Tales of Homeschool

Co-op Science Week 18

2012-01-27T08:33:00.000-08:00

Chapter 2 of ACS Inquiry in Action

This week we tried to identify a mystery crystal.

We started off by giving the students 4 knowns: sugar, salt, MSG, and Epsom salts. I had written those 4 names in silver marker on the corners of half-sheets of black construction paper, which I handed out. I also wrote the chemical formula for each on the board, and gave a bit of commentary. I'm trying to get them used to seeing things like "NaCl" -- Thalia said that she absorbed an amazing amount through the years from just being exposed to us mentioning various concepts in the course of conversation.

For example, I told them I thought "maybe sodium was Na because that was short for 'natrum', which is what the Egyptians used to mummify -- hey, did any of you ever mummify a chicken? (blank stares from class) Really? I thought that was a standard homeschool thing to do for history ...." etc. In other words, the random prattle my kids have been subjected to for years, which has apparently worked as an introductory course in Random Stuff.

We handed out copies of the first activity sheet so they could follow along with the reading, and answer questions or draw pictures as they desired.

We also handed out magnifying glasses. Our co-op has a bunch of plastic ones, so I have no tips on where to find cheap ones, although I'll note that CVS struck me as fairly expensive. The salt, sugar and Epsom salts I had around the house (one girls was eager to share that they used Epsom salt to remove a stinger when her brother had a bee sting). I used to have a little container of Accent (MSG) but had thrown it out years ago -- I wasn't even sure it was still sold -- does anyone actually USE this stuff? But I found some at Target, along with a box of the unknown, which was kosher salt. And the other mom and I walked around distributing small piles of the various crystals on their construction paper.

The kids really liked using the magnifying glasses on the crystals. A few thought the mystery crystal was sea salt. I asked how sure they were, and moved on to the next activity -- the hardness test.

(Although one boy was pretty sure we should try to identify the unknown by feeding all of the crystals to fish -- I assumed he was talking about doing an LD50, although there IS an aquarium in the room, so who knows what was going through his head.)

We talked a little about controlling the experiment -- how will you know that you're treating each crystal the same, without variability? Really a pretty decent discussion -- the kids seemed really engaged in the necessity to think like scientists. I think this might've been the point at which I reminded them that Galileo just made do with the equipment he had centuries ago -- he didn't have the uber-accurate digital clocks, so he measured his pulse to gauge time (I'd brought this up last fall in class). We distributed plastic spoons, and set them loose crushing crystals, recording their observations on the appropriate handout if they so chose.

Finally, the solubility test. I gave a quick rundown on why we measure by weight rather than volume (this was outlined in the ACS handouts -- I used Rice Chex for my demo, and a bucket balance we had at home [probably for elementary math, although I really don't recall why we have it] -- as usual, the kids liked the part where I pounded the Rice Chex into little bits, although they were quite argumentative about whether we had the EXACT SAME AMOUNT afterwards). I also drew a quick graph on how the amount of sugar that will go into solution varies by temperature, while salt pretty much remains the same -- this was also in the ACS material -- I asked the class if they were used to reading graphs, and again got the blank stares, but forged ahead based on the above-mentioned theory that they should be exposed to new concepts even if they don't know exactly what I'm talking about.

Also, when I'd looked up the chemical formula for MSG I noticed that the wikipedia article gives all sorts of standard info for it, which I showed them on the iPad. Things like the melting point, the LD50 ("Oral, for rats.", "but why do they use rats? Rats are really cool!", "I know -- we have pet rats -- that's just what they often use for those experiments.") and solubility -- scientists have figured out this stuff and have this info around in charts to help them figure out new stuff. Pretty clever, eh?

I demonstrated how to do salt and sugar -- dissolving them in hot water (I had taken hot water in a Thermos), swirling in plastic cups while the other mom counted out 20 seconds on her watch. Then we formed 3 groups, I measured out the weight equivalent of 10 paper clips worth of each substance using the bucket balance so each group had samples of all 5 (salt, sugar, MSG, Epsom salt, unknown) which we put in tiny Dixie cups, handed out plastic cups, and had each group organize themselves. The other mom counted out the seconds for everyone en masse while they slowly swirled their cups. It was really a pretty cool experiment, and we discussed how the different things dissolved.

The final activity per the ACS curriculum involved re-crystalizing the water that had just been poured off of the crystals. I knew we wouldn't have time for that in class, so I had done it at home the day before, and took the plastic cups of crystals in to show the kids.

And, in the end, the kids who guessed sea salt were pretty close in knowing what the mystery crystal was. I really liked the more creative guesses, though, like Splenda and white sand -- I sort of suspect the kids who said "sea salt" just figured out how most of these demos-for-kids work ("okay, they won't have anything TOO weird for us to figure out") while the outliers will do better in a real lab some day.

Really, we barely had time to get through all of these activities in an hour, plus do a little clean up of the water we'd spilled on the tables. I think we're going to slow down the pace a bit, since I feel like we're rushing through all of this helter-skelter.

I think the kids are learning a lot about how scientists work, though. As I said, they seem really engaged in the process. No clue if they're actually learning any chemistry.

Co-op Science Week 17

2012-01-19T07:25:00.000-08:00

Oh, how proud and excited I was to have a curriculum all laid out for the next several weeks! I started working through the next lesson several days ahead of time, happy to be so organized.

But then, whoops, I got sick. To the point that I did NOTHING for several days. And decided it was time to haul out Plan B.

When I started teaching this co-op science class I decided I needed to have a Plan B in case I couldn't be there, or I absolutely couldn't get stuff together to teach on some particular week. Hey, weird stuff happens, and when you're in charge of a bunch of kids for an hour, it's nice to have a Plan B.

My back-up plan was Zoom Puff Mobiles. Over Christmas I'd purchased one of those books of Lifesavers that has several rolls of the candy inside -- it had about 84 Lifesavers in total. Opening up one of the rolls, I realized that our usual drinking straws were actually too big to fit through the hole, so I stopped by a dollar store and got some cheapy narrow straws. Then it was a matter of printing out several copies of the pdf file (which is in the "Printable" section of the website), adding paperclips, scissors, tape and scrap paper to my supplies, and voila, instant busywork!

When we all arrived at class we talked a little about chemistry. We discussed what we had done the week before (dissolving M&Ms) and I asked if anyone had tried any other experiments, like trying to dissolve the coating in sugar water. No one had. Then we discussed the Periodic Table of the Elements just a bit -- I wanted to get a feel for whether any of them had a clue what it was. I borrowed Ellen McHenry's analogy of the elements being like cooking ingredients in a kitchen. Most of the kids seemed to be fairly clueless about the Periodic Table.

Then I said, "Okay, that's it for chemistry. Let's do an engineering project!", and enlisted people to start handing out supplies. A couple of kids asked if they could work as a team, which was fine.

We had a quick math lesson about how many Lifesavers would be needed for everyone in the class to get 4 vs. how many were in the packages I had, bearing in mind that some of the Lifesavers would be broken (and, indeed, the cherry ones seemed to be pretty fragile).

Also, BONUS, I brought extra supplies in case I had extra kids in the class, since this seems to be happening consistently in everything I do lately. And, sure enough, there was an extra kid. But I totally expected to have an extra child that no one had bothered to tell me about ahead of time! Yay me! Take that, universe! I'm on to your tricks!

The kids who have been in the class the entire time had a blast. They worked fairly quietly (thankfully, since I sort of felt like laying down on the floor and taking a nap), and showed great co-operation in sharing things like tape dispensers. Some of the new kids were a little timid about the entire thing -- I kept repeating that real engineers try an idea, see if it works, then sometimes need to try something new. It's really okay to just dive in and try things. And it's okay to be shy. Also, please take your creation with you, as I actually think Lifesavers are sort of repulsive, particularly after they've been rolled over a table several times.

I love seeing what they come up with on things like this. We end up with great discussions on why some ideas work and some don't. Our best sail design was fairly low-to-the-Puff Mobile, and was concave.

Of course, now I need to restock my Plan B supplies, probably with another Zoom challenge. Hmmm....

A Random Snippet of Life

2012-01-17T12:46:00.000-08:00

I've been sick with a cold. The sort of cold that has your nose running and your eyes leaking ... overall, much liquid coming out of my face. And much need to sleep.

Nothing incredibly serious as far as an illness goes, but it really sapped all my energy. I've spent most of my time lately taking naps, and cruising the Well Trained Mind forums participating in vital discussions like "what song is going through your head right now".

So last night I was sleeping pretty soundly, having a rather noisy dream that somehow involved lots of crashing and booming and huge quantities of rocks going through plexiglass tubing. All that noise subsided, replaced with a droning. And then Rick woke me up by saying, "that's the tornado siren." Which I thought was pretty stupid, because the sirens are SUPPOSED to be tested on the first Monday of the month, so it was pretty silly to test them in the middle of the night, right?

But I went out in the hall to tell the kids, who were already gathering blankets and heading to the basement. The cat came slinking out from under the bed and ran down with them, at which point it occurred to me that all the noise I'd thought I'd dreamt was actually a thunder storm and hail storm combo. And that the tornado siren was on because someone or other thought we might have a tornado forming.

Down to the basement, television on, we watched the storm pass quickly on the radar. Then back up to bed, but couldn't get to sleep right away. Rick suddenly got up, ran to the bathroom, and threw up. Back to bed, more hail. I must've dozed off eventually, because the other cat appeared on my nightstand meowing loudly at about 6:45am.

So. I seem to be over my cold, although I think I could use another nap simply due to lack of sleep last night. We're hoping Rick just has that 24 hour stomach bug that's been going around (as opposed to something more grandiose). And that none of the rest of us get it. Because it would be nice to have a day or two of predictable weather AND no one sick.

Co-op Science Week 16

2012-01-15T08:12:00.000-08:00

Back to co-op after Christmas, ready to start our second semester. This semester we'll be focusing more on Chemistry.

And we've also added 3 more kids to the class. I knew about 2 of them, but the 3rd was a surprise (Didn't that just happen to me in Girl Scouts a few days ago? Why, yes, it did! Random extra kids are showing up at things I'm supposed to organize on a regular basis, it seems.) I've gotta say, going from 11 kids to 14 kids was a leap -- lots of busy-ness, lots of noise. The kids are all relatively good, there are just more of them now.

And when I got home a mom emailed me to ask if her 2nd grader could join the class. Sigh. I let that sit a few days while I pondered, but then I eventually said that I think we're running out of room in the classroom. Plus I've noticed that some of the younger kids sometimes struggle more in a large group setting -- kids that are pretty bold and outgoing, and who would do just fine with the material in a small group (like in their own home with siblings) are falling right through the cracks when they're in a large group, getting lost and not keeping up.

But, anyway, my big find of Christmas break was the American Chemical Society's Inquiry in Action, which is a free chemistry curriculum for grades 3-5. Wow. Okay, first I found the ACS middle school curriculum, and I seriously thought about using it. Really, any of the kids in the class could probably do the middle school stuff, particularly at home. But I decided to go with the lower level because it looked simpler for me to implement, plus it involved M&Ms. Yes, the candy.

"Can I have some of the M&Ms to eat?"
"You know, my family's prediction was that at least 3 of you would ask to eat the M&Ms today. And my personal prediction was that YOU would be the first one to say it. Glad to see you didn't change much over break."
Smile. Hug. Five minutes later, same child asks again: "Can I have some of the M&Ms to eat?"

So. I downloaded the entire file onto my iPad, put it in Goodreader so I could browse through it, jotted down lists of stuff I'd need to take to class, printed out some of the handouts, and voila, class was planned. It is AMAZING how much easier it is to have someone else plan what's going to happen rather than choosing a topic and coming up with all of the demonstrations on my own.

We did the first 3 activities from Chapter 1 during our class time. We observed M&Ms dissolving on paper plates (I used the Solo brand plates that had sort of a hard finish on the paper rather than styrofoam or plastic -- I used the dessert size). Everyone had their own M&M and plate for that. Then we dumped the water and M&Ms (IMPORTANT TIP: It's easiest to slide the plate of water to the edge of the table and then tip it into a bucket or some other large container. The container needs to be wide enough that you could easily fit the entire plate in, if needed. I had taken a pitcher, but that was way too narrow, so I just dumped everything out of the 18 gallon plastic storage bin I'd used to transport all of the class equipment. Also, the container should be deep enough to carry around without all the water sloshing out. Dump the water in the container, but keep hold of the plate -- you can wipe it with a paper towel and re-use it.)

Before class started I'd had the kids who wandered in early draw bullseyes on some of the plates. We distributed those, and next judged whether different colors dissolved more quickly. The kids were in 2 groups of 7, and each group had 5 plates to look at. They did find some variability in the diffusion rates. I wonder if that was partially because we ended up with various depths of water in the plates, and some of our M&Ms weren't totally covered.

