My Latest: The Awesomes

My round-up of the week's paid writing is late, because on Sunday I was deliberately NOT doing all the productive things that I usually do on Sundays. Instead, I watched Birdman, and spent a lot of time sledding, and ate Tibetan food--you know, the kind of stuff that the normals probably always do on a Sunday.

Anyway, here's what I got paid to write last week!

a tutorial for making a DIY camera lens cap leash

and ALL about the superhero costumes that I made for the kids and submitted to our town's Trashion/Refashion Show jury

I wrote this tute on appliqueing jersey knit without using fusibles. 

Syd and Will both helped piece the T-shirt fabric for their capes.

I made a template, and their job was to piece together something that was larger than that template.

Then I cut that piece to size, and added it to the cape.

I decided not to take the time to starch, so instead I painstakingly pinned while watching... is that Supernatural or New Girl? Can't tell.

Here are the rest of my build notes for the completed garments. 

I'm not super pleased with how these came out--if I hadn't been spending most of my time last month managing the Girl Scout cookie business, I think that you'd be looking at a much more elaborately detailed, intricately pieced pair of costumes right now--but I think that what you are looking at at least has more of the feel of a homemade, kid-designed superhero costume, like what a kid superhero would actually look like if she actually had the skills to applique herself a cape and sew herself a leotard. 

And, of course, the kids like them, so, you know, fuck you, Perfectionism!

Work Plans for the Week of March 2, 2015: Ice Skating and Ballet

Much of last week was actually spent finishing the kids' superhero costumes, and much of this week will be spent shuttling Will back and forth to rehearsals for the Spring Ice Show (Momma Moment of Brag: Will was promoted yet another level in ice skating this session! Next session, which alas won't be until the fall, she will be in Level 6, the second highest level in the program, and can also choose to join the figure skating club. It's a Big Deal), so we didn't finish all of last Friday's schoolwork, and I'm frankly not sure if we'll do all our work every day this week, especially since I didn't carve out a space in the lesson plans for those Ice Show rehearsals. No pressure.

To help the kids keep track independently, I've added their daily practice work to the work plans, so that they can see what they need and check it off without having to ask what's left. Since I've begun asking them to do this, I've deleted our ten minutes of daily memory work in the car; you can't do cursive or keyboard OR typing in the car, and their Chinese practice mostly involves relevant videos from the Learn Chinese with Emma channel on YouTube. We really like to listen to audiobooks in the car, anyway, so this gives us more time for that.

This week's assigned books include more Chinese vocabulary study (board books are GREAT for this, by the way), Chinese mythology, fiction involving the Lippizaner, for Syd, and Degas, for Will, and some a picture book about the ballet--although Syd at least knows the names of the various ballet terms when spoken, neither of them are familiar with them in print.

MONDAY: We've got our volunteer gig at our local food pantry as usual, today, and Will has Ice Show rehearsal. At home, Syd is starting a unit on measurements in Math Mammoth, while Will, still in decimals, is getting some extra practice converting between decimals and fractions today before she continues in her Math Mammoth unit.

Both kids will take a Hoffman Academy lesson, which they can do independently, and they can choose a Girl Scout badge to work on, also independently. Sometimes I add extra work and reading to the badge requirement to turn it into a unit study, but since both kids are bridging into a new level this summer, right now I'm pretty much just letting them get on with earning whatever badges they'd like to earn before they bridge.

We're still studying Sleeping Beauty, in preparation for Syd's spring ballet recital on that theme. We watched the Disney version a couple of weeks ago; this week focuses on the ballet version, and then we'll read the fairy tale version, and then I'll ask them to analyze and compare all the versions.

TUESDAY: Free day! Robotics Club and Ice Show rehearsal are at the same time on this night, so I'm going to have to ask Will to choose. I wonder what she'll pick?

WEDNESDAY: We've got First Language Lessons, but I am officially on the lookout for a grammar study with shorter lessons that Syd can do daily, as First Language Lessons is no longer really working as something that the kids use together. Syd needs more reinforcement/practice, whereas Will just needs to learn labels for this stuff and then move on. So, if you've got any ideas, pass them to me!

