Christmas and Cookies 2016

This was my children's first Christmas in their own home. The first time in 22 years that I haven't taken a road trip to Mamma and Pappa's house for Christmas.

I tried to keep it calm and mellow, the better to mask when I needed to go hide in the bathroom and cry for a few minutes, and, of course, I had to honor my Southern heritage of eating one's pain, and that meant---

Cookies! ALL THE COOKIES!

Syd and I made the gingerbread dough the day before, let it chill, and then Matt and I cut out the house pieces and baked them that evening after dinner. The next morning, a cup of coffee in one hand, I melted some chocolate and assembled them. After breakfast on Christmas Eve, they were ready to decorate!

 We really only "needed" gingerbread houses--

--and a couple of cookies for Santa--

Will has posed with her finished gingerbread house just like this every single year since she was five.

--and yet somehow we ended up with over a dozen gingerbread cookies extra AND an entire batch of homemade sugar cookies, to boot...

Okay, this gingerbread person might be a *little* inappropriate. I'd possibly broken out the bourbon by this point...

Syd got to this Millennium Falcon before Matt did, and decided that it was a bunny.

Meanwhile, Will turned the actual bunny into an alen.

Another alien

Syd decorated these to leave out for Santa.

And I don't really know WHAT she was thinking when she decorated this guy!

As much as I miss Pappa, I will say that it was nice to go to sleep in my own bed on Christmas Eve, and to wake up in my own bed on Christmas Day, sit in front of my own tree on my own floor--

Dog included!

 --and see what Santa brought everyone.

Santa brought Syd a Rapunzel doll and Will some magnetic Thinking Putty.

Will's grandma gave her a game of Exploding Kittens.

I bought the kids this marker airbrush, and as soon as I'm done writing this, I'm going to go snatch it out of their arms and play with it!

Syd gave Will some bracelets. She liked them.

Will gave Syd a charger for her tablet and a pair of headphones. She REALLY liked them!

Somehow even the cats and the dog ended up with presents.

Gracie LOVED her cat toy.

Luna did NOT like this Santa hat.

Will is super into dragons, so I bought her this handmade stained glass one from Glass Castle Arts.

My brother-in-law and his girlfriend bought us our newest Most Favorite Game EVER.

 And my mother-in-law introduced Will to the phenomenon of the Softest Blanket EVER:

She has been in this blanket burrito pretty much ever since.

 I never could figure out why you'd want to eat another traditional American feast just one month after you already had one, so we went to our favorite Indian restaurant for Christmas lunch (I thought we'd be the only ones there, but it was hopping!) and came back home to lie on the bed with comfy and full tummies and watch TV, play with stuff, and color for the rest of the evening.

Oh, and eat cookies until our tummies were no longer comfy. Can't forget the cookies!

It was... okay. And next year, I have high hopes that it will be better than okay.

A Visit to St. Nick, and the Christmas That I'm Enduring

I had a different kid a year ago. I had a kid who I bribed to do her schoolwork. Who took every instruction, whether it be "brush your hair" or "please pick up that piece of paper from the floor" as an invitation for a fight to the death.

Who refused to visit Santa.

This year, that same kid sits down and completes all of her schoolwork every day without prompting. She has her moments, but she's a genuine help most days. She even brushes her hair!

The other kid, mind you, hit her tweens the second that she turned ten, and she's now my kid who sneaks out of her schoolwork and wanders off to play when she's given a chore.

But she's still very much a kid at heart--they both are, really--and this year, hallelujah, I was able to get them both over to Santa's couch for a nice little visit:

It was a Christmas miracle.

Of course, you can't visit Santa at the Children's Museum without doing all the other stuff at the Children's Museum, too!

I didn't realize something until we were in the dino dig pit for the thousandth time in the children's lives and a friend whom we'd met there asked me how this set-up is different from the real dino dig site. I looked around us, blinked in surprise, and said, "Huh. Not much, actually!" The experience of digging, chipping off the matrix from the fossils, is pretty similar to what it's really like to expose fossils in the field. The walls around the pit contain a 360-degree panorama of what actually does seem to be our South Dakota dig site. And outside the dig pit is a wall with more fossils to chip out, and those fossils are embedded into a bank that is just about identical to the actual bank that we actually dug actual fossils out of!

