My Latest over at CAGW: Seed Starting and Dish Refurbishing

a round-up of food scrap containers good for seed starting (think eggshells and orange peels)

and a tutorial for embellishing thrifted dishes using ceramics markers

We first started doing this with some medium-sized thrifted white plates, because the girls' appetites had outgrown their IKEA lunch plates and the Fiestaware that I collect as our family dishes doesn't make a good "medium-sized kid lunch plate" size. 

However, I've been LOVING how these turn out, and the ease of collecting cheap-o white dishes second-hand, combined with the difficulty of collecting Fiestaware at discount prices (people even inflate the price of Fiestaware at GARAGE SALES here!!!), has made me think that perhaps I should start collecting/embellishing these white dishes as our regular stock, and set the Fiestaware aside for the most part.

Except for coffee mugs. You'll pry my giant Fiestaware coffee mug out of my cold, dead, rigor mortised hands.

Sydney behind the Lens: January 2013

Although both girls have cameras of their own, my camera is better, and everyone knows it.

It doesn't surprise me, then, when I dump my camera's photos into my photo editing software, to find, here and there, photographs that I didn't take. It's generally easy to use context to determine the photographer, and in this particular case, I'm confident that these photos were taken by Sydney:

a stack of the fresh strawberries that Sydney requested from the grocery store

Gracie and Sydney's favorite stuffed animal watching kitty TV together

the video that Sydney checked out from the library last week

Like me, the girl photographs what she loves!

Today, I was So Proud

four years ago

today

I am happy, happy, happy today. I've even found myself thinking, 20-year atheist that I am, "Thank you, Jesus!" That's what a childhood in the South leaves with you when good things happen, atheist or not.

Off and on today, between board games and a lunchtime outing for pizza and a few rounds of Kinect Star Wars (I am really good at the Galactic Dance-off!), I watched the inaugural festivities streaming live on my computer. Through speeches and songs and parades, I noticed something really funny about myself: much of the time, I was watching not the festivities taking place, but President Obama watching the festivities. I was enjoying watching the look on his face as he experienced his inauguration, exactly the same way that I enjoy watching the looks on my children's faces as they experience events that are really special to them. Silly, right? But he's the first president in my memory that I genuinely, truly, absolutely like (well, I liked Clinton, but then he couldn't keep it in his pants). Is this how my Mammaw felt about Kennedy? 

Today, I was so proud. May I feel the same way about the world tomorrow.

Sydney Writes Thor Fanfiction

I must admit my fault in being much more open to Sydney's obsession with superheroes than I was to her obsessions with The Land before Time characters, the Disney fairies, or the Disney princesses. I still sometimes think back to when she was two years old and loved to talk like Ducky. I rarely let her watch the movies, but now that I see how fleeting a two-year-old's desperate passion can be--she doesn't give a flip for The Land before Time now!--I think that I should have indulged her more back then.

The thing that's MUCH easier about a passion for superheroes (and even for a passion for Disney fairies and princesses) is that there are so many outlets for indulging in superhero stories other than TV, which Sydney still doesn't get much of. I gave her several teeny Marvel superhero figures for Christmas, but without having to buy anything at all, Syd has as many superhero comic books, picture books, chapter books, and even audiobooks as she can handle, just from our public library. She especially likes Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, the Silver Surfer, and the Hulk, but her favorite superhero is Thor.

And of all the superheroes, Thor IS the best, because he's actually legitimately educational! His superhero origin story (or Thory, as we nerdily call it here) is similar enough to Thor's depictions in Norse mythology that I've successfully snuck in loads of further materials on the Norse God Thor without Sydney noticing.

Mwa-ha-ha!!!

Anyway, two of Sydney's reading days on her weekly schedule are actually mostly literacy enrichment days, because she still needs to move VERY slowly through the actual reading instruction and I don't want her frustrated with the process. Sometimes she gets to watch The Electric Company, sometimes we'll read a picture book together and then do a craft project related to it, sometimes she'll make puppets and perform a story back to me, sometimes I'll let her play on a phonics computer program, sometimes she'll sit down with her headphones and a stack of CD readers, etc.--basically anything literacy-linked that's NOT "sit down and decode the words in this book, pronounce them correctly, and also understand their meanings, on the sentence level and in the work as a whole." Syd loves to invent stories and loves to create books, so I thought that it would be fun to see if she'd like to invent a new story about her favorite guy, Thor, and create a book around it.

It WAS fun!



