April Favorites: Orpheus, Alice, and Temeraire

Don't even bother trying to smash any records with your reading goals, y'all, because Will has already read 118 books this year.

Thirty of them in April!

She's sad, silly girl, because this isn't as many books as she read in March; we've been outside more, and she's been studying a LOT more for her AP European History exam in two days.

Will finished the His Dark Materials series last month, and now counts the entire series as among her favorite books from the year:



She read Moby Dick, and amused me to no end by how much she genuinely loved it. I would NEVER tell her that I think a book is boring before she's had a chance to read it for herself, and so I do think that as she read me tidbits of the book, laughing over inaccurate information about whales and despairing over the captain getting crazier and crazier, she really did so in ignorance that much of the literate world considers the book to be a mournful slog through overbearingly obtuse prose.



Another of Will's favorites is another old friend, and she and I both adore the His Majesty's Dragons series. Will is the one who first got me into the series--of COURSE!--but this book is new to both of us, as the library didn't have it until I asked them to buy it. And they did!

It's not on my list for this month because Will took it from me and read it instead. I actually looked for it this morning so I could start it but couldn't find it anywhere so I started The Andromeda Strain instead. It's around somewhere, probably under the couch or on the stack of books on the kitchen table or, ooh! Maybe in the backpack that I took to last Friday's Girl Scout meeting!



Here are Will's other favorites from the month:



And here's the rest of what Will read in April!



I didn't read much in April, and what I did read I didn't like much of. This little graphic novel that I zoomed through on a Saturday afternoon was actually my favorite of the bunch:



It has all my favorite things: camping, badge-earning, and bookish loners who don't know how to socialize.

I also read a disappointing novel about the workers of the Manhattan Project's Secret City; a parenting book that has mostly succeeded in pissing the kids off because now most afternoons I kick them out for an hour of "unstructured, active outdoor time;" the Alice in Wonderland books; and a biography of Lewis Carroll that tried sooooo hard to convince me that he wasn't a pedophile.

I'm still pretty sure he was a pedophile.



Just like books, YouTube is a great place to delve into our random obsessions. In the car a few weeks ago, I heard an NPR interview with the composer of Hadestown; I barely managed to make it to the gym and then back home before I was on YouTube looking for clips. It's a post-Apocalyptic/Depression-era retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice--are you surprised that I'm obsessed?

Here's Persephone:



Ooh, and here's Persephone with Hermes and then Hades, and a little bit of Eurydice at the end:



Here's an older recording of the soundtrack, which I'm also obsessed with. The new recording of the Broadway version is going to be out next month--mark your calendars!

Syd really likes to watch ballet videos, so we watch a lot of those when we hang out together in the evenings:



And then often the suggestions after those videos lead us down some very strange rabbit holes. Did you know about Japanese precision walking?!?



And then this apparently iconic cheerleading competition performance that shows that cheerleaders are REALLY good with rhythm--



--which led us to wonder what cheerleading competitions used to be like. A lot tamer, it turns out, but that's surely too high to stack people:



Will discovered these Architectural Digest videos, and now that's what WE watch when we hang out together:





Rich people homes are ridiculous.

Did YOU read or watch anything ridiculous in April?

Girl Scout Make Your Own Badge: Keyboarding

I have been telling you guys for six years now that Girl Scout badges are AMAZING for getting kids to try new things and stretch themselves in new directions. One of my kids built a genuine dog house for a badge. The other kid wrote an honest-to-god screenplay. I don't know, I could probably sit here for an hour and name off the cool things both kids have accomplished solely for the lure of that prestigious badge on their vests, but I'm actually only sitting here because Will is sitting next to me memorizing the Document-Based Question rubric for the AP European History exam and then we're going to go over her DBQ draft and outline it using the rubric as our spine and then she's going to write another draft of it, so, you know, my brain is already busy.

Instead, here's the latest thing that one of my kids has done for a Girl Scout badge: Syd, who doesn't take piano lessons, learned to play a song on our keyboard.

There's another entire history there, how I super wanted both kids to learn an instrument when they were littler, and managed to get one kid into guitar lessons and it went pretty well for a while before it crashed and burned, and managed to get them both to sort of unenthusiastically study keyboard and/or recorder at home off and on for a couple of years before they both finally wore out my patience and I let them drop it.

