Small Engineering

This may explain why Will is always injuring herself.

This is what I walked into the living room to find the other day:

Apparently she had slowly, with much effort, jacked our beaten-up yet very heavy couch up, book by book, until she could stick her head underneath it to look for a lost marble.

Tutorial: Make a Thaumotrope

Persistence of vision is the fun human physical flaw that makes animation work. The brain retains each image that it sees for just a fraction of a second longer than it sees it, so if you add on a new image as it's doing that, and another then a new image while the brain is retaining that last one, you have the illusion of motion: animation!

Will's been studying animation as part of her Entertainment Technology badge (it encompasses a huge conglomeration of subjects--basically every form of entertainment that uses technology), so when it was time for her to buckle down and make a gift for a buddy's birthday party, she chose to make him a thaumotrope.

A thaumotrope utilizes persistence of vision by having two separate images, one on each side of a piece of cardstock:

Will used this printable bird and cage thaumotrope.

Spin the cardstock quickly and persistence of vision makes the two images combine:

You can mimic the effect with your camera if you decrease the shutter speed, as you see above.

It's a neat little trick, isn't it? This project is actually on my list for an upcoming human biology unit study (after the dino dig, if I can ever tempt the kids away from experimental chemistry), since it exemplifies so much about the human eye and the brain. Using it to explore the history and science of animation hadn't even been on my radar until Will started studying those subjects.

Have I mentioned more or less than a thousand times previously how much I love the Girl Scouts?

As part of her gift, Will wrote out instructions for using the thaumotrope (sneaking in that writing practice!)--

--and then packaged it up in a pink Indianapolis Museum of Art gift shop bag--we're not real big on wrapping presents around here.

Other hands-on projects for this Entertainment Technology badge include stop-motion animation, two kinds of catapults, putting on stage makeup, programming something on Scratch, interviewing her Uncle, who works for Sony, building a theme park in RollerCoaster Tycoon, and making a ringtone for my phone. Will likes this badge a LOT!

Geocaching on the B-Line Trail

Geocaching is one of the skills that Will has taught herself since she began to free school. Using the Geocacher Girl Scout badge as inspiration, she figured out the concept, then how to use Geocaching.com to find geocaches, then how (with my ample help and lots of frustrated noises, because that thing is NOT intuitive!) to use our GPS receiver (it's an older model of Garmin eTrex) to program and track those geocaches.

I pointed her towards resources, I read the dang GPS receiver manual from cover to cover and then hit the user boards to troubleshoot when Will couldn't get the receiver to do what she wanted it to do (FINALLY I figured out that Geocaching.com's default GPS coordinates are listed in degrees, minutes and decimals, while our GPS receiver uses degrees, minutes, and seconds, although neither actually say that this is what they use nor mention that other conversions exist--ARGH!), and I planned outings to enable us to get to the geocaches that are further away from us than the park across the street, but mostly I just got out of her way and let her explore, work hard, and learn.

On a nice day last week, Will programmed the GPS receiver, we packed lunches and schoolwork and art supplies and reading material, and we biked over to our inter-city walking and biking trail, where several geocaches are hidden.

This trail, the B-Line, is a major foot, bike, and skate thoroughfare, and it's also got places to play--

--art to look at--

--and comfy green spots for two kids to do their math and grammar:

But most importantly, it has geocaches! Will took charge of the GPS receiver, and using it was an excellent hands-on lesson in estimating and measuring distances. It points the way to the next geocache, and states the distance either in miles to the hundredth place or in feet, and over the course of the couple of geocaches that we found, Will got much better at figuring out if we should get on our bikes or walk them, how far we should go before checking the GPS again, and when we were close enough for the kids to put down their bikes and start searching in earnest. 

It was my mistake not to look over the geocache listings as Will entered them into her receiver, since the receiver's accuracy ranges, but is often something like 20 or so feet; to really be able to find the actual geocache within that perimeter, you must figure out the clue, which none of us had read. It's a good thing, then, that Matt didn't have a photo shoot or meeting with a printer or a presentation that afternoon, since I called him at work, talked him through getting onto the geocaching site and finding the listings for our geocaches, and then made him read me the clue for each one. 

