The Eastern Tent Caterpillar Hatches

This was quite a year for Eastern tent caterpillars, and Will, especially, just reveled in them. She held them, she let them crawl on her while reading or doing schoolwork, she lost them in the house and then rediscovered them crawling across the kitchen table or on someone's shoulder (sigh), she built habitats for them to watch them eat and cocoon, she wrote about them in her journal, she showed her friends how she could gently put her hand inside a tent and pet the hundreds of caterpillars inside, she bravely defended them to adults who griped about them being pests--"Actually," Will would always speak up, her reticence about speaking to adults forgotten in defense of her caterpillars, "Eastern tent caterpillars are native to this region. They won't kill trees."

Finally, after the entire caterpillar season was over--after many caterpillars were helped across streets and parking lots, after many caterpillars were brought inside to play before being taken back to their trees, after a jar filled with leaves and twigs and several caterpillar cocoons was left out in a rainstorm and drowned, to much devastating grief and guilt--Will found herself with one last Eastern tent caterpillar, one last chance to love it, feed it, give it a safe place to cocoon inside her kid-made bug barn, and raise it to an adult.

She hatched this weekend:

I didn't realize that the moths would be so pretty! This one is female, and she was so cutely fuzzy. Look at her feathery antennae!

They're nocturnal, which I suppose explains why I've never seen them before, and the females also have a very short lifespan, so we got this one back into her environment as soon as possible so that she could eat, mate, and give the kids some more babies to love on next year.

Will is a little sad that there aren't any more Eastern tent caterpillars around to love, but at least she has a good three dozen tadpoles in a glass aquarium out on the back deck to comfort herself with.

Special Effects Makeup for the Girl Scout Entertainment Technology Junior Badge

Girl Scout badges are something that we work on almost every day, often as part of the kids' schoolwork. If you were diligent about the extra activities that you assign or the badges that you select, you could absolutely use Girl Scout badges as your entire homeschool curriculum, but we tend to work on the kids' Girl Scout badges as unit studies along with our other studies--it's a great way to insert novel areas of study into my otherwise pretty methodical lesson plans.

One of the badges that Will's been working on for a while now is the Entertainment Technology Junior badge. She's filmed a stop-motion animation, built a thaumatrope and a catapult, programmed in Scratch, and done a lot of reading and documentary watching. A few weeks ago, she said that she wanted to complete the "Create your own special effects" step, so I pointed her to the children's face painting book that I had checked out of the library for this, helped her find the face paints and brushes, and set up our giant mirror outside on the deck for her:

The mirror is filthy because, although it's huge, we're always moving it, often outside, for various activities.

Will REALLY wanted to paint Syd's face like a puppy, but Syd just was not going to let her. Syd did, however, consent to act like a puppy for us:

Instead, Will decided to paint herself like a zombie: 

I've been wanting to restock this clown makeup with additional colors for YEARS. Now that we're finally out of white, that's my excuse!

 Will worked hard on herself, with a ton of focus, and was THRILLED with the results!

Immediately after this, we biked over to our polling place so that I could vote in some local primaries (and spend some time with the kids studying and explaining the ballot--it's part of Will's Inside Government Junior badge!). Will was hugely tickled to discover that every single poll worker was interested in hearing the entire story behind her makeup--of course, instead of actually telling them the story, Will just began to act like a zombie who was staggering over to eat their faces off, but that's her way of acting thrilled. One poll worker was so impressed that he clearly sensed a kindred spirit in her, and pulled out his phone to show her a bunch of photos of a greenhouse that he built behind his house. That dude has a pineapple tree in his greenhouse! And a fig tree! With figs!!!

Will still has a few activities that I'd like her to complete before I sew her Entertainment Technology patch on, but to be fair, this badge is HUGE, encompassing what amounts to an entirely different subject for each step. This is absolutely one of those badges that, if you were schooling solely through Girl Scout badges, could take you through an entire semester of math, science, history, creative writing, technology, and art. 

My Latest: Blue Jeans and Rosemary

Matt took the kids to a Girl Scout camp-out at the professional baseball field in Indianapolis this past weekend, so I had a full 24 hours to myself--the longest, I think, that I have EVER spent away from my girls!