Anyway, dump THAT batch of water and M&Ms, clean up, and, oddly, all the kids started packing up to leave. ???? "Well, we were cleaning up, so we thought it was time to go." No, we were cleaning up so we wouldn't have a huge mess at the end. Also, the clock is broken in the classroom, so they had no clue. Still time for another experiment!

"Okay, what do you think would happen if we put 2 M&Ms in the water fairly close together?" I drew a couple of possibilities on the whiteboard. "Would a yellow and a blue make a huge pool of green around both of them? Would it look more like a Venn diagram, with a green overlap in the middle between them? What do you think?"

This time they worked in pairs, with mild squabbling about which colors each pair wanted to try. One pair ended up with 3 M&Ms, and we all figured, hey, maybe that'll be interesting. I held up a ruler to show them approximately how much distance we mean by "2 centimeters".

They were VERY impressed by what happened next, and running around looking at each others' plates. The plate with 3 was quite an item. One of the kids was excited to realize that their end of the table wasn't level -- he had diagnosed it by looking at the water level vs. the height of the 2 M&Ms. Then it became the fad to gently blow across the surface of the water to mix the colors. I did a brief wrap up, saying that if we left these plates here for a day the colors would've eventually mixed. Then a final clean up, and they were off to history class.

My thoughts:

We only made it half way through the demonstrations listed in this chapter, but I think it's enough. The main point, I felt, was that we change ONE variable at a time when we're seeing how things work. We'd already worked on that last fall, so I thought we were okay with just a brief review this spring.

The fifth graders in particular loved having the handouts. They were making notes on them. I've emphasized that as they get to middle school next year they'll be doing more lab reports; I think they liked having the practice available to them.

After I got home I sent an email to all parents with a link to the pdf of the science behind sugar dissolving in water, which they had the option of going over with their child. I also pointed out the links to the 3 related experiments we did NOT do.

I also delivered a small Dixie cup of M&Ms to That Kid at lunch break, with permission of his mom.

How to do this without a sink in the room:

I took old plastic water bottles with me, and had the kids go to the water fountain in pairs to refill them as needed. I had a pair of kids take the plastic container of waste-water-plus-M&Ms to the restroom, where they dumped it into a toilet and then flushed.

So far I would High Recommend the ACS materials for co-op use! And I'm thinking about using the middle school chemistry for our own home science class for 7th grade next year.

Cadette Girl Scout Amaze Journey, Session 2

2012-01-11T09:25:00.000-08:00

You know, if Girl Scouts USA was smart, they'd have a website along the lines of PatternReview.com or Ravelry.com (websites in which crafters tell about their experiences with various patterns in sewing and knitting, giving tips to future sewists and knitters) in which various people could post how their troop did various badges and sessions of Journeys and whatnot. Then leaders trying to get ideas for how to do these things could just browse through and find the ideas that seemed to fit their troop. It would make the badges and Journeys SO MUCH EASIER to do, and make volunteers' lives a lot more stress free.

But, of course, the GSUSA Powers That Be seem to be, um, less than competent, and definitely disinterested in making a volunteer's life any easier. So, in the meantime, I offer up how our troop accomplished Session 2 of the Cadette Amaze Journey.

First off, we made our Peacemaker Kits. I had a boatload of little tins from Altoid-type mints, and asked girls to bring in any they had at home. Only one girl brought something in, but I had enough for everyone else (10 girls -- one girl was brand new and showed up without warning, but another girl announced she was quitting about an hour before the meeting started, so we were even -- by the way, isn't it annoying when you have something planned with the correct amount of supplies, and parents decide their kids can wander in unannounced? So awkward for the kids in question, so frustrating for the person supplying the stuff.)

I also had various interesting scrapbook paper cut into 6x6 sheets, stickers, etc. Annabeth had the kids trace around the top of the tin on the paper, then cut the paper to be a bit smaller than the lid. They put ModPodge on the lid using those little spongey-type brushes (the ModPodge was distributed in small Dixie cups, and plastic put on the tables), then stuck the paper on. Some chose to put stickers on right away, others waited until the end. I had supplied labels that said "PEACEMAKER KIT", visible in the picture below, for those who wanted to use them. A layer of ModPodge went over the top of the paper.

And I had printed out the Girl Scout Law in 9 point type to be put in the inside lid, if desired.

I explained to the kids that these were to function sort of as mini-scrapbooks of the Journey; they'd be putting paper and mementos in them as they completed the various parts of the Journey.

Overall, the girls loved this part of the meeting. Many asked if they could cover the tins' bottoms and insides. Um, yeah, knock yourself out; I'm really not hung up on how you accomplish this, gang. Go home and hot glue thousands of Swarovski crystals on it (those are so stunning on stage, you know) (that's an Irish Dance joke) or whatever else strikes your fancy.

Also, it's possible to cover these tins in Duck Tape or similar duct tape, but, having experimented with the concept at home, I decided Duck Tape necessitates using sharp knives (eg, an exacto knife), and I really didn't want to round up a bunch of sharp knives and supervise their use.

Okay, on to the actual subjects we were supposed to cover. First up, stereotypes. I had girls give examples of stereotypes while I wrote them on a whiteboard. Then we needed an activity, and, honestly, the ones given in the leader guide struck me as really dull. So we played Party Quirks as a group game -- in other words, those who wanted to play (and it was okay to sit out) did it as a sort of interactive charades with lots of talking, with people really engaging in stereotypical behavior. One girl was a Jedi, one was an actor, one was a "dumb blonde", etc. What I learned from the experience: make sure your first host has some imagination; also, consider having 2 people be the host at one time (they can circulate around the room separately or together).

Next, we looked at their list of what qualities they look for in a friend, p. 31 of their Amaze book. Then we did the activity suggested in the Leader book in which they drew a circle on a piece of paper, and wrote on the outside qualities they look for in friends. On the inside of the circle they wrote what qualities they brought to a friendship.

I did this with them by making my own and talking about it while I went along: "Let's see, I'm a good listener. Also, cake ... I can bring cake to a relationship, because cake is important." Glancing at Annabeth's sheet, I noticed she'd written "horse" outside the circle: "So, a person needs to own a horse? Be a horse?" "No, I meant horselover, I just didn't write it out." "That's 1,2,3,4,5 letters, and you couldn't be bothered? Really? That reminds me, I should write 'ability to deal with sarcasm' as a quality my friends need." Overall, I was trying to keep the mood light. particularly since some of the kids seemed to get stressed about this stuff insofar as whether they're writing the "correct" thing and going to be judged by others regarding what they write. After all, most of the girls joined so they could do crafts, play games, and go camping, not so they could attend conciousness-raising sessions.

Then I had them jot down something on a small piece of paper about what they'd thought about so far, and put that in their Peacemaker Kit. I had printed out strips of paper with the writing prompt "For better relationships I will:" on it, and pointed out the various questions on p. 39 of their Amaze book, in case they needed inspiration. I was hoping that by this point in the meeting that they'd caught on that it was up to them what they put on the paper -- I certainly wasn't there to judge.

Next we were supposed to talk about Peer Pressure. I used the angle of how hard it is to be someone that you're really not, and introduced the game Bob. Wow, it was a riot. Some of the girls were excellent at it, some really not so good, everyone laughed a lot. I wish we would've had longer to play, but they needed to write down another slip about what they wanted to remember about peer pressure. So, back to the Amaze book, p. 52, and think about something to put in the Peacemaker Kit, using the writing prompt "I can resolve conflict by:" if desired. "Hey, if you just want to write 'Bob' on the slip so you can remember playing the game, that's okay. It's your scrapbook."

A different mom will be leading Session 3. She was there to observe what we did during Session 2, which was clever on her part (the future leaders of future sessions weren't there, and I wonder if they'll have a clue what worked and what didn't). Plus Session 3 looked like it had some fun games written in the leader's guide.

My impression of Journeys so far: Expect to come up with your own ideas on how to make them palatable. It can be a lot of fun, but the leaders need to really, really think about what will work in their group. And don't expect any support from the GSUSA Powers That Be to figure out what that is -- they're busy spending your money revamping some of the Journeys that have issues .

Co-op Science Weeks 13, 14, 15

2012-01-10T05:53:00.000-08:00

Oops! I thought I'd get around to writing these up over Christmas break, but I was too busy Christmassing. And, alas, I seem to not have notes about what we did, which is annoying, because there were some things that were worth passing on to other people trying to lead a co-op class for this age group.

Week 13 was another class on Light, using experiments from a book series which, unfortunately, I don't have written down. One of those science series that looks so good on the shelf, the photos are so cool and the directions so clear ... and the experiments don't actually work. Such a fail. Unfortunately we were doing the experiments on the fly during class since I thought that it would be a good chance for the kids to learn to read about and set up this stuff. Wow, I didn't expect every. single. one. to fail.

I think this was the week that I lit a candle in a darkened room and we looked at it through 2 popsicle sticks held close together (idea I found online). We also tried looking at it with our eyes squinted up so we were seeing it though our eyelashes. Then I handed out refraction glasses I'd gotten cheap online (again, sorry, no memory of the vendor, but I got a box of 15 or 20 for a cheap price and quick delivery off of Amazon.com). Annabeth took a picture of our Christmas tree by holding a pair of glasses up to the camera. For the record, our tree has white lights only.

Week 14 was on Sound. I had tried several cool looking experiments from the book on Sound from the above series ... again, failure. Fortunately I figured this out at home, so I came up with some alternatives. I took in a slinky to show the difference between longitudinal and transverse waves; also, we could see the "echo".

We set up dominoes to show the difference between sound going through a liquid and air (dominoes closer together represent a solid, farther apart represent air -- which group falls faster?). The dominoes took FOREVER to set up, and about 10 seconds to knock over. The girls in the group did okay with it, but the boys complained it was boring. I also gave a brief discussion about how sometimes science IS boring, or at least seems that way -- you have to do all this detailed work to figure stuff out, and it can seem tedious at times.

We blew across bottles (I had learned last year that plastic water bottles are tough to do this with due to the flimsy plastic, so I had collected both glass bottles and more rigid plastic bottles from sparkling mineral water, and took in a huge assortment).

We stretched plastic over a bowl, put blue sugar sprinkles on top, then made noise to make the sugar sprinkles jump with the vibrations.

And week 15 was the final week before Christmas break. We had a half day of co-op, and a party starting at noon. I suspected the kids were going to be a little wound up in our midmorning class, so we did an engineering challenge -- how high can you build a structure using uncooked spaghetti and mini marshmallows? They worked in groups, usually on some sort of plastic tablecloth to help prevent marshmallow smashing into sticky messes on the table tops.

Wow, they LOVED this activity, and could've worked on it for hours and hours. And it was so fun to hear their discussions about how to accomplish their building visions. My biggest regret is that we did this in an upstairs room, so we couldn't easily show off their creations -- we needed to either make them on something that could be transported to the common area where we later held the party, or else have made them in that area in the first place. For the record, the structures tended to sag over time. Also, not only did kids want to eat the marshmallows**, they wanted to eat the dry spaghetti.

**"Okay, understand this -- you have a FINITE number of marshmallows. You do know what 'finite' means, right?" Oddly, several of them didn't. So we had to define that, then discuss the implication that if they ate a bunch of their group's marshmallows, they would not have as many marshmallows to build with, and thus probably have a smaller tower.

More Merriment

2011-12-31T06:16:00.000-08:00

This past week we continued our Christmas celebrations in Indiana, visiting my parents. This shall be remembered as the Cupcake Christmas -- my sister-in-law provided dessert in the form of a cupcake sampler from a shop in Lafayette. She cut them up so we could try the different flavors.

Action shot of a bacon cupcake sampling (the base is supposed to taste like pancake; the frosting was very light and fluffy, with a maple flavor):

I also forced the kids to play some of their recital pieces in the main lobby, which is always popular with the people around there, but fairly unpopular with the Thalia and Annabeth:

Then back home late Wednesday night, by which time I was thinking ahead to our next adventure, which was a wedding Friday afternoon. I had absolutely nothing to wear. So Thursday morning after taking Thalia to the doctor for yet another vax for the trip to the Dominican Republic, I went to Hancock Fabric and got some poly/rayon ponteroma (on sale for 30% off, plus I had a coupon for 15% my purchase -- woot!). I used Butterick 5523, purchased months ago on sale.

I slapped it together Thursday afternoon and evening. Unfortunately, I chose the size to make based on my measurements and the fact that I had read a review that it was snug through the bodice back. When I tried it on I looked like a little girl playing dress up in her mom's closet -- I was swimming in it. That's when I remember that a prime measure for choosing a dress size when sewing is the shoulders -- mine are narrow. So I took the sleeves off, undid the side seams, walloped about a half inch off all of the vertical seams, and sewed it back up (fortunately I hadn't serged it, choosing instead to use a narrow zigzag, which was pretty easy to rip out). It was still a little loose, so I put a couple of tucks in the back, made the self-belt thingy, for which I covered a couple of buttons in the purple fabric (I had some large button forms already -- who knows why those were in the button box, but I'm glad they were there), tacked the belt over the tucks, and was ready to go.

