A Snarky Frankenstein Unit Study Appropriate for Snarky High Schoolers

Listening to audiobooks with my teenager is just about my current favorite thing about homeschooling. So far this semester, we've listened to History of the Kings of Britain, The Haunting of Hill House, and The Hound of the Baskervilles, and we're currently one hour and 40 minutes into 12 Years a Slave, and we're VERY into it.

Frankenstein is a book study that we did last year, but somehow I never got around to writing about it even though it was AWESOME! I don't know if you know this, but a teenager is the best companion to have when reading a book. We speculate on every character's sexuality (*cough, cough* Walton was IN LOVE with Victor *cough, cough*), mercilessly roast every character (but mostly Victor), gasp in shock and horror at the kinds of behavior that was apparently normal at the time but is 100% taboo now (I'm sorry, but Victor and Elizabeth were raised as siblings!), and cheer at all the murders...

... and we sneak in some literary and cultural analyses, maybe a bit of creative writing, definitely some comparative analysis with other books and films. Book studies somehow always manages to feel low-stakes while being quite rigorous academically. It's some of the best schoolwork that we do together, and whatever we're studying, I tend to always have a book unit going.

Here's some of what we did for Frankenstein, and some other stuff that we could have done but didn't.

Pre-Reading

I wouldn't want to do anything that would give away any spoilers for a book, even a book as iconic as Frankenstein. I work with teenagers pretty often, and I am equally as often surprised at the background knowledge that they can lack--I would never assume that a kid who hadn't read Frankenstein knows ANYTHING, no matter how basic, about the plot!

That being said, a good video can often be a good, evocative setup for a book, especially a book with as interesting an origin as Frankenstein! This TED-Ed video sets the scene without giving away too much:

We've spoken about Lord Byron before back when we were studying Ada Lovelace, so mentioning that he was there did quite a lot to explain the setting of the creation of Shelley's novel to my teenager, ahem. Other good pieces of background info could include brief bios of Mary Shelley and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, alchemy, the Gothic and Romantic movements, etc.

While Reading

Whatever you do, don't incorporate ALL of this into your literature study. I like to see what's intriguing my kids and expand on that, or encourage projects that build up skills I want them to learn, that follow their interests, or that could add a cross-curricular component that I could also count for a different subject.

• discussion questions/essay topics: A nice thing about homeschooling is that we can talk day and night about the books we're reading. We roast main characters over dinner, gossip about who's into who in the car, rewrite minor plot points via late-night texts across the house, and revisit our favorite bits years later--we're still cackling about our recurring joke involving Gandalf's favorite horse, and we finished that book five years ago! I don't usually use discussion questions or talking points to inspire our conversations, but I can see how they'd be useful, especially to set an essay topic.
• family tree/cast of characters. There's not a giant cast of characters in Frankenstein, but enough that it's easy to forget who someone is by the time they wander back into the picture. We do NOT want to forget how Victor and Elizabeth know each other, for instance (barf!), nor who our delightful little William is. There are tons of ways to create family trees and graphic character lists, and I do like to have kids create their own from scratch, illustrations and all... but here's a cheat sheet. 
• food. We usually enjoy cooking recipes themed on what we're reading or watching, but Frankenstein doesn't give one a lot to work with, ahem. Ah, well... perhaps a picnic while we read out loud to each other!
• geography. I LOVE using maps in my homeschool. I think it's so important to be able to visualize places from history and literature, and to build geographic context. Here's a Google Earth tour of the many geographic settings in Frankenstein, but I feel like my own kids don't always look hard enough at already-created maps to absorb the information; I'd rather show them a Google Earth tour of a different book, then have them create one for Frankenstein from scratch, or go completely old-school and create it with a printed map. This Smithsonian article about places that inspired Mary Shelley is another good resource. 
• practice using quotes as evidence: The year that my teenager went to public school, her English teacher had a terrific technique to teach the kids how to respond to a text. She'd give them a text, then ask them to 1) highlight claims, and 2) for each claim, respond with a sentence that agreed and gave a reason, or disagreed and gave a reason, or expanded on/qualified the claim. It was a great way to remind the kids that they did need to have their own opinions about texts, and to model for them how it works. This worksheet encourages the same strategy; when responding, encourage the student to find textual evidence for their response, and then you have a natural entry point for teaching them how to incorporate quotes into their writing. 
• supplemental texts. We do a lot of cross-curricular work in our homeschool, and one of my favorite ways to incorporate that kind of work is a supplementary reading that also applies to a separate study. For a novel like Frankenstein, supplemental texts in the fields of science, history, and mythology would all be easy to source. Or go in a different direction and offer supplemental pieces of artwork!
• travel. I really like to incorporate field trips, day trips, and other types of travel into our homeschool studies. Alas, for my final homeschooling teen haaaates to travel, but I still insist more often than she'd like... but a lot less often than I'd like! Travel to Bath, England, to visit the Frankenstein museum isn't exactly feasible, but I'm always on the lookout for traveling museum exhibitions, festivals, academic presentations at our local university, or high-quality live theater experiences.

