My Latest over at CAGW: Vegan Sugar Skulls and Last-Minute Jack-o-Lanterns

a round-up of last-minute Jack-o-lanterns to make before Halloween

and a description of the vegan sugar skulls that I made and had the girls decorate:

I might turn el Dia de los Muertos into a larger study next year (I lived for a while in Texas, so it's a celebration that I'm fond of), but these particular sugar skulls got made rather spontaneously, after the girls and I attended a yoga class at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures last week, and the craft time after the class consisted of... decorating sugar skulls! I figured that they couldn't be TOO hard to make if the instructor was willing to make two dozen of them just for small children to decorate.

It turns out that sugar skulls ARE very easy to make! Conventional sugar skull recipes call for meringue powder, but my secret trick is, if a recipe looks complicated or has weird ingredients, to search for a vegan version, and yep, cornstarch IS easier to find than meringue powder.

Will went minimalistic on her sugar skull, although she's received a lot of compliments on those creepy, sequined eyes:

She had a lot more fun, I think, and made her skull a lot more elaborate, at the Mathers, where there were a ton more things to put on the skulls that we don't have at home--rhinestones, pom poms, googly eyes in lots of sizes, feathers, etc.--so that the hoarder in me wonders if I'm stalling her creativity by not having a bunch of random crap on hand to glue to things. Perhaps I'll set a small bin in the study where we can deposit found objects of decorative potential?

Syd didn't end up gluing anything to her sugar skull, but she and I sat down together before she began and looked at lots of images of sugar skulls online, so her work ends up looking quite traditional, I think, considering that I gave her Sharpies instead of royal icing:

I LOVE how the sugar skulls turned out, and how sturdy they are:

I don't own any other large molds like this, but I'm already thinking of sugar decorations for other holidays...

Sugar turkey?

DEFINITELY a sugar Christmas tree!

At the IU Astronomy and Physics Open House

I don't know how much better you could have it than homeschooling next door to a big university. Check it:

• On chilly days, we walk to the greenhouse.
• Last week, we went to a free kids' yoga class at the anthropology museum.
• Theater and drama festivals often perform excellent children's plays.
• When Willow discovered that there are a bunch of Rainbow Fairy books not yet available in the US, the IU library inter-library loaned them to us from London.
• We hang out at the art museum a LOT.
• The creek that runs through campus is excellent for playing in.
• Around Halloween, the girls trick-or-treat at an IU basketball scrimmage.

I don't have quite the intimacy with the university that I did when I was earning my Master's degrees there and teaching there, taking the girls with me to office hours and workshop days with my students, giving them free-range in fourth-floor Ballantine and the grad student lounge. Fortunately, the university is good to its townies, so you don't have to be a grad student who spends half your days skulking around your exam committee's offices to enjoy its amenities. 

Case in point: this weekend, I roused poor Matt from his deep 9:00 am slumber to come with us to the Astronomy and Physics open house. The place was pretty crowded with school groups from all over the area, but nevertheless all the student volunteers made plenty of time to play with us:

whisper dishes

bed of nails

assembling our Galileoscope (which we got to take home!!!)

The Galileoscope kit was assembled at a workshop that Willow and I attended at the open house; we had a LOT of help from the students running the workshop! Another family, consisting of a dad with his son and daughter, sat across from us at this workshop--the dad and his son, who was perhaps a couple of years older than Willow, put together their Galileoscope while mostly ignoring the daughter, who looked about Willow's age. The poor baby just sat there, plaintively whining over and over, "I want to help! Let ME do something!". At the end of the workshop, she got to put on the sticker that reminds you not to point your Galileoscope at the sun; THERE'S a little girl being encouraged in the hard sciences for you!

answering Solar System quiz questions for prizes of pencils and lollipops

making a model comet using dry ice, water, dirt, and syrup--these were AMAZING!!!

piloting a model Mars Rover--the rover had a camera whose image was projected to the room

coffee filter chromatography

dry ice bowling, making use of dry ice's immediate transformation from solid to gas