Every Christmas, and again in February, the museum transforms its stairway into a slide!

Last year, one of these kids would NOT ice skate on the pond.

This year, however?

Yeah, she seemed to feel okay about letting loose.

 This one's always okay with letting loose!

I'm not going to lie--this Christmas is hard. I feel guilty every time I mention how hard this year as a whole has been for me, because there have also been so many amazing and wonderful things. I mean, how petty does someone have to be to call a year in which they went on a cruise to Alaska "hard"? It feels gross to call it such. Babies are dying in Aleppo. I'm lucky and I know it.

And yet... this year has been hard. This Christmas is hard. Not even a minute ago, in response to something casually cruel that Will said (despite her attitude change, she *is* still a tween...), I looked up from this computer and said to her, "I'm not going to tell you that you can't feel the way that you do, because you can, but I will tell you that you're feeling that way because you're immature. I would give so much to be able to see my grandparents again, and one day, when you're more mature and it's too late, you're going to feel the exact same way."

The last time that I saw my grandfather was last Christmas.

So I'm really not trying to make this "the best Christmas ever" or any of that other crap. I'm just trying to get through it. I'm putting on my game face as well as the holiday music. I'm faking it until I make it. I'm doing all of the other cliches that describe what you do when you need to make something great for your kids while you, yourself, are feeling deeply sad.

It's a fortunate thing, though, that when you deliberately try to give happiness to your kids, they have a tendency, the little ice skaters and Santa's lap sitters and pretend dino diggers, to give it right back to you.

Work Plans for the Week of December 19, 2016: Food Crafting, Lots of Science, and CHRISTMAS!!!

Yes, these work plans are late. We had a day trip on Monday to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, and day trips always throws off my blogging schedule, as I can only find the time to write on my personal blog on the days that I'm not doing my paid writing for CAGW.

These work plans are also a bit of a repeat. School last week went okay, but I seriously underestimated how much a business trip of Matt's would affect us. It was quite an eye-opener to realize how much I depend on my partner to get that second load of dishes done and that second load of laundry and haul the kids around to their evening activities and supervise the completion of their last bits of school so I can veg out and even turn off the TV after I fall asleep. Nothing like waking up at 3:30 am because YouTube randomly switched from my livestream of the ISS to a video on the hollow Earth conspiracy theory, not being able to get back to sleep, and then spending the entire day either chauffeuring kids or madly scrambling to make party food that we need THAT DAY and etsy orders that have to be shipped THAT DAY and checking my email to confirm the address of Will's Pony Club party and discovering that not only does it start half an hour before I thought it did, but that there's a GIFT EXCHANGE!!!

I donated a publicist's review copy of a cookie decorating book and kit to the cause. Not only can the publicist apparently just hold her breath and wait for that review that now isn't coming, but dang it, it was also going to be a Santa gift for Syd!

AND I get there to drop Will off and a co-hostess expresses (maybe slightly passive-aggressive) surprise that I'm not staying, because apparently all the other parents are staying, even though there was nothing said in any of the emails about parents being expected to or even welcome to stay. And she's the first kid there, because maybe it really does start half an hour later but there was a mistake on the email? Or I'm just really prompt? I never figured that out. And then Syd and I get home so I can make a play dough etsy order real quick and find that the dog has pooped on the rug by the door, maybe because she wasn't feeling well or maybe because we'd been in and out of the damn house all damn day and hadn't had time to play with her. And then Syd and I spend all of Will's party time making and packaging my play dough order--

I couldn't have gotten it done without my play dough chef!

--then haul the dog into the car with us (because I'm sure as hell not leaving her alone again!) to run back to get Will 15 minutes early from her party so I can go in and pretend like I'm a good, attentive mom, only to find her alone with the hostess AGAIN because all the other guests and their good, attentive moms randomly left fifteen minutes before THAT.

We drive back, get the dog in the door, and are greeted by Matt, who FINALLY got home, after a delayed flight, from his trip. I am just a teeny bit ashamed to say that I walked straight into his arms and burst into tears.

