

Tutorial: Baked Ham and Eggs

Grease a muffin tin--standard, silicone novelty shapes, or my favorite mini-loaf pans--then add in one slice of ham, letting the edges stick up. Break one egg on top of the ham, and add spices, cheeses, or diced veggies:

Bake in a 350-degree oven for 20 minutes:

The baked ham and eggs made in muffin tins are perfect to put inside biscuits or English muffins. The novelty shapes are cute for holiday breakfasts. And the mini-loaf pans?

One hearty breakfast, one fabulous series of books:

One excellent start to an excellent day.

Our Comfy New Desk Chair

I swear, I've been wanting to do this for years, and it just never happened. A mom friend borrowed the yoga ball for her pregnancy, and kept it to use with her babe while she was wee. We got it back deflated, and had misplaced the hand pump by then. We found the hand pump at some point, but had misplaced the yoga ball by then. Also, what to do with the giant office chair that already lived at the desk?

There was a room move (hey, THERE'S where we put the yoga ball!), a garage sale (goodbye, giant office chair!), and experiment with cheap-o metal folding chairs (ouch!), and finally, finally--

--my long-awaited yoga ball chair.

I'm in love for the following reasons:

• It's comfy. It's vastly more comfy than the hard, chilly metal folding chair, and even more comfy than that giant office chair with the back that was a little too deep and the armrests that were a little too in the way.
• It's active. I'm pretty heavy-set, and I'm always looking for ways to be more active. Bouncing a little, rolling a little, sitting up straight--it just feels better than shlumping in a chair.
• It takes up MUCH less room. Just roll it under the table and boom--tidy!
• The girlies love it. The yoga ball is more comfortable for them, too, and they're free to roll it off and play with it when I'm not using it, as long as they bring it right back to me when I need to sit at the desk.

It's getting a LOT of use, and so I really doubt that a yoga ball chair is ultimately going to be cheaper to own than that pricey office chair, because I've already resigned myself to the fact that an air-filled ball that gets this much use is bound to need regular replacing, but it's fun.

How fun is an office chair?

Tutorial: Circular Perpetual Calendar

For kids of a certain age, the new year is the perfect time to begin a study of the calendar.

My goals for this study are for both kids to memorize the sequence of months and a canonical poem relevant to each season (we've already got "Stopping by Woods" in our back pockets, so there's plenty of time to search for a springly-type poem). The older kid might not be interested in much more beyond that, although I have a list of books on calendar history and calendar cultural studies to sneakily sneak into her library book stash, but for my little kid, who's really enjoying her art right now and who could always use more practice with number sequencing, I have in mind a year-long project, really, having to do with creating a twelve-month calendar, working on one month, well...a month!

For starters, however, I wanted each kid to discover for herself the pattern of the months and the seasons, so together we made each of them her own circular perpetual calendar.

To make the calendar, you need a large piece of paper, the larger the better. We used some professional-quality artist's paper leftover from my partner's days as an undergrad majoring in art, but white posterboard, or a large piece of newsprint, would also be perfect.

Mark the centerpoint of your paper (it's fine to eyeball it), and draw a circle around that centerpoint. You want the circle to be large enough to give the seasons their due, so...a diameter of at least six inches or so? Use a plate as a template, perhaps, but one of the round ones, not the pointy-hat Halloween one that, yes, is STILL in circulation in our house.

Now comes the tricky part: you want the inside of your circle divided into four quadrants, but you want the OUTSIDE of your circle divided into twelve rays that extend to the edge of the paper. Here's a handy trick for dividing a circle into twelve parts without measuring angles.

Draw all your lines in black Sharpie, because you want them to be very visible, and when you decide which of the twelve outer segments will be December and which will be January, make that line very dark--that's the yearly division between December and January.

Only after I had completely finished these two outlines did I invite the kids to make their calendar. Using the black Sharpie, each kid first wrote the names of the seasons in the proper order in the proper space--

--and then added the months in THEIR proper places:

If you use watercolor paper or some other kinds of professional artist's paper (NOT posterboard), I personally think that these calendars would look simply glorious painted using wet-on-wet watercolor (if you check out my tutorial, please note that I've come to prefer wetting huge pieces of watercolor paper section by section with a sponge, as opposed to the dunking that we give small pieces). Neither of the kids were really feeling the watercolor groove, however, but neither was interested in coloring in those large spaces with pointy crayons or marker tips, either, and so I had another reason to be thankful that I went ahead one day and bought a set of Stockmar block crayons, even though I have big kids, not toddlers:

The result of the each kid's hard work is a calendar so special that it gets to live on permanent display, one in their shared bedroom, and one on the wall in our study/studio:

The older kid developed the neat little trick of color-coding her months, so that she could remember what fun holiday each held, such as this red and green December that reminds her of Christmas:

I have to say, however, that barely into January, this is already the season that I, personally, am most looking forward to:

And we haven't even had any truly gigantic snowfalls yet!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Tutorial: Perfect Paper Snowflakes

Start with a perfectly square piece of paper:

We primarily use origami paper, kite paper, or 12"x12" scrapbook paper; you can also just cut a rectangular piece of paper to size.

