April at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis

We were on the road early on this morning, due at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis for a homeschool class on aquatic ecosystems at the crack of 10 am. YAWN!

When we're out for the day (or the weekend, or the week...), I always pack food for our trip. I noticed, on this morning, that our lunches have grown since the days when I was toting a toddler and a baby to the Children's Museum for the day!

There's grocery store sushi for each of the kids, a big green apple and a knife to cut it with, crackers, salami, goat cheese, and a clementine to share. And everyone had a banana and a giant nut butter and jelly sandwich in the car for breakfast. 

Our aquatic ecosystems class was fabulous. The kids learned about watersheds, then went between stations to perform a natural water filtration experiment, create art with oil pastels and watercolors, perform another experiment on showerhead design (finally I understand how low-flow showerheads work!), look at pond water through a microscope, and perform yet another experiment on water run-off. 

The highlight of the class, however, was building their very own aquatic ecosystem, with a vase, some glass marbles, a plant (we actually didn't take the plants that they gave us into the house, because they were peace lilies, which are toxic to cats. Yikes! We plan to buy spider plants, instead), and a betta fish! 

The kids. Were. Thrilled.

We came away with our ecosystems and a list of books and activities to continue the fun, and were off to the rest of the museum.

I'm always a little dubious about the museum's tendency to run pop culture-themed exhibits-- 

--but I do get they use them to integrate educational enrichment into the theme. This Transformers exhibit included lots of storytelling and pretend play, of course, but also emphasized product design:

Add "Make toy prototypes" to my list of reasons why I SUPER want a MakerBot!

Also, when I travel with the kids, NOBODY takes my photo so that the 3D works correctly!

Sigh.

We zipped through the new exhibit on TV and film production--

--then went down to our volunteer gig in the Paleo Prep Lab of Dinosphere. Will finished preparing, all but the air abrading, a lovely example of an edmontosaurus annectens chevron:

The full chevron is forked, with the two branches ending in a bulbous piece and the other end extending out a great distance. Will had a nice portion of one of the upper branches. These chevrons run along the bottom of the edmontosaurus' tail.

Syd, coincidentally, had a piece of neural spine:

These are pointed shingle-shaped pieces that run along the TOP of the edmontosaurus' tail!

Unfortunately, this neural spine was part of a great mess of a piece, because the paleontologist who discovered it (Max, I'm looking directly at YOU here!!!) did NOT Paleobond it in the field. Friends, when you do not Paleobond the fossils in the field, they crumble all to hell by the time you get them home. Syd prepped her nice neural spine piece--

and then began to Paleobond and attempt to prep some of the remaining fragments (only Paleobonding herself to the fossil once), while I chipped through some more of the matrix to see what else was in there: 

You're not going to believe it, but it was another freaking tendon. I am the tendon queen. If only tendons were at all rare or even scientifically interesting!

The prep lab tends to have a couple of other volunteers and staff members whenever we're there, but on this day, for some reason at one point all of them had run off, leaving at the Paleo Lab Window (the connection between the lab and the museum exhibit. People can come to the open window and touch fossils and ask questions) a single paleontologist, who needed to run back to his office for a minute. But he couldn't, because he also couldn't leave the window unattended--kids would be licking the Paleobond, and teenagers would be leaving the exhibit with backpacks bulging with T-rex bones.

"I can stand there for a minute," I offered.

My offer was met with an ambiguous combination of Hopeful Eyes and Horror at What is to Come. It's never been overtly stated, but I'm pretty certain that we rank amateurs are never to interact with paying guests in an official capacity. We have not had our interpersonal or guest relations training, and there is no telling what might come out of our mouths. It's the way I feel observing Syd's ballet class, where the teacher likes to ask them all what they had for breakfast while they're stretching; Syd inevitable answers something humiliating, like "cheese," or "leftover French fries," or "my Mommy didn't feed me breakfast today" (the lying little rat! I offered her peanut butter and a spoon to eat it with, and she turned up her nose at it!).

The brave paleontologist took a breath, and dubiously asked me, "Can you talk about this T-rex bone?"