It was wonderful. That first night, after they had left, I baked French fries for dinner, then read and watched Harry Potter movies until I fell asleep in the smack middle of the bed. I got up super-early the next morning, as I often do, and then realized that, gloriously, I did not have to tip-toe around the house for the next two hours! Up north in Indy, our other early riser, Will, discovered that getting up super-early at the baseball field meant that she was one of the few girls to get to have a doughnut before they ran out. Back here at home, I turned on the lights, made some coffee, and got right to work with the crafting and writing that I had to do; by the time the rest of the family got home that afternoon, I'd written three posts for my freelance gigs, completed two urgent craft projects, and packaged and mailed an etsy order--basically my entire weekend's work! And that's not even counting the cooking, cleaning, gardening, exercising, and shopping that I also got done.

But back to that writing--here it is:

a write-up of 3D design software that can reduce production waste

a tutorial for breaking down blue jeans for crafting

and a tutorial for upcycling broken coffee mugs into plant pots

Productivity like that *almost* makes me want to suggest that Matt take the kids out for the day more often, but I would really only want to do that if he promised to only take them places that I didn't want to go to, too, like to the middle of a baseball field to sleep, or to the Children's Museum for the thousandth time. Anywhere else, and you'd probably find me right there with them, elbowing the kids aside to get myself to the front of the line.

Book Review: The Forgotten Seamstress, by Liz Trenow

Take note: My reviews always contains billions of spoilers! Be warned!


The Forgotten Seamstress by Liz Trenow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fair warning: I was given this book by a publicist who knows that I like "crafty" books.

This crafty book, however, also speaks to another of my reading passions: the postmodern novel. If you haven't read The Crying of Lot 49, think of The DaVinci Code, I guess--you've got your questionable narrators, your ending that isn't totally tied up into a neat little package, your mixing of high and low cultures, your "metafiction", etc. Add to that my further loves of mysteries and conspiracy fiction, and I was happy as a clam reading about a prince's secret seamstress lover, the conspiracy that incarcerated her in a mental institution for decades, and the tricky methodology for establishing the provenance of a quilt of hers that resurfaced something like a century later.

My favorite aspect of the novel is the relationships between the female characters. The men are either thoughtless cads who use their wealth and privilege to abuse a woman without money or resources, servants of the plot (like that interior design guy), or amiable, affable, easy-going fellows who most definitely would NOT seduce a woman, lock her away, and kidnap her baby. The female characters, however, are complicated, they suffer and prevail in small ways and then suffer some more, but are able to rely on each other in ways that they cannot rely on their families or the men in their lives. It's telling, I think, that the prince does not rescue (or even seem to think about ever again) his former lover; it's the heroine's best buddy who eventually finds her and saves her, and the woman who secretly, illegally adopted the heroine's baby who aids her, and then brings her into her family, as well.

Because relationships are complicated, and lives can be sad, it's fitting that the book doesn't end with absolutely everything happily ever after. Frankly, I have doubts about the longevity of Caroline's business idea--patchwork upholstery? Really?--and that antique quilt is never going to be the same, no matter how extensive the restoration, and why would you not want to tell the world that you're a part of the royal lineage?!? Are UK people just bored with the whole royalty thing, that they seriously wouldn't be interested in being Queen Elizabeth's great grand-niece or whatever? I'd totally be all over that--I want to be a duchess!

But the ending fits the book, since you know that when the story is over, there is still going to be some sad and some happy and some sad again in the characters' lives, just as their will be in ours.

View all my reviews

Homeschool Field Trip: St. Louis Zoo

The St. Louis Zoo will likely be the final zoo that we visit in our Year of Zoos, since it was last June that the kids and I spent a day at the Cincinnati Zoo. And as we were four hours into a ten-hour drive from Arkansas to Indiana at the time, we spent approximately three hours at the St. Louis Zoo, not the full day, but nevertheless, the adventure made both children very happy and our Will saw plenty of those animals that she loves so much.

When we've got a limited time to visit someplace, I like to let the kids check out the map, then each choose one spot for the whole family to visit. This has worked in big places, like the National Mall, in small time increments, like 90 minutes at the Children's Museum, and it worked well for one afternoon at the St. Louis Zoo (it wouldn't have if the zoo hadn't started its late summer hours just that weekend--phew!). Will got to choose first, since she'd gracefully[-ish, eventually] conceded to Syd's desire that we go to the zoo instead of the St. Louis Science Center, as Will wanted--I came out on Syd's side, since I preferred to spend the afternoon walking around in the nice weather rather than following the kids and standing around while they played inside a museum, and, since Syd's working on her Girl Scout Bugs Brownie badge and Will's working on her 4-H Entomology project, I wanted them to see the insect exhibit at the zoo--and she chose, as always, the reptile exhibit:

This kid seems to have a special connection with animals, and I am always seeing moments like these.