In the meantime, Thalia had tried on all of her fancy dresses and discovered that the ones that were an appropriate length no longer fit. She asked if I could take in the bodice of her 8th grade graduation dress (Simplicity 4070), which was now too big and baggy (as she's gotten taller she's apparently gotten more slender). This time she styled it with a big black belt and taller shoes.

It would be better with black shoes, of course. And the bandaid (from the vax) on her arm brought to mind a tattoo, which I suggested as being sort of edgy with this dress. Also, a black leather jacket would be edgy, not that she owns one.

So now she has visions of making another of these, but in red with black lace, for a future formal dance. Also a leather jacket and 6 inch black heels. No tattoo, though.

The giant Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Building:

View from our table up on the 42nd floor:

Thalia was seated at the other end of the room, with a view of the Arch. And Rick was running around talking to people when someone offered to take the picture. The wedding was really beautiful, by the way. The bridesmaids wore purple dresses with little belts in the back (just like me!), except theirs were floaty chiffon.

And I think that's the END of Christmas.

Random Bits of Christmas

2011-12-26T06:26:00.000-08:00

We went to a 9pm Christmas Eve service (and Rick sang the actual words to the song, not switching up Nobis Pacem with Obese Possums as he had threatened). It was a lovely service that ended up with everyone holding lit candles while singing Silent Night. Annabeth had never been to anything like that before, since we stopped messing with that sort of thing when she was little and we were living in northwest Ohio where it was too cold and snowy to be dragging a little kid around to Christmas Eve services late at night.

Of course, that meant that we didn't get home until fairly late, particularly since on the way home we discovered a large subdivision totally lit up with luminaries, thousands upon thousands of them. They probably do this every year, but we'd never seen it before since we'd never gone out on Christmas Eve before. We ended up driving around it some just to look at all the luminaries, and got slightly lost.

So, home late, and still had to finish up the annual treasure hunt -- Rick had to finish writing the clues, which this year were a takeoff of Madeline since he and the girls had been reading that aloud a few days before. Then the clues had to be hidden (the kids were in bed by this time, and theoretically asleep), and the final gifts hidden away at the end of the hunt.

Which meant that when the cat came in the room and stood on my nightstand announcing that the Christmas tree lights had come on at 5:45am, I was totally dead, and tried to shoo him out of the room. Except the kids were up by 6am. Self portrait of how I look with less sleep than I need to function rationally:

In spite of the lack of sleep, it was a fun morning. Santa brought Thalia the latest Percy Jackson book, a fluffy Panda Pillow Pet, and a sweatshirt from the Lotus Casino (which all makes sense if you've read all the books):

I got this swanky vase that they'd found at an estate sale. (This Christmas featured quite a bit of secondhand shopping and some crafting -- Dave Ramsey would be proud):

Annabeth was thrilled to get convertible mitten/gloves, and as a bonus they were Hello Kitty themed (these were from Thalia):

Oddly, no pictures of Rick opening gifts. Be assured that he was quite happy to get a Thor Christmas tree ornament.

Next, omelets for breakfast, along with smoked turkey. I was surprised to find a bit of bone in mine, since it was supposed to be boneless turkey. Then I realized that it was actually a large chunk of one of my molars. Ack!

Rick headed out to go to church. The rest of us opted to be heathens, figuring we'd already gone to church the night before. I took a nap and sulked about my broken tooth. Thalia lounged with her Panda Pillow Pet

and Annabeth apparently painted her nails and took dozens of pictures with the camera, which I just now found when I loaded the photos to the computer.

The rest of the day was spent quietly -- fire in the fireplace, watching movies, playing with gifts. A nice way to spend the holiday, other than the tooth issue.

So far ...

2011-12-24T16:47:00.001-08:00

So far we've had a rat in the tree:

We've gone to see Beauty and the Beast:

We've made butter cookies:

And decorated them (after an emergency trip to the store for sprinkles, etc., when we realized we were almost out):

Including a special cookie Annabeth made for Santa (which I think is so awesome I sort of want to lacquer it and keep it forever):

And had our special family reading of the Christmas story while the kids used the manger scene to act it out:

Still to come: the Christmas Eve service at church, which we usually don't go to. But Thalia and Rick are singing in the choir. And Rick has discovered that the words "Nobis Pacem" sound a lot like "Obese Possum", and is wondering if he can get away with singing it that way.

Busy Hands

2011-12-22T07:42:00.000-08:00

Annabeth went to a birthday party earlier this week. She made a scarf for her friend out of fabric she found in the basement, plus some pompom fringe.

I had purchased this fabric years ago, probably from Sewzanne's. Never used it, obviously, and now the kids aren't interested in wearing things with little pink ballerinas. But her friend loved it -- she studies dance, so it was very appropriate.

Also, I've been knitting a scarf for myself. Something to do while waiting, which is how I seem to spend a lot of my life.

I had the yarn, Lorna's Laces sportweight in Cranberry, in the basement for about as long as I had the fabric. I think I was going to make the kids warm socks; the red color reminded me of Little House on the Prairie. (I had amazing intentions about what I was going to make the kids over the years. Also, we have interesting supplies squirreled away in our basement, some of which are holdovers from those projects that never saw the light of day.)

And we've had the annual cat-in-the-Burger's-box photo.

Every year someone sends us something from Burger's Smokehouse. Every year the cat wants to sit in the box. And we take the same photo of him in the box every year. Another Christmas tradition fulfilled.

Ten on Tuesday: 10 Things I have to do before Christmas

2011-12-20T17:20:00.000-08:00

Bridgett participates in the Ten on Tuesday meme, and when I saw her blog post today I thought this was a particularly good topic since it involves making a checklist of things to get done this week, which many of us are doing anyway, so it's sort of like multitasking blogging (okay, was that sentence long and run on enough?). So here's mine:

1. Take Thalia to the county health department for a typhoid shot. Which isn't particularly festive, but seemed like a clever time to go do it because we're not slogging around to lessons and classes this week.

2. See Beauty and the Beast at the Fabulous Fox.

3. Wrap presents. Nary a present has been wrapped by me yet. The kids have done theirs.

4. Receive more presents from UPS and/or mail. Because they've been shipped, but haven't shown up here yet. Which has put a crimp in that whole wrapping scenario. In the meantime, attempt to not dwell on what will happen if they DON'T show up here.

5. A bit more shopping needs to be done. I have the items in my mind, it's just a matter of locating them in a store (this is usually the dreadful part, since merchants seem to have a startling lack of ESP about what I want).

6. Make Favorite Butter Cookies from the recipe published in the Post-Dispatch in the early 1980s. These are the official Santa cookie of our household.

7. Finish pants that are half done. Actually I don't need these until next week, so I could spend Christmas Day sewing. Hmmm, that sounds rather attractive ....

8. Help make a present for a family member who I don't think reads this, but maybe they do.

9. Get hair cut.

10. Find time for a nap.

Holiday Weekend

2011-12-19T06:14:00.000-08:00

A trip to St. Charles Christmas Traditions, which was about 40 degrees warmer than last year.

This year the kids collected about 17 or 18 out of 33 character cards, which was much more than last year. They wanted to find The Town Crier, but alas, he was either on break or else just not there Saturday afternoon. (The Town Crier falls into the category of people-we-know-playing-characters, thus the appeal, particularly since they must stay in character while talking to us).

Sunday was nearly an actual day of rest, for a change of pace. In the evening we had a piano recital.

Annabeth warming up beforehand, hence the hat and jacket. She played Chopin's Waltz Op. 64, No. 1, The Minute Waltz, and also an arrangement of The Holly and the Ivy. She did a great job with both.

And here's Thalia warming up to play a duet of Sheep May Safely Graze with her teacher, followed by Joplin's The Entertainer (original version). And she, too, did a great job.

I videoed both kids playing, but not sure I want to subject the world to that much piano recital (the Joplin piece alone is about 7 minutes long).

We're now taking a semester off of piano. Thalia has too much school work this year to spend the practice time. And Annabeth wants to take the opportunity to try violin. (Optimally I'll mention this to the people in charge of the Musical Theater debacle -- that Thalia's giving up piano due to lack of time, while still stuck in a musical not of her choosing which is sucking up a few hours a week -- and they'll feel racked with guilt, particularly since the head of the place is first and foremost a piano teacher.)

We're rounding the curve and just about in the straight away as we head towards Christmas!

Status Report

2011-12-15T10:58:00.000-08:00

1. Santa has been visited.

2. Cards (most of them) have been completed and put in the mail.

3. Fall Product sales are over, paperwork turned in to Neighborhood Coordinator, money deposited. I'll turn in our troop's proceeds today. I already threw out/recycled most of the flotsam.

4. Co-op is over for 2011. So are theater classes. Last ballet class is later this week. Feels like acres of free time spreading out in front of us.

5. The Christmas dishes have been unboxed and are in use.

6.. Creeping closer to the "done with the presents" finish line.

Ten days to go!

This Weekend

2011-12-11T19:35:00.001-08:00

Round one of Christmas was completed Friday night when some of the relatives came over. Grandma and Grandpa were on their way from Indiana to Kansas City, and stopped at our house, plus an aunt and uncle came by. We all had dinner and exchanged gifts.

Thalia had a chance to show off her new hat:

Yes, she is aware it looks rather like a chicken landed on her head. She found it at an estate sale, and realized it would be perfect for Eulalie MacKecknie Shinn (Music Man). Actually, it'll also be good for Elsa Schraeder. Or, for that matter, Hello Dolly, Easter Parade ... lots of posssibilites for about $10!

Annabeth stuck with the more traditional Santa cap:

That party broke up late, we all got to bed waaaaay too late. And were up the next morning so Annabeth could go to a dress rehearsal of the Christmas musical her choir was in at church. And Thalia worked at the Christmas tree lot at church (required service hours for kids going on the trip to the Dominican Republic -- in addition to raising the money to pay for the trip, getting all the required immunizations and paperwork, and all the other falderal surrounding traveling overseas, they have a bunch of service projects and meetings they're required to attend).

Then zoom home, grab sandwiches to eat in the car, and off to Thalia's ballet class in a drastically different part of the county. Followed immediately by a trip to a Panera's in yet another part of the county so Thalia could meet with some kids from her history class -- they're going to be debating feudalism in class, and were getting their arguments lined up. They're the pro-feudalism team, in case you wondered. I spent the time talking to another mom who decided to hang out there.

In the meantime, Annabeth and Daddy went to the climbing wall and indoor pool.

After that, it was home, order pizza, watch Christmas movies (White Christmas followed by Rudolph) and generally collapse.

And up the next morning to get to church for the Christmas musical! Except what we didn't realize is that the music director (who is also Thalia's new voice teacher) had decided Thalia should be song leader. Well, Thalia knew it, but hadn't bothered to tell us. So she was up there doing a great job of leading everyone in "Infant Holy, Infant Lowly" before the musical started (particularly crappy picture since I wasn't sure about the etiquette of snapping pictures in the middle of worship -- I'm pretty sure it's considered bad form):

Then on to the show, Arrest These Merry Gentlemen. Which, by the way, is a cute musical. It's sort of a send up of Dragnet. Annabeth played Jo Sabbath. She had watched some Dragnet videos to prep for the role. Really, all the kids did a great job. They did it for 2 services, by which time some of them looked sort of exhausted (the little girl in the white dress behind Annabeth's elbow was one of those starting to fade, but she sang an absolutely awesome solo and totally stole the show by being so flippin' adorable).

Then lunch at Elephant Bar to celebrate a successful show. Followed by more climbing wall and pool -- the climbing wall is now closed for the rest of 2011 for maintenance, so it was important to get those last hours in, you know. The girls spent the evening babysitting for the neighbors. Rick and I planned to spend the time planning and executing on Christmas gifts, but instead spent the time researching washing machines, since our 10 year old machine has started randomly filling with water when not in use. A festive end to the weekend!

And now plunging into another week ....

More about that.

2011-12-08T04:59:00.001-08:00

You know, that Musical Theater thing that's been bugging me.

Total side note: Musical Theater is always a bit weird. One time my friend Chris, who leads a kids' theater group in another city, commented that a lot of the homeschoolers in her group were pretty odd. And I just sort of snickered, because homeschooling attracts an odd crowd (including those who pulled out of school because their "differentness" made/would make them the kids who got picked on in the halls), and theater groups attract an odd crowd (remember, the entire premise of Glee is that kids in the arts are "different", getting slushied in the halls), so the intersection of the the two sets would be uber-bizarro.

