How to Write a Googol

Every homeschool family that we're acquainted with in our hometown, this place with a fabulous public library and a fabulous university library, has WAY too many library materials checked out. This is known.

And every homeschool family, every now and then, has its own way of dealing with all the checked-out library items that just sometimes get a little (lot) too plentiful. My friend Jenny sometimes declares a moratorium on any new check-outs until everything that they already have out gets returned. When we go on vacation as a family, we'll sometimes return every last thing that we have checked out, and then start fresh when we get back home.

Our library materials are once again overflowing their shelves in our living room, so instead of our usual schedule this week, we had a "library" week. Instead of regular school, the girls did their math every day and then each chose a couple of library materials to explore. Usually the material would lend itself to some sort of casual, spontaneously-thought-up enrichment activity, and when it was done the girls would decide if they wanted to keep the item or were ready to return it. It was a lot of fun, we got some great schoolwork completed, and we cleared the shelves a bit--yay!

So we read Can You Count to a Googol? all together, and then, with major build-up, I said to the girls, "Alright now, each of you is going to, all by yourself, write. A. GOOGOL!!!"

Willow promptly pitched a fit.

It was pretty hilarious, actually, poor kid, because you could clearly see her thinking that a googol is a huge number--with 100 zeroes!!!--and therefore must take a really, really, really long time to write! Days, perhaps! Perhaps years!

I'll call it an exercise in trust that she did eventually sit down with me and Sydney. I rolled out some butcher paper (I wish I had the adding machine paper that this kid used), gave the kids pencils, and off they went:

 And how long DOES it take to write a googol, you ask? It took a little longer for Syd, who kept losing track of how many zeroes she'd written, until I suggested that she make a mark under every ten zeroes and then skip count to find her place, but for Willow, who never lost count, it took less than a minute to write her googol:

And yes, she was very, very proud of herself afterwards.

I see a lot more "library weeks" in our future. It was nice to get away from the weekly schedule without having to declare a holiday, nice to take a break from our regular studies to explore some new subjects, nice to just read and think up projects and then do them all week. We're back to our regular studies of Latin, skip counting, U.S. geography, grammar, human biology, Ancient Egyptian history, etc., next week, but whenever that all starts to feel stale again, I won't hesitate to declare another school week that's guided by our fantastic library materials.

Skatin'

Ice skating is a huge part of our lives in the winter. For four months, we're at the skating rink at least twice a week, once for the girls' skating class and the rest of the time for the lovely early afternoon public skating hours that the rink offers--I love anything that takes place while the majority of the world is at school or work!

Often we have the rink to ourselves during these early afternoons, but lately our homeschool group has been scheduling times to meet up there (and pay the group rate, yay!). I have been loving the chance to hang out with my friends when I'm not on the ice, and the girls have loved discovering that skating with a bunch of your friends is a whole different world from your average public skating session or skating class free-skate time. With a rink full of nothing but homeschoolers, the easy-going staff pretty much lets us play as we like--no confinement to skating counter-clockwise around the perimeter for us!

Their laces always come untucked. Yes, it DOES drive me nuts!

 

We're headed into the climax of the ice skating season next week, with daily rehearsals that will culminate in the Spring Ice Show that marks the last official on-ice event of the skating rink until next season. I wish that our rink was year-round, because Willow, especially, loves ice skating, and it's one of the few yearly extra-curriculars that she genuinely enjoys.

We do have a roller skating rink, however, and next month Willow is signed up to attend a workshop with the Junior Roller Derby in our town.

Her next extra-curricular, perhaps?

Horse Mandalas, Colored in My Best Sharpies

The girls have been spending lots of time with this coloring book of horse mandalas that they were given by the publisher:

Mandalas made from horses--who knew? They're basically the perfect mandalas for kids. I've occasionally offered mandalas to the girls to color, because they're so great for those little minds and hearts (So contemplative! So complex! So immersive!), but the girls just never could engage themselves in the abstract patterning.

Horses, though? Now THAT is something that my kids can engage in!

Although the girls both played with crayons and colored pencils and Crayola markers, their favorite tool for coloring these mandalas is--big surprise!--my nice set of fine-point Sharpies:

I eye their use of my Sharpies with narrow-eyed suspicion, since their points are delicate and there have been...incidents...but to the girls' credit, they have much better fine motor skills now, and a much better respect for pricey art supplies. Nevertheless, especially now that the girls have also begun to ask for my even pricier Faber-Castell Pitt pens, I'm eyeing the sales and setting aside money in the homeschool/crafts budget to buy duplicates of the art supplies that I'm fondest of, myself, so that I don't have to clench my jaw and share.

 I was really surprised/pleased at the level of creativity that the girls, especially Sydney, poured into these mandalas--they usually don't get so emotionally involved with coloring pages. For instance, Sydney spent a ton of time on this particular mandala, using both fine point Sharpies and Prismacolor colored pencils, adding a huge amount of detail to each form:

Notice how each unicorn in the mandala is very different? Sydney created them intentionally to be unique, and each unicorn has its own name--Ocean, Green Grass, Fire, and Pink Flower--and its own magical powers, and she now sometimes incorporates the idea of them into her imaginary play, embodying one of the unicorns herself or assigning one of her more mundanely-colored toy unicorns to play the roles.

It's almost like she re-invented the four elements of ancient times and is now exploring them through play.