There are SO many things that I love about Sydney's creation:

1. Does that drawing of Thor not kick ass or what?!? He's got his wings on his helm, he's got his red cape, he's wielding Mjolnir, he's got lots of shiny metal thanks to those new gel pens (thanks again, Grandma Beck!). I'm also really fond of the monster that's drawn escaping from its bubble--did you see how it's clawing a hole in the bubble? The perspective is really creative there. My kid's awesome.
2. Syd mostly prefers to illustrate her books and verbally narrate them, but every now and then, when she's feeling extra confident, you'll see her brave an actual sentence. Yay!
3. See, there IS some actual fact creeping into the superhero play! When we study the Norse myths, she'll be familiar with the rainbow bridge, with Asgard, with Odin, with Loki, and with whatever other clever little details she's picking up.

Currently, we have basically every kid-friendly item on Thor checked out from our public library (Sorry, other Norse myth/superhero aficionados! You can see Thor after our lending period expires!). Here are Syd's favorites:

Our Giant Cookie Map of Egypt

Chapter two of Story of the World discusses the geography of Ancient Egypt, as well as its gods and goddesses, so I wanted to do another map project, but we did salt dough maps of Egypt in 2011, and paper maps as part of The Story of the World Activity Book for chapter two just a couple of weeks ago.

We got into the habit of turning things into giant cookies way back with the Giant Cookie Solar System of 2010, and we've discovered, since then, that many, many, many things make EXCELLENT giant cookies.

Egypt, for instance? Turns out that it makes an EXCELLENT giant cookie.

We used this cut-out sugar cookie recipe for our dough, although I'll warn you that it needs to be more exact than the recipes that I usually use for kid cooking are. Syd accidentally poured in 1 cup of milk instead of 1/4 cup, and I futzed around to try to save the recipe any other way than quadrupling it, but in the end we actually had to dump it out and re-make it. Normally, I only give the kids recipes that are very forgiving for that exact reason, but this recipe DOES result in a great cut-out cookie, so there you go.

For the template, I printed this 2x2 Egypt map, which, when assembled and cut out, was the perfect size:

We printed and cut out the one-page map first, but it was way too small for a shared project, so I told the girls that if there was enough dough leftover, they could each make their own personal Egypt cookie and decorate it silly.

The dough, rolled out--

--and cut to shape with an x-acto knife--

--looks like this!

It's very important to roll it out and cut it over parchment paper; otherwise, I don't know how on earth you'd get the damn thing on the pan.

Obviously, you're never going to be able to figure out the baking time for this beforehand. I just keep an eye out, and even then there was no way not to burn the area of Egypt east of the Red Sea inlet, but otherwise the cookie was perfect about 20 minutes in. 

Decorating the cookie was a family affair, with the adults researching on computer and ipad, and the kids, with their messy fingers, calling out monuments to be researched, modeling them out of marzipan (other edible play dough would also work), icing, and M&Ms, and placing them on the map:

checking her work on Google Earth as she places the Nile

Setting M&Ms to follow the course of the Nile

Here's the finished masterpiece!

The Nile Delta is done in green icing and green M&Ms; modeled in marzipan are the Sphinx and the larger three pyramids of Giza (the three small ones are made from M&Ms alone):

The bent pyramid, the Valley of Kings, and the Tomb of Ramses II are also modeled in marzipan; modeled in marzipan and red M&Ms is the red pyramid:

And Syd made a valiant attempt to write "UPPER" in M&Ms and icing to label Upper Egypt.

 The great geographers are very proud of their work:

They're quite fond of how it tastes, as well:

I tidied away the excess dough, and on another day, the girls were ready and willing to make their own personal "silly Egypts":

I might personally think that they look a little less appetizing than the carefully constructed extra-large version-- 

--but the girls reported that they tasted just as yummy.

A List of Responsibilities Every Day

Here's Sydney's list of responsibilities this week:


And here's Willow's:
I've never seen another homeschooling parent's work plan, so maybe these are crazy. All I know is that they work for us right now.

(Which is all that matters, right? So many arguments between fellow parents could be avoided, I think, if people simply accepted that what someone else is declaring is what is working for them, not you, right now, not for all time. But then what would I read when I'm in the mood for mama drama?)

Each day contains each child's general chores (usually listed by room--they know what they're supposed to do there) and specific schoolwork. On Monday mornings, after I finish my coffee, the girls meet me at the table with binders in hand. They remove last week's material, and I pass out these lists and the assorted printables/worksheets/whatever for them to hole-punch and insert into their binders. When we first began to use binders, I took the time to make labeled subject dividers--these have almost entirely been torn away over several months of hard use, and nobody seems to miss them much.