Thank goodness for those clues, too! Using the clue for one particular geocache, I led the girls to a big map on the trail, but then I, too, was stymied. It was Will who figured out that the map board had a hidden recess underneath, felt inside it, and found the geocache:

Here's me lying on my back in the dirt to show you what the geocache looks like. So cool, right?

 Fortunately, our second cache was easier to find--it was on the back of this sign:

One of the many nice things about our town is that it's so accessible to those without cars; after our geocaching adventures, we biked over to the hands-on science museum, and when that closed we biked to the library. I *did* have Matt pick us and our bikes up from the library on his way home from work, however, because biking home from the library with the kids is a special kind of hell in which I'm pretty sure they're going to die every second (does biking in traffic with kids make everyone break into a panic sweat? Gawd, it's terrifying!), but overall it was a fabulous day of bikes and picnics and sun and treasure hunting.

Perfect day, basically.

My Latest: Gardening and the Apocalypse

It's Garden Week over at Crafting a Green World, and my latest two posts celebrate that with a tutorial for propagating the wandering Jew--

and another tutorial for growing yummy microgreens in plastic salad containers:

I also have a new writing job that's started this week! I now write weekly for Insteading on subjects that cover homesteading, survival skills, and post-Apocalyptic scenarios. I get to review my favorite post-Apocalypse and dystopian books and films--you might not know this, but post-Apocalyptic and dystopian fiction are BIG loves of mine--and I even get to write about my most favorite post-Apocalypse micro theme: ZOMBIES!!!

This week, I talk about the theme of cannibalism in fiction, and why this would be a very bad idea in reality, and I review the Susan Beth Pfeffer Moon Crash series:

Its dystopian society is feudalistic, which, as a former Medieval scholar in grad school, I am all about.

I like to think of myself as a writer along the lines of Virginia Woolf these days. In A Room of One's Own, she claims not only that every woman should have a room of one's own, but also that writers should write all kinds of things, not just fiction OR biographies OR blog posts, but all that and political essays and memoirs and poetry and non-fiction of all sorts. I don't completely have a room of my own (well, I sort of do, but it doesn't have any doors), so I mostly find myself writing in my chair at the living room table, a nosy neighborly view out the windows on two sides, in ear shot of all children wherever they might be shouting at each other, but I do write all kinds of things, especially if you agree that you can define "all kinds of things" as lesson plans, tutorials, essays on post-Apocalyptic themes, blog posts, and fanfiction.

Fanfiction is an especially noble genre, I'm sure you'll agree.

Tutorial: Tissue Paper Decoupaged Easter Eggs

I love that every year we decorate a few more of our monstrous hoard of wooden and cardboard Easter eggs. I bought soooo many of these years and years ago, when the little kid was a tiny toddler and I decided that we'd start celebrating Easter (I think I decide to celebrate a holiday guided only by its awesome craft project potentiality). Plastic eggs offend me, and I think I was experimenting with veganism or something similar then, so hard-boiled eggs weren't an option.

Anyway, those eggs turned out to be a great purchase, as we've loved them ever since. One year we decorated some with Sharpies, another year we painted them with acrylics, another year we made mosaics on them, one year I felted colorful wool around some of them, and still every year when I bring out the stash, there are more plain ones to inspire us.

Last week, encouraged by how nicely the tissue paper decoupaged bookshelf turned out, the kids and I tried the same tissue paper decoupage technique on some of these wooden and cardboard eggs (the wooden eggs all came from Casey's Wood Products, and the cardboard eggs came from either a thrift shop or a garage sale--I can't remember now, but it was an excellent score). I set out a dish of Mod Podge, paintbrushes, tissue paper, and the eggs, and the kids and I listened to Jesus Christ Superstar while painting a patch of egg with glue, layering tissue paper over it, and then painting another layer of glue over the tissue paper:

On the one hand, this is a fiddly project because the tissue paper is thin and easily torn, and you have to be very mindful about where you put your hands while working so that you don't mess up a section that you've already completed, but on the other hand, fiddly projects teach perseverance and problem-solving, and anything that you mess up is repaired in seconds with just another layer of tissue paper.