After Reading

After finishing a book is when I like to incorporate comparative analysis. With Frankenstein, there are a lot of different directions you could go with this!

• Frankenstein films. With these, you can illustrate the growth and development of the Frankenstein trope, and critique its various manifestations. In our homeschool, we usually do at least one of these as an official Family Movie Night, with everyone contributing cheezy novelty recipes to a themed meal that we can eat while we watch. Here are a few of my favorite Frankenstein films that go quite well with Frankenstein meatloaf and Frankenstein broccoli florets and Frankenstein pudding cups and a Frankenstein cocktail/mocktail:

• children's books. Usually, the Frankenstein in a picture book is just a goofy-looking Halloween character that doesn't make any particular literary references. For an artistic kid, though, it's interesting to compare and analyze the various kid-friendly depictions of the monster, then create their own in response. Kids who are interested in folklore, anthropology, the organization of information, or books in general can enjoy logging the characteristics of each kid-friendly character and seeing if they can figure out the stereotypes or analyze what the representations are meant to imply. Here are a few of my favorite kid books that feature Frankenstein:

• other Frankenstein retellings. You can make thoughtful comparisons with versions of the story told in different times and places; they highlight different values and fears in our changing cultures, and often speak to the original version in important ways. Here are a few of my favorite Frankenstein retellings:

• secondary sources. I don't always incorporate these, but if a book has really struck a kid's fancy (as with the huge hit that Le Morte d'Arthur turned out to be!), I'll keep those good vibes going, perhaps with a bit of long-form non-fiction! Histories, biographies, and cultural analyses are always a good bet with books. Here are a few good ones for Frankenstein:

While supplementary activities can add a lot of content and rigor to a book study, keep in mind that it's also perfectly okay, and perfectly at-level, to simply read the book, talk about it, and move on with your lives! Discussion is a great way to address the content and themes of a book, so that even if you don't write an essay, if you've have lots of conversations about it you HAVE formed opinions, made claims, supported them with evidence, responded to another's claim with your own thoughts, and essentially performed quite a lot of analytical work. 

You should definitely make thematically-appropriate novelty foods and eat them while watching a related movie, though. that's a very important part of the process! 

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DIY Upcycled Cardboard Polyominoes

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.

Polyominoes are a super fun educational toy. When made from upcycled cardboard food packaging, they’re also super eco-friendly!

If you’ve ever played Tetris, you know what polyominoes are, AND you know how fun they are!

Without getting too mathy, because I know that scares some of y’all, polyominoes are shapes that you can draw on a piece of graph paper using the same number of squares.

You know dominoes, right? Those are polyominoes made of two units.

Tetrominoes are made of four units. When you play Tetris, you’re playing with tetrominoes!

Pentominoes, pieces made from five units, are my personal favorite.

