I Let My Kid Get an MRI for Fun: The Child Scientist Program at Indiana University

One of the fun things about living in a university town is that graduate students love to conduct experiments on our small children. The first experiment that Willow did, she was a baby sitting on my lap in a dark room in the Cognitive Studies department, wearing a teeny little headset that tracked her eye movements as she watched stuff on a computer screen--I don't know exactly what stuff, because I had a hood on my head so that I couldn't react, myself, but she seemed to enjoy it.

Willow has conducted experiments to test her memory, her ability to name familiar objects (except for the photo of a crib--she studied it for a while, then said to the grad student, "little cagey box?"), her overall vocabulary, and her ability to estimate numbers. Syd has conducted several experiments to track her slight speech impediment, as well as the same vocabulary and math experiments that Will did at her age.

If you don't live in a university town, yourself, it might seem a little weird to shuttle your kids over to campus a few times a year to have experiments run on them, but nearly everybody here does it, and the Child Scientist program is actually pretty great. The grad students that we've worked with have always been excellent with little children, really upbeat and friendly and engaged; for Willow, especially, who went through a long phase of being extremely--I don't want to say shy, because she wasn't timid, but she just did NOT want to interact with adults--whatever she was, it was terrific positive reinforcement, because these young adults playing with her were just so nice that she couldn't HELP but engage with them, and even Syd, who did go through a shy and clingy phase, loved interacting with these friendly adults who really wanted to play with their interesting little toys with her.

The experiments are also valuable for the medical information that they provide. Will's vision experiment came with a complete eye exam--I have miserable vision and insurance that doesn't cover eye exams, so I was glad to have it for her. All of Syd's speech experiments came with complete speech evaluations, which our insurance also doesn't cover, which were, again, absolutely free, and which were crucial to obtain, since she did have a speech impediment.

The best part for the kids, though? The stuff! When the girls were little, they got to pick out toys at the end of each experiment; now that they're older, they get cash. Poor Willow, who is left-handed, is ineligible for most experiments now, since they mainly call for right-handers, but Sydney has aged into some pretty awesome experiments that have a pretty awesome pay-out. A couple of months ago, I took her in for a math and vocabulary evaluation (the grad student asked Sydney to define "vacation", and Syd said, "That's where you drive a long time in the car and you get to eat fast food"), and at the end of it, Sydney was handed twenty bucks. We went straight to the toy store from there, and Sydney came home with several new toy horses.

This month, Syd went back for the second half of the experiment. First, she got to play in a "practice" MRI machine. Then, she was set up in the practice machine to rehearse the experiment several times. Finally, she was set up in a real MRI machine; the grad students alternated between telling her stories and asking her math problems, the answers to which she was to tap with her finger while staying quiet and still, while they scanned her brain. At the end of the experiment, she was handed THIRTY dollars and this:

Here's a picture of Sydney's brain:

Not only do we now have a great picture to frame for her room, and we have evidence that her brain is beautiful and perfect, but we're also starting a study on brains/geography when we get back to our regular schoolwork next week, so now we can do our labeling not on an image downloaded from Google Images, but on an image of my own kid's own brain!

Oh, and about that cash? It BURNS in Sydney's pocket, which is why we headed straight to the toy store after that first experiment. But Matt took Syd to the second experiment, and after it was over...

He took her to the gas station.

To buy candy.

My Latest Over at Crafting a Green World: Business Cards and Business Cards

a tutorial for making business cards out of recycled papers, with stitching instead of glue

 and a tutorial for substituting fabric scraps for that recycled paper, and top stitching the business info on

Transit of the Sun

You knew I'm a bit of a space buff, right? It's common knowledge in our little family that I am thwarted in my every attempt to witness any event of astronomical significance. Solar eclipse? Cloudy. Lunar eclipse? Cloudy. Meteor shower? Cloudy. Once, when Matt and I were dating back in college, I dragged him out to the middle of a field a few miles outside of Ft. Worth to view a comet (among other nefarious plans), but since then, I've viewed most significant astronomical events via streaming webcam.

Finally, however, Matt rehabilitated his reputation for ruining space for me by coming with me and the girls to the top story of a parking garage next to the university (I love these odd little nooks that we find to enjoy the sky from!), where the university's astronomy department was hosting a viewing party.