And that, Friends, is why that Friday's schoolwork became Tuesday's schoolwork, completed on Tuesday without manic energy or fuss of any kind.

Memory Work this week is mostly spelling words, because I can't make Syd do her Wordly Wise at home so we're doing it in the car, where she can't get away, instead. Books of the Day are more books from the Banned Books list and some pre-reading for the Black History Month essay contests that the kids usually enter. Other daily work includes typing practice through Typing.com, keyboard with Hoffman Academy lessons, journaling or story prompts with me, Wordly Wise for Will and Word Ladders for Syd, their current events journal (it wasn't meant to be a long-term project, but I keep extending it because I'm so pleased with how it's going), and for Will, SAT prep through Khan Academy.

Tangent: If anyone is interested in our prep plans to get Will ready to take the SAT in the spring, as a seventh grader, just ask!

And here's the rest of our week!



MONDAY: We spent the day at the Children's Museum!

TUESDAY: Both kids are almost done with their respective semesters of Math Mammoth, with Syd finishing her final review next Monday (because yes, I am making the kids do math next week so that they can finish their respective semesters by year's end) and Will doubling up math lessons next week and finishing on Friday. They're both doing coordinate planes still, although Will's math adds in integer calculations and Syd's math adds in graphing with different types of graphs.

That's one reason why the coordinate grid foldable, although it's not as hands-on as I usually like my hands-on math to be, is so useful; the kids retain their calculating ability but often lose the terminology, so after they labeled this coordinate plane I had them put it in their school folders to keep as a reference tool.

The kids do one lesson a day in their Analytical Grammar (for Will)/Junior Analytical Grammar (for Syd); Will is currently studying adverbs, and Syd is studying prepositions. In February, after essay contest season and the National Mythology Exam, I'd like to start a packaged writing/literature unit with both kids (I'm a little embarrassed that I don't want to create my own curriculum, as that's exactly what I used to do for years as a freshman comp instructor at our local university... but I don't!), so hopefully we'll have reached a good pause point for Analytical Grammar by then.

There are so many fun activities to explore the difference between inherited and learned behavior, but we did just one more to cement the concept before moving on: the Animal Survival Scenario worksheets from this unit. I required the children to answer in complete sentences and to provide a video example to flesh out one of their claims. Will used this gorgeous video from Planet Earth to flesh out her claim that swimming is a learned behavior in polar bears.

Aphrodite and Ares are our subjects in Greek mythology this week; interestingly, D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths does not tell us the story of Aphrodite's origins, so Will helpfully read it to us from The Myths of Greece and Rome. We prefer Guerber's edition to the Bullfinch, just so you know. The trading cards are also coming along well, with the kids drawing thoughtful images on the front and writing relevant facts on the back of each.

I had thought that I would change our our literature activities by the week, but the kids are really enjoying reading and checking books off of their MENSA reading lists, so we're just going to keep running with it. I'm looking forward to graduating Will up to the next list, because she's been complaining lately that she's read everything in the children's department and most everything on the young adult shelves--and she has! I walk the adult fiction shelves with her and help her choose books sometimes, but of course mom recommendations are always suspect, so more reading lists with more books that she hasn't read are ALWAYS welcome!

WEDNESDAY: The current module in our Animal Behavior MOOC is animal communication, and after watching the introduction to the module, this day's assignment asks the kids to interact for ten minutes with a pet, then write an essay describing the animal's communication during that interaction.

Will has always been a reluctant writer, so I'm thrilled that Syd loves it so much. She's taken to the Junior Scribe badge activities with gusto, completing them all independently, although I do have vague plans to perhaps encourage her to illustrate her work and then get it printed and bound into a book... we'll see. Fortunately, Will seems surprisingly enthusiastic about earning her Leader in Action award, which requires leading an entire Girl Scout troop meeting--and if there was ever proof that Girl Scouts encourages kids to stretch themselves out of their comfort zones, this is it! She has several possibilities for activities related to the Brownie World of Water Journey, including making polymer clay raindrops, edible aquifers, seashell crabs, and terrariums, We'll be making everything except the terrariums (I forgot to buy activated charcoal) today, so that Will can evaluate each in regards to how difficult it is to make, how difficult it might be to teach, how consistent the results might be, and if it seems fun!