If one of the elements had been represented in hot pink, that is.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Makeup and Hoop Skirts

a discussion of handmade makeup, inspired by these MuyLinda Collection lipsticks that I bought for the girls

and a tutorial for the hoop skirt that I made out of upcycled wire hangers

My friend Kayte already suggested a mod for this project, which is to use a pair of needle nose pliers to wrap the long wires around the hoop, instead of gluing them to it. Unfortunately, I've actually since abandoned this particular hoop as a no-go for Sydney's Trashion/Refashion Show dress, since it just didn't mesh with the flowy look that we're going for (a look SO spinny-flowy that, four seconds after trying the finished dress on Sydney, I realized that I'm going to have to use the last bit of that vintage silk sheet to make my twirly girl a pair of matching bloomers!).

So...now the kid has a hoop skirt to add to her dress-up wardrobe.

Inside the Glue Gun

In retrospect, there was probably always something wrong with that pink glue gun, the one that burned so hot that when I accidentally squeezed hot glue directly onto the back of my hand almost exactly a year ago while helping the girls make Sydney's Trashion/Refashion Show wings, the liquefied glue immediately peeled the skin off and I STILL have those scars.

This past weekend, making the wire hanger hoop for THIS year's Trashion/Refashion Show, I kept plugging that pink hot glue gun into the outlet back in the study, and it kept blowing the fuse to that part of the house. Weird, but I have, like, a million things plugged in back there (computer, external hard drive, shop light, two sewing machines, etc.), so I moved all my work to the living room, set the glue gun down on the table, and plugged it into the outlet there.

That damn hot glue gun caught fire! Fortunately, I'd make a big enough production about moving my work that everyone in the family happened to be looking at me at the time, and so everybody got to see the gigantic blue flame shoot out of the little heat vents on both sides of the gun. Matt fetched an oven mitt and set the smoking piece of junk (see how I didn't say "smoking gun?" on account of I have too much pride?) outside on the concrete front porch to settle down.

I'm REALLY glad that I didn't happen to be holding it when I plugged it in, or, god forbid, one of the kids, because they use hot glue more than they use school glue. It was clearly a total fluke, so I don't even know what to do to prevent something like that. Buy a more expensive hot glue gun? Set stuff down before you plug it in?

After the hot glue gun had had time to get nice and cold from our sub-zero outdoor temperatures, Will brought it back in, found a screwdriver, and did what we always do with every appliance that breaks on us.

We LOVE to take junk apart!

The insides are a little blue because I tried that crayon trick once. Did not work:

Will reckons that the fire originated here. See how it's all charred?

Sooo...at least that was fun, right? And now I get to go hot glue gun shopping!

Pink + Purple Circle Skirt + Bodice

In the process of creating a pattern for this year's Trashion/Refashion Show, somehow I ended up with this mis-matched, pinks and purples--

swirly-silly dress:

Or is it that kid who's swirly-silly?

The process is also getting a little silly, as I keep going back and forth on the hoop issue and up and down on the skirt length--this poor circle skirt pattern that I drafted has been trimmed and lengthened, um...three times? Four?


This dress WAS meant to be a muslin for the bodice + hooped underskirt of the final garment, but if I don't use the hoop, then I may ditch the underskirt entirely for several layers of petal skirt (and bloomers, because you just know that kid's going to twirl up on the runway!).

Ah, well... I needed to make a circle skirt pattern so that I could draft the petals, anyway.

Be My Valentine 2013

Despite the fact that I didn't do a lot, personally, to celebrate this year, Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays. I'm nine years old and barf at romance, and so our celebrations are usually of my favorite, family-centered type. Pink and red are great colors to work with, the heart is iconic, and any occasion that encourages people to send handmade greeting cards, and inspires our homeschool group to throw one of our "class parties," is an okay holiday by me!

Valentine-themed woodworking project at our local Lowe's Build-and-Grow Clinic

These workshops are among my kiddos' favorite activities, EVER. And they're free!!!

making valentines for their pen pals and our homeschool class party

Syd made an assortment of valentines, including a few that I let her make from our building block stash

Will took her cardboard necklace project one step further by using wood discs from our stash

How can you not love a valentine made using POWER TOOLS?!?

I kept my mouth entirely shut about how she scribbled on each disc in gel pen for decoration, even though we have plenty of scrapbook paper and a heart punch that would have been JUST the right size for the discs

She cut embroidery floss and threaded it through the hole in each disc, gave it to me to knot the floss well, then wrapped it around an index card, taped it down, and wrote "From Willow" on the card. And I tell you what, she got a HUGE thrill seeing how many kids put on her necklace right away after receiving it. 

I never regret keeping my mouth shut.

I didn't keep my mouth shut when I asked Matt to help the girls make our traditional Valentine's Day mailbox  instead of me and he instead concocted some weird thing with shipping boxes, aluminum foil, and a box knife, but of course they turned out great, too:

Although, you know, MY mailbox project has a cute little flag with the kid's name on it. Next year...

In fact, other than the party, all we really did THIS year was buy red carnations for the living room

The girls have been such good sports with their lousy-feeling, crabby, tired, humorless mother this winter, however, that I've been keeping my head busy planning some extra-fun activities for us to do now that I'm feeling better (knock on wood!). And those activities may, indeed, involve the colors red and pink, and various varieties of the heart shape.

It'll be Valentine's Day 2: Electric Boogaloo!