There was, of course, a LONG line to look through the telescopes, but fortunately the top floor of a parking garage, cleared of cars, is actually a pretty terrific place for a couple of kids to play:

The astronomy department also gave us something that is my new most very favorite toy ever:

Funny little glasses, eh? And what can you do with those?

See? My most favorite toy ever!

After off-and-on periods of huge clouds, during which we all held the line very patiently, Venus was at the perfect point in her transit as we finally reached the telescope--away from the edge of the sun, fully evident as the amazing phenomenon that it was:

Even my nice camera, even with a sun filter, isn't capable of photographing the transit--Venus is simply too small, and though it's visible to the naked eye, it's completely overwhelmed by the sun's light--but my nice camera, with its sun filter, and with much playing around with digital filters in Lightroom (just like the REAL astronauts do it!...sort of), IS capable of taking some excellent and interesting photographs of the sun:

You can see the corona really well in this photo:

This one gives you a better idea about the color range:

Sort of a combination photo, also with a good corona:

This one pulls out a lot more information about the available light than is available to the naked eye, although I couldn't get rid of the green tone:

This one is my favorite, because the color is the most realistic, while still keeping the extra evidence of light that allows you to see the larger corona:

And now that Matt has given up his jinxing of all my attempts to view astronomical events, the summer's meteor showers are looking up, as well!

Cooking from Pinterest

I left my parents' home with zero cooking ability. In college, food that I cooked for myself consisted of 1) Ramen noodles, 2) Minute Rice with Velveeta melted onto it, and 3) Minute Rice with a can of vegetables mixed into it and Velveeta melted onto it. Later, I discovered how to make myself a salad, and for seasoning I'd sometimes empty a Ramen noodles flavor packet onto it and crumble up raw Ramen noodles on top of it for the crunch.

When Matt and I started living together and he'd take a turn cooking, he'd make 1) fettuccine noodles with olive oil and a hamburger on the side, 2) fettuccine noodles with olive oil and a smoothie on the side, and 3) a hamburger and a smoothie.

We'd also order a lot of pizza.

Although I cook much better now, it was such a frustrating process to learn, and every lesson that I taught myself I wish that I'd been taught as a child. For instance, it was a long time before I learned that dinner is made more easily, and will taste better, if you figure out what you're going to make before you're standing in the kitchen at 5:30 ready to make it. It was a long time before I learned that a trip to the grocery store will go better, and be less expensive, if you figure out what meals you want to make, and what ingredients you need to buy to make those meals, before you go. It's taken a long time to be able to know what foods go together well in a stir-fry, or a soup, or a casserole. It took SO long, and a series of messages with my aunt, to finally understand that there's a certain KIND of potato that you're supposed to use to make a baked potato that tastes good. It's taken a long time to simply stop cooking with Velveeta, if you must know.

Blogs, cookbooks from the library, and messages to my aunt when I'm stuck in the middle of something are what have taught me how to cook.

Setting aside a regular time in the middle of most days to prep for that evening's dinner, put something in the crock pot, or simply bake muffins or cookies or prep snacks, are what have made me feel successful as a cook, and helped me stop hating the chore.

It also helps that now Matt knows enough in the kitchen to start dinner when the girls and I are out, or finish dinner when we're in, if I give him very specific instructions and don't mind the times when he mistakes fresh mint for fresh basil, or fries the roasted red pepper dip instead of the falafel. Of course he can make dinners from start to finish, too, but he simply doesn't have the time to devote to it that I do.

Anyway...all this intro was simply to tell you that I LOVE Pinterest for recipes! I have the following highly organized (it's a fun outlet for my Library Science degree's obsession with organizing information) recipe pinboards:

• Recipes to Try: I try a few of these a week, then either move them to one of my permanent pinboards or delete them.
• Our Favorite Family Foods: Raging successes go here.
• Crock Pot Recipes
• Vitamix Blender Recipes
• Canning, Dehydrating, and Other Methods of Preserving
• Carrot Cake Recipes: Carrot cake is Matt's favorite!

The girls and I cook from my pinboards, especially the ones with new recipes, pretty much daily. Here are some of our latest forays from just the past couple of weeks:

No-Knead Bread: I love this recipe even more than the one that I used to make.

Carrot-Ginger Soup--It was a mistake to serve this as an entree, even with these rich cheesy breadsticks on the side, because nobody loved it. I'll serve it again, but only in small bowls with a different meal.

Peanut Butter Balls: Healthy and yum!

S'mores Treats: UNhealthy, but also yum!