I confidently bullshitted, "Dude, I can TALK about this T-rex bone! How hard can it be, right? 'Hey, Kids, do you like dinosaurs?' and 'Want to touch a real one?'"

I should have stopped talking after that first exclamation point, because the look on the paleontologist's face told me that there is a LOT more to sitting at the Paleo Lab Window than "Hey, Kids do you like dinosaurs?" but he clearly figured, "What the hell?" and left me there, speed-walking away determinedly.

Immediately, a little girl and her mom tentatively walked over to the window, where a big T-rex bone temptingly sits. "Hey!" I said to her enthusiastically, "Do you like dinosaurs?"

"Yes." YES!!!

"Do you want to touch a real one?"

"No." NOOOOOO!!!!

"Well," I said, "Touching a real dinosaur bone doesn't happen every single day. I mean, did you touch a dinosaur bone yesterday?"

"No."

"Uh-huh. And did you touch a dinosaur bone the day before yesterday?"

"No." Ooh, she's smiling now. I've got her!

"Well, do you want to touch a dinosaur bone today?"

"No." Damn it to hell!!!

I change tactics. "Do you know where your knee is?"

"Yes," and she touches it.

"The T-rex's knee is right here," and I point to it. "Now, do you know where your hip is?"

She doesn't, but her mom helps her.

"There's a long bone called the femur that connects your knee to your hip. This bone is the T-rex's femur, and it runs from his knee to his hip." I enticingly run my hand all the way from the T-rex's knee to his hip. The kid reaches out her right hand slowly, almost touches the bone, and then hesitates and pulls it back. No. Freakin'. Deal.

I get distracted from my mission, then, as I continue to tell the kid about femurs and T-rexes--I point out the complete skeleton across the way, where she can look for the T-rex's femur, and I get her mom to hike her leg up on the windowsill, so that we can all compare our femurs to the T-rex's. It's not until I turn away a couple of minutes later, the kid having wandered off, see that I now seem to have TWO paleontologists hovering nervously behind me, waiting to reclaim the Window, and go back to my work (where Will teased me, saying "You sounded like a KINDERGARTEN teacher, Mom!" "Child," I replied, "I was talking to a KINDERGARTENER!"), that I suddenly scan my memory and realize that yes, YES, at some point during our conversation, THAT KID TOTALLY TOUCHED THE T-REX BONE!!!!!

Mission accomplished.

I could fuss around in the prep lab all day, but an hour and a half of hard work is about all that the eight-year-old can stand, so off we went.

Back to the world of the dinosaurs. Of COURSE: 

In the paleo art lab, Will sketches a bust of Dracorex Hogwartsis.

 The upper level of Dinosphere (here you're looking down from it into the lower level. This used to be an IMAX theatre!)--

--is focused on paleo art, which is really cool. Sometimes one of the docents will sketch there, asking kids to describe an animal that they're thinking of for him to draw--the drawing always turns out ridiculous, of course. But there are lots of activities that show the kids how to make models and draw figures, etc. The kids' favorite one has loads of bronze-colored Silly Putty and metal skulls of different dinosaurs; the kids can sculpt the musculature and skin onto the bust. Syd was working on her sculpture of Dracorex Hogwartsis for ages, when all of a sudden Will exclaimed to her, "Oh, you've kneaded your hair in!"

And indeed, the child, intent on her work, head bent down so as to almost touch her sculpture, had absent-mindedly kneaded a chunk of her hair into the Silly Putty skin.

And that's how I can tell you that Silly Putty works exactly like bubble gum in hair. I had to finally just cut it out the next morning, bless the poor kid's heart.

Games Kids Love: Story Dice

Santa brought the kids this set of story dice for Christmas, and like most of his stocking gifts (so weird that Santa mostly brings the children educational toys...), I expected that they would mostly be put away in the playroom, and discovered and played with just every now and then. That's where the interactive book on cool things that you can do with mirrors lives, after all, still not played with, and the water clock kit, still not played with.