Enter the Make Your Own badge. This is a retired Girl Scout badge program that lets kids create a badge topic, come up with their own five steps to earn that badge, and then complete those steps and actually design the actual badge that the kid can proudly wear. Back when the MYO badge program was active, the Girl Scouts had a site where kids could use clip art to make these badges, and since its retirement, some groups and companies have started making small runs of embroidered badges for kids who are all interested in the same thing.

My kids are always interested in weird things, though (Syd's last MYO badge was Doughnut Designer), so I simply bought a few blank badges that we can draw and paint on, and asked them what they were most wanting to learn how to do these days.

Syd's answer?

Well, she wanted to learn how to play one of her favorite songs on the keyboard. Specifically, she wanted to learn how to play Shawn Mendes' "In My Blood."

And, just in case you think that I would finally be delighted about one of my kids FINALLY showing interest in a musical instrument, no, she didn't want anyone to teach her this song. No lessons. No instructors. No YouTube tutorials. No mentoring allowed AT ALL by ANYONE.

You're less delighted for me now, aren't you? You're even thinking that it simply can't be done. I mean, this isn't "Twinkle, Twinkle" or "Mary Had a Little Lamb." So, whatever. I told Syd I thought it was a terrific idea and I internally gave up on it. She'd work on it for a while, get frustrated, discover it was impossible, drop it, forget all about it, and I'd have her pick something else later.

But what actually happened is that my kid, through the most obtuse channels, did actually learn how to play a passable version of this song! And the way that she did it is absolutely bonkers.

1. She browsed through free piano game apps for her cheapo, four-year-old Kindle Fire that's the only tablet that she owns, the poor little lamb. Her mother is so mean! Eventually, she settled on this one, which has the primary characteristics of having the song that she wanted AND having a virtual piano keyboard that she can look at. Mind you, it doesn't have the notes on the keyboard, but that's cool because she can't read music.

2. She played the game, one of those "touch the screen at the right spot at the right time" rhythm games, a billion times to earn enough points to unlock the Shawn Mendes song that she wanted.

3. The song's game drops the melody notes onto a piano keyboard; touching the notes at the right time causes the full score to play and earns you points, etc. Syd played this game hundreds of times, first matching the game's keyboard to our keyboard by ear, then transcribing the game's musical notes. She tried several methods for this, too, including numbering our keyboard keys with a dry-erase marker, creating her own musical code and writing the notes down that way, and drawing her own keyboard and trying to tag the notes that way. It was painstaking to watch, made up mostly of trial and error, and took absolutely forever because you can't rewind the song on the game. To transcribe the notes in the middle of the song you have to play to the middle of the song on the game, over and over and over.

4. Syd learned the melody piece by piece, using trial and error not just for the actual notes, but also for the rhythm. When she forgot a note she'd have to play through the song on the game several times to figure out what she was doing wrong, then transcribe it to the keyboard all over again.

5. Finally, Syd got to the point where she felt like she had the melody memorized, and she had much more fun making it sound the way she wanted it to.

It's not perfect. I mean, obviously--you read how she learned the whole thing off a Kind app!--but it's sure as hell impressive for a kid who can't already play the keyboard, or read music, or play any other instrument whatsoever. I'd say it's worth a Girl Scout badge for sure! And you guys: this is the kid who has sneaked or weaseled out of 80% of her assigned schoolwork since the day she turned 12. She's the kid who, when I asked her what she wanted to do with her life, told me with a straight face that she wanted to sit on my couch, play Minecraft, and make art forever. Part of me is breathless with relief that she DOES have grit and determination, and part of me is gnashing my teeth as I wonder why she can't apply even an ounce of that grit and determination to her math curriculum. Grr.

This will be the cover photo for her upcoming CD, I think:

So the moral of the story, the best I can figure, is this: who cares what the "right" way to do something is? If you want to learn to play "In My Blood" on the keyboard, and you don't want to take lessons, then you go ahead and teach yourself. So what if you don't have proper fingering? The insistence on and privileging of "being taught" something as opposed to teaching yourself is kinda elitist, if you really think about it. Not only are there loads of people who don't have access to piano teachers and properly weighted keyboard keys who would love to play themselves some Shawn Mendes tunes, but there's also plenty of room in the world for people who simply don't feel like taking lessons and would rather drag that Shawn Mendes tune out of a digital toy by the scruff of its neck and muscle it onto a keyboard all by their dang selves.