There are infinite really interesting math problems–many of which have never been completely solved!–that utilize polyominoes. But even for us non-professional mathematicians, polyominoes remain very fun. You can build cool patterns with them. You can create puzzles from them, then try to solve them! And, if you have a kid around, they’re a sneaky way to build their logical reasoning skills and to teach concepts of area, perimeter, patterning, and other even more abstract, sophisticated geometry and measurement concepts.

Also, I’m just going to say it one more time–they’re really fun!

You don’t need another set of plastic game pieces kicking around your home, though. Instead, here’s how to make any set of polyominoes that you want from sturdy, upcycled, recyclable cardboard.

To make your own set of upcycled cardboard polyominoes, you will need:

• upcycled cardboard. Cardboard food packaging is perfect for this project–for this tutorial, I’m making all my polyominoes from Girl Scout cookie boxes! It would be VERY fun, though, to make “life-sized” or giant polyominoes from corrugated cardboard.
• graph paper. Once upon a time, I scored the rest of someone’s stash of 1″ graph paper at a yard sale, but the internet exists now, and so you can just print graph paper at any size. Or if you, like all the other cool kids these days, don’t own a printer, you can buy it commercially.
• measuring and cutting supplies. I made all these polyominoes with a pen and a pair of scissors.
• double-sided tape (optional). All polyominoes other than Tetris pieces are meant to be able to be flipped over, and if you get into doing polyomino puzzles, solutions will often require it. For that reason, I make most of my own polyomino pieces double-sided. But if the difference between the front and back of a polyomino piece doesn’t bother you, then don’t bother with this extra step!

Step 1: Create the polyomino patterns.

This first step is my favorite!

On graph paper, sketch out the outlines of your polyominoes. You can easily Google patterns for various polyomino sets, but kids, especially, find it VERY fun to create their own polyominoes from scratch.

Cut out your polyominoes, and you’re ready to apply them to the cardboard.

Step 2: Use the paper templates to make cardboard polyominoes.

Trace around the polyominoes and cut them out of the upcycled cardboard.

Using upcycled cardboard food packaging gives you a lot of scope for creativity! If you’ve got a variety of colors, like I do with my Girl Scout cookie boxes, it can be fun to make each type of polyomino a different colors. Or, decide that the plain cardboard side will be front-facing, and decorate the pieces with markers.

Step 3 (optional): Make the polyominoes double-sided.

Tetris gets away with not letting you flip pieces by making the flipped side a completely separate piece. For every other use, though, you’ll generally want to be able to flip your pieces over. If you’re using cardboard that’s roughly the same on the front and back, that’s not a problem, but with this cardboard food packaging that has a printed side and a plain side, I’ve discovered that many people, and especially kids, find it non-intuitive to have to flip pieces. We’re just not used to working with both the “front” and “back” of a puzzle!

To solve that problem, make your polyominoes double-sided.

Just cut out a second piece (flip the pattern over if the piece isn’t symmetrical!), then attach the two with double-sided tape. Now both of your sides look cute, and it’s easy to realize that you can flip them!

There are so many ways to extend the fun of polyominoes while exercising your brain and developing numeracy and logical reasoning skills. A mini set taped onto a magnet sheet and put into an Altoids tin is a terrific little travel game; for even more fun, hand-draw or print puzzle templates on plain paper and cut them out to fit in the tin, too. A larger set of tetrominoes and a few pieces of grid paper taped together make a fun two-player, analog Tetris game; for more fun, add more magnets and place on a wall-mounted metal sheet.

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Inside the Greenhouse of My Dreams

The local university has a teaching greenhouse that's also open to the public during certain hours. I am OBSESSED with it, and during a recent college break my college kid kindly agreed to go there for the hundredth time with me. 

She and I love going places and looking at stuff the most!

My college student kid spent most of her childhood longing for a little pond. I could never quite figure out how to make it happen for her (my newest dream project that I probably won't make is a dry stream bed!), but if you give me a giant greenhouse, I will!