There was an empty habitat in which the background scene was still being painted, and both kids, old hats at scientific classification and museum signage, found much humor in the academic in-joke that was this sign:

Syd found navigating us next to Sea Lion Sound, her choice, to be a pretty big challenge--

--but we got there eventually!

The children never tap or bang on habitat walls, ever, but I do often notice them gently placing a hand against a transparent wall as they observe the animals inside:

My choice, obviously, was the insect habitat, although frankly I almost changed my mind when I saw who was sponsoring it:

Seriously?

Each summer, I toy with the idea of raising silkworms, since we have two mulberry trees in our yard.

We're not doing the intensive butterfly study that we did last year, but we still very much love them.

 We needed to buy some young chicken sitter friends some souvenirs, so Matt made his choice be the gift shop, which is conveniently by the exit, an aid to an easy transition out of the zoo:

The promise of choosing a statue to pose by also helped get them out.

 After our fact-filled animal afternoon, I looked in the rearview mirror soon after we'd gotten back on the road to find Syd entertaining herself thusly:

Hydra vs. griffin should DEFINITELY be a zoo exhibit!

Homeschool Field Trip: Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma

Spiro Mounds weren't unbearably boring as I'd thought they were as a child, but the place was calm, quiet, and peaceful, so I can see how I'd thought so at the time. Straight from Cahokia Mounds with a mind full of context, however, and in the company of my own family, they were quite pleasant to hike:

We had a self-guided tour (a single photocopied pamphlet, borrowed from the front desk, with some faulty pagination--how many decades has it been so?), several informational signs along the way, and our own prior knowledge to help us understand what we were looking at, especially as many of these mounds are vastly smaller than the giant Cahokia Mounds that we were used to. Almost a game to try to see the humps in the meadow:

I believe that this was also our first long family hike through this particular type of terrain:

The kids had mixed feelings about plains-hiking. On the one hand, it's a change of pace, with a much different view--and no hills! On the other hand, there were zero of the shady trees that always lower the temperature as we hike, and, as Will often helpfully reminded us, it was hot!

Matt invented a game with her that I'm probably going to regret the next time we go anywhere: the gist is that everyone is on a field trip (Gee, where could they have gotten that idea?), and they're all whining at their teacher, only it has to be silly whines. So Will can now hike happily enough, as long as she's also whining, "Mrs. Templeton (that's my imaginary name in this game)! My water bottle is only half full!"

"Mrs. Templeton! That squirrel is climbing on the mound!"

"Mrs. Templteton! Where's the bathroom?"

"Mrs. Templeton!"

Yeah. Thanks, Matt.

Of course, in the South, the payoff to everything being blazingly hot outside is that the air conditioning hits you with a wall of bracing cold as soon as you go back inside, so everyone had a pleasant time cooling back off in the museum, looking at antiquities, watching a documentary, and, you know, grinding a little corn:

This museum doesn't have even a fraction of the budget of Cahokia (as a matter of fact, we almost couldn't pay the admission to get in, because they didn't have a credit card reader--yikes!), so I was frankly impressed that the place was as respectable as it was--outdoor historical sites require a LOT of maintenance! I still want to visit Serpent Mound, but with this trip, I think that these two kids of mine have absorbed just about as much information about the Mound Builders as they're going to be able to absorb for a while.

And since next weekend, we have our dinosaur dig orientation with the paleontologists and other families who'll also be at our dino dig in a month and a half, I think it's about time to move our geography and history studies out West!

P.S. I heard a lot about this scandal during our visit, and I requested this book from our university library as soon as we got home:
I'm prepared to be both enthralled and horrified by it.

My Latest: Zombies and Your Old Sports Gear

a review of the Pentagon's actual Zombie Preparedness Plan

a round-up of DIY projects that upcycle old sports gear

and a tutorial to make a tennis racket butterfly net

To my delight, both kids adored their spring tennis classes. Although we're hopefully to move away from the beautiful park across the street, and its many tennis courts, soon, I'm nevertheless eagerly anticipating many, many more tennis games with the children in my imminent future. These classes that build real, useful skills, and contribute to the enjoyment of everyday life, are my favorite type of extracurricular. I hope that the kids' ability to ice skate well, ride horses safely and confidently, play softball and tennis (must add soccer and basketball to their skill set at some point), build a slab or coil pot, start a fire, turn a cartwheel, act in a play, and swim like fishes will help them to have very, very happy lives. 

