Number Cross

Although I think logic is very important, it's a subject that I haven't yet managed to work into the girls' regular school schedule. Logic is important, yes, but so far reading, grammar, math, Latin, music, science, history, geography, and art are more important. I always have in the back of my mind, however, that one day, sooner or later, Sydney will no longer need formal reading instruction, and then I could replace that spot with logic.

I have mentally replaced Sydney's reading spot with probably half a dozen different theoretical subjects by now. I hope that reading frees up a LOT of time!

I do occasionally include stand-alone logic activities in Will's schedule--she has extra space set aside for enrichment activities almost every school day, and when I don't want to assign an enrichment activity based on what we're working on that day, I sometimes assign her a logic puzzle or game, or challenge her to a chess or Othello match. She loves word ladders, and recently she's been REALLY into this book, Number Cross Puzzles: A Quick and Challenging Workout for Your Brain, that a publicist gave her:

Seriously, how cool is this?!?

Ignore her backwards digits. She still does that very rarely when she's thinking VERY hard.

The format is exactly like that of a crossword puzzle, except instead of clues, you're given the numbers that will fill in the blanks. Many seem interchangeable at first, and only by trial-and-error or a LOT of logical forethought can you tell which goes where.

I tell you what--I LOVE these puzzles. Will is such a words girl, but she's quick at math, too; she just rarely takes the time to immerse herself in math. These puzzles give her a fun experience playing with numbers, which is something that I would like for her to learn to take pleasure in.

Will is also a girl who hates erasing and re-doing. If she wants to avoid that in these puzzles, then she must stretch herself to think ahead and visit all possibilities, but the puzzles are fun enough to her that even when she must erase and re-write, she sticks with it:

My biggest surprise, however, was when Sydney got ahold of this Number Cross book. I fear that I am sometimes guilty of underestimating my Syd--she's younger than her sister, and not yet fully literate, and has a different learning style from her sister's almost invisible way of picking many things up, so sometimes I forget that she's a very quick learner, too, especially in math, at which I am convinced she will catch up to and then pull ahead of her sister someday soon, but that's a story for another day.

Anyway, it had never even occurred to me to show this Number Cross book to Sydney, but she found it on her own, took it to Matt, who explained how to work the puzzles, and then sat herself down at the table and did this:

Not too shabby for the kid sister, huh? She's got a mind for numbers.

Kid Meal: The Incredible, Edible Soft-Boiled Egg

When Matt was a little boy living in Germany, a common breakfast for him was a soft-boiled egg, served with butter and toast. He has such happy memories of those breakfasts that when we saw egg cups while browsing in a kitchen store we actually BOUGHT them--brand-new and everything!

Hey, big spenders, I know, but a combination of the novelty of a brand-new something-or-other and the fact that my kiddos are adventurous eaters (even more so than either Matt or me, I freely admit) made them absolutely giddy to try soft-boiled eggs for themselves.

And they're a hit! I use this soft-boiled egg technique, which is really different from the way that Matt remembers his eggs being cooked when he was a child, but the result is the same, from getting to crack open the egg at one end--

--to dipping in your spoon and scooping up the whites and the hot, runny yolks--

--to yum!!!

The girls have been eating these as part of breakfast or lunch about three times a week for a while now--I'm a little skeezed about not thoroughly cooking the eggs, so I've been trying to buy local just for this. I have a friend who sells her surplus eggs, and there's a local dude who sells duck eggs, but later this afternoon I'm going to check out a little long-term dream of mine by attending a class entitled "Chickens in the City." Depending on just one particular regulation that I need to have clarified at the class (Is a "visual barrier" between the coop and the adjacent neighbors' properties simply a barrier that one can see, or is it a barrier that completely conceals the coop?), we *may* have some little chick babies of our own next month, when the thirty or so eggs that my friend's hen sneaked off and laid and sat on hatch.

Otherwise, I'm thinking of trying to get my friend to at least let us foster some babies, even if we have to eventually give them back for lack of a "visual barrier," whatever that turns out to be.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Tank Tops and Markers

a tutorial for art supply swatch cards 

and a tutorial for replacing tank top straps

I think I'm going to try to not buy the girls any clothes this summer. They're still so easy to sew for, in these ages before darts and careful fitting come into play, and they're thankfully still of ages in which they're thrilled with whatever I sew for them (I understand that this may NOT be the case in a few more years, but hopefully by then they'll be sewing some things for themselves!).

This decision will mostly affect Willow--Sydney has a HUGE selection of hand-me-downs from her sister, an older cousin, and a generous acquaintance of mine, but Will's main source of hand-me-downs, bless her heart, is a playmate who is several sizes bigger than her; when Will's a tween, she'll be all set with summer clothes, but this summer, for her, may well be the summer of cropped pants and homemade shorts. 