Every morning, each kid has ultimate free time from the time that she gets up (Syd sleeps in sometimes, but Will is always up by 6:30) to the moment that I finish my coffee, although she can start work early, if she chooses. But as soon as I've cleared the table of my coffee/newspaper habit, I call for the children to choose something from their binders. One kid might choose math, one kid might choose music practice. If both kids choose something that I need to be involved in separately for each of them, I'll ask one of them to do her chores instead, and then play quietly until I can help her. If one kid chooses a schoolwork that she and her sister will be doing together that day, I'll either get the other kid involved at that time or put the work off until both of the kids are free.

If the girls get distracted with play, or immersed in a book, or involved in a project, I'll let them be, but if I notice them at a stopping point, or see them wandering by, or hear them fighting, then I'll redirect them back to the binders. In that way, almost all the responsibilities are marked off by dinner. If anything remains undone, then Matt's there to assist us after dinner. I know that means that we're rarely "done" with school, but early on, when I required the girls to sit at the table and do their work at one go, they'd hurry through their assignments, doing poor work, forgetting to enjoy themselves, and absorbing very little. This way, a kid will very often get immersed in her activity and work far longer than I'd have required her to and delve far deeper than I'd intended. It's important to me that, even though I'm rigidly structuring each assignment, the girls feel autonomous and can own their own work.

Sometimes we have an off day (today is one!), and if that happens, I'll turn one of our three free days each week into a schoolwork day. We're definitely doing weekend school this week! If we really get off-track, such as when one of us is ill, then I'll usually just keep missed assignments in their same spot for the next week; many subjects we cover once weekly, and even the subjects that we do daily don't build off of each other that same week--math lessons, for instance, are on Mondays, with the other days for reinforcement, review, drill, enrichment, etc.

These work plans have worked well for us for several months, now, and there's a lot that I like about them:

1. They offer excellent accountability for everyone. I expect the children to mark responsibilities off as they finish them, so that I can glance at the binder and see where each child is. I file away the marked-over sheets the next week, so that if I'm ever required to prove that we've been working at (or above) grade level, I'll have the evidence.
2. They allow me to plan all week. As soon as I've printed each child's work plan for the week, I delete the entries and begin to plan, gradually, for the next week. Whatever I haven't filled in by the weekend, I fill in then.
3. They give the authority to something that can't argue back. For some reason, the girls just don't argue about what's on the list. If I told them, out of my head, to complete a math worksheet, then I'd die of old age before Willow had finished arguing with me about it. But if I say, "your list shows that you need to complete this math worksheet," well, then...who can argue with The List?!?

As the girls get older, I'm curious to see how our work plans evolve. Might they begin to write their own work plans? Might we evolve from specific assignments to blocks of time that they can use for their own research and projects? Might we transition from daily plans to weekly plans?

Who knows? All I know is that this is what works for us, for now.

(Just not today. Today, Will played while I worked with Syd on her fashion show design, and then Will and I played chess, and then we had Gym Day with our other homeschooled friends for two hours, and then I took the girls to the library for another two hours, and then when we got home I remembered that today is Willow's half-birthday and therefore I need to make her a half-cake, and then Matt came home and I was all, "Holy crap, it's 6:00?!? Here, follow this cookie cake recipe and then order pizza." Because there are plenty of hours in the weekend for math worksheets, clay sculpture, and cataloging Egyptian gods and goddesses, but this is the only day in the entire lifespan of the entire universe that my Will is turning 8.5, and we're watching the movie of her choice and eating pizza and a cookie-half cake to celebrate!)

My Latest over a Crafting a Green World: Clothing Rehab

a tutorial for mending ripped jeans

and a tutorial for re-dyeing black clothing

Everybody has a large wardrobe right now, in various stages of (dis)repair, and because I'd rather spend our budget on something OTHER than new clothes (a late-winter weekend at an indoor water park, perhaps?), I've been doing a LOT of clothing rehab lately--lengthening, mending, dyeing, embellishing, refashioning, etc.

Just today, on the sewing table, I have two pairs of pants that need to have their basted cuffs removed (little girls insist on growing up!), one pair of pants that needs to have a seat seam re-sewn, one shirt that needs to have a ripped-off tie mended, two pairs of silk long johns that need to be re-dyed, and two pairs of pants that need to be lengthened with some stash fabric.

But when my cotton fabric dye arrives in the mail next week, that's when the party is REALLY going to start!