The finished Easter eggs didn't look anything like I'd imagined they would, and at first I wasn't sure that I liked them, but the kids loved them from the second that they were done, and now they've grown on me, too.

The kids used up the last two giant eggs in our stash on this project (one of which had some toddler Sharpie scribbles on it--ah, the memories!), so next year I may actually need to buy more wooden eggs. Six years between egg purchases is pretty darn good!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Work Plans for the Week of April 7, 2014: History and Geography

Last week was actually a really productive week for schoolwork, considering that so much other enriching, engaging, kid-led work got done, as well. There was swimming and basketball playing and jump rope and documentaries (Cosmos and The Science of Disney Imagineering are our current favorites) and pogo stick. The older kid did a lot of gardening, a lot of reading (do I even have to say that? It's her default state), some stop-motion animation, and a LOT of weapon building, led by her newest favorite books, the Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction series. The younger kid is commonly seen with her doll in one hand and her ipod blaring an audiobook in the other hand, and she spent much of last week playing quietly, listening to books. Last week went really, really well, and I hope that this one does, too!

MONDAY: The kids didn't do their Latin chapter last week (although they did memorize "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" in Latin), so I kept it on the plans for this week. They enjoyed learning that Latin song enough, though, that I'm now thinking that I might alternate weeks of Latin study and Latin enrichment--this might solve my nagging worry that the kids aren't finding enough context in their Latin study to make it legitimately memorable.

The older kid is still doing multiplication drills all this week, but the younger kid on this day, instead of our usual hands-on math activity, is getting to do an ipad app as a treat. I get just about all of the educational apps on our ipad free from App Friday; they make sort of an odd and diverse collection, but the kids LOVE discovering them waiting for them on the ipad, and they spend much of their screen time playing them (or watching Netflix or Brainpop videos, their other two favorite things to do on the ipad). Sometimes, as with the stop-motion animation app that the older kid used last week, or this multi-skill math app that the younger kid is going to use today, it turns out that one of those random apps is just the thing that we need, and then we've saved a couple of bucks by getting it free!

The portfolio project from Drawing With Children didn't really work out--collecting images that you'd like to draw from magazines and catalogs *sounds* fun, but looking at images and thinking about how you have to figure out how to draw each one is actually pretty overwhelming. Instead, we just finished a project that I made up, but that's in the style of Drawing with Children, and it was a HUGE hit! In fact, right this minute the younger kid is writing a letter to the Disney Imagineers explaining to them the brand-new roller coaster that she just drew for them, also enclosed, and asking them to tell her when they build it. Even if we don't finish her "official" schoolwork for today, I think we'll be okay.

TUESDAY: As as expansion of our animal biology, nature, and prehistoric life studies, I've been wanting to introduce Phylo to the kids for a while. I plan to have Syd help me put together the basic and pterosaur decks, and then, hopefully, we'll have a new fun game to play! The kids have also been missing doing science experiments, so they'll have a lot of fun helping me do some of the projects in a book that I was recently given to review--this day's experiment even involves acids and bases. Bonus!

I haven't even looked at what the younger kid's Math Mammoth will be for this week, but now that we're past the measurement unit, it should be pretty much plug and play, just like First Language Lessons.

The kids are starting on their project for the International Fair this week. I let the older kid choose the country, and after looking around at maps and atlases and flags for a while, she was in the end swayed by my descriptions of my favorite place in the world, Iceland, and my promise of plenty of photos and souvenirs from my trips there to add flair to their project. Also, I know Old Norse, and I might be persuaded to read a little to the kids during the presentation. Ahem.

WEDNESDAY: Horseback riding, aerial silks, and perhaps roller skating in the evening. My goal is to get Matt to actually put on roller skates this time!

THURSDAY: This day is supposed to be gorgeous, so I don't imagine that we'll come back from Park Day until dinnertime. I planned for just a few, practical assignments, then--the Jerusalem artichokes MUST be planted, and so must the peas, and if the younger kid's friend accepts her dinner invitation on this day, then that counts for her Making Friends badge.

FRIDAY: We didn't get history or writing done last Friday, so those have stayed on the schedule. Math class is a regular, of course, and a favorite--the younger kid came home last Friday doing card tricks, and the older kid came home talking about Prime numbers.

