Perler Bead Play

Sydney is hooked on Perler beads. Seriously, she's got it bad.

I bought the Perler Beads and a small selection of their pegboards several years ago, and Willow and I played with them a bit while Sydney napped (if only she still took two-hour afternoon naps...), but they caught neither of our fancies as more than a novelty, and so they've sat, on the craft shelves, for years.

There they sat, temptingly on a low shelf, ready for a certain six-year-old to discover in her own time.

Since their discovery, the Perler beads have spent their time either on our big living room table or off of it, scattered across the floor, until the kid responsible finishes throwing her fit and picks them up and sets them back on the table. Other than mealtimes and schoolwork, Sydney designs with them almost constantly. She makes things like elaborate hearts and colorful fish, challenging her fine motor skills and exploring patterning and symmetry.

I don't completely have the patience for Perler beads, and every time I finish a design and go to iron it and accidentally bump the design and all the Perler beads fall off and I have to re-do the design, I get pissed. I did join Syd yesterday, however, to make her a tree for her dollhouse:

The renovation of her dollhouse is something that Sydney has wanted to do for YEARS. She wants to give her plain, unfinished wooden dollhouse the works--paint, wallpaper, carpet, etc. I've been shamefully putting her off for just as long, because, frankly, the dollhouse cost too much to end up looking like crap (instead, I let her paint a small dollhouse), but now that my Sydney is six, and has the patience and fine motor skills and design sense to work with Perler beads, I'm thinking that it's finally time for that special project.

Just...after Thanksgiving, you know?

My Latest over at CAGW: Sailor's Valentines and Some Good Competition

a write-up of an upcoming nationwide eco-art competition

and a tutorial for DIY sailor's valentines

Seriously, you'll be shocked at what a kid-friendly craft this is. Syd's sailor's valentine is on the left--doesn't it look amazing?!?

In other news, how fun was election night? I was beside myself with tension over the presidential race, and Matt and I dealt with the stress by self-medicating with champagne and oreos. In the end, some people whom I was rooting for won and some lost, which is probably just the way it should be. Today, I'm streaming re-runs of all the acceptance and concession speeches that I was too sleepy (and drunk) to watch last night--some of them REALLY need my full attention in order to be most appreciated!

I was very uncomfortable voting for Ritz for state school superintendent, but I did, simply because I did strongly feel that Bennett was doing a terrible disservice to my children's friends who attend local public schools. I finally convinced myself that she was simply speaking off the cuff when she made those ignorant remarks about homeschooling, and that, when she educates herself about the regulations that do exist, she'll change her negative views. To that end, after our road trip to North Carolina, Virginia and D.C. and our Thanksgiving trip to California, I plan to devote some time to writing Ritz, and having my girls do so, as well. 

I wonder how many letters Ritz has received that have been written on pirate-themed stationery? 

Improv Comedy Stars on The Friday Zone

Although Will has been a craft kid on The Friday Zone before, Syd has only recently become old enough to participate in taping our local PBS children's show. She was pretty thrilled, then, when the call came out for child actors comfortable doing improv comedy with a professional comedy troupe to tape some segments for the show.

So I dutifully signed both girls up--one an old hand at being filmed, the other a bright, eager newbie--and carted them over to The Friday Zone set. To entertain Sydney while Willow and I read as we waited (first lesson in taping a TV show: be prepared to wait), I gave her my camera. Here's what she captured:

Camera person with The Friday Zone set in the background. My girls were the only children who could not seem to sit still on those cubes on the set--darned little homeschoolers!

backstage--the video screen shows what the camera sees. It's what all the parents watch to see if the camera is getting a close-up of their kid.

Guess what I'm doing the entire time? 

lights setup, and the boom camera that all the kids were fascinated with

the set!!!