Cahokia Mounds Homeschool Field Trip

As a kid, I swear I was traumatized by the MOST BORING FIELD TRIP EVER to Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma (more on that later). It was hot and buggy, I don't remember actually knowing a bit of context for what I was looking at, it seemed as if all the kids had a bad attitude, including me, and I was so little impressed by the whole experience that 25 or so years later, studying the early Native American Mound Builders with the kids, I had absolutely zero personal information to contribute to our study.

I was a bit concerned, therefore, that our field trip to Cahokia Mounds in Illinois might suck a little, but I figured that at least there are hiking trails, and our kids like to hike, and if it sucked too much we just didn't have to stay very long.

Yeah, we stayed for a LONG time. Cahokia was so awesome that we basically stayed until we either had to get back on the road or resign ourselves to arriving in Arkansas at midnight--Central time!!!

The best part of Cahokia IS definitely the hiking, since you can't climb on any but one of the giant mounds, of course:

Still, it's very fun to hike around the flat meadows, discovering mounds and other natural beauties in clearings and around wooded curves in the paths:

We hiked for quite a while, and then explored the excellent museum:

I researched extensively for our Mound Builders study, and still I didn't come close to providing the context and enrichment and detailed information that we all got here in this museum. There were exhibits on the Mound Builders, on the lives of the Native Americans who lived in Cahokia, on the archaeological excavations of the place, and on the artifacts that were discovered. Syd even found some pottery!

And we're absolutely trying this recipe in the fall:

One thing that was an annoyance throughout our entire visit was the presence of two or three unruly groups of children too old to behave that way on a school field trip. Most of their annoyance wasn't malicious, of course, but simply their failure to realize that there might be any other humans also present, trying to enjoy the mounds, who weren't on their own personal field trip. They did a lot of talking and laughing loudly, covering the entire swath of walking paths in giant herds and not noticing the approach of other pedestrians also trying to use the path, and stopping in groups to have casual conversations while blocking exhibits.

I half-heartedly attempted to justify their behavior to the kids by explaining that maybe these children didn't get to go on adventures very often and were just too excited to remember their manners, but of course what the kids mostly took away from the encounters was my unconscious body language that shouted to the heavens, I'm sure, that I was completely over it. And so, later, as we loitered at the foot of Monks Mound, waiting for Will to catch up and for perhaps that other field trip to descend before we climbed up, ourselves (this biggest mound is the one you can climb on!), Syd happened to look to the path behind us, then suddenly screamed out, "FIELD TRIP COMING!!!", for all the world as if it were a horde of zombies lurching toward us, or an army of Huns bearing down.

We laughed, but we did get our butts in gear to beat them:

Can you see the Gateway Arch in the background?

I hadn't paid too much attention to what the kids packed for this trip, other than to tell them how much of what to bring (four outfits, including underpants; comfy clothes for the car and for sleeping in; Nook/ipad stocked with library books; math book and journal; colored pencils or crayons and pencil; toothbrush and hairbrush; six very small toys; water bottle), so I didn't really notice nor care that both kids had only brought their Crocs, but let me tell you that I will not make that mistake again! While Crocs are comfy, apparently, for day-to-day wear (I don't know--I've never worn them), they are completely unsuitable as active wear. Both kids suffered in them for the entire trip, and Will took to ditching them whenever she possibly could:

Cahokia also has a treehenge, although it was too overcast to cast a shadow:

I'm pretty sure we should build our own treehenge at our new house, though.

If you're planning a road trip that takes you anywhere near St. Louis, Cahokia is an absolute must-see, especially with even a brief unit study of early American history to preface it. There are no resources that even compare to a physical visit (and yes, you could say that about any place, but it really applies even more so here, since there are no digital or video resources that even approximate the experience), and visiting it adds crucial context to any Native American or American history study, context that you're just not going to find elsewhere.

Be that as it may, here are some of the resources that we enjoyed as we studied the Native American Mound Builders and Cahokia:

• Stuff You Missed in History Class: Cahokia