We're continuing to learn about Indiana's Native Americans for geography, and I'm hoping that there will be a good day next week to take a trip to the Eijteljorg, an entire Native American museum in Indianapolis (future trips also include Serpent Mound near Cincinnati, Angel Mound in Southern Indiana, and Cahokia near St. Louis). Easter crafts are also still continuing, now that I know that Easter is April 20 and not April 1, ahem. The younger kid's been enjoying reading the myths from several world cultures, so I'm thinking that we'll make this toilet paper tube crucifixion set and tell the Christian Resurrection myth. I should have been collecting toilet paper tubes for a while now, sigh...

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: The entire family is going to indulge me on Saturday by accompanying me to the open warehouse sale at WHO North America, and then, depending on the weather, we'll probably spend the rest of the day out and about in Indianapolis--Indiana State Museum? Saraga International Grocery? Pottery painting? Arcade?

On Sunday we'll be dividing and conquering (the man-on-man defense, something that you can use when the kids don't outnumber the adults) so that I can take the older kid to chess club and Matt can take the younger kid and a friend to a "teddy bear tea party" at a local retirement home as a Girl Scout event. And if the weekend looks much like this past weekend, there will also be friends at the park, lots of basketball, homemade pizza and Family Movie Night, and a few more mini weapons of mass destruction, I don't doubt.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, novelty baking, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Tutorial: Pippi Longstocking Hairdo

Y'all know I'm a big nerd, right?

The whole lot of us recently went to a children's theater performance of Pippi Longstocking, and I could not pass up the opportunity to do a little cosplay with the kids. Here's how:

1. You need to score some bendable floral or jewelry wire. The 18-gauge jewelry wire that I had on hand was perfect for Syd's light, straight hair, but didn't hold Will's thick, curly mop quite as well.
2. Measure out a length of the bendable wire that's long enough to go over the top of the kid's head and down each side the length of their hair. Cut it from the spool with a pair of wire cutters.
3. Comb and divide the kid's hair in two down a center part. 
4. This is the big trick: center the wire at the top of the kid's head, and get another person or the kid to hold it there. Having both braids made from a single piece of wire anchors it, so that you can bend each of the braids into more drastic contortions.
5. Comb and divide the hair on one side into three sections above the ear; include the bendable wire with the center section.
6. Braid the hair as usual, braiding the wire with it as part of the kid's hair. Tie off the braid at the bottom, then use the wire cutters to cut off any excess wire below the tie (you may want to bend it back onto itself first, so that it won't have a sharp end that sticks out).
7. Adjust the wire as needed so that it's snug and lays flat over the top of the kid's head without biting into it, then braid the kid's hair on the other side the exact same way.
8. Use a couple of bobby pins or sturdy clips to anchor the wire on each side of the kid's head above the braids, so that it doesn't inch down the back of the kid's head.

Now you should be able to bend each braid into whatever silly contortions you desire. 

After I did this, basically none of us ever stopped laughing at how hilarious the kids looked with braids sticking out all crazy--Will's long, thick hair made every pose look especially improbable. 

At the play, many of the kids were invited to sit on cushions right in front of the stage, and as soon as mine had settled themselves far enough away from me and Matt that I could no longer intervene, I noticed that Pippi hair does NOT keep to itself! Fortunately, the kids on either side of mine were buddies of theirs, buddies good enough that their parents would probably inform me if they got head lice. I'd rather have bent the kids' braids up and over their heads before they walked away, though--I can go the rest of my life without dealing with head lice ever again.

Will liked her braids okay, especially at first, but by the time we were home from the play, she was ready to take them out and move on with her afternoon. Syd, however, was ready to move on to...

a photo shoot:

She's currently making noise about wanting lots and LOTS of bendy braids for her runway walk at the Trashion/Refashion Show later this month. 

Pro: I think we could get away with using pipe cleaners instead of wire in each braid. 

Con: There's no way I'd ask a Hair Arts Academy student volunteering his/her services to put a million pipe cleaner braids into my child's hair, so there goes my pre-show morning!

This post was shared with Teach beside Me.