Happily, We Dye our Eggs

using the super-bad-for-you food coloring that I'm trying not to use on actual food anymore,

and some plastic cups leftover from our week without a sewer

(I only buy paper/plastic for parties/vacations/sewer outages, but somehow, just knowing that a package is in the house, even if I don't need it anymore and *could* put it aside for the next party/vacation/sewer outage, is intoxicating. It ALWAYS gets used up)

oh, and popsicle sticks--we've been using same mega thrifted box since the babes were really babes

and eggs. mustn't forget the eggs

the kids are both filthy. this day was the first nice one in ages, and they'd been taking full advantage

part of our tradition is that you ALWAYS paint with the egg dye afterwards!

Such pretty colors. Even though we're atheist, Easter is one of my favorite holidays--I LOVE chocolate bunnies, and I LOVE dyeing Easter eggs. It's not a tedious craft, the results are always so vivid and lovely, and it sets you up for yummy lunches for the next two weeks.

Because, of course, as soon as Easter is over, we begin the celebration that is entitled Egg Salad Fortnight.

Nom!

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: EASTER!!!

a round-up of ideas for eco-friendly Easter baskets (we don't usually have plastic grass or eggs, but this year my goal is to also avoid individual packaging and limit junky sweets)

and a tutorial for making papier mache Easter eggs

These are a good plastic egg substitute that help us avoid individual packaging, because the Easter Bunny likes to divide candies like jelly beans or robin's egg chocolates among them; the Easter Bunny hopefully won't deliver little foil-wrapped individual candies to our house this year!

I'm pretty sure that the Easter Bunny will, of course, also be delivering a chocolate Easter Bunny to each child, as well as one other sweet treat, but otherwise I think she's (the Easter Bunny is a girl, right?) planning to bring a book, a card game, a set of eyeshadow, and perhaps a couple of little wooden toys to mix in with all the girls' toy animal play, and maybe some bubbles or store-bought Play Doh (the Easter Bunny LOVES to hoard things purchased on deep clearance!).

And yes, the Easter Bunny is of COURSE also going to deliver a chocolate Easter bunny to me!

Peanut butter-filled, preferably.

Colored Sand and a Lightbox

Our university has a warehouse from which they sell surplus items, everything from dorm furniture to lab equipment to electronics, cafeteria supplies, and sports gear. I stalk this surplus store's Facebook feed the same way that I stalk Craigslist; Matt and I are not in the habit of buying something as soon as we want or even need it (our bathroom sink that is held up--literally--with duct tape can attest to this), and it's not unusual for me to eventually find what we're looking for in one of those two places.

And that's how a couple of months ago, my years-long quest for a lightbox ended with the purchase of a really, really, REALLY massive lightbox from the IU Surplus Store.

We paid twenty dollars for it. If you know lightboxes, you're eating your heart out right now at that price. As you should!

Until you remember that I've wanted a lightbox for years before buying this one. Not jealous anymore, are you?

Along with finding some great ways to incorporate the lightbox into our schoolwork, I've been setting up some sensory play activities on it in the evenings sometimes. The backlighting is especially evident then, and it's a relaxing pre-bedtime thing to do.

Here's an evening that the girls spent in play with the lightbox and colored sand:

It's mesmerizing to watch. The photographs are a bit disingenuous, in that they make the light from the lightbox look brighter than it is--truly, the children are in no danger of retinal damage here.

We've been using the lightbox for schoolwork--it's a great place to look at x-rays!--but the artistic possibilities are also endless, and I'm now officially on the lookout for supplies like clear bins (for colored water play), colored cellophane, translucent boxes, clear glass containers, colored translucent plastic building materials, tissue paper, clear plexiglass (for window markers), and stained glass-style coloring books.

Craigslist, perhaps?

We Spent the Night at the Zoo

And we had so much fun!

Willow rocked the scavenger hunt that began our overnight adventure:

I gather that scavenger hunts are a big part of school field trips, and I can see why: not only did Willow love this scavenger hunt, but it was great for research skills and reading comprehension, and she was so engaged that she did all that writing without a fuss.

Sydney, on the other hand, wasn't at all interested in the scavenger hunt, but that actually worked out perfectly, too, since Willow didn't have to share. Instead, she saw all there was to see in the Oceans exhibit while Willow and I worked:

Do you see the baby cownose ray?

Well, okay--we did a fair bit of sightseeing, too:

The zookeepers put up this fence around the shark touch tank at night so that the sharks don't jump out.