I continually wish that I was doing more with Story of Science, as one reading comprehension activity and one hands-on activity don't seem like enough to distill all of the interesting content from the chapters, but I also bought those Quest Books so that I could save myself the lesson prep time... Perhaps I'll sit down over our Christmas break and research more activities, or perhaps I'll learn to let it go. Regardless, we're sticking to the Quest Book for this week, so this day's activity is answering reading comprehension questions for chapters 6-7.

THURSDAY: This day's Animal Behavior MOOC videos are on signals and information and modes of communication. After watching the videos, the kids will explore the Animal Communication Project to learn more about various animals, and also research video examples that provide evidence of the claims made in the Animal Communication Project readings.

Our Story of Science demonstration on this day is changing the acidity of water, using bromothymol blue as an indicator. In order to do this demonstration, however, my good friend has to dig through all of her stuff to find her bromothymol blue that she's going to let me borrow (because doesn't everyone have lab chemicals in their pantry that they're willing to lend out like a cup of sugar?), so if it doesn't turn up, we'll put off the demonstration until it does.

My kids don't exactly realize that not everyone receives random craft kits in the mail like magic, so they're never quite as excited to review them as I am, but even they're pretty revved up about this Star Wars felt kit that we're going to test out and write about. I'm thinking we'll turn them into ornaments!

FRIDAY: As with all other instructors on the last day of school before Christmas, I don't expect to get much done today. If they can get their daily assignments and a trading card for Ares completed, then we're going to spend the rest of the day making gingerbread houses while drinking hot chocolate (mine with bourbon) and listening to Christmas music.

And then it will be Christmas!

Homeschool Math: Measuring Tall Objects Using Ratios of Similar Right Triangles

I know that sounds really complicated, but it's actually pretty simple.

Take two similar right triangles:

via Skwirk

For these triangles, angle A = angle D. Angle B = angle E. And angle C, obviously, = angle F. The sides that make these angles are proportional: AC:CB = DF:FE.

If the ratio of triangles ABC:DEF was 1:10, then you could multiply side AC times 10 to get side DF. You could multiply side BC times 10 to get side EF. Here's more information about how that works.

To measure something really tall, then, you're going to use that 1:10 ratio. Here's what you do!

1. Go find something really tall. Hmmm..... I wonder what is near us that is also really tall?

Found something!

2. Measure out 30 feet from the drive-in screen:

A couple of places for human error here are the fact that the ground has a slope and that the kids are measuring, so don't expect perfect accuracy.

3. Take two yardsticks. One goes straight on the ground, pointing toward the drive-in screen. Set the other up so that it makes an angle with the prone yardstick, then put your eye as close to the vertex as you can and sight up to the top of the drive-in screen. 

It was about 20 degrees, max, on this afternoon, by the way. This kid is a baller.

4. Get a partner to wrap the angle with duct tape so you can move it. Our yardsticks also came with holes in the ends, so a better method would be to buy a bolt, washer, and wingnut so that you could simply tighten the wingnut and hold the angle that way.

In a pinch, though, duct tape is fine:

5. You are now going to measure out your similar right triangle that's 1/10 of this size. So whereas you were 30 feet from the drive-in screen, you now need to be three feet from the drive-in screen:

6. Place the vertex of your angle at the three-foot location, get back down on the ground so that you're once again eye-level with the vertex, and sight back along that top yardstick again:

7. Verbally direct your partner to the point that your sight-line leads you to. Warning: your partner might be kind of acting like an asshole:



8. Measure the height from the ground to that point (side BC), and multiply by ten. Your answer is side EF, or the height of the drive-in screen!

When we did this, we got a measurement of 60 feet for the drive-in screen's height. I have no idea if this number is at all correct, particularly since I can pinpoint several instances of possible human error in our process. The next time that I happen to see the family who owns the drive-in, however, I plan to ask!

