S'mores in the Snow

It has been a COLD winter here in the Midwest, definitely more cold than I signed up for when I moved here (of course, when I moved here I only planned to stay for 4-6 years, and it's been 13, soooooo.....). With the help of thermal underwear, thick gloves, and hot chocolate, we are trying to not let the negative numbers on the thermometer stop us from getting fresh air and having adventures; the kids still go to their all-day nature class (although they spend a little more time in the yurt than they do in fair weather), we learned how to ski this week, horseback riding lessons went on as usual, and the other night, craving hot dogs and s'mores, we actually had a campfire in the snow:

The s'mores bar worked out only okay in this temperature:

All the ingredients froze while we were eating our hot dogs, and not even the smoking hot, melted marshmallow could warm them up again. So we ate crunchy, frozen strawberries with melted marshmallow, and bit through frozen chocolate into frozen banana, etc.

Will tried to heat up her s'mores ingredients one-by-one:

 When our tummies were nice and comfy, we sat by the fire for a while longer, watching the kids make their own light show with burning sticks:

When it was time to clean up, though, we were stymied for a bit--we usually put out the campfire with the garden hose, but ain't nobody hooking up the hose in this temperature!

And then suddenly we were all, "Ooh! SNOW!!!"

Problem solved! That's definitely one advantage of the winter campfire.

I shared this in the Weekly Kids' Co-op over at Housing a Forest.

Kid-Friendly Cooking: Healthy Banana Split

The kiddos (Syd especially) have recently been obsessed with this particular healthy recipe. It's good for breakfast or a snack, and easy enough for the kids to make for themselves:

It's a healthy banana split (and yes, that's also a plastic spoon--I've been having trouble keeping up with the dishes)!

We originally adapted it from this healthy banana split recipe, although now it feels very much our own. It consists of one banana, halved. Split it down the middle, then spoon on yogurt--we use plain Greek yogurt. Over the top, add some fresh fruit; berries are best, if you have them. Pour granola over the fresh fruit, and then add something "fun". We like drizzled maple syrup or warmed peanut butter, or sprinkled chocolate chips. I think that drizzled warm jam would also be pretty yummy, and I, personally, like coconut flakes, but the kids don't.

I don't know if the kids find this so yummy because everyone is always so hungry for nice, fresh things at this time of year, of if they find it so yummy because it's just yummy! Either way, I'll definitely be glad when I can make this recipe in the spring, and at least not have to put a second mortgage on the house to get those fresh (off-season, shipped from who-knows-where) berries.

Work Plans for the Week of January 20, 2013: Skiing, Science, and Scouts

Happy Martin Luther King. Jr. Day! We've had a lovely, meaningful holiday so far--we watched Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech over breakfast (and yes, I did pause it periodically to ask comprehension questions--"What did Dr. King mean when he said that they've written the negro a bad check?" "Why do you think the camera showed the Lincoln Memorial?" "What do you think Mississippi and Alabama have in common, that some people would act so racist there?", etc. It's such a rich speech, and there's so much historical, geographical, political, and economic context to unpack!), then Matt took the kids to a Girl Scout service project while I went alone to our weekly volunteer gig, which was kind of like a mini vacation without my two squabbling little helpers who sometimes dare each other to eat jalepenos and then come to me crying and tattling.

At our family meeting on Sunday, we decided that because of our very short week (the kids and I are going skiing for the first time tomorrow!), we would forgo work plans, and instead we made a list of some projects that the kids should work on--the rest of the activities for their World Thinking Day badge, their Science Fair project, their performance for a talent show that they're participating in next month, practice for the spelling bee that Will's competing in this weekend, and so on. Our last two school weeks have ended up being very intense academically, so my hope is that I'll have a little breathing time of my own to finish spelling bee prep, plan a field trip to the local university's art museum for our homeschool group, finish up the pattern for Syd's fashion show garment (I've developed a dress pattern that I *think* I can walk her through sewing, although how this will be less work than doing it myself I do not know), and get some book reviews powered through.

Okay, that doesn't sound at all like breathing time, but what can you do? I'm taking a break from word problems and lesson plans, so there you go.

In other news, we have a huge collection of huge play silks that I've dyed for the children over the years, and lately they have both become obsessed with getting a grown-up to do this with them:

You've got to wrap the kid completely up like a mummy (thank goodness silk is so breathable!)--

--and then set her somewhere to wriggle around:

They both LOVE this activity, Syd most of all. This reminds me, though, that I promised to dye one of our newest, largest by far play silks rainbow for them this week, a process that involves seven full pots of dye, and takes seven times as long to do because I only have one big pot.

Ah, well, perhaps next week I'll have breathing time.

Homeschool History: Make a Sarcophagus

Creating a model sarcophagus is an excellent enrichment activity to add to an Ancient Egypt study, and it fits in well with chapter four of The Story of the World: Ancient Times, the chapter on Ancient Egypt that includes information about mummies and pyramids.