We really should have spent the entire day there, but eventually us grown-ups were so burdened with balloons and dyed coffee filters and model comets in Ziplock bags and candy and Galileoscopes and free textbooks that we called it a morning well spent and went home to make lunch and get Sydney dressed for her ballet class. It was a perfect morning, however, at the perfect kind of event. And my favorite thing about the open house, the thing that made it so perfect to me, is that it WASN'T perfect. The students doing the physics show couldn't get their grand finale demonstration to work. The student running the dry ice bowling almost let Sydney pick up a piece of dry ice with her bare hand (but he DIDN'T!). A professor in charge had to remind the student demonstrating the Tesla coil to, you know, ground it first. My kids are so used to attending splashy hands-on science museums where all the demonstrations work perfectly and all the shows are slick and well-rehearsed that I think that they sometimes get the idea that science isn't necessarily real, you know? That it isn't messy, with mistakes more often than not. They loved that the students running the open house were well-informed, of course, and friendly, and that they gave great kid-friendly explanations of each activity, but they also loved that they were clearly real people, with syrup all over their shirts from helping kids make comets all morning.

Because when the woman with syrup all over her shirt from making comets all morning talks about how great science is, you know you've got to believe her.

Pink Play Silk

It took me too long to succumb to this one, but finally my girls have a Momma-dyed pink play silk (and a few more pink play silks up in my pumpkin+bear etsy shop, of course):

I am pretty sure that my kiddos would be perfectly happy with a toy collection that consisted solely of play silks and tiny plastic animals.

To Build a Fire: Junior Version

I amused myself the other morning by giving the girls a book of matches and the challenge to start a fire in our fire pit.

The kiddos actually had a pretty good idea initially, in that they brought outside an absolutely massive stack of newspapers from the recycling, but instead of crumpling that paper they tossed it--whomp!--into one big stack in the middle of the pit, set a lonely stick on top, and then went to town with the matches.

Of course, the edges of the giant stack of paper DID catch fire, and the second that it did, the kiddos immediately stopped all work and set to putting their cold hot dog wienies on sticks, only to turn around and...where did the fire go?

Back to light another edge on fire!

I offered no assistance whatsoever, but simply sat to one side, did some work of my own, and snickered.

After a while Willow got so frustrated that she couldn't even get her matches to light correctly anymore, and we all considered it a major accomplishment when they got the fire to stick long enough that they could at least somewhat warm their hot dogs before munching them down:

Sydney has been very into movie-making lately, and I was surprised to notice, as I was downloading these images, that at some point after this moment she sneaked behind the camera and took an ELEVEN-MINUTE video of our fire pit morning! I noticed her start the video, and I knew that she had my camera for this length of time--I just didn't realize that she was taping for the entire time:



I am also surprised to tell you that this video, which includes a little homeschooling, a little conversation, a little silence, a little disciplining, and a lot of silliness at the end, is precious to me. My child did something that nobody EVER does for me: she caught me unawares with her camera. My kiddos will have acres and acres of tape of their happy childhoods when they're all grown up, snippets of time when I've captured them, oblivious to being taped, spinning out pretend games and laughing unabashedly and talking to each other and loving on their pets, but nowhere, until here, do they have a record of their mother, just as unaware of the camera, talking to them and engaging with them just as I always do.

I'd capture a moment like this every day to enjoy in later years, if I could.

October at Brown County State Park

You'd spend all of October there, too, if you could.

The forested hills of Indiana are famous, at least regionally, for their autumn foliage. To put it simply, they're stunning. I've been taking every free day that we can wrangle lately to drive the girls the 45 minutes to Brown County State Park to tromp around in the loveliness, making use of the Indian summer that's hit us after a few weeks of chilly temperatures. Unfortunately, my photos are negatively affected by the overcast weather signalling the frequent autumn rains that have fortunately put an end to our summer drought (on both days that I've photographed here, we finally left the State Park only when it started to rain), but hopefully you can get the idea--take what you see, amp the colors up by a power of ten, and you'll have a pretty accurate estimate of what it's like here:

So many ladybugs!

Warm enough for bare feet? Not really!

a completely nature-made leaf pile

Sydney and a rattlesnake inspect each other at the Nature Center.