Thank-you emails didn't get done last week, so hopefully they'll get done on this day. Zoology for Kids DID get done last week, and it was a huge hit, so now the kids are tackling the next chapter.
Both kids now like to attend Magic Tree House Club on separate computers, rather than both huddling around one as they used to. This means that I sacrifice my laptop to one kid on Magic Tree House Club days, and THIS means that I actually cook dinner on Wednesdays! It's pretty amazing what I can do to get out of it on all the other days of the week.

THURSDAY: Syd has more thank-you notes that didn't get done last week, this time for Trashion/Refashion Show clothing donations. And even though the Science Fair isn't until April this year, I like the kids to get started on it early, because sometimes Science Fair projects take a lot of time to complete. Will thinks that she wants to make a maze for Hexbug Nano robots, and explain how they work--I'd like her to do some simple hacks on them, as well, but we'll see. Syd thinks that she might want to do something with plants, or something with chickens. I'm debating between letting her scroll through my science pinboards for inspiration, or making her use her own brain to come up with something that might be much more or much less creative and interesting.

Our homeschool group is meeting up for ice skating instead of gym time on this day, so I don't know--Will might not be enthusiastic about yet more skating by then, especially as she'll have to be back on the ice four hours later. We might just have a little more unplanned free time instead!

Meanwhile, Will is VERY upset about some recent choices that the newspaper made regarding their Sunday comics. She'll be explaining them in a letter to the editor.

FRIDAY: A couple of these assignments are hold-overs from last Friday, when I didn't even attempt school, instead just focusing on finishing the kids' superhero costumes and leaving them to themselves for the day. Syd is still having a lot of fun writing and illustration short stories, however, so I've got that as an assignment for her to encourage her to do another one, and, for my own personal pleasure, I've been interested in getting the kids into fan culture, which is a big academic interest and hobby of mine. Fan culture can be a really accessible entry into all kinds of creative fields, so I'm going to see how the kids might like reviewing some of the Minecraft videos that they watch and creating a podcast on the topic.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Ice Show rehearsal, Ice Show performance, ballet, Chinese--kind of a busy weekend, but all the kids' weekend extracurriculars will be on break for the next two weekends due to the university's spring break, so it's okay to have a busy send-off.

For me, I'll be relishing this week as a chance to get back to business as usual after a February that consisted entirely of Girl Scout cookies and Trashion/Refashion Show designs--I've got blog posts to write, etsy orders to create, some unit studies to research, some books to review, and a couple of field trips to plan. I do like to keep myself busy!

World Thinking Day 2015: A Trip to Mongolia

In our council, the Girl Scouts celebrate World Thinking Day with a giant Geography Fair. It's even more fun than a regular academic fair, because more kids working together means MORE elaborate displays, MORE games and activities, MORE food to taste, and MORE presentations--what homeschooler wouldn't love that?!?

My troop, led by another mom who speaks the language, has traveled there, and thus has lots of knowledge plus cool souvenirs to share, presented on Mongolia. The girls all worked on different parts of the display, and it came out really well--very informative, very elaborate, but clearly kid-made all the way through:

As you can see, we've got photos and facts about Mongolia, info about Mongolian horses and Genghis Khan, the Girl Scout motto in Mongolia, its map and flag, demonstrations of a game played with sheep ankle bones, and food samples of fried bread and salty, milky tea. 

I'm impressed that I managed to get photos of the display as a whole looking like that, because most of the time it looked like this:

Yeah, there were a LOT of kids there. 

Fortunately, my troop has enough kiddos that the girls could trade off offering food samples, stamping passports, demonstrating the game (that's what my two mostly did)--

--and visiting all the other countries at the festival. They also presented a puppet show of a Mongolian folk tale, including making the decorated curtain, making the puppets, and practicing telling the story over and over and over again so that they could do it unscripted.

It was an awesome experience for the kids, and just the kind of cross-curricular, high-intensity, immersive, FUN academics that I like for them to have.

In our family, we also used the weeks when we were preparing for this festival as a short unit on Mongolia, so the kids researched and did their display as part of their schoolwork, researched Mongolian horses, completed the Story of the World chapters on Genghis Khan, and learned to recognize Mongolian music (there's a ton on Spotify!). Here are some of the reading/watching/listening resources that we enjoyed during this unit:

Work Plans for the Week of February 23, 2015: Fashion Show, Field Trips, and Final Cookie Orders (Yay!)