And then they get to put a badge on their vest to show that they can do hard things just for the fun of it.

Our Mini Bookshelf from The PVC Pipe Book

Check out this quick and easy project that I made on one of the first shirtsleeves weather days this spring:



It's the Mini Bookshelf from The PVC Pipe Book (which I received for free from a publicist), and it came together in the time that I should have been spending cooking a decent, nourishing dinner for my family:

I'm pretty sure that we had sandwiches for dinner that night, but whatever. I built a little bookshelf from scratch, AND I painted it!

It's meant to be the latest foray in my neverending quest to make the big table that we use as the kids' school table during the school week (and which they're SUPPOSED to clean up so that we can use it for family stuff each weekend but they never do and I'm perennially too lazy to add it to my list of things to nag them about), but I think I might like it even better in its current set-up:

We're deep into a stretch of shirtsleeves weather days--yay!--that make school outside the perfect thing to get the kids a little more enthused about book work until that stops working and I have to think of something else. We are also on high alert, as yesterday, our whole family was sitting on the couch admiring the children's Easter baskets when we heard a chicken start fussing outside. I ran to the open deck door (because shirtsleeves weather!), saw something orange tumbling with one of our Brahma hens, took another step forward and saw that it was a genuine, BBC documentary real-live FOX trying manfully to snap my sweet baby's neck while she squawked and struggled and tossed feathers everywhere.

I, too, began hollering, ran out across the deck, slipped and almost broke my dang neck, bent down to grab Syd's Crocs (that she was supposed to have brought in last night, sigh...) so that I could start throwing stuff--my second choice was going to be my cell phone--but by the time I stood back up and readied my throwing arm the fox had completely disappeared and Brahma Hen #3 was booking it back to the flock where she was supposed to be in the first place. Will, who was part of the also-hollering idiot mob who ran out behind me with no idea of what was going on but clearly ready to do some brawling, claims that she saw a streak of orange disappear back into our woods.

Brahma Hen #3 is fine, thank goodness. She's so big and fluffy that it looks like the fox didn't even break the skin, although the amount of feathers she had flying at the time had me sure that the fox was something like four chickens deep by the time I ran out there. I'd say that I hoped the whole flock learned a lesson from her experience, but I'm sitting by an open door right this second and can clearly see our little blonde and brown hen, much less fluffy and definitely much smaller, just bopping around all by herself miles from the flock but painfully near lots of great hiding places for foxes. I swear, they cause me as much worry as the kids do sometimes!

So that's how we spent the less fun part of our Easter Sunday strengthening the chicken coop, researching foxes (Matt looked up from the computer at one point and said, "This website claims that the fox has probably been watching us for days and knows our routine!" so now we've got not just regular life but a high-key stalker to think about), and trotting Luna out to "keep watch" and "guard the chickens" for us. I have no idea if she's actually capable of these tasks, since the last time a chicken died on our property SHE was the reason I had to euthanize it, but still. She's bigger than a fox, at least.

And now we can spend our school days outside, not just enjoying the lovely weather and getting some fresh air, but keeping a weather eye on the goings-on of the backyard and the fool hens who are SUPPOSED to be staying with that rooster who I tolerate even though I have to take a stick every time I walk around my own property and turn around suddenly every few feet as I walk to catch him acting like he wasn't just about to jump me from behind BECAUSE HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE PROTECTING MY SWEET BABIES FROM FOXES.

How is YOUR week going?

P.S. If you've got the PVC to make this mini bookshelf, you should also have your kids make this PVC pipe bow and arrow set and PVC pipe sword. It'll help them in their battles against the foxes, don't you know?

Homeschool Science: The Chicken Egg Osmosis Experiment

When Syd and I played with gummy bear osmosis, I wanted her to observe water passing into the gummy bear and causing it to expand.

It did. It was cool!

With this chicken egg osmosis experiment, I wanted the kids to understand that osmosis can go both ways through a semi-permeable membrane. If the more concentrated solution is inside the cell, water goes there. But if the more concentrated solution is outside the cell, then that's where the water goes.

Bring on the naked egg!

You can dissolve the shell from an egg as a simple, hands-on demonstration with little ones, as an early elementary human biology lesson (and demonstration of why we brush our teeth!), and as one of the projects in an acids/bases unit of a chemistry study--we've done all of these, so it's old news but still always fun.