But this incident was just so odd I keep pondering how someone thought this was a plausible idea.

The short version: The Place We Go To (for theater classes) held auditions for Oklahoma. And then the next week announced the cast. Except they'd switched the musical to Sound of Music without telling anyone until they announced the cast list. Sorta like a bait-and-switch, but with musicals (edited to add that this wasn't a deliberate bait-and-switch -- they weren't being fraudulent so much as being really, really stupid).

The long version: The Place We Go To has musical theater classes for teens once a week; they're in the evenings and attract kids from local schools as well as homeschoolers. The first part of the school year focusses on general technique in acting, singing, and movement. The kids put on a Fall Showcase to demonstrate to their families and friends what they've learned so far. After that auditions are held for the spring musical -- these auditions are open to any teen in the area, and are advertised in various venues that are typically used for local audition news (I think most cities have places you can browse to see who is putting on what, and decide if any of it is something you'd like to prepare an audition for).

Additionally, teens can sign up for a second class each week called "Advanced Musical Theater" which gives them extra hours to work on the above.

This year The Place We Got To hired a new director fresh out of school (IU -- yeah, insert that whole IU/Purdue dynamic, given that we're Purdue grads). And she announced that the Advanced Musical Theater class would focus on audition techniques -- how to prepare for a professional audition. Cool!

Also, they announced that the musical they'd be putting on was Oklahoma. So the kids, particularly those in the Advanced class, started to think about which roles they wanted, how they should audition for those roles, etc. etc.

Really, the kids had somewhat cast the show in their minds by late October -- they could sort of see who the director favored (fact of life: directors have favorites. So do teachers. And managers. Kids know this.), who was really good, who "fit" the various roles.

Thalia decided that she really wanted to play Ado Annie. It would be a fun role for her. She selected her music somewhat accordingly -- she sang If I Loved You from Carousel (which is basically a musical made up of songs and plot lines Rogers and Hammerstein had left over from Oklahoma). She contemplated doing When I Marry Mr. Snow to emphasize her interest in Ado Annie, but we didn't have the music. She worked on the song with her voice teacher for several weeks. She also selected a monologue and worked on it. The director had commented that it would be really cool to have separate auditions for singing, dance, and acting, but that wasn't going to work in a class that meets a couple of days a week for a couple of hours at a time.

So, the big day roles around -- auditions! One of the guys, Senior Guy, hopes to be cast as Curley, and sings Bless Your Beautiful Hide from Seven Brides. Another friend performs something from Hello Dolly -- she'd like Laurie's part, but knows that the director really likes another girl better ... and so on and so forth. The kids have been discussing who is going to sing what, which monologues they're considering, for WEEKS. The kids audition in front of the director and the head of The Place We Go To -- the two will discuss the auditions and do the casting. The director announces that the cast list will be emailed out by 3pm the following Monday.

Except, the following Monday we get an email that the parts will be announced in class. Well. THAT'S nerve wracking! Are they actually going to read the cast list aloud in class? Really? When you hear what part you got, you sort of need a moment to catch your breath so you can be gracious, you know? Especially when you're a kid.

I drop kids off at The Place We Go for class, and hope for the best. Later, Thalia calls to tell me they need a ride home after Tech Theater class (sometimes they get a ride with someone else). I ask her what part she got.

"Elsa Schraeder"

Okay, the name sounds familiar, but I can't place it in Oklahoma. I'm confused.

"Yeah, they switched the musical to Sound of Music. As soon as I found out, I knew I'd be cast as Elsa Schraeder, and I was."

(Note: The cast list was actually hung up on a sheet in the hallway rather than being read off in class. The kids were totally giddy with relief about that.)

Well. THAT'S weird. I hang up the phone, and it rings again. A friend whose daughter is also in the musical theater class.

"So, Gail, what do you think about the musical?" Her voice sounds strained, like she's remaining calm on the outside, but would really, really like to explode.

We talked. A lot. About the difference between the two musicals, one of which focusses almost exclusively on one particular role (Maria), whereas the other has various strong characters, including a kickbutt male role that Senior Guy would be perfect for (he in now Von Trapp, with one solo in a range that he doesn't sing well in, and a song he doesn't especially like -- ironic that Christopher Plummer also hated the musical, yes? -- and this is his final musical for this place since he's graduating in May). About the way it was handled. About the idea that people might have decided differently whether or not to audition if they'd known it was Sound of Music. Might have strived for different roles. About the fact that work on the musical won't begin in earnest until after Christmas, so they had plenty of time to re-audition if they wanted to change the show. Etc. etc.

So. Rick decided to be proactive, and sent an email to the head of The Place that was gentle, supportive coaching about the concept that she needed to act quickly to put out the fire that was starting to rage. Are y'all familiar with the book Mistakes Were Made? It was pretty much like that -- total entrenchment in the decision. Sigh. Emails flew around, phone calls were made. And a couple of weeks later:

-- Still doing Sound of Music. Except they haven't worked on it at all due to other scheduling considerations regarding a Christmas show. I think maybe they'll start looking at the music next week.

-- Realization by Powers That Be that they don't actually have a big enough cast, since you can't double the children as the nuns and guards, since all those disparate roles have to be together on stage. Gee, if they'd told people they were doing Sound of Music, I wonder who else would've shown up. Annabeth noted that she might've auditioned.

-- Leisl quit. Her entire family quit EVERYTHING, effective immediately. They've been taking classes there (dance, voice, piano, acting) for 7 or 8 years. Huge supporters. So now notices are going up for open auditions for Leisl, any girl ages 12-18. Oops. Her younger sister had been cast in the musical Annabeth is doing this spring, but I think that group has someone to take that part.

-- Thalia has revealed to us that she wouldn't have bothered to audition if she'd known it was Sound of Music. She says the only decent role (in this venue**) is Maria , and she wouldn't make a good Maria. Also, she knew she wouldn't get the role of Maria since she isn't the director's favorite. She would've auditioned for COCA's spring performance instead, or perhaps waited until next semester for some later productions around town. ** The Muny put Sound of Music on in 2010, and Thalia would've been thrilled to play pretty much any part up on the big stage with professional actors, but this production is with her peers.

I know every place has its quirks and warts. Any place you go for dance or theater or sports or WHATEVER is going to have issues, because people have issues. But this whole thing really amazes me. The Place We Go keeps calling the switcheroo "unprecedented". Um, maybe it's unprecedented because it's a stupid thing to do.

I think I've left out enough of the juicy gossip of the whole thing to actual make this public. Part of me doesn't care, since foolish decisions seem to be par for the course when it comes to this entire story.

So, Chris, whaddya think?

Stuff

2011-12-07T05:08:00.001-08:00

1. I get a lot more done when I don't bother writing on a blog in the morning. I've been doing yoga, lifting weights, have the Christmas cards ordered and in hand, have written those annoying emails I'd been procrastinating about, sewn a pair of pants, and am now working on cleaning out the dining room for use when relatives come to dinner on Friday.

2. Also, the Crazy Train visited Musical Theatre class last week. Of course, one could argue that the Crazy Train is never very far away from any theater production, but this was a particularly whacked out situation. So I spent several days NOT writing about that, even though I was thinking about it a lot. I still may write about it. But now it won't be a matter of droning on and on in righteous indignation, you know?

3. The outside lights are mostly up. We put them up on Saturday, which was before it got cold out. Score!

4. The gifts we need by this weekend are almost all purchased. We're down to the odds-and-ends part. Also the part where we need to dig out the wrapping paper and tags. Which are hidden behind all the boxes we pulled out looking for the decorations. Which still aren't all the way up.

5. Schedule for last Sunday: Be at church at 7:30am so Thalia could sing with her sextet for the first 2 services. Then home for lunch, and back at 2 for a rehearsal for Thalia that lasted until 4. Annabeth's musical rehearsal was from 4-5:30 at church, with a parents' meeting at 5:30 (significant because it meant a coherent adult needed to be there). Then Thalia at the church at 6pm, with the concert starting at 7pm. None of this would've been such a big deal if we lived closer to the church. Or if Thalia had her license and we had an extra car for her. But, you know, whatever. We spent the day driving back and forth.

The concert was pretty cool, which was to be expected because the music director at our church is amazing. You could see that he was totally in his element directing all the disparate parts. Also, the whole thing ran like clockwork. Again, that's having someone in charge who knows how to put it together, as well as how to run an organized rehearsal.

6. I should be doing something else right now. More later.

Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-25T19:20:00.001-08:00

Wednesday was cool and wet. I made a pot of chicken-with-wild-rice soup, and another, bigger pot of chili for supper. We lit a fire in the fireplace and spent the pre-Thaksgiving evening watching the original Tron followed by Tron Legacy.

On Thursday got up bright and early to watch parades. I made the various foods we were taking to Thanksgiving dinner over at Rick's aunt's house:

1. Roasted Green Beans -- snap stem end off of fresh green beans (we did about 4 pounds worth). Dump them in a roasting pan, thrown in a bunch of chopped garlic, drizzle with olive oil; cook at 400F, stirring every 5 minutes. When they look as done as you'd like, take them out. We like them somewhat crunchy. People tended to pick them up with their fingers and eat them like french fries.

2. Sauteed Collard Greens -- chop up some onion and slowly sautee in olive oil until tender and sweet. Throw in chopped collards. Cover pan to steam, utilizing water left clinging to leaves as well as some other water thrown in from the tea kettle (or whatever). Cook until bright green. Serve to crowd that doesn't usually eat collard greens and feels a bit adventurous putting it on their plates at Thanksgiving.

3. Celery stuffed with sunflower butter. Self explanatory, right? Very popular as something to nibble that wasn't sweet or otherwise junky. Also satisfied the sense of trying something new, since many of the crowd had never tried sunflower seed butter.

So, yeah, when I looked at the table I realized we were in charge of all of the green.

Anyway, we had a pleasant afternoon over there. Much talking and laughter.

From there over to Rick's sister's house to see her new wooden floor. This stop also featured pie and a viewing of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Then home. Although Rick was a bit regretful that we didn't have a longer drive home ... for years and years we spent the time after Thanksgiving stuffed in a car with all sorts of luggage, listening to Christmas CDs. We considered maybe head over on the J.B. Bridge, then up north and come back into Missouri at Chain of Rocks, then loop back down on 270, making laps around the county. But, alas, we didn't have our Amy Grant Christmas CD with us (although David pointed out we could just download everything off of iTunes, it just didn't seem the same, you know?) so we came straight home.

And I spent the night having some sort of weird reaction to something I ate. I finally got up at about 4am and sat reading a book in the family room.

Today was nice out (as was yesterday) so it was a great day for raking. Not that I wanted to rake -- really, I wanted to sew -- but the last big drop of leaves is now up off of the yard, as are several hundred more of the Sweet Gum Balls.

We've spent some time organizing the Christmas lights, but don't have them up yet. Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy, so who knows what we'll get up when.

Co-op Science Week 12

2011-11-21T07:50:00.001-08:00

Continuation of light and optics.

We started off by playing with a set of spinning top optical illusions I'd found at Hobby Lobby. It included Benham's top, a spiral that produced the waterfall effect, and some disks that worked better under fluorescent lights. We discussed briefly why these things appear the way they do; I included the information that scientists don't know everything about these illusions, so the kids could maybe discover more about them some day.

Next, discussion:

What produces light? (Sun, lightbulbs, flames; the moon simply reflects rather than producing)
What happens to light? (travels in a straight line forever unless it hits something)
What happens when it hits something? (sometimes passes through whatever it hits; may convert to heat or other energy; may bend)

While talking about these things, did the demo of shining a flashlight through index cards to show this concept (although I just cut notches in the bottom of mine instead of punch holes -- directions in Super Science Projects about Light and Optics by Allan Cobb). Answered repeated queries as to whether we could set the modeling clay on fire with a firm "No".

Vocabulary words: Opaque, transparent, translucent. I broke these down into their roots. Mostly I was surprised that some of the kids didn't know them. Shone flashlight on cardstock, copy paper, and through glass.

More vocabulary: reflection, refraction.

For reflection we talked about mirrors, and how the light bounces off at the same angle it hits. I had made a shoebox periscope using cheap little mirrors from the craft store (Hobby Lobby? Michael's?) and a bunch of duct tape (by the way, it was amazingly tedious to get the mirrors lined up correctly). Pretty much everyone was familiar with the concept, but no one had actually made one before. Again, I used the directions from Allan Cobb's Super Science Projects about Light and Optics We shone the flashlight through it, we used it as a periscope, we shone a laser pointer through it. I had to keep moving one kid's head since he seemed determined to have the laser pointer reflection go right into his eye in spite of my saying we were NOT going to point it into anyone's eyes.