Fold in half diagonally:

Turn the paper so that the point is on top (you don't really have to, but it makes the instructions easier to visualize):

Fold the triangle in half from point to point:

Turn so that the triangle again has its top point up top, and fold one corner over by about one-third (my fold isn't perfectly one-third here, which is fine):

And the other corner over where the first fold ends:

If you've done it perfectly, the end of that second fold will come right to the edge there, but honestly, it really doesn't need to be perfect. This is way NOT perfect, and it's still going to work.

Flip it over, and you'll see the flat line where you folded the corners over the middle of the triangle, and below that those two points sticking out. Cut off those points:

Cut squiggles and notches and doo-dads and fancies, being careful never to cut away an entire folded side:

You can cut away the entire bottom if you want, because there aren't any folds there.

Carefully unfold:

And snowflake!!!

The big kid made a couple of paper snowflakes, and I made several, but the little kid? Oh, my goodness, the little kid made--dozens? Hundreds? See all that paper in the background:

Yeah, those are all HER snowflakes, and she clearly isn't done. She learned to do the folding almost independently, had a few tantrums when cuts didn't go the way she wanted (the kid finds dealing with frustration a major challenge, sigh), but mostly happily folded and cut and decorated away:

I like her idea here of drawing a pattern for the cuts she'd like to make:

I don't remember now if it worked for her, or if she still threw a huge fit, but still...clever kid!

Especially if you use thin paper, such as origami paper or kite paper, you can stick these right to the window with a glue stick:

Which reminds me that we need to make some snow-white and Valentine's Day pink and red Waldorf window stars!

P.S. When you're a paper snowflake expert, move on to kirigami!

P.P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

The Santa Saga and the Pogo Stick

Sydney really, really, REALLY loves Santa. Because of this, right before Christmas I signed us all up for a breakfast with Santa session at our local YMCA--lots of Santa time, you can take your own photos, and there are pancakes. Whoopee.

Sydney was so excited to talk to Santa at this breakfast that she had trouble getting to sleep the night before, and when we woke up that morning it was nothing but, "I'm going to say hi to Santa! And I'll ask him what his reindeer like to eat! Do they like carrots? I bet they like carrots!", etc.

So off we trek, the girls in their Christmas finery, the grown-ups in their work-out gear (because after this breakfast business we might as well throw them in childcare and get a work-out in, since we're already at the Y and all). Before we can even sit down to our pancakes Sydney has just GOT to see Santa, so we walk right in, give the elf our names, and...

You know how sometimes you have A Really Big Moment coming up, and you're so excited for it, and you just can't wait, and then the Really Big Moment arrives, and you just...freeze?

Will's not really into Santa, so she had no desire to sit on his lap, and Sydney just...froze. Wouldn't sit on his lap, wouldn't talk to him, would hardly even look at him.

As soon as we left his presence, however, and found our seats at the breakfast table, she suddenly realized what she had done:

Poor kid.

Of course, the good thing about our breakfast with Santa is that there was breakfast, and there was Santa. We could have some pancakes and juice, get our blood sugar up, and then have another go.

While Sydney was busy stuffing her face with pancakes, I had a little murmured conversation with Willow. I reminded her that she was the big sister, and that her little sister looked to her to know how to react in new situations. I told her that I knew that she wasn't really interested in sitting on Santa's lap, but that Sydney really, really wanted to, and was just too nervous. I told Willow that if she did do it, if she walked right up to Santa and sat down on his lap and had a conversation with him, then her sister would see that it was okay, and she would sit on Santa's lap, too, and wouldn't it make her feel so good to see her sister do something that she really wanted to do? Willow agreed that this would make her feel good, so we had a high-five, and we had a plan.

