Homeschool Book Review: The Art of Doodle Words

I'm happy to admit that art is the hardest subject for me to incorporate into our homeschool. Syd is a gifted artist and needs lots of art enrichment, but resents any art instruction that doesn't come from her father, who fortunately is also a gifted artist, but is not at her beck and call, and certainly not during the average school day.

Will's gifts lie elsewhere, which means that she needs art just as much but is often clueless about how to go about it, and reluctant to pursue it.

I try to incorporate a weekly hands-on art project that both kids can engage in despite their varying skill levels. I've tried and so far failed but have high hopes to try again in the winter semester to include a comprehensive art history study. What has worked most consistently, however, for several months now, is to include daily art time in Syd's weekly homeschool work plans. She is generally left to do what she pleases during this time--mostly mermaid drawings or more panels for her comic strip about office workers who are also cats--but is expected to be accountable for what she's been working on, and to keep a portfolio of her work.

Every now and then, however, I come across an art book that I think Syd will really love, and I'll assign it to her for her week's work. Such it was with The Art of Doodle Words, which I received for free from a publicist. I handed it off to Syd, said, "Here you go. Show me what you make!" and left her to it.

And she made lots!

The book is super clever, in that it shows you how to incorporate themed doodles into words, kind of like your own Google Doodles. It's the perfect book for a tween who loves to draw, loves things to be cute, and is extremely clever.

I love her whale:

Her cat is a little more abstract, but I can read it, especially the yarn ball "C":

Here, I think, is where she really started to get the hang of it. All of "BACON" is made of bacon--except for the "O", which is an egg, and her cotton candy looks just the way that I feel after eating cotton candy:

I actually didn't even see, at first, that the dots on the "I"s are the eyes of the smiley face. How clever is that?!?

I like the way that Syd started to play around with the concept more after a while. She didn't doodle the actual letters in "DREAM," but played more upon the overall idea of dreaming to make a more complex sketch:

And now she's moved into slogans!

The pizza would look cute in color, I think, but I really like the bites taken out:

 And the fox is very adorable and autumn-themed:

This was such an easy book for Syd to follow, and the concept was clear-cut and easy to recreate, but it was a very valuable way to spend a week of art, because the extensions to this idea are unlimited. We've got this book in our home library now, shelved with our other art books (because you know that I have our home library shelved according to Library of Congress call numbers, right?), so that Syd can continue to refer to it as her interests change and experience grows. Syd's also really into black and white right now, but I think these would look well with color, Prismacolor markers or perhaps even watercolors.

That was by far the easiest hands-on art unit that I've ever planned!

P.S. Want to learn more about our hands-on homeschool and all the fun projects that work (and, more importantly, don't work!!!)? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

She Made Homemade Gummies

Our Syd has looooong been obsessed with gummies. Like really. They're her favorite thing EVER. She's always thinking about them. Every time I ask for grocery shopping requests, that's the first thing that comes out of her mouth and I have to make her tell me something more reasonable to eat for lunch. She collects the empty wrappers from whatever gummy candy she does manage to manipulate people into buying her. She traded away lots of premium Halloween candy to Will in exchange for all of Will's gummies.

She LOVES gummies.

Obviously, the kid's obsession with store-bought junk food is no end of annoying to me, and so every now and then we've tried different DIY versions. We've done the Glee Gum's Make Your Own Gummies kit twice, and working with carageenan is pretty awesome, but Syd did not find the texture or flavor to be similar enough to her junky, yummy, store-bought gummies. For a while Syd was also pretty into trying to make her own gummies (mostly inside soda bottles, because she REALLY wanted a giant gummy soda bottle) using flavored Jello and extra gelatin, but those always tasted like lightly-flavored plain Jello--barf!

I thought that I had the ultimate solution when I read Confectionery House's gummy recipe, especially because they also sell a starter kit with all of the ingredients included. I splurged on the kit, had Syd pick out a couple of molds and a candy flavoring, and one evening (which explains the crappy lighting in these photos--sorry!), Syd made herself a batch of gummies:

mixing the gelatin 

pouring the gummy solution into the molds

The recipe was super easy to use as written, although I think that the instructions to add the flavoring oil "to taste" really made us go wrong. Syd was squeamish about tasting the liquid gummy solution and stingy with the flavoring oil that she knows is super expensive, and so although the gummies looked perfect--

--and their texture was absolutely spot-on--

--she did not like the way that they tasted:

Without enough flavoring oil, they basically taste like straight glucose, which is not a taste that I recommend:

the face of a man who does not like what he is tasting

Syd solved the problem somewhat by adding powdered citric acid to make the gummies so sour that you can't taste anything else:

We have enough of the supplies left to make another batch, although Syd isn't very enthusiastic, discouraged as she is by this first try. When we do try it again, however, I'll supervise better and make sure that she uses plenty of flavoring oil--I'll even taste test it like you're supposed to!--and I'm hoping that more flavor, combined with the spot-on texture, will be a winner.