I have GOT to finish the kids' Trashion/Refashion Show entries this week! I was thrown off my game by a full day last week when, no matter how many times I sewed it, Will's T-shirt biketard simply. Refused. To. Work. Now that I've got that nailed down finally, I keep telling myself that all the rest of the design and sewing will go much more quickly, but still... must get it done this week. That Thursday Free Day is going to be the final leg of the race, no matter what.

In addition to these lesson plans, the kids' daily work will include, as always, chores, typing practice, keyboard practice, Chinese practice, and a daily book or documentary of my choice, to be read/viewed and then discussed with me. Those selections include a picture book biography of Georgia O'Keeffe that I thought that Syd would enjoy, a photo/essay book on fossils that I thought that Will would enjoy, a couple of books and videos for more Chinese language practice, and some selections on ballet or Sleeping Beauty, the theme of Syd's Spring ballet recital.

MONDAY: This time last week we were in the middle of a blizzard, and all outside-the-house activities were happily cancelled, but today we'll be happy to be back at our regular volunteer gig now that everything is plowed and cleared and the snow is piled up where it ought to be--a foot deep on the grass, perfect for sledding and forts and snowpeople in our free time!

In Math Mammoth this week, Will is studying decimals and Syd is studying area, perimeter, and volume. On this day, I'll be showing Will how one can use our Base Ten blocks as decimal manipulatives (hint: the hundred flat equals ONE), and Syd will be helping me tape out a template for the capes that she designed in masking tape right onto the floor. I'm hoping that she and her sister can sew these capes themselves, or at least baste them by hand for me to sew...

Will has the outline for her essay on historically black colleges and universities written, so this week she'll be writing that essay, then editing it. And yes, I do make suggestions in colored ink all over her rough draft, just as I used to do with my freshman comp students. Syd also has a book report to write on this day, and both kids need to write some thank-you notes to some extra generous Girl Scout cookie customers.

I've set aside time for the kids to have a Hoffman Academy keyboard lesson today, but I think that I'll actually give them the choice to either take a new lesson or complete the worksheets from the last few lessons--I got lazy about printing the worksheets for them, because for a couple of weeks in a row they'd just seemed like busywork, but now that I look back at the pages that they missed, I think that they'll want them for the rhythm and note identification.

TUESDAY: We'll actually be gone for most of the day on this day; we'll be helping with seed sorting at the food pantry where we volunteer weekly, and we'll be sledding with friends, AND the kids have Science Club (and hopefully I have a date at a Mexican restaurant!) that night.

The kids, especially Will, love animals so much that I think they'll be excited to start this zoology unit on this day. We'll be using Zoology for Kids, and the first lesson is an introduction to animal biology at the cellular level, and it asks the kids to make an edible animal cell model--yum! We'll be doing it cookie cake-style, and I plan to require them to also make an edible plant cell model, so that they can see the similarities/differences.

WEDNESDAY: In addition to horseback riding class, the kids and I have a field trip to a local wild animal rescue center on this afternoon--they are going to be SO excited. We'll slog through one, two, or three First Language Lessons lessons, depending on how long each one is, and hopefully the Trashion/Refashion Show garments will be finished--at least *almost* finished--by the end of this day.

THURSDAY: If not, I'll be ignoring the kids all morning while I finish them on THIS day!

FRIDAY: It's early for Easter eggs, I know, but I have an experiment with dyeing brown eggs that I'm desperate to run, and I know that the kids won't care whether or not it's off-season.

The kids have a couple of larger orders of Girl Scout cookies to add notes and prizes to, wrap up for mailing, write addresses on, and calculate postage for. If it needs to be done anyway, might as well do it as part of school!

This Prima Princessa ballet DVD might be on the baby-ish side, I'm suspecting, but it's supposed to provide an excellent narration of the story as told in the Sleeping Beauty ballet (as opposed to the Disney movie), so I think that it'll be a worthwhile experience, and it's also supposed to include some little ballet moves for the kids to do along with the video, which will be nice for Will, who's never taken a ballet class in her life, to try out and get the feel of.

While Will takes her final ice skating class of the season, Syd can write thank-you notes to the relatives who generously mailed us their unwanted black or white T-shirts that will hopefully by then be part of our 100% completed Trashion/Refashion Show garments!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Saturday, as usual, will have Matt spending part of the day taking Syd to ballet and both kids to Chinese and doing something fun with them in between. Sunday will hopefully be a day at home for everyone!