The corpse plant actually flowered this summer!

Someone local clearly has a homemade vanilla extract side hustle going on!

I really want a bird fountain, but we have West Nile in Indiana now, and I have a horror of adding more mosquito breeding spots to my already mosquito-heavy yard.

When I brought the kids here when they were little, they were always SO fascinated by the real cotton plant!

My teenager recently observed that I "don't like to do things alone," and while I was stung by her observation... she's not wrong. The problem is that once upon a time, I had two kids living at home who liked very different things from each other, but quite a lot of the same things as me, so I became used to always having a pal for every activity. Library podcast+craft night? I brought the big kid. Concert? Little kid. Play? Both kids, but the big kid would actually enjoy it. Shopping for novelty holiday items? Little kid. Museum? Big kid. Fancy coffee date? Little kid. Hike around the lake? Big kid.

So now I keep having these fun things that I want to do, but half of the time, when I think about it, there's nobody I know who would want to do the thing with me. I could make some friends, I guess, or wait until my big kid's next college break, or just suck it up and go by myself. So far, I've relied on the second solution, but I know I've got to work my way up to numbers 1 and 3, as well. Because earlier this week, I said to my little kid, "Hey, do you want to come with me to a concert featuring a band that you know nothing about but that I was flat-out obsessed with when I was 12 years old?"

The teenager said something along the lines of "That sounds sick. Bet"--I forget the exact words, but it was some kind of teenager-speak affirmative. I was SUPER stoked, because she is the best concert buddy... but then when I actually looked at the tickets, it suddenly occurred to me that the concert? It's in late August! By late August, this kid's possibly going to be away at college, too! Both of my pals, two-thirds of the people I talk to on a daily basis, are going to be out of my pocket and out in the real world by September.

Do you want to start taking bets on what my mid-life crisis is going to look like?

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The Poured Rice Fantasy Map Project

I've seen the poured rice fantasy maps being made on Tiktok and YouTube, but my actual inspiration for this project was subbing in an art class in which the kids were hard at work on their own fantasy maps. They'd already done the poured rice step and were deep into embellishing their maps with fantasy and cartography elements. Their teacher had a long list of categories and a Google Slide Deck of reference images for them to use, and I spent two days in that class walking around and cooing over everyone's maps, encouraging them to add elements from a new category, debating river placement and what kinds of sea monsters are the scariest and how many volcanoes one island can reasonably contain.

You know who else is currently writing a fantasy novel AND loves art? My very own homeschooler!

For a Creative Writing/Studio Art enrichment lesson one day, she and I sat down with some large-format drawing paper, our eight-year-old kilogram of rice, and my favorite drawing pens (these are the teenager's favorite drawing pens). 

To make the map, you simply pour out your rice (I've seen some people use lentils, but I loved all the fjordy bits that the rice made)--

--then trace around it!

You can, of course, artificially manipulate the rice to spread it however you want, but the idea is that by letting it do its thing you make a map that looks organic and random and has a particularly detailed coastline.

After that, you listen to music, and you draw!

The teenager was quite happy with creating from her own brain, but I preferred to use reference images. Here's the teenager trying to show me how to draw cliffs like Dover:

I kind of got the idea, but I couldn't make it look good on the map. Oh, well--at least my barrows look awesome!

It's impossible to do any work whatsoever without Mr. Jones being actively weird in your face:

The art class kids who were spending several days on this project had to add a billion details, a compass rose, and a banner title, but the teenager and I were satisfied with our maps after just a couple of hours hanging out together, drawing and listening to music. Here's my fantastic fantasy map:

A henge is OBVIOUSLY at the center of my island, with various barrows around the outskirts. My snowcapped mountains are an embarrassment, but I'm quite proud of my road and my swampland. 

And here is the teenager's. She packed a LOT of detail into just a couple of hours!

I LOVE that her map also has a henge! All the Giant Rocks Day is such a good memory!