Recorder, Take Two

Our DIY music lessons have actually been working out pretty well. The girls dipped into and out of the instruments that we have here at home--recorder, violin, guitar, and keyboard--taking weekly instruction from me in whatever suited their fancy at the time, practicing that lesson for the week, and then holding a "recital" of what they'd learned, before picking again.

The lessons are fulfilling their overall purpose in that Willow has decided that she is quite interested enough in violin that she'd like to take formal lessons. Coincidentally (or not?), this is the instrument that, although I play a little, myself, I have the hardest time teaching, and thus I have a lot of newfound respect for actual violin teachers, and not a bit of a problem shelling out for one.

Just...not right this minute. Currently, our kid activity budget, both time- and money-wise, is full up: horseback riding lessons, softball, ballet, chess club, and, in a couple of months, science camp. And, yes, more of those activities are the younger kid's, but an even division isn't really the way it works around here. You do what you have a passion for, that we have a time for, and that we can afford. Sometimes there's a waiting list for one's passion, hence that year that it took to save up for these horseback riding lessons that are so beloved, and so appreciated, right now.

So after science camp we'll have the cash, and the time, for violin lessons, but until then, I wanted Willow to stay in the habit of regular music practice, and I thought that it would save some time and money during her lessons if she already had skills like reading music and clapping rhythms. Thus we're back to the recorder, the easiest instrument for her to learn and me to teach, and so the easiest instrument to make some real, inspiring musical progress in, and to teach related musical lessons with, until violin lessons begin.

Those little $1 recorders work great for the basic notes, but are pretty faulty in the lower register, so I upgraded to a nicer soprano recorder (still cheap enough that I can buy a second one later for duets!). I check out songbooks for the recorder from the library, or I figure out the simple tunes myself ("Hot Cross Buns" isn't rocket science, thank goodness!), and then I pass them on to the next generation:


This week, Willow is practicing a scale that includes all the notes she'll need to learn "Mary Had a Little Lamb" next week. When she knows an entire octave of notes, I plan to add reading music to her studies. We've also been researching woodwinds, in general, and this week in my free time (ha!), I've been working on a set of flash cards to identify members of the woodwind family, from the clarinet to the pungi.

Want to know what a pungi is? Ask Willow!

For our recorder study, we've been using--
 

--as well as the ideas from my Homeschool: Recorder pinboard. I've found some good fingering transcriptions from the links there, and I think that Willow will enjoy that kid-made recorder case project.

But don't worry...I've got plenty of violin projects planned out, too!

My Heart is in Boston Tonight

Let's be there together, shall we?

Bibs for Babies

I am not going to have anymore babies on purpose (knock on wood), so it's a source of sadness to me sometimes that I didn't become the hyper-engaged crafter that I am today until after my second baby was born.

Think of all the blankies that I missed out on sewing for my own babes. The baby gowns! The rompers! The Boppy covers! The cloth stacking rings! The little hats! The diaper covers! The mei tais! All the weensy little things, sewn by me, just for my baby, and I get to put them on her, and look at her all super-cute, and take her picture, because in this fantasy I'm also not half-functioning under a fog of exhaustion.

Suffice to say...

I sort of have a thing for sewing presents for other people's babies. 

A few weeks ago, there was a perfect storm of babies being born. My half-sister had a baby, and a friend here in town had a baby, and a co-worker a couple of states over had a baby.

I got to sew little baby presents in batches! 

It totally beat to hell the sympathy cards that I had to write in batches a couple of months ago.

And what's great for batch sewing for babies?

Bibs, that's what!

I used my old pattern for these T-shirt bibs that I made, gasp!, almost five years ago, to make bibs for all the new babies. I really, really liked the look of the T-shirt bibs, especially the tie-dyed ones, but I'm trying to sew from my stash this year (have I mentioned that the girls and I are undertaking another epic road trip in a couple of months? Hershey World, here we come!), and I have lots of lovely quilting cottons in my stash.

So I ironed interfacing to both pieces of fabric, sewed them and turned them and edge-stitched them--

--stopped to admire them in a can't-stop-beaming-at-them way that totally disturbed poor Matt when he happened to walk by and catch me at it--

--snap set them, monogrammed them, forgot to take pictures of them, and gave them to babies. Two sets were mailed, and one set was given in person, along with that fabric matching game big siblings present that caused me so much grief.

As I was chatting with my friends that day, including the new mom, we were talking about my "baby presents in batches" thing, and I confessed that I actually had yet another long-distance friend who had just had another baby, but they weren't getting another baby present, because they hadn't acknowledged the last one.

"Oh, you're one of THOSE people," the new mom said, probably half-operating under her own fog of exhaustion and contemplating a future of having to snap a bib around the neck of the baby currently at her breast and show it to me as yet another chore to complete before she could catch her entire hour in a row of sleep that night.