There were lots of group activities for the kids--

--lots of games, stories inside the underwater dolphin dome (where the dolphins, made curious by the unusual after-hours activity in their space, gave us LOTS of attention), a night-time tour of the Deserts exhibit, and then, hours after the girls' usual bedtime, crafts--

Popsicle stick picture frames, of course!

--and games:

I took my planner and pencil over to the zoo's games cupboard and wrote down the names of unfamiliar games. Nerd much?

Onto The Desert--this is now on my official wish list, along with Into the Forest

There was a late-night snack time listed on the schedule, but I didn't really think that my kids needed a snack an hour and a half past their bedtime, so I reluctantly brought along a couple of granola bars, just in case. My poor kids looked at their granola bars, then at the other families' packed snacks of chips, or whipped cream and strawberries, or, in one case, pulled pork sandwiches, and then back at their granola bars balefully. They ate their granola bars, but it was pretty clear that they'd rather be eating pulled pork sandwiches, chips, and whipped cream and strawberries.

Such is the nature of compromise: nobody was happy!

Our sleeping spot was in the special events room in the Dolphin Gallery, with one giant window looking into the dolphins' underwater habitat. The security guards came in to give us a run-down of the overnight rules, and this one security guard, who meant, I believe, to make a joke by describing the next shift of guards as "grumpy old men," instead misspoke and, I swear to gawd, said, "The radio, remember, is for emergency use only. We're nice, but you don't want to disturb the next shift of guards. They're a bunch of gropey old men." 

I guess that's one way to keep people from making frivolous use of the radio.

We all slept on the floor in the one big room, so we brought gym mats and blankets for the girls--

--and we borrowed two air mattresses from a very generous friend for us, with sleeping bags on top. Matt and the girls fell asleep immediately and slept like little lambs all night, but I shamefully admit that I am a fussy sleeper, and I did not do well. People kept rolling over and adjusting their covers, and one kid coughed every minute on the minute, and someone's cell phone rang, and someone else went to the bathroom, and some kid way to old to wake up and fuss woke up and fussed, and one kid, thankfully all the way across the room from us, PUKED, and so that family ran to the bathroom, and then they packed up their stuff, making ample use of the flashlights that they'd brought, and then they used the radio to call the gropey old men, and then the gropey old men came to escort them out of the zoo, and then when they were finally gone someone else started to snore.

It was a LONG night.

So worth it, though. Early in the morning, just after our 7:00 am wake-up call, the zookeeper told the children that as soon as they were fully dressed, they were welcome to come to the big window and say good morning to the dolphins (brilliant method, by the way, to get the kids up and clothed and out of the parents' way while we packed). So the children all got dressed at the speed of light, and then lined up at the giant window. They whispered to each other and waited, and after just a minute or two a couple of the dolphins swam over to see them. It wasn't the way that dolphins swim around and back and forth in their habitat during opening hours--these dolphins swam over to the kids, then rested there in the water, completely stationary, and just stared at them, and the kids stared back. It was beautiful.

Socialization is a tiresome question to bring up to homeschooled families, but every now and then, I am struck by something that my kids don't know that every schoolkid on the planet knows. Case in point:

The bemused look on Willow's face is happening because she's never drunk out of a milk carton before. The triangular opening of the carton doesn't match the shape of a child's mouth, and she was pretty sure it wouldn't work.

So there: The kid can stand in a line, she can raise her hand when she wants to talk, and now she can drink out of a milk carton.

The whole trip up to this point, Matt kept saying that he knew one of the kids at the overnight with us. I was all, "You don't know some random kid!"

But Matt kept saying that he swore that he knew him from somewhere, and finally, during breakfast, he said, "Toddlers and Tiaras! That kid was on Toddlers and Tiaras!"

I told him that there was no way that kid was on Toddlers and Tiaras, and even if he was, there was no way we were going to find out, because you can't just go up to somebody and ask that--that's admitting that you watch Toddlers and Tiaras! Also, admitting that you RECOGNIZE a kid from a baby beauty pageant? Creepy.

Matt kept insisting, however, so finally I called his bluff. I went up to the kid and said, "I have a silly question for you," and asked him if he'd ever been on TV. Wouldn't you know it, he said yes!

But of course, kids get on the afternoon news, and the local children's variety show, easier than they get on Toddlers and Tiaras, so I jumped in with both feet and asked, "Were you on Toddlers and Tiaras?"