I found little cardboard... pencil boxes?... on clearance one day in one of the big box arts/crafts stores that I frequent as little as possible due to my tendency to buy things on clearance that I don't need and probably won't use for years, and kept them on a shelf in the study/studio for, yes, years before realizing that they were the perfect material for this craft. Can a time lag of three years still be described as serendipity?

Any little box that's longer than it is wide will work for this craft, however, whether it's cardboard or wooden--I don't think plastic would work well, but you can make your own cardboard box that's the exact size that you want. For a very miniature sarcophagus, you could even make a matchbox work, and that would be super cute!

Before the kids began their own sarcophogi, we researched a bit and did a Google Image search in order to study examples. Based on that, we talked about having a facial portrait on the sarcophagus, including decorative elements and patterns, drawing symbols or representations of the meaningful gods, and recording important scenes from their lives. We also talked about the importance of the sarcophagus being their best work, and thoughtful, and including a lot of details and creative embellishments. I introduced the idea that artists often create sketches or rough drafts of their work before they begin the piece itself, and to that end I gave them these sarcophagus design sheets and asked them to create a draft of their piece first. Will fussed at this, of course, because she hadn't focused yet and thus didn't feel invested in the project, and actually tried to scribble her sarcophagus out as fast as possible on the cardboard box, but I erased her work, done quickly and shabbily to try to make a point, and required her to do her design sheet first. 

While working on her design sheet, she finally focused and found herself invested in her work, and worked hard and happily until she finished:

Seriously, though--school in Cinderella pajamas? That kid doesn't understand how good she's got it.

The kids copied their designs onto the cardboard sarcophogi in pencil--I reminded them to be mindful of the scale, but that's a concept we clearly need to keep working on, since both of their drawings ended up pretty small--colored them with Prismacolor and Sharpie markers, and, since their designs left extra room, I had them each research and write the cartouche for their names on the boxes, as well:

I actually think that I will have the kids use these sarcophagi as pencil boxes, and if this alone serves to stop their bickering over who stole whose pencil, then it will be three bucks well spent. This does bring to mind, though, my favorite thing to do with a kid's finished project--use it! For us, at least, a project used or displayed is a project that brings greater overall enjoyment, and a project that eventually gets worn out or messed up in some way, and therefore a project that eventually gets thrown away, guilt-free. Guilt-free de-acquisition? YAY!!!

Possible extension activities for this project:

• Sarcophogi were sometimes decorated on the inside, as well (in the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose, we saw a sarcophogus made by a coffin maker for his daughter. On the inside, he'd written all the information from The Book of the Dead that his daughter would need for her journey--a beautiful relic of his last act of service to his beloved child), so you could also decorate the inside of your sarcophogus, perhaps even with hieroglyphics.
• You could create a mummy to live inside the sarcophogus. Some homeschoolers have symbolically mummified Barbie, and I don't think that's such a bad fate for her.
• A matchbox sarcophagus could be entombed inside a model pyramid.

This project is shared with the After School Link Party over at Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational.

We're Having a Spelling Bee!

I am just now starting to let myself get excited about the school-level Scripps Spelling Bee that I'm organizing for one of our homeschool groups later this month. It was a pain in the butt to get approved and planned out, yes, but I am a firm believer that a healthy dose of competition is good for kids. There are so many valuable lessons in competition--the concrete reward for practice and preparation, the realization that you don't necessarily get something just because you want it (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and your unrealistic morals, I'm looking at YOU!), the chance to practice winning and losing with dignity and grace, etc. I'm an even firmer believer in academic competitions, and always disappointed that they're so much more rare than sports competitions. I'd love for all chess matches and spelling bees to have the same enthusiastic audiences that go to the softball games of six-year-olds.

So I'm all set for this upcoming spelling bee. Practice in taking turns and following rules! Practice in winning and losing with grace! Practice in standing and speaking in front of an audience! Practice in interacting with judges! Practice in speaking into a microphone!

And practice in spelling, of course.

After the bee is over, I've got a post planned that's a tutorial for how to run a school-level spelling bee for a homeschool group, but as I'm still in the prep stage, here are some of the school-level spelling bee videos that I've been using to help me organize our own spelling bee:

This is a lengthy video, but it's the best because it encompasses the entire school bee, from the first speller to the champion. If you watch it, you'll see the kids model how to take turns at the microphone, how to ask the correct types of questions to get more information about a word, how to spell a word without starting over or unnecessarily repeating letters, what it looks like to misspell a word, and how to act when you do.

It also illustrates the only tricky part of the spelling bee--the "champion round" rule. Basically, one round consists of all uneliminated spellers in that round spelling their word and either being eliminated or moving on. The last kid standing after all other spellers are eliminated is first given the most recently misspelled word to spell, and then, if the kid spells that word correctly, it's as if the kid begins a new round all on her own. She's given a new word to spell. If she spells that word correctly, she's the winner! If she spells either word incorrectly, however, the bee retraces its steps back to the previous round. Everyone who was eliminated in that previous round returns, and that round begins again with new words.