To my surprise, however, the kids LOVE these story dice! They play with them at least once a week (we have an indulgent amount of playthings for the children, so weekly play is a pretty good record), and even bring them out to play with during playdates, during which it seems that their friends like them, too.

To use the story dice (this may not actually be how you're "supposed" to use the story dice--I've never looked to see if there are any instructions, but this is how the kids have used them from the beginning), you simply roll them--

--and then make up a story that uses each one. Each die has little images engraved onto each side that direct the story, but are quite open to interpretation:

Syd and I played this game recently, on an afternoon that Will spent at the library. Here are some of her stories:

Cute, right?

It's been a while since we've carried on with our art lessons, although I do often remind the kids, when we're drawing together, to remember the Drawing With Children shape families and the Drawing with Children rule that we should work with mistakes instead of, as Syd would prefer, crumpling up the paper and throwing a giant fit. But anyway, these dice would also fit well into a Drawing with Children-style study, since the lines are clean and simple: you could take turns rolling the dice one by one, incorporating each into your drawing as it comes.

Ooh, or written storytelling--perhaps you could just roll one or two, and use that as a story starter. Or roll them one at a time after every paragraph, as a "What happens next?" game.

Or gross motor skills, acting, and improv--Charades can be hard for little ones, but these would be a manageable number of prompts to roll from and act out, especially if they're familiar with the dice.

Got any other good games to recommend to us? Summer is birthday season in our family!

Practicing for the Fashion Show

If there is one thing that we've learned during years of participation in our town's Trashion/Refashion Show (and there are, of course, MANY things that we've learned...), it is that a fashion show takes PRACTICE!!!

There's no point in practicing before the show's first rehearsal--a couple of years the marks on the runway that they want the models to hit have changed, and one year the entire venue was different from the previous year--but after that first rehearsal, we tape down a masking tape runway indoors and draw a sidewalk chalk runway outdoors, and the model practices daily.

This is the first year that Will is also a model, and there was some sister drama to start, hopefully smoothed over now. During their first rehearsal, planning their routine, Will had the audacity to suggest one alteration to the routine that Syd had in her head, and she immediately pitched a giant fit. Rehearsal was stopped and frankly, I sent them both to bed.

The next morning, Syd was in fine form and ready to listen to any and all suggestions, but Will was still pissed at her for last night's behavior, and pissed at me because I'd asked her to practice instead of read, so she grumped and sulked until I sent her away and had Syd practice alone until she had her routine memorized. You can see Will in the background of this video, actually, using birdseed to lure the chickens away from the road:

These are some very superhero poses, aren't they?

These are some very spoiled animals that we have. Whenever we're outside, they insist on being underfoot:

Seriously. The kids and I went for a hike in our woods this weekend, and at one point I turned around to find that all three cats and both chickens had followed us!

Of course, the kids are equally besotted with their pets:

And that's how rehearsal segued into play, which segued into more rehearsal when a friend who's also in the show came over, and that segued into more play, and then the friend left and the kids did their math while I wrote, and then did their spelling and vocabulary, and then we worked on memorizing a Robert Frost poem, and then we listened to a CD of Robert Frost reading some other poems, and then there was Minecraft.

And that was a fine school day!

Behind the Paleo Window: Fossil Prep with the Kids at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis

The kids and I volunteer in the fossil prep lab of the Children's Museum of Indianapolis about once a month. It's one of the perks of having gone on their Family Dino Dig, and it remains a much loved and much appreciated experience. Here's what it looks like:

We wear Paleo Prep Lab coats, and sit on stools at the big work table. There are gooseneck lights to help us see, and we work with x-acto knives, paintbrushes, and Paleobond. In the background you can see a large legbone fossil with a window behind it; that's the Paleo Window that faces the exhibit hall, and families can come up to that open window to speak to the paleontologist working there and ask questions, one of which often is, "What are those kids doing back there?"

This is an edmontosaurus rib fragment, in fine shape, that I've cleaned and am about to polish. I am always struck, when here, of the huge honor that it is to be able to do this work and handle these objects. 