Do you ever have those times when you are really hyper-aware of your children's misbehavior? During this mega-taping (segments of eight different episodes, I think?), I thought that I was going to have a stroke. Mixed in with all of these nice, quiet, obedient children, my kids behaved like animals, I thought. They kicked the cubes they were supposed to be sitting on, they scooted off of them, they crouched on top of them, they fiddled with their necklaces, they gazed up at the boom mike when they were supposed to look like they were listening to the host--and the worst part is that they were being filmed at the time, so I couldn't march over there and hiss, "Straighten up!" at them!

Although it was miserable at the time, one of my friends, whose husband produces the show, later assured me that 1) the kids were fine; 2) when you work with children, your bar for misbehavior is set more along the lines of "Is the kid running around and knocking the set over?" than "Is the kid fiddling with her necklace?"; and 3) kids who are goofy at least make for better TV than kids who are frozen in fear.

That being said, of COURSE it was fine! At about 10:20 in the "Live, Learn, and Play" episode, the girls play living shadows with the Comedy Sportz improv troupe, and yes, it seems as if Sydney's goal in this skit is simply to torture the poor comedian assigned to her, and I think that possibly it actually was her goal, because she's mentioned several times since then how funny it was to NOT do what she was supposed to do, sigh. Will had a fabulous time, though, can you tell? At about 20:00 in the "Let's Eat" episode, you can watch them kick their cubes and play with their necklaces and fidget during the mad pizza-maker sketch.

There are still six more episodes, I think, containing the girls, yet to be aired this season. I'm most looking forward to the fairy tale news sketch, which is a Fox news-esque telling of the Rumplestiltskin tale, in which, if I recall correctly (I was trying to read AND send Sydney psychic instructions to stop falling off of her cube on purpose, remember), Willow plays the gold-spinning maiden.

Kid-Made Rainbow Cupcakes

I'm certain that we eat too much white flour, and too many sweets.

But baking them is so much fun!

Syd wanted to make rainbow cupcakes last week, and it was a project that she did almost completely independently. Hence the mess:

Which she cleaned up, incidentally--I'm still really struggling with getting the girls into the habit of cleaning up after themselves on a regular basis, but they do clean up after their projects very well (with prompting).

Sydney made the batter, following the instructions that I read out loud to her from our vanilla cupcake recipe (I usually use the vanilla cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which is yummier, but this one seemed easier for a kid to make by herself), then divided it while I dragged out the dregs of our food coloring stash:

I've used the Wilton gel coloring for years, but as the colors have been running out I've been considering upgrading to healthier food coloring. I'm waffling, however, which means that right now we have neither healthier food coloring NOR a good selection of Wilton gels anymore. So Syd had to get a little creative!

Paper plates are NOT what I would have steered her to if I'd been making these cupcakes. We buy paper for road trips and birthday parties, and then I always try to hide the extras away until the next road trip or birthday party, and yet somehow the kids and Matt always find them! Mark my words, I'm probably going to have to buy more paper plates for next week's road trip, now, so that the vicious cycle will continue.

These poor cupcakes took almost 24 hours to make. Syd started the process early one afternoon, then had to put it aside because we had our volunteer gig that afternoon, then worked on it some more after dinner that night, then had to put it aside for bedtime, then got it back out after breakfast the next day, and then FINALLY had the rainbow cupcakes of her dreams!

And then, apparently, she got my camera out, because I did not take the following glamour shots of these rainbow cupcakes:

See? White flour and sugar!

But also math, independent work, practical life skills, creative thinking, problem solving...

And yummy dessert.

Games! Games! Games!

When I spent some time at our homeschool group's Park Day last week griping about the hard time that the big kid and I have been having with her schoolwork lately, one of my friends suggested games as a way to sneak in the learnin' without the kids noticing.

It was a happy coincidence, then, that the first thing that the big kid did on Monday morning, on the first day of our mini Fall Break, was pull out a game to play with me!

Professor Noggin's Pets

And then... another!

Connect Four

And then another!

We played Professor Noggin, Connect Four, and Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego? all before 9:00 am (yawn!).

researching what Carmen meant when she said that Ohio's state flag is a burgee

 

A break for breakfast, and then another!

Othello is one of my favorites.