I mean, I guess? It's not like this recipe is health food, although I guess we're avoiding the preservatives and most of the food dyes. But I do think it's valuable to show Syd that good homemade versions of whatever she likes CAN be made, even if the store-bought crap is still cheaper and more convenient.

Personally, I'd still love to play around with other DIY gummy recipes, especially ones that use natural sweeteners and healthy ingredients, although I'm not in love with the idea of putting in all that work only for the kid to turn her nose up, as I suspect she would, due to the fact that they're not going to look and taste like sour gummy worms or whatever. 

But winters are long, so maybe we'll give it a try one gloomy, chilly day. If so, here are the DIY gummy recipes that I've been collecting for us:

• gummy polymer chemistry. I like that this recipe includes the science lesson that explains polymer chemistry. That would make it a good science enrichment for our gloomy, chilly day!
• homemade healthy gummies. I like the idea of using these gummies to sneak in ginger, cod liver oil, or whatever other superfood I want the kids to have against their will. You think they'd notice if I made them some raw garlic gummies?
• Jello soda bottle. This is one of the kinds of YouTube videos Syd watched that made her really want to make her own. I do feel like we could use this recipe to make a gummy soda bottle--maybe that will be Syd's motivation to try the recipe again! Or possibly the giant rainbow gummy cake would be more her speed these days...

So that's the order of operations, the next time I can tempt Syd away from the candy aisle and into the kitchen with me:

1. Retry this recipe with more flavoring oil, until we have a good, authentic gummy recipe in our pockets.
2. Try out healthy gummy recipes until we've got one that Syd likes, even though she'll never admit that she likes it as much as she likes sour gummy worms.
3. Use one of those recipes to make some of the ridiculous gummy novelties that make the kids eyes grow big. I will not stop until someone has said "Wow!"

To the Apple Orchard, Nine Years Later

I have long campaigned with the children for a four-day school week, so that we can take a day trip or have a relaxing day at home without fuss. They've never gone for it, because they know good and well that this will only mean more work assigned to them for the remaining four days, but this semester I reworked our entire work plan scheme to have fewer daily assignments and more "due by the end of the week" assignments, and as part of the process I gave us a four-day school week.

I love it. The kids do, too. I should have insisted upon it earlier.

Mind you, some weeks we waste that free day on a Monday, making up work that the kids just didn't get done by the previous Friday, but overall it's been a dream to have that day in the plans, and not have to shuffle everything anyway every other week because obviously we've always taken day trips.

And one of our favorite day trips is one that I've just realized we've been doing for NINE years now! Check out the tiny little peanuts that I took on our first trip to an apple orchard in 2009:

They've grown in so many ways--

--and yet haven't changed at all...

To be fair, eating apples right off the tree IS the best part of the apple orchard:

Of course, as late in the season as we tend to go, it is a little harder to get your hands on them:

Oops. You're not supposed to take off so much stem and leaves, but she did pretty well considering that she had to leap for it:

We did a much better job getting the high ones back in 2013, the year that we convinced Matt to go with us:

Fortunately, we did have a helper on this day, too:

 This was Luna's first trip to the apple orchard, and she had herself a wonderful time:

During our picnic lunch (apples, of course, and things to spread on apples)--

--the kids were goofing around and discovered something brand-new about our beloved doggy that we've had for almost two full years now:

Why, that doggy loves apples!

Turns out that she'll even learn a new trick for an apple!

The kids had so much fun getting Luna to do tricks and rewarding her with apple that I had to ready-reference real quick to make sure that it's okay for a dog to eat, like, an entire apple in one sitting.

Thank you, Google!