Will scrapes surrounding dirt off of a fossil. The paleontologists here are wonderful in their trust of children's capabilities; they show the children what to do and then let them get on with it. I'm impressed, as well, that they also don't accept careless work. Scraping off all that debris isn't always fun, but if a kid brings over a fossil to be inspected and it isn't completely clean, she's shown what else needs to be done and sent back to work. 

Look at the detail in this fossil!

The fossils have been carefully field prepped on site, either field jacketed in plaster or wrapped in paper towels and then foil and taped up and put in a plastic container. Each fossil is photographed on site, and mapped, and there's a form filled out with that info, as well as what it's suspected to be, and who discovered it and who all has worked on it. I wonder who discovered this particular fossil?

That's who! How cool is that?!?

I love how seriously the kids take their work, and how focused they are. 

This is Syd making her Very Important Scientist face.

Not all the fossils are great, of course. This one is totally borked. The amateur Paleobond mess isn't doing it any favors, but it's so fragmented that it really doesn't matter. I cleaned it off a bit, but fossils in this kind of shape are generally just donated to the local schools. My kids are so desensitized by their familiarity with really great fossils that I actually had to explain to them how cool the teachers and kids would find this particular specimen. 

This one's another school donation. I'd have had to jackhammer off all that dirt Paleobonded to it there at the far end. This is why they don't let amateurs work with the really fancy fossils!

This is really cool. It's an air abrader machine, and it's used to polish the fossils once they're clean. That little wand blasts out baking soda; you aim it not directly at the fossil, but across it, so that the baking soda can gently smooth the surface and make it shine.

Both kids know how to use it, and it's pretty much our favorite toy in the lab.

We generally stay in the lab for about an hour and a half, which is enough time to completely prepare a small fossil in decent shape, or get some real progress made on a larger piece or one that needs more work. After that, it's back into the museum to play some more, and where do you think the kids always want to go first?

Paleontology exhibit. Of course. 

My Latest: Knitting and the Rain

a round-up of DIY rain chain tutorials

an essay on knitted heart implants in Bolivia

and an essay on knitted pouches and nests for wildlife rescue centers

Although I didn't put any tutes up on CAGW this week, I actually ended up doing a lot of crafting. The kids and I have become obsessed with Perler beads, for one thing, and have spent every afternoon this week slouched over the big table in the family room, testing our eyesight and practicing our fine motor skills. I've also been playing with a blowtorch that I was given to review, and I've found a LOT of things that I can ruin with a blowtorch (there's a concrete block on top of a table outside that is the scene of a game that the kids and I play called "Will it melt/burn/explode?"). And now that the snow on our property has melted, I've been doing a ton more scavenging and finding lots of interesting objects to use in future projects--a hand-forged latch, perhaps for a garden gate? MANY limestone blocks, also for gardens. And I found a bunch of insulators lying abandoned around a double circuit steel pole power line at the very back of our property--these are going to be a garden border, I think.

And with that, you can probably tell what activity I'm going to be focused on next week!

Civil Rights for Kids

We first studied Civil Rights back in 2012, in preparation for a trip to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta (and we have to go back again, because they have a Junior Ranger program!), but it's been a regular component of our curriculum since then.

My methodology has remained consistent, because it seems to work well for my kids. We memorize dates, because they make a good scaffold for whatever context we later add, we explore biographies and living histories, and through those, we unpack a particular issue or event.

Because this study is mostly memorization, conversation, and reading, it works well both for my kid who will do anything that I ask her to, and my kid who will do nothing that I ask her to. The contrary kid has the gifts of a sharp memory, a passion for books, and a love of philosophy and debate; she can't help but learn this way. The amiable kid will power through anything that doesn't have a "correct" answer for her to freak out about, loves stories, and couldn't stop talking if I paid her to; she'd be happy adding in lots of hands-on projects, but this is also a good way for her to learn.