Banana Ice Cream: Also healthy and yum! It's thrifty, too, since the food pantry where the girls and I volunteer sometimes gets so many dozens of pallets of bananas that they beg people to come by and grab them. I could fill my entire freezer with frozen chopped bananas and be perfectly happy about it.

In related news, it's been an off-kilter week here, with both girls attending different day camps with different drop-off and pick-up times (not to mention different lunch/snack requirements, different dress codes, and one camp that even has different drop-off and pick-up locations on different days, yikes!), so I'm trying not to feel guilty that I've just written an entire post about cooking and I have NO idea what's going to be made for dinner, nor do I know how I'd make it if I did have a plan, since the sink is full of dirty dishes and I'm leaving for my volunteer gig in a few minutes. But Matt's volunteered to handle both camp pick-ups this afternoon so that I won't have to miss my volunteer shift, so since he's the one who'll be home with the girls this evening, not me...well, dinner's HIS problem tonight, right?

DIY Laundry Soap: An Update

When the girls and I started making our own powdered laundry soap a year and a half ago, people had a LOT of questions, and even more opinions:

• Would it really be cheaper than purchasing detergent?
• Would it really get our clothes clean?
• Would it fight stains?
• Would our clothes become dingy over time?
• Would it ruin my washing machine?

Today, 18 months later, I've got all the answers.

1. Is making our own powdered laundry soap cheaper than purchasing detergent?

Yes and yes and yes! Although I haven't kept track of how often we wash how many loads, I will tell you that in early January 2011, I purchased one box of borax, one box of washing soda, one tub of Oxyclean, and two bars of Fels Naptha; that, plus baking soda, is what I use to make our laundry soap, sometimes using my homemade bar soap instead of Fels Naptha. I've been using only homemade laundry soap since I started, and I gave a Mason jar full of homemade laundry soap away at Christmas, and I haven't run out of any of those original supplies yet; price the cost of those supplies in your area, estimate how much laundry I might do for my family of four each week, and you can get a pretty good estimate of what you'd save.

As for me, I'm thrilled. When I first started making this soap, I estimated that it would cost 3 cents a load--for me, it actually costs SO much less when compared to purchasing conventional detergent.

the kiddos making a big batch of laundry soap last week

 2. Does homemade laundry soap really get our clothes clean?

Yes! No matter whether or not I use Fels Naptha or my homemade bar soap, our clothes come out of the wash clean and fresh. They smell good, and regular dirt and food (oh, those girls!) disappears.

3. Does homemade laundry soap fight stains?

Nope, not at all! Unlike conventional store-bought detergents, this homemade soap seems to have no stain-fighting power. Regular dirt and spills and whatever wash out, but mud, and spaghetti sauce, and other stains that deeply penetrate the fiber of the cloth don't. Fels Naptha does better at getting out grease stains than my homemade bar soap does--I know this because I saw more of that type, in particular, coming out of the washing machine when I used my homemade soap--so it's possible that there's a soap out there that would work really well at stain-fighting, but neither of the bar soaps that I've tried have much to offer in that regard. I'm okay with this, both because I'm saving a crazy amount of money with this homemade soap, and because I can still get rid of the stains completely, but just with a little more work. I treat all stains as soon as the item of clothing is removed for the day by wetting the stain, rubbing a bar of Fels Naptha onto it, and rubbing the Fels Naptha in. I also pre-soak stained clothing for several hours by putting a bucket in the bathtub, scooping in a couple of tablespoons of laundry soap, filling the bucket with water from the tap, and submerging the stained clothing in it. Finally, in the summer I try to hang laundry to dry on the line--not every load, but every few loads, so that everything gets hung dry at least a few times during the summer--to sun-bleach everything.

Mind you, this is only necessary if something is truly stained; most of our clothing, including normal spills and stains, wash out without extra attention.

the jar of laundry soap that lives in the bathroom, used for pre-soaking stained clothing

4. Have our clothes become dingy over time?

Nope, not at all! We have an he washing machine, and I'm pretty militant about clean rinsing, anyway, so I put vinegar in the rinse agent compartment every time I wash, and I set my machine for a second rinse every time, as well. I don't know if that's the secret, or it's our water quality, or what, but nothing is dingy, not even our whites.