 

We listened to audiobooks and my Starred songs list on Spotify as we played, sometimes singing along to our favorites, and returning, as well, to favorite games:

This kid LOVES Professor Noggin!

While I'm still not sure how to incorporate specific games into our specific fields of study (Anyone know a game that will make learning subtraction with borrowing across zeroes FUN?!?), my friend's suggestion does have me doing some more long-term thinking and planning.

Specifically, here's what I'd like to obtain:

• math games that practice operations and computation
• logic games
• games that reinforce facts about ancient history, especially the material from Story of the World
• geography games that reinforce facts about the United States
• science games related to the study of human biology
• Latin games
• trivia games at a child's level

I'll be on the lookout--and open to suggestions!--for the next two weeks, because a secretly educational but legitimately fun game for each kid would certainly be something nice to have under the Christmas tree!

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!

Trick-or-Treat 2012

The kiddos made their own costumes this year (except for that epic cardboard and newspaper witch hat, which had some Momma assistance).

Will is always more of a minimalist, and this year sported a small amount of face paint and kitty ears as her cat costume. My Syd's efforts always seem to be grandiose: in addition to the hat, she cut up and safety-pinned the cape that was part of Willow's vampire costume last year, and applied an extreme amount of face paint--and HAND paint!!!--

--to embody a witch:

Syd also had a fine time with her face paint (best Christmas present EVER!) making me into a bad kitty--

--and Matt into a scary clown:

I don't know if he was INTENDED to be scary, but nevertheless...

In the course of our trick-or-treating we also encountered a Dalek, a member of Pussy Riot--

--the gas mask kid from Doctor Who (whom I required to perform for me no less than three times, bless his heart, and each time he did it I was so creeped out that I thought I was going to die), one gorilla who was almost too scary for Sydney to trick-or-treat from (but not Willow!)--

--and just an entire neighborhood's worth of pirates, princesses, animals, and stars of stage and screen:

And thankfully for the big eyes of my little babes, NONE of the costumes that we saw seemed to be prefixed by the adjective "sexy."

For a while in our neighborhood, we trick-or-treated just behind a real-life gang of teenaged hooligans. Dressed in regular clothing, I didn't realize that they were stealing all the candy from every candy bowl left on someone's porch (Do people in your neighborhood leave out a bowl of candy on their porch if they're not home or don't feel like going to the door? I've seen it in every state that I've lived in, so I'm guessing that you know what I'm talking about)--I just thought that every bowl just happened to be empty when my kids got to it right afterwards. I'm naive that way. It wasn't until one neighbor came out, furious, just after they'd run off and told us that those kids had stolen all his candy that we decided to take a right turn on the next block and stop following their trail of destruction.

On a positive note, Sydney, especially, received a huge amount of compliments for her costume. I love that strangers are willing to take notice of the clearly special effort that a kid has put in and then praise her for it. And on the other hand, I love that nobody teased Willow for her very low-key costume. Different kids have different levels of tolerance for things, and I appreciate that Will wasn't treated badly because she wasn't willing to completely costume herself.

The girlies received everything from raisins and erasers to full-sized Snickers and Starburst. We gave out pencils and sour straws, which were graciously received, and when those were gone we gave out kid-fistfuls of pennies and nickels, which every single person from toddler to teenager was genuinely THRILLED about. Gotta love that cold, hard cash!

The day after our big adventure, we've had the smoothest post-Halloween behavior that we've ever had. The kiddos, who get to keep their candy and eat it at will, have eaten a ton, traded some, given ME some choice chocolate-y tidbits (they know how to sweeten their momma's temper!), and, blessed be, done their schoolwork without complaint!

And if THAT'S not a Halloween miracle, then I don't know what is!

October School

I have the feeling that this is our last REAL month of school until January. We'll have just a week of real, regular school in November before we head out for a week-long homeschool road trip, then a week-long Thanksgiving plane trip (and then a week to recover? Perhaps!), and who knows how much will get accomplished in December before I throw my hands up for the month and just give the girls up to ornament crafting and endless letters to Santa?