Speaking of which, Rick loaned me his nice red laser pointer he uses in presentations -- one of the nice, expensive ones. He has a friend with one of the green ones, which would've impressed the kids immensely, I'm sure, especially since I told them that in many places it's illegal to shine them up in the sky at night, and that you can't even take them into some countries. As you can imagine, the set-the-clay-on-fire, shine-the-laser-in-the-eye crowd instantly realized that their deepest desire was to obtain strong laser pointers and shine them in the sky.

For refraction, I drew a picture on the board of a bird's eye view of all of them holding hands and running in a straight line; the line was at about a 45 degree angle to a body of water. As the first kids got to the water they had to slow down since it's harder to run in water than on dry land ... eventually, the line looked bent. I got this analogy from Vicki Cobb's Light Action, which is a book I would highly recommend if you're explaining this stuff to kids.

We refracted light with water . I put a coin in the bottom of the bowl, had everyone stand where they couldn't quite see the coin, then filled the bowl with water; the penny appeared (I'm pretty sure this same demo is one of the experiments in Apologia Physical Science). Then I placed a penny on the table, put an empty glass on top of it, filled the glass with water, set an index card on the top of the glass (so we couldn't look straight down into it) and the penny was invisible. This one really confounded one of the kids, who thought I'd done something or other with the penny even though he was watching every thing we did.

We also shone the flashlight through plastic prisms (purchased cheaply at Hobby Lobby) to bend the light and see a bit of a rainbow. It was a gloomy day, so we couldn't use sunlight to make better rainbows, unfortunately. Again, all of the kids seemed familiar with the concept, but they enjoyed messing around with the prisms. And we shone the laser pointer through the prisms, too.

Finally, we made Movie Wheels. I had shown one I'd made to some of the kids the week before when we made thaumatropes. They were surprisingly enthusiastic about this. Well, most of them were. One boy wanted to play with the tops -- we had him sit at a different table, and he eventually started making some rather sophisticated paper airplanes. Another wanted to make it, but wanted someone else to do the work -- pretty funny. We have a mirror in the room, so they could view them in there or else stand in pairs and view each others'.

A few of the kids said they'd studied all of this before, but they are enjoying studying it again. That's what we're after -- a hands-on supplement to the curriculum they're doing at home.

Weekend

2011-11-20T19:28:00.001-08:00

Saturday was a lovely day -- it was perfect for raking leaves. Too bad we weren't home long enough to do any raking.

-- In the morning, a make-up class in Theater Skills in Maryland Heights. The teacher had been sick earlier in the week.

-- Then home for lunch.

-- And off to U. City for ballet class.

-- And from there directly to Pattonville High School Auditorium for the Fall Showcase, wherein the performing arts students from one of the places we take classes show what they've been working on thus far this school year. This included monologues from the Theater Skills class:

Thalia did a monologue from A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, which was rather earnest and angsty.

Some songs from Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella for Annabeth's Musical Theater class:

Seen here making Cinderella's coach -- the kids who were the wheels were supposed to do forward rolls as they moved along. I wish I had a video of Stepsister's Lament, but our camera chose that moment to cease focussing.

And the older Musical Theater kids performed numbers from Pippin:

Thalia singing Magic to Do. I've decided to believe the out-of-focus pictures look arty, in keeping with the Fosse-style choreography.

-- Home for supper.

-- Then to Nerinx Hall in Webster for their production of Phantom of the Opera. Which was excellent. But I really dislike their theater due to lack of leg room. (Of course, the fact that I'd spent much of the day either sitting in a theater or sitting in some creative arts building on a crappy seat didn't help matters.) Several of the guys in it were from SLUH (Nerinx is all girls), and Thalia actually recognized some of them. The Phantom was played by a guy from Pattonville, coincidentally. Small world.

So, overall I felt like we sort of had a marathon of performing arts going on. I awoke Sunday morning with the main musical theme of Phantom running through my head, although I kept tending to sing, "Join us. Leave your fields to flower...." In the meantime, Rick kept singing "Ten Minutes Ago".

Of course, Sunday was cold and rainy, and perfectly awful for raking leaves. We had church -- Thalia's choir sang -- and then returned in the afternoon for a rehearsal of the musical Annabeth's group is putting on in a few weeks. Other than that, we've been doing the stuff we didn't have time for yesterday, like washing the dishes and letting the rats have some free range time (hey, guess what! Annabeth had handed me a donut-hole to put in a napkin in my purse earlier! Guess who found it!).

Homeschool Update

2011-11-18T15:05:00.001-08:00

This morning it occurred to me that it would be really cool if someone did a homeschool weekly report/wrap-up in haiku. Not that I'm planning on doing it, but it would be fun to read.

See, I've done the work of coming up with the concept -- now I'll pass the torch to someone else for the detail work.

(I spent much of September contemplating how an existentialist would write a homeschool weekly report. For that matter, what would homeschooling look like in an existentialist household? Anyway, another concept that someone else can work with, right?)

As for us, last week was ~~sucked into a miasma of~~ spent working backstage at a ballet. The kids were supposed to help load in the sets on Wednesday, except I decided to Just Say No, since it would involve missing their typical Wednesday classes. They were there Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, though. Annabeth ran the light board, and Thalia was a stagehand. This was part of a Technical Theatre class they're taking -- earlier this fall they painted the sets for the ballet.

Which is why Jensen's continues to languish in not-getting-done land. Aaargh! And Medieval History isn't far behind, moving glacially slow, as though we're trying to recreate the timeline moment by moment in the present.

The co-op classes the kids are taking have stayed up-to-date: Kinetic Physics and Notgrass World History/Literature for Thalia, Writeshop and Shepherd's Life Science for Annabeth.

And this week we haven't had A Big Event like the ballet, the Fall Formal, the everlasting bad cold, Thalia's Sweet Sixteen party, Halloween, or whatever else took all of that time a month ago. So we've made progress towards getting back on track.

The big homeschool success of the week was that DAVE RAMSEY IS DONE! Woot! That's a half credit of personal finance completed (a little later in the fall than expected, but still before the end of the semester). The next to last chapter seemed the most complex -- insurance. We have several family members in the insurance biz, but, wow, LOTS of info. The final chapter is on real estate, and seemed like it was mostly an excuse for Dave to entertain us with stories of his adventures in realty. We also have a realtor in the family, plus have moved around the country buying and selling homes, so most of this wasn't news to Thalia.

Overall, I'd recommend the course. I've heard people express dismay that it doesn't take too long to watch all those videos -- how can it possibly count for a half credit? Well, yoohoo, that's what the CDRom is for -- look through the suggested activities, do some of them (some are better suited for a classroom, but you can still find plenty to do), take the tests, take the unit tests and the final. Also, go on field trips -- an estate sale, a cash-advance business (okay, we did that one online instead of actually setting foot in one, and the entire concept was skanky enough to make an impression), follow the stock market. Watch it as a family and discuss -- what do you agree with, what do you disagree with. Assign extra reading (Thalia and I read Scratch Beginnings and discussed how the Dave Ramsey material applied -- what was the same, what was different). It's an easy course to have your kid do, and it has a lot of great information.

Okay, so, failure with Jensen's, success with Dave Ramsey, neutral with pretty much everything else. And all the other stuff that isn't really "school", like driving practice, ballet, tap, voice, Scouts, blah blah blah.

More tales of successes and failures, I'm sure (at least, I hope I'm not the only one who's got a failure-thing going), when you visit Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers' Weekly Wrap-Up.

Happy Rat-iversay, Emily!

2011-11-17T05:07:00.001-08:00

Yes, we've now had Emily for over a year. And considering how short-lived rats are, that's worth celebrating.

When we got Miss Em she had been a backroom rat -- the pet store had her in the backroom as unsaleable due to a leaky tear duct. Rick and Annabeth were rat-shopping, and one of the workers mentioned that they had another rat in the back that couldn't be sold because of a health problem -- were they interested in adopting her? She had been spending her life in isolation from other rats (rats are extremely social animals, and it's unusual to have a solo rat). And she hadn't really been socialized to humans, either. And it didn't help that she appeared to be blind in one eye. To this day she tends to weave her head back and forth when she's looking at you, as though she's trying to compensate for the lack of binocular vision.

Wow, she was a scaredy-rat when we got her. She hated to be picked up or have much interaction with people. But after a year of hanging around here, Annabeth is able to tote her around:

Seen here inspecting a birthday card for Grandma that has picture of some rodent that bears quite a likeness to Emily. Grandma and Emily bonded last February when Grandma sat giving her Corn Chex one by one until Emily had about half a box stashed in her igloo.

She's happy to get out and explore, especially book bags, briefcases, and purses, which sometimes have random food left in them:

She's posed for innumerable photo shoots:

And been dressed up in Angelina Ballerina outfits:

Mostly, though, she likes hanging out in her cage with her friend, Farley:

Or snuggling up in an old tshirt:

One of her favorite things to do is try to stuff everything in the cage into the cube. And she's the most persnickety rat we've seen insofar as wanting to use a litter box, which we supply in the bottom of the cage. She enjoys avocados, bananas, beans, and Corn Chex, but her favorite is fresh raspberries.

How did she celebrate her rat-iversary? She was out of the cage, exploring the house, and climbed in my purse, at which time she discovered that I had purchased a 2 pack of QBel Dark Chocolate Wafer Rolls a couple of days before, eaten one, stuck the other in my purse and promptly forgot about it. Emily happily dragged it out of my purse and was quietly enjoying the feeling of being a wild rat who had foraged food AND come up with something so luscious ... unfortunately, Farley came along, grabbed the QBel and started running around the house with it in her mouth, loudly squeaking OMG! OMG! OMG! in her excitement (you know the opening scene of Legally Blonde, The Musical where the sorority sisters are all jumping around loudly singing OH MY GOD!? Farley was doing the the rodent version of that). So, of course, the lovely QBel was taken away. Sigh. Quite a bit of the chocolate covering had already been removed, though, so I think they'd had enough.

Many happy returns of the day, Emily!

Bronze Award

2011-11-15T05:02:00.001-08:00

Okay, obviously this is old news, but that's how far behind I am on things I've meant to blog about.

For the Bronze Award last year, Annabeth's troop decided to make items for animal rescue group. One girl made blankets for dogs, Annabeth made cat toys, someone had a paper drive to gather newspapers for a rescue group, and another girl made horse blankets.

To start off her part of the project, Annabeth made cat toys by examining some of the more popular models we've purchased in the past. She then cut up a pair of blue jeans Daddy was throwing out, sewed up tubes, and stuffed them with catnip. We figured out which brand of catnip to use by going to PetSmart and standing in the aisle sniffing various containers until we found one with some "oomph".

She decided to stuff the catnip in the toys outdoors for easier cleanup. She ended up using a plastic bag as a funnel. Also, she ended up standing farther away from any lawn furniture so that the cats couldn't "help".

Then she took them back inside and sewed up the end. The first couple were sent for rigorous field testing by our experts, who still enjoy playing with them months later. Also, the stitching was found to be tough enough to withstand vigorous use.

Later, the troop got together so that the girls could teach each other how to make the various blankets and toys. That way everyone got to work on everything.

By this time we had purchased a pair of men's jeans at Goodwill (size in the extra-large range -- more fabric for our $3!), laundered them to get out some of the fabric softener (what is it with Goodwill clothes and fabric softener -- they're always saturated in the stuff, and it gives me a headache -- no way I'd subject an animal to that).

And we delivered our cat toys to Open Door Animal Shelter, which I believe is where the dog blankets also went.

In the meantime, Annabeth had been totally captivated with the concept of making horse blankets. She ended up getting together with a couple of the other girls who wanted to work more on that project. It took a surprising amount of time to cut out and put together a single blanket, which is somewhat made-to-measure. This was delivered to Longmeadow Rescue Ranch for use by one of the smaller ponies.

Apparently the smaller horses have more need of blankets in the winter. When they come in from their prior living situation they can have issues that have worn away some of their coat (like rain rot). Also, some of the horses get really freaked out about having blankets buckled about their legs, so these are just a lightweight layer.

They still have the strapping and buckles to make a couple of more blankets, which this particular group of girls would like to do. No doubt the future versions of the blanket will go more quickly now that they've figured out the directions. (The girl in charge of this project had purchased a pattern from somewhere, but I've no clue where. I think to find appropriate webbing and buckles they ended up ordering from a place on the west coast that supplies rock climbers and campers -- mostly because her family is familiar with that vendor from when they lived there, and couldn't find the stuff locally.)

Overall, a decent group of projects, and a good experience.

Co-op Science Week 11

2011-11-10T08:19:00.001-08:00

This week was our Fall Open House, so we spent much of our class time getting ready for that. We stapled covers on our booklets of Newton's Laws. Several of the kids drew pictures on the front of the booklets. I brought in our catapults from an earlier session, as well as some other stuff we'd worked on -- sort of a random assortment.