An important part of the apple orchard experience is paying too much for a Jack-o-Lantern pumpkin:

New this year, however, was the snack shack, which has never actually been open when we've visited before. Obviously, then, we had to buy an apple cider slush, a piece of apple pie, and an elephant ear. Take a bite, pass it on, and repeat!

Another important part of the apple orchard experience is coming home with waaaaay too many apples.

Or at least, I thought that I was coming home with way too many apples, but 1) I now have not a toddler and a preschooler, but a tween and a teen (and a DOG!), and 2) at a garage sale over the summer, I bought one of those apple peeler/slicer/corer thingies for a VERY low price, and I brought it out for the kids when Will complained about peeling an apple. They never listen to me when I tell them that you can eat the entire core, and that the peel is full of fiber.

The chickens, at least, have been thrilled with all of the apple peels and cores that they've been getting, and we ran flat out of apples in one week. Before I could make any applesauce. Before I could bake a single pie. Before I could juice anything. Before I could dry apple slices or make apple fruit leather or apple butter. Before the kids had even gotten tired of eating umpteen apples a day and keeping the doctor away!

And that's how nine years after our very first trip to the apple orchard, we've now become the family that makes the trip twice in one season.

I hope they have the snack shack open when we go, because that apple cider slush was VERY tasty!

Movement and Grace: Scenes from the Ballet Classroom

Syd has been dancing ballet since the age of four. It's one of the governing passions of her life. It's the only extracurricular, other than Girl Scouts and our volunteer work, that she chooses. She loves ballet, and I love watching her dance.

Indulge me in the matter of a few photos, then. Syd's ballet program only invites parents into their classroom for one week every semester. I agree with this policy (me!!! Who NEVER agrees with anyone else's rules!!!) because Syd, at least, finds the presence of parents, in particular her own, super distracting and does not enjoy Parent Observation Week, but for me, it's the only week each semester that I get to watch my kid in class--AND take photos and videos of her!

You're luckier than my friends and family, in that here I'm only going to #mombrag with the rare photos that I could catch of Syd without her peers identifiable in the frame, an especially challenging strategy in that I highly suspect that Syd chooses her placement during Parent Observation Week to be as far from her Mom's giant camera as possible.

As if there aren't three other Moms with giant cameras sitting right next to me. She's not the only embarrassed kid, I assure you!

This is one of Syd's ballet teachers this year. She was her sole ballet instructor last year, and Syd and I were absolutely thrilled that she got her again this year, too. Honestly, out of all of the ballet teachers that Syd has ever had in this program, both faculty and college ballet majors, this college student is the best teacher that Syd has ever studied under. She is the best teacher, in any subject, that I have ever seen. She's extremely demanding but still encouraging, she motivates the kids, is quick to correct and to praise, gives each of them tons of attention, tells them stories about her own ballet experiences, and teaches them the choreography that she's learning for her own performances. She hands down leotards that she thinks might fit them. Sometimes she even does their hair. She advocated with the head of the program to cancel pre-pointe class on Halloween so that the children will have time to trick-or-treat. Every time she interacts with the children, it's easy to observe what a gifted teacher she is, and how invested she is in the kids' growth and well-being, and how she enjoys their company and really sees them for who they are as individuals. She is exactly the mentor and role model that you would want for your tween girl in the world of ballet.

Also, my kid is the best stretcher in class. Just saying.

Excuse how grainy and blurry my photos are. You would think that a ballet studio would be well-lit, wouldn't you? Well, I'm here to tell you that it most certainly is NOT.

Jazz is a new class offering this year. Syd does not prefer it, and likely wouldn't choose to go if I didn't encourage her to, but I LOVE it. They dance to music that has a drumbeat! And guitar! And a melody with words! And I usually know the words! Because it's usually Weezer!

Ballet at this time of year is even more exciting, because we are well into rehearsals for the university's yearly production of The Nutcracker. Syd will be dancing the role of a party guest this year, and although she's pretty bummed to be cast as a male character for the second year in a row, meaning that she has to wear pants and a wig instead of a beautiful dress and her long hair styled into ringlets, the silver lining is that I don't have to learn how to use a curling iron yet, and my well-practiced performance bun is a thing of beauty and majesty.

And even if she's not dancing the part that she most wants, she's still dancing--on the big stage, to the music of a live orchestra, in front of hundreds of people, and with her friends. It's the thing that she most loves to do, and whether I'm backstage or in the audience, I'll get to do what I love most, too, which is watch her being happy.