And if you have sensory-seeking kids, there's nothing like the feel of a chicken egg with its shell dissolved away:

And speaking of sensory-seeking kids...



I promise that, current evidence to the contrary, she is very intelligent. Just don't try this at home, okay?

Sigh...

So as you've gathered, before we violated every lab safety standard and Licked the Science, we soaked the eggs in vinegar for long enough to get them nice and bloated, as osmosis equalized the water inside the egg with the water outside it. The kids' challenge was to find a solution to soak the eggs in that would cause water to migrate FROM the egg TO that solution, thus shrinking the egg and lowering its mass.

The kids weighed their eggs in grams, labeled jars and put the eggs in--

Guess whose jar belongs to Syd?

--and then went in search of a solution with the proper characteristics. Will chose canola oil (spoiler alert: it worked); although I encouraged Syd to use her notes from the gummy bear osmosis experiment to inform her choice, her first idea was baking soda dissolved into water and dyed blue. This had the opposite of the desired effect, as you can see from the fact that her egg is now blue:

It looks really cool, though! It would perhaps be a fun continuation of this project, when done with small children, to dye the water a rainbow of colors.

I stopped photographing the eggs at this point because they were soooo gross (and Will did NOT lick one again), but you'll be pleased to learn that for Syd's second try, she chose dish soap. Success!

If you've got even more time to play, you can do this similar but more academically rigorous osmosis experiment with potatoes, instead. You can also watch this neat little animated model of a cell membrane in action.

Trashion/Refashion Show 2019: Gibbon Girl

It's fun to see how Syd has grown in the nine years that she's participated in our town's Trashion/Refashion Show:

2011: Fairy Princess

2012: Rainbow Fairy

2013: Rose Dress

2014: Upside-Down Orange

2015: The Awesomes (with WILL!!!)

2016: The Phoenix (which I sewed while sick with the flu)

2017: Supergirl of the Night (the last design that I helped Syd sew)

2018: Medieval Maiden (the first garment that Syd constructed completely independently)

And that brings us to 2019: The Year of the Gibbon!

These are Syd's application pictures, and every year they suck, because February is rarely well-lit. Oh, well. You can still see that Syd's vision is a caped black tunic and leggings (upcycled from a few black tops and sweaters that we thrifted). The highlight of the garment is a pair of sleeves that Syd can make look ruched, but can also make look like this:

She used a pair of pants for those sleeves, and later altered it so that she could have a secret pass-through for her hands when they're in their super-long formation.

Syd really, really liked the idea of sleeves that drape like a bridal train, but she also intended from the beginning that they could be fully weaponized, like so:

I love seeing her have so much fun with her design. From the very beginning, Syd's garments have always been playful, and most of them embrace big, powerful movement.

Her garments are never something that you simply wear; they're something that you DO:

 Our town's Trashion/Refashion Show is happily well-situated within our busy spring every year--it's generally about a month after cookie season, and about a month before Syd's birthday party. It's nice, because as soon as we finish planning for one thing, we can move right into the next!

The day of the fashion show is the hair/makeup call, then the stage rehearsal, then cooling our heels in the house while the other acts rehearse--

--then the pizza party--

--then the fun time of squeezing into a few square inches in the overcrowded dressing rooms backstage--

--and then I go sit in the audience with the rest of the extended family, and Syd?

She shines.

Here are some cheater pics that I took during the dress rehearsal:

And here's the real show:



This year's official show photographer has been taking photos for four years now, and he also created the slideshow that played between the acts. Check out this awesome tribute that he made for all of the Trashion Kids--he made a whole slide for each kid that he'd seen come back every year, and here's Syd's!

Look at how she's grown. Syd actually HATES it when people tell her how much she's grown (it's Nutcracker-related trauma on account of they cast by height and they're always looking for the shortest kids and it sucks), but look at the kid in those photos. She has grown! Syd has always been an artist, but she's become such an able DIYer, too, confidently constructing her vision garment from top to bottom, shoes to hairstyle. Those leggings? She sewed them from a stretchy black sweater, sure, but she also did it WITHOUT A PATTERN. No template. She didn't even trace another pair of leggings! She just... started cutting, sewed them up, and boom. Perfect leggings.

Perfect leggings. Smoky eye shadow that she applied herself. A garment with sleeves fit for royalty and suitable as long-range weapons.

I absolutely can't wait to see what this kids does next.