5. Has homemade laundry soap ruined our washing machine?

Most of the criticisms that I've received on my posts about my homemade laundry soap have had to do either with dingy clothes or broken washing machines. A lot of people seem really afraid that homemade laundry soap will ruin a fancy he washing machine. If homemade laundry soap had ruined my washing machine, I'd totally tell you, but our machine works fine. Mind you, Matt occasionally cleans out that pipe thing that runs from the washing machine to the wastewater pipes, because we have such pathetically crappy plumbing that we have to really be on top of its maintenance if we don't want to pay to have our main line unclogged every month, so if that's the part of the machine that people are worried about then it does get cleaned regularly (which Matt would do even if we used conventional laundry detergent), but since I've never really heard what people specifically think could happen to a washing machine that uses homemade soap, and I've never heard from anyone who actually had their washing machine ruined with homemade soap, all I can say is that ours is fine!

Conclusion: I'm really happy with our homemade laundry soap. If I learned of a recipe that claimed to fight stains better than ours does, I'd try it out, but I wouldn't consider going back to conventional detergent.

My Latest Over at CAGW

a tutorial to make a buckwheat-filled eye pillow (and I only permitted Matt to laze on that hammock underneath his chilled eye pillow for as long as it took to get the perfect shot--the kids' sandbox isn't going to fill itself on such a beautiful Saturday afternoon!)

and a tutorial for breaking down Crayola markers so that you can recycle the caps and barrels (in which I gratuitously shock my audience by giving them living proof that I permit my seven-year-old to wield a box knife unassisted. And in last week's tutorial, I took a photo of her in which she had a black eye!) 

Studying Grammar

I am happy to tell you that after some hard work encouraging rhythm and discipline, the children and I are now contentedly working at a wonderfully relaxed yet productive pace. We're spending a little less time on schoolwork in this lovely mild weather than we likely will in the heat of summer or the dead cold of winter, but four days a week we sit down for essentials--two different math works for each girl, handwriting for each girl, reading for Sydney, and grammar for Willow--and then work a couple of "extras"--a documentary on George Washington, dissecting our daylilies, working on our mixed-media postcard swap, etc.--into the fun of the rest of our days.

Yes, I said it: Willow studies grammar.

*stepping up onto the soapbox*

Grammar is the structure of language. You may talk and write however you wish, and if you're understood then you've practiced good communication, but to write or talk well you must understand, and you must use, the correct structure. I want my children to write and talk very well, and I also want them to enjoy learning languages. As a reader of many languages, myself (though not a writer or speaker of them!), I know that understanding grammar makes learning languages so much easier. If they internalize the structure of language, then my children will always find it easier to speak and write well, and to learn to do the same in another language.

*stepping down from the soapbox*

For grammar, we first go to KISS Grammar. KISS Grammar is a fabulous (and free!) set of downloadable grammar workbooks for children that are in Microsoft Word format, and thus are editable. The writer also teaches freshman comp at Penn State, and I used to teach freshman comp, too, and so I feel like we are probably on the same page about what young adults need to know to be successful writers and critical thinkers, and (more frustratingly) what they tend to actually NOT know from their conventional schooling. I also like KISS Grammar because its sentences pull from living books--for instance, the first few worksheets in the Grade 2 book use Bunny Rabbit's Diary, which is a public domain book and therefore a free Kindle download, so Will read the entire book first--and LOVED it!--before she started the worksheets, giving her a more sophisticated context for the grammar work that she was asked to do.

So far, Will has needed more practice for each skill than is offered in KISS Grammar, so after she does all the worksheets pertaining to a particular skill from that workbook, I search online for other worksheets that cover that same skill or a logical extension of it (in the image below, for instance, I'm having Willow apply her newfound ability to identify the subject and verb in a sentence to differentiating between complete and incomplete sentences)--

--or I write my own worksheets for her, or I make it into her daily copywork, then have her do her identification work using her copied sentences. I also use the worksheets covering that skill from the Level 1 KISS grammar books written for higher grades, which explore the same topic using more sophisticated language. Willow definitely gets frustrated when learning a new grammar skill--the kid is really used to having academic challenges come easily to her, and she can get mad when she doesn't understand something right away--but she and I both love it when all of a sudden all the work pays off and the skill she's been working so hard at finally clicks for her:


There's no need to move on to another skill until I feel that Willow has really internalized the one that she's working on because, just like math, I want her to understand what she's doing, and why, rather than simply memorizing what to do by rote.

Just wait until I show you her baby sentence diagrams! They're stinkin' adorable.