I like this one, because our bee will look a lot like it. We're holding it in a fancy meeting room on the IU campus, but it won't have a stage. It WILL have a podium and microphone, and although I'm also bringing a step stool from home, we could equally also end up using a hand-held mike.

This one amuses me when I start to stress out that our spelling bee won't be nice enough--there's no stage! No name placards! No medals, certificates, or trophies!!! But if these kids are happy to stand in their library and spell to a folding table, then it's clearly not about the placards and medals and certificates or trophies.

Here's what it's about:

Here's an example of what a district-level spelling bee looks like--this is the level of bee that our champion will move up to. It's a little more intense, isn't it? It should be, because the bee after this is the national one!

Participating in the spelling bee was one of the very happiest parts of my own childhood. I vividly remember studying from the spelling bee booklet every year (it's a pdf now), and how it felt to sit on the stage with the other kids and then take my turn spelling. I remember trying to figure out how to act towards the kids that everyone knew were the "big competition," and furiously misspelling every other kid's word in my head during their turns, in case someone was a mind reader and trying to cheat by reading my mind (I was a *very* weird little kid...). It still makes me feel good to remember how proud my entire elementary school was of me after I came in second place in our district spelling bee; seriously, they declared one Friday to be Julie Finn Day, and there were balloons, a giant poster signed by the entire school, a ceremony in the auditorium, a thesaurus given to me by a representative from one of the local factories that was our school sponsor, and I felt both abashed and like a rock star.

My Papa never went to the district spelling bee to watch me compete, any of the four years that I did so (I did lousy one year, then came in third, then second, and then second again; in high school, I became good friends with the kid who beat me out every single one of those years, and in college I told those stories about her and the spelling bee so often that my best friend from that time still occasionally asks about her when we talk), because he said he'd get too nervous; instead, he stayed home and recorded the spelling bee, which actually interrupted the Saturday morning cartoons on our local CBS station. I know for a fact that we still have all those VHS tapes of my spelling bees... somewhere, and I should totally put them on DVD before humanity moves so far past the VCR that it becomes impossible.

In other words, I can't wait to share this spelling bee experience with a whole new batch of little kids.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: How to Patch Your Pants

a tutorial for sewing on a basic patch

and a round-up of all the best ways to sew a patch

It's absolutely the time of year when we, at least, are spending more time thinking about mending and patches and lengthening, etc. Eventually, spring will come--I'm not buying those kids new warm pants! In addition, many of the kids' activities involve an absolute hell of keeping the proper clothes clean and organized. Aerial silks requires a leotard, leggings, and a cotton shirt on top. Horseback riding requires fingerless gloves, jeans, and heeled boots. Ice skating requires a sweater, a hat, and warm gloves (NOT the fingerless ones). Nature class requires, depending on the weather, fleece pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a coat, snow pants, wool socks, snow boots, gloves, and a warm hat, not to mention a backpack, notebook, pencil, water bottle, and packed lunch (including a warm soup or drink in a thermos).

Many of those activities also require thermal underwear:

These at least, are a source of endless hilarity, since we like to tell Syd that she's a ninja when she wears them, and we like to pretend that we can't even see Will.

Right now, as I write and as Syd works on her spelling and Will works on her math (kicking up a fuss because she's being asked to learn order of operations), I am already feeling fretful about the required clothing for today. Where, for instance, will we find those fingerless gloves, since we haven't been to horseback riding in a month? I'm sure that searching for them will be agony. And I know for a fact that the thermal underwear needs to be washed this morning, since the girls came home from nature class on Saturday muddy and filthy and wet to the skin, and yes I washed their snow pants and coats immediately after, but not the clothes underneath. And the aerial silks outfit... am I remembering Will spilling something on that after class last week, so that her shirt and leggings need to be washed, too?

I guess today turns out to be Laundry Day!

Keeps the Dragons out

Syd spent most of the other day building and playing with her Kapla blocks and a few of her small plastic animals:

I know that for us, it's partly because our house is so small, but does it ever seem as if your children always choose to build their large, all-day-play creations smack in the middle of the main thoroughfare of the house?

Anyway, I spent most of that day walking around and stepping over this giant thing as Syd played, and it wasn't until she'd gone to bed that night (after negotiating its survival for at least another day) that I really stopped and noticed it:

So there's a corral of horses, with a couple of stables inside, and it looks as if the kids have hot glued some stash Scrabble letters to one of the Kapla blocks over the corral's gate to give the corral a name: Crosswood. One of Will's dragons is parked just outside the gate, trying to get in--

--but all of the horses are safe in their enclosures, with LEGO people to guard them.

Here's how we hand-dyed some of those Kapla blocks. I think that I should dye more sometime, and I think that I should keep an eye on the sales to beef up our Kapla collection.

Maybe the horses would like to have TWO corrals to choose from, you know.