The first time that we studied dates (and put them on our big basement timeline--how I miss you!), Martin Luther King, Jr. was the perfect biography to explore, because, of course, he was present at so many of these crucial events. We read plenty about his life, but our main emphasis was on his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, with this book in hand to help us unpack and understand that speech:
Since then, we've studied the Civil War (crucial for understanding racism and the need for Civil Rights), Native Americans (another historically disenfranchised people), and other African-American scientists and inventors (remember Will's prize-winning essay on Patricia Bath last year?), but recently, we all found ourselves in the middle of a unit on school segregation and desegregation. It started with this audiobook--
--part of the Dear America series. I've found that series spotty in how well it can keep the kids' interest, but this one enthralled them. We listened to it in the car, and even Will, who prefers books about animals to books about people, and books about magical people to books about real people, was an avid listener. So this was the living biography that inspired us.

For the dates and facts, I turned to our very own town, which sports two former colored schools. One of them, the first colored school in town, is located downtown, blocks from campus. It's now our county's history museum, so we've visited there often. Kids attended this school until the local university moved to its current spot. The Powers that Be didn't want a colored school so close to the university, so they built a new school further to the west, on the far side of the furniture factory that employed quite a lot of the town, reasoning that with the school way over there, African-Americans would have no reason to approach the university's campus.

Nice, huh?

This second colored school, the one that non-Caucasian children attended until desegregation reached our town, is now the community center that my kids, like many other homeschooled kids in our town, are in and out of multiple times each week. In fact, we're there right now--the kids are in math class, and I'm in the library getting some writing done.

A few weeks ago, I set up a time for the community center's program coordinator to talk to our homeschool group about the building's history. She discussed segregation in our town, described the layout and conditions of the school, and walked us through the former classrooms (which we've seen many times before, as one room is the library and the other is the math classroom!) to show us the surprising number of original features that still exist. The blackboards are the same blackboards that were used by the colored school! How cool is it that my kids are now part of their history?

We've very lucky in that the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, a place that we visit probably once a month, also has what I imagine has to be the world's only Civil Rights exhibit that's geared specifically to a child audience. It's called The Power of Children, and although it was a little too scary for the kids when they were younger, it's now perfect for them.

The exhibit focuses on three children famous for their experiences of discrimination. We haven't yet visited the Anne Frank section (although now that we're studying World War II, we will), but recently, the kids spent a long time exploring the sections on Ruby Bridges and Ryan White.

The Ruby Bridges section did a wonderful job personalizing discrimination for two little white girls who've never personally experienced it:

It also had plenty of artifacts that I was interested to see. I'm racking my brain, and I don't think that I've ever seen artifacts like these on display before:

Much of the exhibit focused on the inequities of segregated schools, and the inequities that Bridges faced in her first year at the integrated school:

The unfairness was abundantly clear.

The kids seemed to feel less in response to the Ryan White exhibit, partly because they were distracted by White's truly epic amount of 80s era swag. Alf! Star Wars! Max Headroom! But they had a LOT of fun filming this news report!

I, however, adored the Ryan White exhibit. First of all, I remember hearing about White when I was a kid; he was a few years older than me, and I was struck by his story. This exhibit also makes his story very real, because, of course, he's from Indiana, and the school that he was driven out of and the school that he was made welcome in are both Indiana schools. White's mother donated most of the artifacts that make his exhibit so vivid, and she's also a regular visitor and speaker at the museum.

While there are clearly people in Indiana who need to relearn the anti-discrimination, anti-bigotry ethic, as evidenced by the RFRA nonsense that my state is now undergoing, I hope that my kiddos will never be the kind of people who dehumanize another, or who stand by and let it happen.

Here are some of the other resources that we've been using in our Civil Rights studies:

A Giant Crayon Peace Sign for YOUR House

A friend regifted me a fabulous giant peace sign silicon mold, and I could not rest in any sort of sense of happiness until I had figured out something good to use it with. Melted bead suncatchers sort of worked, but also sometimes caught fire (I really miss that star-shaped mold!) and always gave off enough fumes to make me fear for the neighborhood bird population.

Finally, however... huzzah! I melted down crayon stubs and, just my opinion, but I think it's just the thing:

This turned out way too cute to keep in my house where the kids and the cats are just going to wreck it, so it's up in my pumpkin+bear etsy shop.