(Click to enlarge pictures, if desired.)

I also had the kids decorate a poster proclaiming "3-5 SCIENCE". They drew several things we did, and several things they apparently wished we had done. There was great controversy surrounding the fact that the boys made the letter C into a monster; one of the girls drew an alternative non-monster C which I attached to the bottom of the poster. Overall I thought it was pretty cool. Annabeth had given me the heads-up that this is how we should do this, by the way -- have the kids make it themselves.

One of the boys had brought in more magic tricks to share, having forgotten his last week. And since many of the tricks they've been sharing have been along the lines of sleight-of-hand and fooling the eye, I thought it was a good time to segue into optics and light.

We started with thaumatropes to show the concept of persistence of vision. My co-teacher brought in a little plastic zoetrope that she'd gotten in a kid's meal somewhere -- it was way cool. I'd hoped to make our own rendition of zoetropes, but we ran out of time. Overall the kids were content to color and decorate things -- a very subdued group. I think the time change really took a toll on everyone in spite of supposedly getting more sleep.

The day before class I'd come up with
New Improved Directions for Making Thaumatropes with a Crowd of Kids:

Cut a couple of 3x5 index cards into squares (if you leave them rectangles they're too flappy to work well).

Draw your pictures on the non-lined sides, taking care that the pictures will overlap appropriately. Outline in Sharpie -- this helps the picture "pop" when you spin it. Color as desired. (You want to color it now because once you get the straw on it, it will be too lumpy to color.)

Tape a straw to the back of one side. If it's a bendy straw, make sure the bend isn't going to interfere with spinning the thaumatrope -- I put this bend against the back of the card, but you could also put it at the bottom. Or just cut it off and have a shorter straw. Also, if you use colored straws be aware that the kids will have strong opinions about which color they want.

I used Duck brand tape to tape it to the back of the index cards because it's wide and easy to tear.

Staple the front to back. Or use Scotch tape, which is what we used when we ran out of staples.

Spin. Be impressed with the picture that appears.

The kids were incredibly imaginative with their pictures: head with hat (that didn't quite line up, so the hat was sort of floating over the head, which was actually pretty cool), person in jail cell, pen writing on blank sheet of paper, jet flying through clouds, smiley face eyes with smiley face smile on the back, fish in a fish bowl .... Some kids made multiple thaumatropes, trying various ideas. Probably the most amazing was a dog (or maybe wolf) sitting on a moonlit, starlit hill howling -- on the facing card was another dog/wolf on a hill on the opposite side of the "valley", also howling. I am in awe of this group, and so glad I get to spend some time with them each week.

Homeschool Wrap-Up

2011-11-05T08:23:00.000-07:00

Last week was The Week of the Bad Cold, in which Thalia got stinkin' sick with a cold. Which made the difficult Kinetic Physics problems closer to "impossible". Rick was out of town (Rick typically helps her with this), I was busy with other stuff (one of the rats had surgery, subsequently started picking out the sutures and bleeding all over the place, so I was running around in the cold, rainy night amassing gauze pads and various other first aid supplies), plus we were supposedly getting ready for her costume party. Oh, and going to the doctor to talk about vaccinations and malaria drugs for the trip to Dominican Republic next spring.

All of which is to say, not a whole lotta schooling going on. Although Rick got home late Thursday night, the Physics DID get done (with 30 minutes to spare!)(the teacher sets a time by which all answers need to be entered online), and turned in. And Notgrass history got done. But Jensen's Format Writing and Lial's Algebra 2 suffered.

In the meantime, Annabeth had a crash course in rat first aid, googling how to stop bleeding (since I was out running an errand in the cold, wet, dark night, and Thalia was too sick to help). On a more mellow note, she also kept up with math and English -- history suffered from neglect once again. She continued to use Mango French on our library's website.

Then, of course, the weekend, which included the afore mentioned party. And then Monday, which was Halloween. We skipped Monday night classes in order to Trick or Treat, since that seemed a higher priority at the time.

After which, of course, it was back to Physics, although it was somewhat simpler this week. And working AHEAD in Notgrass, since next week is going to be busy. And playing catchup in Lial's Algebra and Jensen's Format Writing. We ended up splitting the Dave Ramsey session on insurance into 2 parts/2 weeks , as it's a pretty information-packed segment of the book.

Fall Formal was this week, which is sort of the homeschool answer to homecoming celebrations, but without the football game. It takes place at Andre's on Telegraph, typically on a Thursday night. This year Thalia thought she would make a simple Little Black Dress (counting the construction towards a half credit of Practical Arts), and then buy a pair of fun shoes. After all the falderal of last week and the weekend, though, it was apparent that the black satin languishing in the laundry room wasn't going anywhere very quickly. So I cut it out Tuesday, and slapped it together Wednesday. We went to the mall Tuesday night and found shoes:

I think she wanted something gaudier, but gaudy costs more money, and this is what Charlotte Russe had in her size. Those heels put her up over 6 foot tall.

Of course, she gets ready over at a friend's house, and refuses to bother taking pictures. So far this is all I've got of the dress, which I swiped off of someone's Facebook (as I did the above shoe picture):

She assures me that there are better pictures on another friend's camera, but that friend is currently in Kansas City for a robotics competition.

And this week Annabeth did RightStart Geometry; got ready to take another test in Shepherd's Life Science, except we can't find the test book, which was probably stuck away somewhere during the whirlwind housecleaning before the party last weekend; missed her WriteShop class so we could take the rat BACK to the vet to find out if that lump developing under the incision was an abscess (hey, we have cats, and that's what an abscess on a cat looks like -- but on a rat that's just had surgery it's a hematoma ... I wish they would've told me beforehand that seratomas and hematomas are an option). By the way, we don't have to take her back to have her stitches removed since she's already removed all of them with her teeth. Also, Annabeth has been reading about St. Francis in her sloooow trip through Pandia Press Middle Age history.

Also, Annabeth is the lead in a Christmas musical at church, and is tagging along to Thalia's voice lessons so she can spend a half hour working with the director on inflection and acting. The play is a takeoff of the old Dragnet series, and she has the Joe Friday part. She was thrilled to learn that they'll be costuming it in a 1950s look rather than a Bible-story look (she loathes Bible-story costumes, but the 1950s look puts it reasonably close to Captain America, and she's hoping to base her costume on Peggy, his girlfriend -- she asked if she could dye her hair and wear the bright red lipstick).

Plus, a couple of nights ago while fooling around with Amazon.com's new book-lending feature for Kindle (which we've decided is pretty lame, by the way), she discovered a free copy of Black Beauty. She's captivated by it.

Plus Scouts was this week, during which they supposedly learned something or other. Thalia's troop was working on collages as part of finishing up one of the old badges. Annabeth's group was working on a Journey, which is fairly insipid.

Earlier in the fall I read the blog by some young woman who was homeschooled in Missouri, and is quite opposed to homeschooling now because of the social isolation. Um, yeah, right. I could use some isolation right about now -- maybe I'd be able to write up a nice report of all the actual schoolwork we got done rather than all the running around we do, and rabbit trails we wander off on.

More Homeschool Weeks-in-Review at www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com.

Co-op Science Week 10

2011-11-03T18:08:00.000-07:00

Science class met on Halloween this week, so I invited the kids to bring in magic tricks to demonstrate to their classmates. It was fun, although many of the kids forgot to bring one in.

I had put some Soil Moist granules in water in a plastic container the night before. I took them in and announced that they were "ghost brains". The kids didn't buy it, of course. I spooned some out into small plastic bags while explaining that it was a hydrophilic polymer I had used in the garden over the summer, it would dry back out into granules if left on a paper towel, and it was pretty much the same thing that they could find in a disposable diaper. This last bit of info really elicited some cries of "eeeewwwwww!"

Then we made Slime, using the directions in the old Girl Scout Junior Badge Book in the Making It Matter Badge; these are the best directions I've found for making Slime with a crowd of kids in 3rd through 5th grade. Of course, this badge book is no longer available because ~~GSUSA is a bunch of idiots~~ GSUSA apparently believes that girls don't need STEM inspiration (or, at least, girls won't cough up the bucks to join an organization that has fun STEM projects), so here's how to do it:

Pass out cups to the kids, along with wooden popsicle sticks for stirring. Measure out 1 tablespoon of Elmer's Glue (or other glue -- there are lots of websites comparing the virtues of various glues in regards to Slime-making) into each cup (have kids help with this or not -- sort of depends on your crowd)to . Go down the row putting 3 tablespoons of water into each cup, and have them stir the water and glue together.

(For the record, all I had told them about what we were doing was that we were going to make a polymer by having using the Borax hook together the polyvinyl acetate [in the glue] sort of like paper clips hooking together lots of little chains. Some kids recognized what we were doing, most didn't. Several websites give nice explanations of the science of this demonstration, and thanks to Wikipedia I think I know the difference between polyvinyl acetate and polyvinyl alcohol.)

We then put a squirt of glow-in-the-dark paint in each cup.

Earlier I had mixed 2 tablespoons of Borax in a cup of warm water. Each cup of watery glue next got one tablespoon of the Borax solution, with directions to "keep stirring". Unfortunately as the water cooled a lot of the Borax precipitated out (I'd done this at home, and at least an hour had elapsed). So the first few cups had a few duds, as they didn't have enough Borax to start the reaction. But, wow, it was pretty cool when SURPRISE, Slime started to form in the cups that worked. Since we had plenty of cups, glue, and Borax solution, we started over on some of the duds.

We then discussed where we could go to see whether or not it would really glow in the dark -- I hadn't tried this out ahead of time and wasn't really sure. We all ran downstairs to a big room with no windows, and discovered, YES, we have glowing slime! I meant to give a quick lesson in how glow in the dark paint works, but it was lost in the excitement.

I had brought plastic bags for them to put there Slime in. So, take-home bags of Ghost Brains and Slime! Perfect Halloween science class!

Halloween, Musical Theater-style

2011-11-01T14:54:00.000-07:00

This year we had pumpkins carved as Hello Kitty

and as a Manga character.

As for costumes, for the past several years the kids have gone trick-or-treating with a friend. But this year they found out about a week before Halloween that she wasn't available for the evening, meaning that their planned costumes/routine weren't going to work out. But the show must go on, so they dressed in their outfits from last spring's vocal recital -- Snazzy Jazz

-- and became the Betty and Judy Haynes from White Christmas.

And performed a favorite number from the movie (very appropriate for the 2 of them) (my idea, by the way).

Some people recognized the music ("You're Rosemary Clooney!") and others didn't ("Did you write that song yourselves?" [Egads, if they were going to write a song about being sisters why would they choose those lyrics? Setting aside the appalling lack of cultural literacy, there's not a whole lotta common sense going' on with that there question]). Overall, it was well received. Some people asked where their friend was, since they remember them from year to year (and, really, who could forget last year's amazing Riverdance Spectacular?)

Once again the they ended up with a ton of candy...

I think even more than last year ...

proving once again that adding a little pizzazz to your trick-or-treating can pay big dividends.

Then, after we were done with our neighborhood, we blew out the candles in our jackolanterns, turned off the lights, and zoomed over to a friend's house to show them how it's REALLY done. Because we're all about raising the bar for Halloween craziness.

Weekend

2011-11-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

The neighborhood Halloween parade.

Followed that evening by Thalia's Sweet Sixteen Costume Party.

Which featured a cat,

and Cher (although as the evening progressed I found myself thinking about Elvira),

and a whole bunch of other characters.

Sunday they were supposed to go to a Trunk-or-Treat our youth group was putting on at an apartment complex. The plan was to reprise their roles as Dorothy and the Wicked Witch. But everyone was pretty wiped out from the party (and the physics assignment, and a bad cold going around) so we stayed home to carve pumpkins instead.

Ready for The Big Day!

Co-op Science Week 9

2011-10-27T05:20:00.000-07:00

Magnets!

I spent some time talking about whys of magnets -- why do magnets act the way they do (electrons), why can we magnetize certain metals temporarily (organize the atoms in, say, an iron screw by using another magnet or an electric current), why do compasses point north (Earth has a magnetic field).

Mostly, though, we played. I had some neodymium magnets I'd gotten at Hobby Lobby several months ago -- I'd gotten them for my refrigerator, frankly, so I can stick papers to it without having everything tumble off. They came in packs of 2 -- a red and a yellow -- about 2 inches by 1 inch by 1/4 inch thick. I've since figured out that they're encased in plastic because neodymium is brittle; also, the plastic keeps them from sticking together so tightly that they're impossible to pull apart (the plastic is slick enough to slide them apart). Who knows how big the encased magnets are -- they might be much smaller. Anyway, they're pretty powerful little goobers, and I have 4 total magnets. I went back to Hobby Lobby recently to get more to use in class, but they were out of this particular model.

