Mapping the Yucatan Peninsula

 

I don't even know how I would homeschool without a giant homemade map, y'all. We've been downloading, printing, and taping together these huge Megamaps since Syd was two and Will was three, and now here we are with Syd at fifteen and Will at seventeen, and we're still making and marking up giant maps.

I originally printed and compiled this map of Mexico, and a separate one of North America, for my Girl Scout troop to use during our troop trip planning meetings. It was VERY amusing to unleash a troop of teenagers with a pack of markers onto a map of North America and tell them to label everything they know. Some kids eagerly took marker in hand with a gleam in the eye, and some kids hesitantly took marker in hand with a look that was more like, "Oh, shit...", but everybody was able to label something, and all efforts were praised.

They were ALL hesitant when I then presented them with this map of Mexico and the same instructions, but they gamely went to work and were eventually persuaded that they all knew a little more than they thought they did. We did have a useful conversation, though, about why it is that we don't seem to know very much about the geography of Mexico, seeing as it's just right there below us. 

If you look closely, you can see that placing Mexico City took them a couple of tries...

The troop basically helped my own kiddos get a head start on what is now their map for our Mesoamerica unit study. We're studying the history, geography, geology, environment, and culture of Mesoamerica, with an emphasis on the Maya since theirs is the specific region we'll be visiting on our Girl Scout troop trip to Mexico.

But until we get to go there and look at it all in person, we have to rely on maps! This book is turning out to be the spine of our study so far:

• The Maya

--and on this particular day, the kids transferred much of the information from Chapter 1 onto our map. 

Will was in charge of finding images of the animals that were important to the Ancient Maya, then gluing them to the margin of the map and labeling them: 

She and I also got out the compass so we could draw and label the Chicxulub Crater:

You guys, on our upcoming Girl scout troop trip, our cruise ship will be going RIGHT OVER the crater! And the cenotes that Will and I are going to snorkel in are directly related to that impact!

Fun fact: I am both pretty sure that snorkeling in a cenote is how I die, and also definitely going to go snorkel in a cenote. Life is complicated, y'all. 

Syd was in charge of the task of drawing the main rivers of Mesoamerica:

Fortunately, Jones was there to lend his assistance:

On a previous day, the kids had used the list of important places from this book--

• Maya: Amazing Inventions You Can Build Yourself

--to map and collect images of Ancient Maya sites (I even made them write a paragraph about each site and turned them into adorable flash cards. They're so cute and I love them and the kids are absolutely horrified because they think they're too old for flash cards, my silly little geese), so those are the other little icons you can see on the map:

 

A lot of the map's real estate is wasted at the moment, since we're only studying Mesoamerica and not the rest of Mexico, but now that the kids are old enough to use a large-format map without utterly demolishing it in the process, I think I can hang onto this map even when we're finished and keep it for a future Syd study, at least.

On the Peninsula Trail

 

Here in the Midwest, we're currently wavering between Winter, Part Three and Practice Spring, with temperatures varying anywhere from 35 to 65 depending on the day. 

So one day last week, when the forecast bafflingly called for clear skies and a high in the upper 60s, I declared it Homeschool Field Trip Day. We left our bathroom work crew to go about their day without having to step over or around us every ten minutes and drove out to a spot I've been wanting to visit for years. It's a nature preserve adjacent to million-dollar houses on the shore of one of our nearby lakes, a narrow peninsula that leads a mile straight out, water on both sides of the ridge that you walk along. The parking lot is deliberately pretty small to limit visitors, so despite its beauty it's quiet and fairly unpopulated.

It was the perfect place to spend the day.

It was made clear to me that I apparently spent the entire winter hibernating, because I did not have ANY wind for the unexpectedly steep elevation changes we encountered. I spent most of the hike gasping for air and vowing to get my cardio back on track when, you know, the days are a little more reliably not 40 degrees and raining.

Luna got a little winded, too. 

Good thing the view was so beautiful! Gazing out at the scenery is a great excuse to stop and make sure you're not dying right that second.

My greatest happiness is that my teenagers still bring me awesome rocks to look at.

We have some geology studies that we're VERY low-key working on, so during this field trip I forced the kids to each find three interesting geological things to sketch. 

Will sketched a bluff, and then it was back on our feet for the final leg of our trek!

The trail ended on a dirt beach, with water on three sides and the far lakeshore visible in the distance.