Because now that we've got our two favorite sledding runs nice and packed down, it would be a shame not to spend half the day, every single day, out on them!

My Latest: Trains, Rainbows, and Sandwich Boards

a round-up of train crafts

a round-up of rainbow crafts

and a tutorial for this cardboard sandwich board

I thought that I'd have a T-shirt biketard to show you, and I do have it, but the tute for it will have to wait until I sew Syd's--it turns out that T-shirt fabric works as a leotard really only for kids whose bodies are still straight little noodles, NOT for kids whose bodies have hips and waists and itty bitty busts, so although Will's biketard will work fine for play and for her runway walk at the Trashion/Refashion Show, it won't work for actual aerial silks or gymnastics use, so I don't need to write you a tutorial for making a non-functioning biketard.

I bet you could figure out how to make a non-functioning biketard all on your own.

Our DIY Aerial Silks Rig

I believe that this is called a "Princess Sit?" I've resigned myself to the fact that in every photo that I share of this rig in action, you'll be able to see random clutter in my hallway. Shown here: plywood for a future mounted Hot Wheels track, Galileoscope, fire extinguisher, box of World War II letters we found in the attic, plastic crates stolen from the back of Kroger's, and, of COURSE, a ladder.

Note: we did this to our own house because we're careless wretches who don't give a flip about our home's resale value or our children's well-being. We DO care about beating up our home while having a lot of fun, though! I don't think you should do this project, because I have faith that you're a more careful parent and homeowner than I am.

For playing such a large part in our daily lives, this DIY aerial silks rig of ours is something that I haven't really shared as such yet. Part of the reason is that my partner and I put it up during a busy time (Nutcracker season!) and then modified it during another busy time, so I didn't have hours to spare to describe the process and the tools and the supplies in the loving, obsessive, undoubtedly-tedious-to-read detail that I usually expend.

Another part, though, is that this rig has fit so seamlessly into our lives, become such a natural, integral part of it, that I honestly don't spend much time noticing that giant swath of fabric hanging in the middle of our big hallway. The kids play on it and around it off and on all day, expending fabulous amounts of energy, calling me to come and see some new trick or skit or performance. I pass by it dozens of time every day, admiring a kid or pausing to give her a push or toss down some more mats or stopping to tie it up out of our way, only to pass by again an hour later and see it hanging down again after another unnoticed playtime.

It was actually only as I was going through some photos from the year so far that I noticed over and over again batches of photos that I'd snapped of the kids on their rig, and realized that I haven't yet been super braggy (well, I *have* been super braggy, but perhaps not in an overabundance of photos) about it here!

So here I am, super braggy about our aerial silks rig:

You can see here that I had my partner hack off the middle of our purely decorative exposed beam and drill through a higher exposed beam to install the hardware. The ends of the exposed beam look janky, but we kept the cedar facing, so if we ever want to permanently remove the rig, we can nail the cedar facing back up to the beam ends and it will look exactly as it did before.

This is the Twizzler. It requires tricky balance, and both kids were very pleased when they mastered it.

 I especially love how this rig encourages cooperative play between my often competitive, often bickering children:

I made the kid this Avengers leotard out of a T-shirt. 

The kids saw their instructors performing this two-person stunt at the winter showcase, so of course they practiced it, too!

 Check out the muscles on my kids--one can pull up her sister while hanging upside down, and the other can pull herself upside down while hanging onto her sister!

 The reverse is a little harder:

 So they decided to do this instead:

 And it turns out that the reverse of that is a little harder, too!

P.S. Interested in more inadvisably DIY projects? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Our Girl Scout Cookie Booth: What's Working, and What's Not

My Girl Scout troop had our second cookie booth last weekend, and all last week, my two worked hard to implement what they'd learned from our first cookie booth at Wal-mart and make some improvements.

It was decided that MORE color and MORE decoration would draw MORE attention, so working from a rainbow theme, the kids decided to pin play silks in rainbow colors to the front of the otherwise plain blue felt tablecloth:

That orange, by the way, had to be made fresh--where did our orange play silk go?!?

And there was also some hijinks involved in the construction:

The kids also noted that a Girl Scout who wasn't tied to the table could potentially entice over customers whose path wasn't carrying them right by, so I introduced them to the concept of the sandwich board. I'll have a full tutorial over at CAGW later, but in short, Will and Syd each composed a poem about Girl Scout cookies, painted them onto large pieces of cardboard, and then the Girl Scouts who manned the booth all took turns wearing it:

Seriously, how CUTE is that?!?