 The girls are impossible to hike with--Sydney RUNS down each trail as fast as she can, while Willow stops to thoroughly inspect absolutely everything. Sydney will run back along the trail to us when she can't see us anymore, but I'm always worried that Willow will look up from her minute inspection of the underside of a rock and have no idea which way we've gone, so I mostly stick with her on the trail. This also lets me capture some priceless moments in the life of my older daughter, moments that are just SO Willow:

However, you do not have to worry that my younger daughter's antics are not being recorded for posterity. It's taken care of!


A day in the woods just about guarantees a happy, relaxing day, don't you think?

It pleases me to take the girls to the State Parks, because one of my (many!) fantasies about homeschooling before we began was just this: spending entire days out in our State Parks, letting the girls play and explore at their leisure. With the difficult times that Willow and I have been having homeschooling together lately, I feel like I'm rewarding myself when I make these dreamed-about moments happen.

Another fantasy that's on its way? The girls and I are taking one of our wild and woolly road trips next month, to North Carolina (to visit some dear friends), Virginia (to see the wild ponies of Chincoteague Island), and Washington, D.C. (to meander The Mall and visit the Smithsonian). Wish me luck in my hyperactive planning!

My Latest over at CAGW: Fallen Tree Branch Crafts

a round-up of tree branch crafts and a tutorial to make a wooden colored pencil, crayon, or marker holder 

The latter involved--what else?--tons of wood play!

drilling holes the right size for crayons

It was a hard job, made easier when we learned how and why to drill pilot holes first.

Cutie little girl, blowing away the sawdust!

Of COURSE the big woodworking log has to get some love, too!

 I actually put away the work bench at the end of this weekend--gasp!--which, of course, didn't deter Sydney from putting together a train woodworking kit later that day, and won't deter the girls from smashing into the broken scanner that I have for them to disassemble later this week, but we've also got a lot of other important things to do in the next couple of weeks.

Jack-o-lantern carving, paper spiderweb cut-outs to create, costumes to assemble...you know, important stuff.

Let Your Kids Dismantle Your Old Appliances

Because sometimes woodwork just isn't exciting enough!

I hate, hate, HATE it when appliances and electronics break! I HATE how it's impossible to get, say, a broken inkjet printer repaired, or if you can find a shop that will repair a broken stereo for you, it's more expensive than if you just bought a new and fancier one. I hate storing a broken and irreparable piece of equipment for months until our city's next Electronics Recycling Day. I hate having to replace it.

The silver lining: I LOVE giving a piece of broken equipment and an assortment of tools to the kiddos, and watching them smash the crap out of my now-hated appliance while they try to discover what's inside. Once last year, I even put an ad on Freecycle and collected some other people's even more awesome appliances for the kids to take apart. To date, over the years I believe that the girls have taken apart the following:

• one blender
• one cell phone
• one laser printer
• one television
• one giant stereo
• three small stereos
• two portable CD players
• one immersion blender

This weekend the girls, still on their tools kick, took apart two of those small stereos noted above (Can I just say that I HATE the quality of small stereos and CD players? Your average six-year-old does handle the equipment a little more roughly than your average adult, sure, but if she can break three portable stereos and two portable CD players in a row with just normal usage, then there's something very wrong with the manufacturing, not the kid). I loosened screws when asked, but mostly I just laid out a bunch of tools and let them go:

Look at the fine motor skills in practice!

Willow was fascinated by what she discovered digging inside the speakers:

 You can do a lot with a screwdriver, but eventually the hammer and the saw come out:

The hammer and the saw got them inside the case, and wire cutters were handy to separate all the electronic components, but the girls' favorite part is always collecting all the clever little components and pieces and doo-dads that make up the equipment. Some end up as art supplies (the ink cartridges from the printer that the girls took apart last year was MESSY fun!), some end up as aspects of their imaginative play, and some end up with uses that you'd never anticipate:

We've actually had trouble finding a jump rope that's the correct length for Willow--who knew that the solution was a stereo cord?!?

Obviously, the stereo cord now lives with the other outdoor toys in their crate on the back deck, and gets as much use these days as it did when it was attached to the stereo.