The kids were enchanted by picking up wads of paperclips with them. Also, they're powerful enough to stick one on top of your hand and one underneath and have them stick together.

I'd taken in some iron drywall screws that we magnetized by stroking with the magnets. Drywall screws were the only thing I could find in our workbench that worked -- most of the nails we have are galvanized or elsewise coated. I put duct tape on the plastic of the neodymium magnets so it wouldn't be scraped off by the threads of the drywall screws. I explained theories of how to de-magnetize the screws, but, frankly, dropping them repeatedly didn't work, and in our classroom setting I didn't feel like messing around with heating them .

We also magnetized steel needles, taped them to small pieces of cork, and floated them in bowls of water to make our own compasses. We discussed that these didn't have the handy marker to show us which end is north, and how could we figure out which was which? (Using our knowledge of where the sun rises and sets, for example.) We also experimented a bit with making the compasses go wonky by exposing them to another magnetic field.

Then I got out another set of drywall screws which we wrapped in insulated copper wire like this, attaching to 9v batteries. I had the kids work in groups for this to make it easier to supervise.

At the beginning of class I'd put a full serving of Total cereal in the blender with some water, then put it in a plastic bag. I'd hoped to get the iron filings to separate out. They eventually did, but this demonstration works best for me if I set one of the neodymium magnets on it for a while, then wander off and forget about it for a long time (like, hours). At home I was able to get a dollar bill to react a bit to the magnet, but I wasn't able to in class. The kids were somewhat appalled at the news that some people put a dollar bill in a blender to do the same type of demo ("that's illegal to do that to a dollar bill!"). Our currency is printed with a magnetic ink, by the way, which is why this would work.

I couldn't find any iron filings to use to show the poles of the magnets. Somewhere in the house we have one of those old games where you move the iron filings on a picture to make a beard or hair, but, alas, I can't find it. It also would've been wicked cool to get some ferrofluid to play around with, but it wasn't in the budget.

Some of the kids seemed disinterested in the entire session. Perhaps they've done it all before; or perhaps the set up of just playing around and seeing what happened bothered them. I'd expected that most everyone in class has played some with magnets, but now I know they've all seen certain things that we can build on as we explore more about electromagnetic forces.

Bento Fail

2011-10-25T19:01:00.000-07:00

This sounded like an okay idea on the surface: Trader Joe's orange chicken, rice, some orange pepper and green onion, diced apples, Goldfish for Annabeth and some sort of Hapi sesame crackers for Thalia. Thalia and I had nori faces on our pumpkins full of rice; Annabeth had a little heart shape (which looks like a belly button). Lots of seasonal interest, right?

But, alas, the food markers wouldn't draw on the orange pepper I'd cut out in pumpkin shapes. I'm about ready to give up on the Wilton food markers, as this is week 2 of disappointing results. And I was out of sushi rice so I used regular white rice which, since each grain was separate, sort of swirled around all over the bentos as the boxes were jostled in transport; my jack-o-lantern face ended up stuck to the inside top of the box by lunchtime, and I had rice in the apple chunks. And the sesame crackers ended up soggy from the apple chunks and flying rice, although they turned out to be stale and disgusting anyway.

Ick.

Homeschool Update

2011-10-22T09:14:00.000-07:00

Some highlights of the past couple of weeks:

MATH:

Thalia took a test early in the week, and has now started Chapter 5 of Lial's Intermediate Algebra, Systems of Linear Equations. She says she now has more of a clue about some of those ACT math questions from back in September, having now seen what the heck they were going on about.

Annabeth continues to storm through Key to Decimals. She's not quite halfway through the second book. So far it's been review, with mistakes made out of sloppiness rather than misunderstanding.

HISTORY:

Thalia actually missed an answer in Notgrass World History -- the first this year. I think it might have been absentmindedness. She's displaying signs of nitpicky-ness with the text, looking for minor faults. It really isn't very challenging as a history text, so I guess that's what keeps her occupied.

Annabeth wonders about all of the timelines in History Odyssey. Why make the little one that you can't fit all the stuff on, and then also put the same stuff on the big one? Because then you actually learn it by fitting it in; plus the big one is to keep and add to from year to year.

ENGLISH:

Jensen's Format Writing requires that one select one's own topics, which has apparently been the biggest challenge for Thalia so far -- figuring out what she'd like to write a 7 sentence (occasionally 8 sentence) paragraph about. The topics are getting more and more ... interesting. For analogy, she compared kidneys to furnace filters, saying it was the first thing that came to mind.

And Annabeth is working on similes in Writeshop. Which is nice, since it's something she hasn't worked on before.

SCIENCE:

Let's see, Thalia had her first Physics test a couple of weeks ago, which she did really well on. Then we had the assignments from hell, which took F.O.R.E.V.E.R. to complete, and included much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then this week everything was easy-peasy. Sort of a bipolar course -- you just never know what to expect next.

And I've been trying to go over more assignments in Shepherd's Life Science with Annabeth, since they're not doing that much in their once-per-week class. They've made it through cell biology, which she thought was confusing. Overall, if I didn't feel comfortable with the subject I think this would be a tough course to supervise from home (it might be easier to outright teach it, since then you're following along more closely anyway).

SOME OTHER STUFF:

Dave Ramsey has taught us about relationships and money (hohum, THAT was a fairly useless chapter), and how to interview for jobs (ditto -- better info about this is available elsewhere). And a brief swipe at taxes. Don't get me wrong, I still like the course. But we hurried through these chapters. There were test questions I thought were just plain silly, since they were more along the lines of "were you paying attention" rather than "you should remember this stuff". But we're coming down to the home stretch. She's also been reading Adam Shepard's Scratch Beginnings this week for sort of a look at real life applications.

Theater work is keeping everyone busy. Sets to paint. Songs and blocking to learn. Annabeth just got the lead in a play at church. She sewed several pillows for the Snow White set last week, stuffing one with an extraneous bed pillow we had in the closet. She was pretty proud of them, especially the one with gold fringe which she figured out how to apply herself.

Also, we've been handing around the latest Rick Riordan book (Son of Neptune) since Thalia was one of the first to get it from the library. Three of us managed to read it this week during her checkout period of it.

And all the other usual falderal -- voice, piano, dance, driving. Annabeth started doing Mango French again this week (Mango is available through our public library's website). Plus all the stuff I'll think of after I post this, which is pretty typical. You'd think by now I'd be writing notes all week, but no. Just scrawls in the planner -- otherwise, these ARE my notes.

Co-op Science Week 8

2011-10-19T18:12:00.000-07:00

Friction.

Actually, we started out with a review of gravity from last week. I used some questions from Science Jim's Bite-Size Physics: Force like: Which of the following are most attracted to each other by gravity? A) apples and bananas, B)beagles and chihuahuas, C) Earth and you, or D)All of the above. Sort of mildly silly, but got the point across.

From there I asked who all had read or seen Magic School Bus Plays Ball, since we were talking about the same topic. Several kids had, but some hadn't. Some came up and looked through the book as we were doing our various activities.

We started by listing ways friction was a friend or foe (idea from Science Action Labs -- Physical Science). We discussed car brakes, crickets, violins, snakes, walking, standing, things that overheat due to friction, etc.

We then did an experiment with a board and various shoes, seeing how high we could incline the board before the shoes slid down the ramp. We talked about how shoes that had more points of contact with the board tended to have more friction.

Next, we tried pulling a heavy metal tray from my kitchen over various surfaces. I hooked a spring scale to the tray so we could see the force used. This also involved explaining Hooke's law about springs, plus what the heck a "Newton" is. Besides running the tray over the carpet, I had brought in a fluffy rug and a yoga mat. After that we ran it a few times over the same surface, but with different amounts of weight on top -- we used books the kids had in their backpacks.

I showed on the board how they could start writing a lab report for this experiment -- what they would write for their hypothesis, materials, procedure.

We took a brief look at bearings. First of all I stuck some pens under the tray while it sat on the yoga mat, and demonstrated how easily it moved on the pens. Then I set up a demo rather like this one (Annabeth and I had done this for a Junior Girl Scout badge back when Girl Scouts had cool badges worth earning). And discussed how the bearing gave the item fewer points of contact with the surface below, just like with the shoes. And, no, even though your grandpa puts grease on bearings doesn't mean that grease is a necessity for bearings to work.

I didn't do much explaining of the whys of friction, although I let the kids know that it's something scientists are still working to understand more about.

Finally, we explored air friction by making parachutes out of plastic grocery bags, taping them to little paper-cone-people. I had taken along drinking straws so we could shoot the people in the air, but since we were done a few minutes early we trooped outside, tossing them over the 2 story balcony on the way out to enjoy the last warm, sunny day of the week. It was really cool to watch them floating down like a bunch of gigantic baby spiders. Some of the kids were still playing with them on the playground, and one girl intended to show her little brother how to make one that evening.

I'd reflect on all of this more, but a rat keeps running across the keyboard, typing nonsense, so I'll leave it at that.

Weekend

2011-10-18T07:34:00.000-07:00

-- Rick got a couple of tickets to Friday night's playoff game. His sister drove over from Kansas City to go with him. They had a fantastic time -- the weather was gorgeous, the crowd was fun, the Cardinals won.

-- Up early Saturday to have people over. Then Donna stayed the day to help put up the bathroom light. During which Rick whacked his head into the nails in the attic ceiling (I was taking Thalia to ballet when the cell phone rang: "Daddy would like to know how to get blood out of clothing" -- not a phone call you like to get, if you know what I mean).

-- Also, open shop for backstage crew for upcoming Snow White ballet. Which meant the kids were gone most of the day.

-- Thalia was supposed to go to the SLUH Fall Formal with the guy whose mom makes him go to dances. Only this time he managed to convince his mom that none of his friends were going to that particular dance so he shouldn't have to; she acquiesced on the condition that he take a female to dinner and a movie. So now Thalia and friend have practiced how-to-have-a-dinner-and-movie-date. Actually, I think they had pretty much fun.

-- In the meantime, I realized that what my life was missing was Halloween-themed silicon baking cups, mini-cookie cutters, and plastic picks. I found some picks in our box of Halloween decor; the baking cups and cookie cutters were 40% off at Hobby Lobby. And the sun shone in the window on the bento I was making, and life was good:

Corn muffins, orange slices in a pumpkin shaped baking cup, 2-bite brownie, twice-baked new potatoes, steamed broccoli, and slices of cheese.

Except the food markers don't really want to draw nicely on Monterey Jack cheese, so that was a little blotch on my bento euphoria.

-- Up early on Sunday so Thalia's choir could sing. Then all the usual Sunday fal-de-ral. It was sunny and in the 80s, so Rick was trying to get the last few tiles cut for the bathroom (using a tile saw tends to be a rather soggy experience). And sliced open his finger. Second injury this weekend.

-- On my way to pick up kids from their activities I saw one of their friends walking through the neighborhood, which was surprising since this friend doesn't live around here. I stopped the car and rolled down the window.

"Hey, what are you doing over here?"

"We're coming to ding-dong-ditch you."

I sat in the car staring at him for a moment.

"Um, isn't that supposed to be a surprise? Anyway, nobody's home right now."

Really, the kids (ours) thought it was hilarious -- we discussed calling him when we got home to let him know that it was okay to come over to ding-dong-ditch. Rick said it was like setting an appointment to TP someone's house.

-- Overall, a weekend filled with laughter, friends, family, fun.

Co-op Science Week 7

2011-10-11T18:12:00.000-07:00

Topic of the week: Gravity.

Began by explaining that while Galileo was figuring out that things always fall down, Kepler was figuring out that planets always orbit around; this looks like it could be two separate phenomena, but Newton figured out that it was all because of gravity. (Source: John Hudson Tiner's Exploring the World of Physics).

Listed the 4 forces on the board (strong nuclear force, electromagnetic, weak nuclear force, gravity). Pointed out that gravity is the weakling of the bunch, that gravity is the only one that is solely attractive, everything with matter has gravity. Filled glass bowl with water and dropped Cheerios in it bit by bit to illustrate things coming together with gravity (explain that the reason Cheerios clump together, though, is the Cheerio Effect, but it's still a good visual for gravity). Attempted to explain how forces vary with the inverse square of distance (quicky review of what squares are, quick look at what inverse means). Pulled out magnet plus a paper clip on string to illustrate how the magnetic force gets sooo much greater when the clip gets closer to the magnet. Pretty much all of these ideas came from Science Jim's ebook about force, although Science Jim neglected to say anything about the Cheerio Effect, leaving the impression that gravity is attracting Cheerios to each other.