My Willow is an amazing kid. She generally prefers not to speak with strangers, and always needs to be reminded before walking into a relative's home that I do require her to look into their faces and greet them and give them a hug (yes, I'm from the South, and it IS required, and she's lucky that I don't force her to kiss everyone, too, like all the true Southern kids have to). However, knowing that her sister was counting on her, knowing that her good example was necessary to help Sydney be brave enough to do something that she really wanted to do, Willow walked right up to Santa and sat down on his lap and had a conversation with him:

And then...so did Sydney:

Mind you, we do a list to Santa, but it's not one of those "You write it and send it in and then Santa's definitely going to bring it to you" deals. First of all, I don't have enough money for that sort of arrangement, second of all, I reserve the right not to buy crap even if my kid asks for it, and third of all, the only things on Sydney's list this year were:

1. a white kitten small enough to hold in the palm of her hand
2. a robotic unicorn that's big enough to ride
3. the longest hair in the world

Yeah... no. I tell Sydney (Willow doesn't care) that Santa knows what would make you the very happiest, and that's what he brings you. It's a lie, of course, because what would make Sydney the happiest would be a tiny white kitten, a robotic unicorn that she could ride, and to have the longest hair in the world, but what can you do? Science has only progressed so far.

And so, to be fair to what I'm about to tell you, I did know that this particular item was on Willow's list; I just had no intention of purchasing it for her. I'd already bought her professional-quality balloon-twisting supplies, and a big snap circuit set, and some fleece pants, because who doesn't love fleece pants?

Anyway...there we are, Willow sitting on Santa's lap having a little chat, Sydney looking on, absorbing it all and gathering her strength. The conversation between Willow and Santa goes like this:

Santa: "And what do you want for Christmas, Willow?"

Willow: "A pogo stick."

Santa: "A pogo stick?"

Willow: "Yep. I want one a lot."

Santa: "Okay, Willow, then I'll bring you one."

................what?

All I can say is thank GAWD for Wal-mart. It's the only place in town that had junior-sized pogo sticks in stock, and I know, because Matt called them all. We were thisclose to driving to Indianapolis, for pete's sake. Call this Reason #4 why lists for Santa suck.

Except.........

Santa was right. He was absolutely right on target this Christmas. Because of him, Willow received a present that I never would have actually bought her otherwise, and because of that--well, check out this home movie. No, I don't expect anybody except for this child's mother to watch her pogo for two full minutes, but do watch her for a few seconds (the kid's a natural), and then fast-forward to the last ten seconds or so, when I ask Willow how it feels to be the "world pogo champion of the world", and look at her face as she says those words:

Thank you, Santa.

Many, Many Christmas Gifts

We're not one of those four-present families. Truly, it sounds sweet and meaningful and all, but I'll be honest with you--for me, Christmas has got to have more stuff than that.

Terrible, I know. I'm terrible.

I have a sort of unstable homeschool/craft supplies budget, taken entirely from whatever money that I earn from my freelance writing, etsy sales, and blog advertising each month. My tricky trick is that for the couple of months before Christmas, I sneak away the purchases made from that budget into the Christmas stash. Our wonderful family gifts the girls with a few wonderful toys (or science projects, or books, or art supplies, since I send my mother a selection of catalogs in mid-October)--

--and it's very exciting, as you can see--

 --but other than a couple of small, sweet treasures that are just for loving--

--our gifts (and Santa's gifts, too, oddly enough...) are the kinds of homeschool enrichment supplies that little unschoolers love the best:

Look--Santa loves the Clickety Clack etsy shop as much as I do!

Other Christmas treasures included a big snap circuit electronics kit, a magnetism project set, sketch pads and a gigantic box of crayons, a nice new leaf press (from my mother), a miniature cupcake maker for the young chef (also from my mother), an art sticker book, magnetic pattern blocks, real clown make-up, a pogo stick (much, MUCH more on that later) and this most special gift, something that I just knew would be perfect for my big girl:

A thrilling new hobby, yes?

To their credit, my generous girls have always been just as excited about seeing others open the presents they've made or chosen for them as they are opening their own. In particular, this year I let the girls choose whatever they wanted for their father (subtracting their own outrageous purchases from my own budget for him, ahem). Each girl chose for him one ridiculous flashlight, one giant bag of Twizzlers (EACH!!!), and one LEGO set--they know him THAT well. I love listening to the selling points of this pricey LEGO set:

Ah, five-year-olds...

My own favorite part of Christmas morning is witnessing how well those little girls love each other, whether it's spending a very long time decorating a present with an elaborate picture of a dragon, for the girl who loves dragons--

--to the other one spending her own money to buy her sister a very unusual gift that's just right:



And yes, yes it begins crazy with the presents, but from the Game of Thrones box set for Matt (which I immediately stole from him) to the picture book about weather for Sydney to this brand-new book from Willow's Grandma Janie and her Poppa--

--this is always how Christmas morning ends in our family.

At least until the feast!