If you're doing this project with kids, you'll probably want to limit the large something that you measure to less than 90 feet, since 1/10 of that would be 9 feet, and even middle graders are going to have a hard time reaching up that high with a tape measure. I  also wouldn't use this for measurements of heights that you could easily measure by hand, since smaller numbers will just make the inaccuracy of the human error stick out more--even a miscalculation of five feet isn't such a big deal with a drive-in screen, but for a nine-foot deck, that same miscalculation would be pretty egregious.

And yes. This is one of the many reasons why I love math!

The Nutcracker 2016: Mommy's Little Soldier

Syd earned a promotion this year at her Nutcracker audition. No longer an angel, bringing light back to the world, this year she joined the ranks of the tin soldiers who fight in the Nutcracker Prince's army in the battle against the mice.

Not only did this mean more stage time, but it's also a more interesting role, with varied choreography and an actual plot to uphold and interaction with the adult dancers. It was a lot more responsibility, but a really fun role for a kid.

Never one to slack off in her preparation, Syd soon developed a background for her character, who she decided is a hardened veteran of many battles against the mice:



Just between us, the soldier's costume is also MUCH cuter than the angel costume, even with its wings and halo. Soldiers wear navy shirts, white pants with suspenders, black spandex leggings that they pull up over their pants to look like boots, navy jackets with gold details, and cardboard hats with straps under the chin and shiny silver starbursts on the front:

during the fitting in the costume shop

and in the dressing room, waiting for the call! I'm about to fix her leggings so they match.

I also took a more active role this year. Last year, there was a sexual assault case concerning the college student dancers and one of their dance instructors that occurred during Nutcracker rehearsals, and although it didn't go anywhere near the world of the child dancers, it opened my eyes to the vulnerable position of children in the performance industry, relinquished by their parents for hours at a time, weeks at a time, during rehearsals. Whatever else I know about myself, I know for sure that I can keep track of multiple kids for as long as I need to, and get them ready to go and where they need to be exactly when they need to be there, so whenever I wasn't at fencing or watching the show, myself, I volunteered backstage with the soldiers, knew where all of them were at all times, forced them all to go pee before their call time, hairsprayed all of their fly-aways into perfectly neat soldier buns, fixed all of their little jackets so that the gold stripes lined up just so, refused to let them sit down after they'd put on their white trousers, let the most nervous among them dry off her clammy hands on my T-shirt seconds before showtime, and, surprisingly, really, really, really enjoyed myself quite a lot. I have no desire to dance onstage, myself, but I can see why Syd likes it!

Will and I share fencing, so volunteering backstage is my chance to share Syd's world, and enjoy it with her.

Ballet dancers have a lot of crap! You've got your costume, your hair stuff, your street clothes, tons of food, a book or two, and card games. Lots of card games. There were MANY Uno and Spot It! tournaments during the long waits backstage, fulfilling the stereotype of soldiers and their card games.

Here Syd is, reading Wonder for the billionth time. This is also my only good photo of her soldier bun, which is just like the angel bun, only it has to be on the smack top of one's head.

 But what do you think the little dancers like doing most of all?

Watching the livestream of the show! It always began about 35 minutes before our own call time, and as soon as the curtain opened, all the soldiers would crowd around to watch. And yes, they danced along, because they're just that adorable.

 One of the cutest parts of the show, however--and there are MANY cute parts--is that during intermission, some of the costumed children are chosen to mill around the lobby for photo ops. I prepped my soldiers by telling them that it was going to be like being Mickey Mouse at Disney World, and it was seriously adorable to watch people mobbing them for photos:

Syd, of course, had a wonderful time, danced her heart out, enjoyed the hours of downtime spent with her friends, liked having me there, and got so much of value from the experience. And I have to say that I, too, had a wonderful time. I loved watching Syd dance her heart out from the darkness, just a few feet away (while keeping a weather eye out for that one curtain that had a lot of potential to clock a soldier in the top of the head as it fell). I took pleasure in watching her play around with her friends and eavesdropping on all of their kid conversations. I could not have been more thrilled to finally get to see her up close in her costume and take pictures to my heart's content, even if they were on my crappy camera phone. I came home absolutely exhausted from the stress and the human interaction and all the running around every single night, but that chance to spend time with Syd in her world?

Totally worth it.