I brought a picnic (that, plus the extra water, hardback book, travel watercolor kit with even more water, and camera might have explained a little bit of my hiking woes...) for us to share, and then I might have had a wee nap while the kids played with Luna, finished their sketches, and also sat quietly to enjoy the day. 

The lake level was very high, I think, so I'll be curious to come back one day in the summer and see what this beach looks like then.

Not gonna lie--the hike back was even tougher!

Will finally took my backpack and gave me Luna, who stopped often enough to sniff stuff that I could save a little face with my rest breaks, and who could generally be relied upon to tow me at least partway up every incline. 

It was a brilliant day, the kind of very early spring adventure that reminds you that yes, pleasant weather IS coming, and full days exploring outdoors will soon be the rule rather than the exception. I think this little hit of Vitamin D will get us through Winter's Last Gasp and into Spring, For Real!

My Kid Went to California, and All I Got Was This Complete Set of ABC Bakers Girl Scout Cookies

ABC Bakers puts their Thin Mints in FOIL SLEEVES!

After a couple of long pandemic years, last month Will was finally able to achieve her dream of going to a sleepaway camp in the Girl Scouts of Northern California council. It wasn't the summer camp with surfing, ocean kayaking, and sleeping out on the beach that she'd originally wanted, but a just-as-magical winter camp up in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, with Sierra redwoods, snowshoes, sleds, and comfy cabins.

Before and after, she hung out with her grandparents, who indulged her OTHER two biggest California dreams: to spend a day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (a perennial dream, as she visits the Monterey Bay Aquarium almost every single time she visits California), and to buy the complete run of ABC Bakers Girl Scout cookies.

For those not involved in the Girl Scout Cookie War Machine, there are two different bakeries that make the Girl Scout cookies that the kids sell, and your local Girl Scout council works with one of those two bakeries. The bakeries are mostly the same--they both make a shortbread, a peanut butter and chocolate patty, a coconut and chocolate, a chocolate mint, a peanut butter sandwich, a lemon, and a caramel chocolate--but there are differences in the flavor and packaging even of those. And each bakery has a couple of different cookies, too. We're a Little Brownie Bakers council, and we have S'mores and Toffee Tastics. ABC Bakers has Toast Yays and Caramel Chocolate Chip.

Sell Girl Scout cookies for a couple of years, and you start to get curious about the other bakery's cookies, if for no other reason than customers--at least customers in a college town!--often come up to your cookie booth and ask the kids for cookies that are actually made by the other bakery. The kids learned early on to direct a customer asking for Caramel Delites to our Samoas, and a customer asking for Peanut Butter Patties got our Tagalongs. It's the same kind of skill set that a kid uses when a customer wants a cookie Girl Scouts stopped making a decade ago, or when a customer wants to know why cookies don't still cost a buck-forty like they used to when THEY were a kid. It expands a kid's worldview, and encourages them to contextualize their own experience in place and time.

So Will, who is currently selling Girl Scout cookies for her eighth (and final!) year, was STOKED to hit up a Girl Scout cookie booth in Monterey and bring me home a bunch of ABC Bakers cookies to try.

And because she is my child (and she's working on earning her Girl Scout Ambassador Photographer badge, which asks for a set of still life photos), we also took photos of them! 

Caramel Chocolate Chip is the ABC Bakers gluten-free cookie:

ABC Bakers Thin Mints have a pull-tab top!

They're also shaped differently, and the kids and I think that they're maybe a little crisper, more chocolatey, and slightly less minty:

Here are Toast-Yays!

They're meant to taste like French toast, and the cinnamon really comes through. The kids loved them, but I'm not a fan:

Lemonades resemble our Lemon-Ups, but the glaze is heavier:

Will LOVED the glaze and prefers these to Lemon-Ups. I thought the glaze had a weird aftertaste and I much prefer Lemon-Ups:

The Peanut Butter Sandwich cookies, are, other than the pull tab on the box, identical to Do-Si-Does:

Based on the serving size and number of cookies in the box, though, they must be a different size, but we couldn't see how:

We thought the Caramel DeLites looked a little different from Samoas, but they tasted the same:

Adventurefuls are the new cookie this year for both bakeries. Little Brownie Bakers is having major supply chain issues this year and couldn't stock us past our troop's initial order, so people in our council barely got a taste, and I'm impressed that Will was able to score this ABC Bakers box!