I'd suggested that the teenager might want to use her fantasy map as THE map for her fantasy novel, but she preferred to make it just a fantastical fantasy of a map, no lore included. But it did get her thinking about geography and place in her story, so I'm keeping this project as a cross-curricular Creative Writing/Studio Art effort.

If a kid is up for an entire world-building experience, I do think it would be cool to actually make this map in coordination with creative writing, perhaps adding new features to the map as you think of them for a story, and vice versa. Otherwise, this project lends itself to all kinds of geography extensions, from basic map-reading to AP Human Geography. Or make up your own coordinate system and then locate places on the map using it! Model the terrain in salt dough! Photocopy the outline and create a political map showing population and government! Invent a flag, then sew it! Find a partner who also created a map, pretend their island is in the same world, and form a political alliance... or declare war! 

This was our eight-year-old kilogram of rice's final act of service. It began its time as a sensory material, lived most of its life as a kid-measured exact kilogram for admiration and reference, and after this, its last hurrah as an implement of cartographic creation, it was ceremoniously retired around the backyard, where it can end its days by offering sustenance and enrichment to our flock of half-wild chickens.

It's only now occurring to me to wonder if whatever I used to dye that rice eight years ago is okay for chickens to eat now. OMG ISN'T A THING THAT BIRDS AREN'T ACTUALLY SUPPOSED TO EAT DRY RICE?

You know what? Whatever, I'm sure it's fine. If you come back to my blog and find this post deleted, though, it's because I accidentally killed our flock of chickens and I need to cover my tracks.

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DIY Corrugated Cardboard Tower of Hanoi

 

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World.

Tower of Hanoi is a super simple, surprisingly fun logic game suitable for early elementary through adults.

I have a weakness for solitaire games, especially logic puzzles. I’ve built up a respectable collection thanks to thrift stores and yard sales, but there’s always room for one more puzzle in my life, especially one that’s NOT made from plastic!

This Tower of Hanoi is NOT made from plastic! Instead, it’s made from that likely-looking piece of corrugated cardboard hanging out there in your recycling bin. Cut it up, add some decorations, and you’ll have yourself a brand-new version of a 140-year-old logic game.

Here’s everything that you’ll need to DIY your own Tower of Hanoi:

• corrugated cardboard. Since the pieces are manipulatives, I prefer the thicker, sturdier corrugated cardboard over the thinner kind for this project.
• measuring and cutting tools. You’ll need circles of varying diameters to use as templates for your Tower of Hanoi pieces. Look around, and I bet you can scavenge these circles from your existing bottles, cups, caps, etc.
• embellishment supplies (optional). You don’t *need* to embellish the pieces, but since when did that stop anyone from making something pretty?

Step 1: Measure and cut the pieces.

You can play Tower of Hanoi with three or more pieces, but I think seven or eight pieces are a good total number to have. You can always subtract pieces from a larger set to make a round easier!

To make the complete puzzle look like a lovely tower, select circle templates with different diameters, ideally ones that will give a nice graduated look from smallest to largest when you stack them. As you can see from the above photo, you should be able to find all of these circle templates around your house. My smallest circle template is an eensy SodaStream flavoring bottle cap, and my largest is the top of a plastic drink cup from my favorite pizza place–I also used the bottom of the cup to make a different circle!

Trace all the circles onto corrugated cardboard, then cut them out by hand with sturdy scissors.

If you like the way the undecorated Tower of Hanoi looks, you’re done! However, I think the game looks a LOT cuter with some embellishment…

Step 2: Decorate the pieces.

With seven pieces to my puzzle, how could I NOT make a rainbow?

One of the many amazing things about corrugated cardboard is that it takes all kinds of embellishment like an absolute dream. I painted these circles with Liquitex acrylics, but Sharpies or even Crayola markers all show up well. Use Mod Podge to decoupage scrapbook paper, or paint plus paint pens to make more detailed artworks on these tiny canvases.

Step 3: Play!