"NO!!!" the kid said, and then I felt like a creeper. But then he said, "I was on Cake Boss." A-ha! It's not creepy to mix up TLC shows!

I asked the kid what happened on his episode, so we could watch it later, but all he said was, "I built a cake with Buddy." Yeah, I'll let Matt figure that one out on his own.

After our breakfast buffet, we had a before-hours visit back to the Deserts exhibit to watch the meerkats eat breakfast--

--and meet with their zookeeper, and then we went backstage to tour the zoo behind the scenes, particularly the animal commissary. I LOVED the animal commissary. It cracked me up to see all the food, lots of which were variations of "Giraffe Chow":

I also love behind-the-scenes tours, because I always like to see what's on those employee bulletin boards that businesses always have. Check this out!

GASP, right?!?

After the zoo opened to day visitors our official adventure was over, but morning hours in a deserted zoo are always a great time to really experience the animals, so, of course, we stayed for a few more hours, visiting the snakes (although we toured Deserts the night before, we couldn't see the snakes, because they require complete silence and darkness overnight or some of them won't eat), and the tigers, and watching the dolphin show, and saying hi to Ray, the loud-mouthed sea lion (one of the great things that the zookeepers did during our overnight was teach us how to recognize several of the animals by name).

We don't always have a zoo membership (we trade years between a children's museum membership and a zoo membership, to save money), and we've really been treasuring it. We've discovered that the animals are so much more engaged when the zoo is deserted, so we've been taking advantage of the freezing weather to visit often and make some special memories. It's snowing again today, of course (sigh), but we're already dreaming of the seasonal butterfly exhibit that will come to the zoo in just a couple of months and signal the true warm weather.

And then maybe another zoo overnight? I think the girls would really like to go with just their Daddy the next time, don't you?

Put-in-Place

With two girls at different grade levels, it's a treat (for everyone!) when they get to do math together. Math is usually a solo affair, with just a kid, her work, and a Momma to keep her on task, but when I tell them that they'll be doing math together that day, they know what that means:

A big project, something edible, a field trip, a movie, or a game!!!

A few weeks ago, Hand2Mind gave us some school materials, including The Super Source Base Ten Blocks, Grades 3-4 that Willow and I have been playing with. It occurred to me, though, that many of the fun activities that Will and I are doing from the book are actually quite suitable for Sydney, too. There is grade-level computation involved, but a lot of the especially earlier activities in the book are primarily geared towards hands-on investigation of a mathematical concept, internalizing certain rules that will make mastering that skill easier later.

Such it was with Put-in-Place, the game from the book that Sydney, Willow, and I have been playing for math on odd days. It requires counting by tens and ones, but it also requires estimation, prediction, and exchanging units for tens:

This game is really great for Sydney right now, since she's actually working on ten exchanges and multi-digit addition right this minute, but Willow is such an inherent pattern-reader that it turned out to be a good brain-stretching activity for her, too. But the very best part of this game for me, though, is that it requires nothing but Base Ten blocks, a die, and a place value mat photocopied or downloaded from another source. I've regularly used our homeschool budget to build a large set of Base Ten blocks, and I'm always pleased to find new ways to use them.

And I'm also giving my kids a head start at becoming really good at Blackjack, of course.

In other news, we can finally use our shower and toilet inside our own house again! Our lousy sewer pipes may well win the war, but at least we finally broke this particular siege against us.

Sisters

Let me try to brush either child's hair, and she will respond as if I am attempting to rip it out by the roots. Let a sister take brush in hand, however...

May their hands always be gentle towards each other.

Cactus Fruit

Sixth day of sewer blockage!!! Just so you know.

In the further interest of sharing our passion for exotic fruit, I present to you--

the cactus fruit

If you're wondering why my photos of our exotic fruit are always junk, it's because we have them in the late afternoon for dinner, when Matt's home to perform the honor of cutting the fruit in half--

and to help research what on earth he just cut in half, and to taste with us:

We weren't sure about this one. It was bright red inside but didn't have a lot of flavor. It also had tons of prickles on the outside that we were mostly able to avoid (not me, of course...). It takes a little of the fun out of it to realize that the reason why our cactus fruit was not delicious, probably, is that it's been shipped from who knows where who knows how long ago. Flavor peak of freshness, this is not.

So exotic produce is probably not going to be a regular purchase for our little Indiana family. But I tell you, whenever we do happen to visit some region that actually has cacti as part of its native flora, we WILL try cactus fruit again.

And, mental note, we will rub all of the prickles off first. Ouch!