Fortunately, it feels as if we got a lot done in October, even if it never actually feels like we get anything done  on any given day:

Chess

Will and I have been playing chess quite happily for logic study. Will goes to a scholastic chess club twice a month, and in between we've been watching episodes of Elliott's Chess School and practicing the strategies together--

--and just playing! I've discovered how to make the game a fair fight by handicapping myself--

--and so Will has started to get in some legitimate checkmates against me.

math

Variety is the spice of life, and thus math has gotten a (little) better this month. Both girls are doing memory drills once a week--

candy corn arithmetic puzzle

--and a variety of problems on grade-level math apps once a week--

--as well as learning new stuff. Will and I are in the home stretch with subtraction with borrowing (the last thing being borrowing across zeros), and Syd is quite ready to move on to big number building and multi-digit addition. Before we start that, however, and before Will starts multiplication, we're zipping through this little unit:

I've built a couple of Montessori-style time telling works, and I don't think it will take long for the girls to get the process down pat.

I really want MORE math, though, so I've started adding a second math work every school day--these math journals:

I set out the prompts a couple of weeks at a time, and I try to make each prompt very different, while also requiring a review or application of a skill that's already been mastered. This way, the journal prompts are fairly quick to complete, fairly fun, and can be done independently, including being done on the bleachers while one kid takes her ice skating class, or on the bench outside the ballet studio while the other kid dances.

music

We've still been having fun with mom-led lessons on the keyboard, violin, guitar, and recorder:

Each week each kid picks if she wants to do a music lesson that week (they usually do), with a week's worth of daily practice to follow and a "recital" at the end of the week. It's working really well so far!

Latin

Willow and I are still exploring in this subject. She's pretty resistant to conjugations and declensions at the moment, so we've been doing a lot of playing lately, trying to find a fun way to learn. Will did a couple of lessons on Mango Latin, which we can access through our public library--

--but ultimately decided that she doesn't like this program, either. I may switch to doing Latin only once a week, which will mean SLOOOOW progress, but progress nonetheless.

history

There has been a lot of historical fiction lately, with Syd playing her Little House and American Girl audiobooks from the library on the family stereo. We've also FINALLY moved into chapter two of Story of the World, where we may stay for the rest of the year, frankly, since who would ever want to leave the Egyptians?

For SOTW, we listen to the chapter on audiobook (while the girls do various odd things to occupy their hands, sigh)--

--answer the quiz questions, review the old quiz questions, do the mapwork, and then move on to the projects... so many projects!

reading

Hallelujah, Sydney is now able to read some of the easier Dr. Seuss titles! She and I are also still reading Bob books together, AND I've just discovered the new Electric Company on Netflix--how did I not know about that show?!? 

One of the interesting things that I've noticed about Sydney is that she can actually read far more than she thinks she can read--she often brings me things like instructions for something, or comic strips, to read for her that she could actually read for herself... and DOES after I ask her to! Although Will doesn't really like WeGiveBooks.org anymore because she claims that the book selection is too baby-ish, I have Syd spend some time on the site once a week or so:

She's so content spending long periods of time "looking at" books like these that I figure that she must be reading them, whether she realizes it or not.

Will and I stalled out on grammar this month. She's been so resistant to schoolwork lately that I've cut way down on even offering dry subjects. Maybe I'll sneak the rest of nouns and verbs in during the next two months, when sit-down schoolwork is definitely going to seem a novelty.

science

I keep meaning to start the entire unit on human biology that I've put together, but we got pleasantly distracted by autumn, which mean lots of time in nature, lots of leaf work--

--and lots of field trips to goof around with apples and pumpkins and tons of other kids.

Starting tomorrow, our entire schoolwork will revolve around preparations for our giant road trip in a couple of weeks--we'll read the Misty of Chincoteague books, learn about the monuments along the National Mall, and figure out what we're going to see in the Smithsonian museums. The girls are going to finish learning how to tell time, then start some new math while reviewing the old. We're going to start our Thanksgiving crafting early, since we'll have so little time at home next month.

And then we're going to go on vacation!