I said, "OH yeah, I'm one of those people! The only reason on this Earth why someone would make someone else's baby a gift by hand is that they want to see the damn baby WITH their gift. The whole time they're knitting a little baby hat or sewing a blankie or whatever, they're thinking, 'That little baby is going to look so cute in this hat/blankie/onesie whatever! I can't wait to see it!' So yeah, if the person that you made a baby gift for receives the gift, throws it in the baby's dresser, and gets on with their life, gift unacknowledged, it kind of kills the point of making them another baby gift. Their new kid needs some bibs? They can go to Wal-mart--they don't have to personally thank the sweat shop workers there."

And that's how I probably took the flavor out of one new mom's zest for receiving gifts for all her current and future children. Just please remember that I never have claimed to be one of those good person-type thingies. 

I just like making stuff for babies.

Memory Work is WORK!

Memory work is useful, yes, but easy it is absolutely NOT! As I've added more memory work to our weekly schedule, I've found that it's really necessary to keep finding different ways to review the same material every day. Too many flashcards, and too much straight copywork, and the kiddos' brains just tune out. They'll be able to quickly give the correct response in that same format, but ask them the same question in a different way, and they suddenly can't remember a single Latin word that they've been reviewing daily for a month, sigh.

Therefore, mostly for my own reference, but for yours, too, if you care about such things, I've compiled below my list of all the varied ways that I can think of to review memory work, everything from spelling words to math facts, timeline dates to state capitals, poetry to sight words, vocabulary to Latin translations...you get the idea:

Copy in alphabetical order. This works for spelling/vocabulary words and the kids' Latin words--it's regular old copywork, but you have to use your brain a bit more, and it makes sure that you're not studying the words in the same order every time.

Write it on the window with dry erase markers or the sidewalk with chalk. The kiddos ALWAYS like to do this, but it does take a ton of time, since if you've given them dry erase markers or chalk and fun things to draw on, you've obviously got to let them draw:

Speed race! This would give Sydney a heart attack, but it's been working really well with Willow and multiplication. Simply memorizing her multiplication table is a fail, because she can calculate so quickly that she can work any fact out in her head in a few seconds, and then you're left wondering, "Is she trying to remember, or counting by eights in her head?". I've been using these multiplication matching puzzles, however, timing Willow as she races to complete them, and encouraging her to beat the previous day's time. If it looks like she's starting to memorize the positions of the answers as well as the answers, I skip to different tables for a few days, and then go back to the earlier ones for a fresh look and a review.

Songs. Will is our star at memorizing facts through song (her recitation of all the countries of Africa still gives me pridey feelings inside), but Syd is quickly catching her up, with her love of the Song School Latin CD. It takes a lot of curating, though, because many educational songs are crap. I use my free Spotify app to search for and then stream songs for just about every subject--they're not all for memorizing, of course (the girls always want to listen to the state song of whatever state they're studying, for instance), but you'd be surprised how happily you can bop along to the multiplication table when it's sung by a good voice to a catchy tune. Our favorite, by FAR, is Victor Johnson's Multiplication and Skip Counting Songs, although there's also a super annoying song ("The Pi Song," by Bryant Oden) that I'm using to memorize pi:

"They said 'Would you like some pi?' I said, 'Yes, I would!' I forgot they majored in math. I would undo it if I could! They said, '3.1415926535897932384626433.'" Yep, that's from memory! Don't all congratulate me at once.

DIY Dry Erase. The girls actually DON'T like this too much, because it takes a lot more elbow grease to erase than a conventional dry erase board, but for things like parts labeling or their spelling words, I like to laminate the document to use as a dry erase:

I've also heard that page protectors and CD cases work well as dry erase boards, but I haven't tried them yet. One more thing for my to-do list!

Tape yourself. The girls love doing this for poetry and spelling words. Not only does the taping require a lot of thoughtful interaction with their memory work, but it also really encourages repetition--I think they just like to listen to themselves! I let them record these on my ipod, which they're allowed to use, too--

--but if a certain little someone receives an ipod touch for her birthday (assuming that Craigslist/local pawn shops cooperate), then they can start recording on that, instead. 

DIY flash cards. They like their flash cards better if they help me make them. This works especially well for Latin, since we use these coloring pages that correspond to all the vocabulary in Song School Latin. I print them four to a page, the girls color them, then (sloppily) cut them out and (even more sloppily) laminate them, all by themselves. Big fun, and impossible for them to say that they hate later on.

So that's what I've got so far. I need WAY more ideas, though! I'd like to have twenty or so possibilities, to support a full month of memory work without repetition. But I also need ideas that don't require a ton of prep work--I do NOT want to be creating a Montessori-style three-part card for every subject every week, for instance--or use a ton of expensive or disposable materials. 

Help?