The rules of Tower of Hanoi are simple:

1. Start with the tower stacked with the circles in descending order, smallest to largest.
2. You have three total spaces in which you can work, and you start with the stacked tower sitting on one space. Younger players might benefit from having a play mat on which you’ve drawn out three spaces for them, but it’s unnecessary for older players.
3. The objective of the game is to reassemble the tower on another space. The reassembled tower must again be stacked with the circles in descending order, smallest to largest.
4. You may move one circle at a time between any of the three spaces.
5. You may NOT stack a circle on top of a circle that is smaller than it. Circles can only be put on empty spaces or stacked on top of circles that are larger than them.

The above photos illustrate a few different moves in the game. I don’t want to give you too many moves so that I don’t spoil your fun, but you can see from the photos the three working spaces, and the circles that are placed on a space or on top of a larger circle.

Remember that you can’t move an entire stack of circles at once–you can move only one circle at a time!

If you want to see the game in action, check out this online playable version.

If you’re a mathy kind of person, there IS a mathematical solution, and a pattern, to this puzzle. Figuring out how to record your moves is also a great introduction to analog coding, for those of you interested in STEM enrichment.

Want to give someone you love a sneakily educational gift? A beautifully embellished Tower of Hanoi inside a lovely little carrying case is just the thing!

Know a kid who’s high-energy and always seems to need more gross motor activity? Upscale this to a giant 3D version that they have to use their whole bodies to stack! Exercising their brain will make them just as tired as exercising their body, so you might even get a full night’s sleep!

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I Read The Water Will Come Because I Wasn't Afraid Enough of Drowning (JK I Am The MOST Afraid of Drowning!)

Found a new-to-us creek access (and soooo many snakes) on the kid's college break!

The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I actually read The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet first, and loved it so much that I immediately checked out another of Goodell’s books-and two weeks later, I’m reviewing this one, too!

I don’t love this book, at least not for its writing style. In The Heat Will Kill You First, I feel like Goodell really cracked the pattern of vivid anecdote followed by elucidating science. The anecdotes WERE very vivid, which drew me into the science, which gave me the information, and then off I went to the next chapter. This book still has the science, but the anecdotes are a little less vivid and less interesting, or maybe I’m just less interested and don’t feel as much of a call to action reading about real estate as I was reading about migrant laborers dying in the fields. I don’t really feel sorry for the people who live on a narrow spit of land in Florida and want their shitty gravel road maintained AND I don’t feel sorry for the county government that has to spend all the county’s money yearly rebuilding a road that serves a whopping twenty people. 

Okay, I feel a little sorry for the county that raised its roads and got sued, anyway...

Other times, though, the real estate anecdotes worked. I’ve been interested in the Marshall Islands since my older kid studied it in AP Human Geography. My entrypoint was how cool stick maps are (I’ve since seen a real Marshall Islands stick map in a museum, and it’s just as cool in person!), and that same class also covered how the islands are being affected by global warming, but not in the vivid, anecdotal detail here. Goodell also showed me another unexpected point of connection to the Marshall Islands: many of the people there are leaving for my home state of Arkansas, of all places! I don’t love that for them, since they’re apparently mostly working at the chicken plant there. Fun fact: my high school chemistry teacher would threaten us with future employment at the chicken plant if we weren’t studying hard enough. The chicken plant is the WORST work, and I don’t wish that on anyone, much less people forced to leave paradise due in quite a large part to America’s actions.

On the trail down to the new-to-us creek access, we also found a lovely spot for a portrait!

This would have been a great book to read with my teenager when she was studying AP Environmental Science and AP Human Geography, and it’s also interesting to read it in today’s political landscape, when I can see connections between climate change and the COVID pandemic, Israel’s attempted genocide of the Palestinians, and Russia’s war on the Ukraine. Mostly, though, it makes me want to take a trip to Miami Beach. I’ve never been there, and it doesn’t seem like IT’s going to be there for very much longer, either…

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