Again, they're slightly different from Little Brownie Bakers' Adventurefuls, and I slightly prefer these:

Peanut Butter Patties are indistinguishable from Tagalongs:

Comparing these cookies was such a fun project, and I'm glad it was one more dream that Will could realize before she graduates high school. Our last Girl Scout cookie season together is almost over--only 47 boxes left to reach her all-time biggest goal of 2,000 boxes sold! I've already got the photo I took of her first-ever Girl Scout cookie booth standing ready, so I can set it side-by-side with the photo I'll take this week of her last-ever Girl Scout cookie booth. 

If that second photo is blurry it's because YOU'RE crying, not me! 

The DIY Felt Peeps Bunnies in the Kids' Easter Baskets

Does the Easter Bunny like to put something homemade in your kids' Easter baskets? 

In my house, sometimes the Easter Bunny does not, because the Easter Bunny is busy. Sometimes, however, the Easter Bunny makes a pair of comfy shorts, or a hooded towel, or a cupcake pincushion. This year, the Easter Bunny is thinking about zippered pencil cases.

Last year, however, the Easter Bunny quite outdid herself, if I do say so myself!

I normally don't love hand-sewing, but I've found myself doing a lot more of it over the past year, as I've wanted to make things that require it. I finally mastered the ladder stitch--actually, I mastered that ALSO for Easter crafts!--and my desire to make stuffed Peeps Bunnies for the kids, and my firm belief that they would only look as cute as possible when made from felt and embroidery floss, is what led me to finally mastering the blanket stitch.

I didn't want to master the French knot on top of that, so first I tried button eyes and a nose:

That was a big nope!

I never did actually master the actual French knot, but I somehow muddled something that results in a similar cuteness level:

Here's the template that I used for my felt Peeps Bunnies. To make the stuffie, cut out two bunnies, then a super long 2" wide strip of felt. You could, of course, figure out the exact length you need by measuring the perimeter of your bunny, but it also works to simply start sewing it on and cut it off when you're back to your starting place. 

Embroider on the bunny's eyes and nose, and use a complementary color of embroidery floss to blanket stitch everything together. Stuff the bunny full of cotton, then finish blanket stitching it closed.

Your felt Peeps Bunny is best introduced in an Easter basket chock-full of candy and little presents, and afterwards in a teenager's bedroom, perched on a nightstand next to her bed, looking adorable and always up for a cuddle.

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!

Mardi Gras Unit Study for Homeschooled High Schoolers: Year Two

Last year, Syd was stuck doing public school busywork while Will and I thoroughly enjoyed our Mardi Gras unit study. This year, Will spent a week in California visiting her grandparents and attending Girl Scout camp at just the perfect time for Syd to have HER turn at this super fun cross-curricular unit.

Whether homeschoolers are little or big, social studies is always fun and valuable, building context, familiarity with diversity, and geographic awareness. Mardi Gras is an especially terrific unit study because it's celebrated in many areas worldwide, but differently in each of these places. In this unit, we studied celebrations in New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Venice, Italy. There was plenty of room, as well, for conversations about other interesting place- and religion-related topics, and there are a ton more connections for cooking, history, environmental studies, and any of the other billion wonderful topics that come up when a teenager and her mom are hanging out and making king cake.

We did all the activities in my lesson plans, but, unsurprisingly if you know Syd, her focus was on the baking.

For some seriously old-school vibes, Syd and I listened to this classic while she worked:

• Carnival at Candlelight

How long has it been since we've listened to a Magic Tree House book for genuine enjoyment? High Tide in Hawaii, maybe? Regardless, we've just discovered that the newest book requires Jack and Annie to climb Machu Picchu and rescue a baby llama... so obviously I requested it from the library. Time for a Family Read-Aloud Throwback Night!

When we weren't listening to a children's book that we've already listened to 400 times in the past decade, we've been listening to a lot of local radio stations off and on for their Carnival music. 

Here are some good New Orleans stations:

• 98.9 Dolphin Radio
• 1590 AM WKKAY

Here are some good Rio de Janeiro stations:

• Radio Batuta MPB
• Bike Web Radio
• FM o Dia 1005.

There are over a hundred radio stations in Rio de Janeiro!

Here are some good Venice radio stations:

• Radio Onda 1
• Radio Ca' Foscari

Syd's beautiful king cake did not look this pristine for long:

Matt ate the last piece for breakfast this morning, which was as good a way as any to celebrate Fat Tuesday!