And here's the booth!

I love that you can really tell that it's kid-constructed, even though our troop is on the younger side. It's messier than it would be if the parents were controlling it, of course, but cookie selling is a girl-led business, after all, and it's wonderful to watch the kids visibly growing in skills during the course of the sale. One kid learned to count back change. One kid, who at the start of the booth was too shy to speak to customers, by the end of the booth was eagerly asking each one if they wanted their cookies gift-wrapped.

I also have to give props to how incredibly patient every single person who came by our booth was with the girls. One woman stood by and smiled as I demonstrated counting back change to a kid, then put everything back so that she could do it herself, then put everything back and demonstrated it again when she couldn't figure it out the first time, then put everything back and let her try again until she got it correct. Another couple let me hold a shy kid by the shoulders and prompt her with every single thing that she said so that she could get the hang of interacting with customers. More than one customer asked a kid a simple question ("Which is your favorite cookie?" or "Do you like being a Girl Scout?") and stood patiently while the kid took absolutely ages to think up the answer that she wanted to give. Not a single person acted a bit fussed to be dealing with these eager, fumbling, unsure, learning-as-they-went, clumsy kiddos.

And, of course, I'm learning as I go, too! Some things that haven't worked out so far:

• offers of free gift wrapping, Valentine's cards, ribbon, etc. This might work if the kids used the offers to up-sell cookies, or entice customers over to our table, especially with those pre-Valentine's Day booths, but the kids in my troop are too young, and already have too much in their heads that they have to say. 
• our stock. I don't know if our council is unusually short-supplied this year, or if this is a perennial problem, but I have not been able to get cases of cookies from them when I need them--I'm currently wavering about whether or not to cancel a cookie booth tomorrow, on account of we're out of Thin Mints and there are no more to be had. And don't even get me started with the gluten-free Toffee Tastics--they're apparently sold out nationwide! Next year, I'm going to make a much larger pre-order, and try to avoid dealing with restocking as much as possible.
• change. MORE dollar bills! ALL THE MORE dollar bills!
• prizes for buying five boxes. The prizes are kid-made and super-cute, and everyone is pleased when they've been told that they've earned one (most memorable prize-related moment: the five college women who came up, one woman planning to treat each of her friends to a box of cookies, who were so stinking thrilled when I told them that, due to the special circumstances, I'd let them EACH pick a prize, and who made such a happy fuss about picking their prizes, that every single kid at the booth was beaming by the time they finally completed their purchase and walked away), but again, the kids had too much to think about to market the prizes or try to up-sell the customers into them.

Some things that have worked out well:

• the booth itself. The kids put a huge amount of effort into decorating that booth, and although I don't necessarily know that it drew in any sales, we did get loads of compliments about it, so I know that it was noticeable!
• free samples. Another parent was in charge of this, and it definitely brought in some sales. Considering that we paid for the cookies that we gave away using money from our troop's donation box, it was well worth it. Next time, I'll suggest only offering samples of cookies that we need to sell more of--I have more boxes of Rah-Rah Raisins than I'm comfortable with this late in the season, but I'm flat-out of Thin Mints, dang it.
• that donation box. Always have a troop donation box! Lots of people have put their change into it, and it's money that goes straight to our troop, with no required cut to our council.
• that sandwich board. Again, I don't one hundred percent know if it brought in any sales by itself, but it definitely let people across the foyer of the grocery store know that there was a cookie booth nearby, and it gave the younger kids, especially, something to do when their brains got tired of focusing on customer service.
• "Please buy Girl Scout cookies!" I don't know how you can sell cookies without assigning a kid to make eye contact with passers-buy and call this out. It's essential, and I think it's a great experience for the kids.

Speaking of cookies... my kids are still hoping to collect donations for Operation Cookie Drop, which gives Girl Scout cookies to our soldiers. Four dollars buys a box, although more or less is also welcome. The Paypal Donate button is at the top left of my blog. If you've already donated--thank you! You can be on the lookout for a thank-you email, written by the kids, in your email inbox one day soon, as soon as I can entice them away from sledding and balloon animals (yes, that's a thing right now) and board games and building blocks.