Okay, next, talked about gravity's pull and how it varies -- Earth's gravity is pulling more on me because I have more mass. Forgot to talk about how that pull varies by location, although I've mentioned that before in class. Oops. Gravity's acceleration is constant, though, as demonstrated in the every-popular flick-a-coin-and-drop-a-coin-concurrently demo, in which the coins hit the ground at the same time (by the way, most places suggest doing this with coins, but I also saw this in a book that suggested using extremely ripe tomatoes -- I'm sure my class would've been charmed, but I really didn't care to clean up afterwards). Had the kids test each other against gravity by seeing how quickly they can grab a 12 inch ruler dropped between their fingers -- by seeing which inch mark they come closest to grabbing it at, we can calculate how long it took them to react (source for this idea was Science Action Labs -- Physical Science).

Then, wandered off into the subject of center-of-gravity. We all stood against the wall, heels to the wall, and tried to touch the floor without bending our knees. We tried grabbing our toes and hopping backward and forward (forward is possible if you scrunch down enough, changing your body shape).

And then brought out soda cans, water, toothpicks, and forks to start teaching them the skills that will be so valuable in college bars, like how to balance a soda can (or beer can) on its edge ...

how to balance forks on toothpicks on a salt shaker...

or else on the rim of a glass, then use a lighter to burn away the excess toothpick.

I'd bought a bunch of extra forks at the Goodwill. In case you wondered, the Goodwill has more dinner knives than anything else, followed by spoons. Cheap forks are apparently in high demand. Although several people felt compelled to comment on my picking through all the forks (I was trying to figure out which ones would work well together) as though they'd never seen anyone buy forks before.

As I was gathering my supplies Rick asked if I had enough lighters for everyone. "Are you crazy? These are little kids!" Of course, as expected, as soon as I got the (single solitary) lighter out I started hearing the speeches like, "Can I use the lighter? I'm allowed to at home." "Okay, then, when you go home and do this, your parents can let you use it if they want. In the meantime, no."

Theoretically, they all went home and did these things at the dinner table that night. Optimally they placed bets with older siblings about whether they could do these things, although I forgot to suggest that.

Bathroom Renovation Haiku"

2011-10-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

(*a less-known sub-genre of Home Renovation Haiku)

New mirror is hung,

And baseboards put into place.

Light fixture is next.

Homeschool Update 10/7/11

2011-10-07T19:37:00.000-07:00

SCIENCE:

Shepherd's Life Science apparently doesn't have specified experiments, although they have suggestions. The co-op teacher decided to use The Egg experiment from Apologia Biology. You know the one, where you take The Egg

and soak it in vinegar until the shell is off.

Then soak it in various other things like corn syrup and water, measuring after each soak.

In the meantime, Thalia is studying for her first test in Kinetic Physics. I have the impression the teacher is a wee bit disappointed with the support available for writing her own tests -- I think she was under the impression they would have more test questions available. They're doing the Principle of Physics, which prepares the class for the Physics AP/B exam, by the way. Anyway, the teacher has re-opened all of the homework questions, as well as the quiz boards (Kinetic is done online, and the teacher sets the "due date" on the homework by setting the program to close all attempts to enter answers to problems as of the deadline) for the kids to use to study for the test. She's sent a pdf of the test, and will send the parents a pdf of the answers.

MATH:

Annabeth finished up the first book of Key to Decimals, and then switched back to RightStart Geometry, wherein she's in the throes of Pythagorean Theorem. Of course, this brings to mind adventures in The Wizard of Oz last summer, when the Scarecrow could NOT remember his line about the Pythagorean Theorem after the Wizard gave him a brain (and Thalia kept saying, "get a refund on that brain!"), distracting everyone from the point of the RightStart lesson.

Thalia is moving ahead in Lial's Intermediate Algebra, which still seems straightforward to use and grade.

ENGLISH:

Junior Analytical Grammar is DONE. Whoot. Honestly, it wasn't the warm, fuzzy experience that Analytical Grammar was. I found myself disagreeing with the answer book at times (given that grammar isn't my thing, this is Big News). But, hey, it's over now, and we're moving on to ... well, we're not moving on to anything in particular at the moment.

Thalia continues to write paragraphs for Jensen's Format Writing. And occasionally plunges into Analytical Grammar High School Reinforcement -- she's using the Great World Authors book this year. As I've mentioned before, she does this for fun, sort of like others work sudoku.

HISTORY

Annabeth hasn't done a whole heck of a lot with the Middle Ages, after blazing through the first week or so. We tend to be rather stop-and-go with history around here.

In the meantime, Thalia is finding Notgrass World History incredibly easy, answering questions about Daniel that she learned in about 3rd grade Sunday School. The biggest challenge is the Country Study -- she writes an essay every week about India. Some of the subjects bore her -- for example, writing about the economy of India was apparently less than scintillating.

OTHER STUFF

Chapters 7 and 8 of Dave Ramsey are done. Thalia knows how to balance a checkbook, and how Dave advises making a budget (I think that's all part of a Girl Scout badge ... oh wait, those practical badges like that are now defunct, and we still haven't received the new badge books ... how does an organization that has failed so miserably at rolling out their new product presume to teach girls about leadership -- gaaaaahhhhhh! ). Also, how to bargain/negotiate. Most of which she'd already heard plenty about just in conversations around the house. But Dave had some amusing anecdotes to illustrate his points.

Theater classes are zooming along, with monologues chosen and memorized, songs practiced, sets designed, etc.

And the usual whirlwind of tap, ballet, voice, and piano. Plus driving around in that pre-driver's license way.

Once again, even more homeschool updates at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-10-05T07:01:00.001-07:00

Co-op Science Week 6

2011-10-05T06:57:00.000-07:00

I decided to work further with the idea of Alka Seltzer in film canisters, this time shooting them out of tubes.

After last week's mayhem I had refined my idea about how to accomplish this type of thing with a group of 11 excited 8-11 year olds.

I cut up my Alka Seltzer at home, using a serrated knife to saw them in half on top of a textured cutting board. The texture held them in place nicely, and I was able to make uniform pieces. I packed them carefully in a plastic container so they wouldn't break more, nor would they get wet.

I also found 5 plastic water bottles in our recycle which I filled with tap water. I handed these out to the kids for use filling their film canisters.

I also took along a white board and chalk.

Thus armed, I went to class.

We discussed what had happened last week --how the varying amounts of water affected the speed of the reaction. Small amounts of water sometimes didn't even blow the lid up -- I asked the class to speculate on why. The largest amounts of water gave the quickest, most satisfying explosion.

I explained to them that when I was messing around with this on my driveway I had filled the canister 2/3 with water then set it upside down. I got a quick reaction, but the canister didn't shoot up very far. I wasn't sure why that was since I had changed TWO things about how I did the experiment (how much water I put in the canister, plus how I set the canister on the driveway). I wanted to explore this further with their help. Which would shoot out a tube furthest -- 1/3 water, 1/2 water, or 2/3 water? One of the kids asked if we could vote by show of hands, which we did -- I made tick marks on the pictures of canisters I'd drawn on the classroom whiteboard. Some kids gave their reasons for their vote.

I explained in tedious detail what we would do outside, drawing pictures on the board. Kids asked question about the sequence, I answered.

We went out to the parking lot, and it occurred to me that if we did this in an empty part we could use the painted yellow parking lines to have a launching line. I asked the kids if they thought that was a good idea, which they did. ( I'm trying to involve them in thinking about how best to set up this stuff, weighing pros and cons.)

I distributed the parts -- I had gotten the plastic tubes from Steve Spangler Science, which is also where I got the film canisters, by the way (really simplified my life -- you can probably find all of this stuff here and there for free, but it was really easy peasy to order a set, plus they even include Alka Seltzer to get you started). Everyone donned their safety glasses.

The kids had voted to start with filling the canisters 2/3 full. Most of the canisters didn't even make it out of the tubes! So, even though that gave us the fastest *POP*, it was sort of a dud insofar as shooting. We speculated that the canister of water was too heavy to make it out of the tube.

Next they tried half full. This was very satisfying, and started several arguments over whether one's canister should be measure insofar as its initial point of contact with the ground or where it eventually stopped. The 1/3 canisters ended up flying about as far as the half full canisters -- interesting since last week several of them didn't even pop open when the kids set them on the ground. Did we improve technique? More pressure since the canister was upside down in the tube? Hmmm ... I don't think we're going to spend anymore class time on figuring that out, but I like ending up with new questions about how something worked. Always something new to think about, you know?

One boy didn't participate. He said it was more fun last week. I don't think it was the fact that we'd done Alka Seltzer/film canisters 2 weeks in a row so much as that last week was more freeform experimentation, and this week was more disciplined. I have the impression he prefers mayhem. But, other kids prefer organization. I imagine we'll continue having a mix of organized activities and free-for-alls, since that's sort of my personality.

The entire demo took amazingly little time -- I think the prep helped, plus the kids are at this point experts in loading film canisters and shooting them. I had them take their backpacks, etc., outside with them, and we spent the rest of the class (about half of it) enjoying the glorious weather on the playground. I told them they were supposed to get all of their wiggles out so they could pay attention in their next class -- science is mid-morning, so having a recess tagged onto it makes sense to me.

(Of course, then I noticed one of the boys standing on the highest point of the equipment swigging out of a plastic water bottle ... "Um, where did you get that? Is that one I brought?" "Yeah" "Do you realize I just found those laying around my house?" "Oh." Continues drinking. I decide to not mention that one of them was on the garage floor next to the trash and I had simply brushed off the gunk on it. "Well, I guess it will pump your immune system to deal with it." Gotta love kids this age.)

Weekend Merriment

2011-10-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

Tiling

and grouting.

Still to come: baseboards, mirror, and light.

Work in Progress Wednesday

2011-09-28T15:53:00.000-07:00

CROCHET

Collars for Choreography team.

CUBE

The rats need some new cage furniture.

CAKE

Boston Favorite Cake from The Fanny Farmer Cookbook. It involves separating eggs, whipping the whites, then folding them into the batter (action shot above).

Then frosted with the butter frosting we use for the Christmas cookies. Other decorations and candles still to come.

Science Co-op Week 5

2011-09-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

We started off the hour with a review of Newton's first and second law (okay, actually we started off the hour with a discussion of Halloween costumes, and also the comparative advantages of various lightsabers). I then wrote on the board the third law: For ever action there is an opposite and equal reaction. The kids copied it onto their papers.

I had thought it would be really cool to have something like an air hockey table so we could boing the pucks around, but transporting the one from our basement wasn't a possibility (my high school physics teacher used an air hockey table under a strobe light to illustrate vectors, and I always remember that as one of the coolest things that happened in high school science). Annabeth recalled that we had an air hover puck that had its own battery-powered motor that allowed it to "float" on any smooth surface sort of like this one. The room we're in for class is carpeted, so we couldn't use it on the floor. We tried to get a little table top action, but the puck kept flying off the table; the back would pop off and the batteries would fall out. But the kids had all seen or played air hockey before, so they had an idea off how it worked -- if 2 pucks collided they'd go zipping away in opposite directions.

Next, I had everyone put on safety glasses for our main demonstration. The safety glasses turned out to be a Huge Deal. First of all, one of the younger boys had to go get his own pair from his mom (I'd brought enough for everyone, but he wanted his own). He arrived back in the class while I was explaining that our family owns so many pairs of safety glasses because we're very conscious of eye safety (and one of the girls was disclosing that her father was cutting wood over the weekend WITHOUT safety glasses, and her mom kept telling him to put them on). The boy explained that his dad was wearing safety glasses RIGHT NOW in the lab he worked in (dad is a PhD chemist); the son was obviously really, really excited to wear glasses like his dad. And as the class progressed one of the girls kept exclaiming, "I feel like a real scientist!" Sort of a change of pace from working with the middle schoolers last year. Although one of the boys in this class wore them on top of his head instead of over his eyes (I tried correcting him. Later I saw him standing to one side rubbing his eye as though he'd bopped himself and looking like he was starting to cry. I asked him if he'd hit his eye, and he claimed he was fine, and that he hadn't hit his eye. I'm pretty sure he had but was afraid he'd get in trouble, or at least get a big ol' "I TOLD you to put the glasses on," and preferred to suffer alone rather than admit he'd been wrong).

Main demonstration: Put water in a plastic film canister, put part of an Alka Seltzer tablet in water, put lid on, watch lid pop off. A classic.

We started by just putting the Alka Seltzer in water (I used half tablets) and timing how long it fizzed -- about a minute. Then I dumped that out, put the same amount of water in, put another half tablet, put the lid on, then started discussing something or the other (it's an enthused bunch full of ideas of other things we should try) and after about 17 seconds POP! the lid went flying off, causing some kids to jump. One boy asked if we could try it again, but not put the lid on so we could see what happened ... um, isn't that what we did first?

Anyway, forging ahead, we went outside so the the kids could try this on their own (although the room has a high ceiling, it seemed to be wise to move this outside). A mistake I made: I should have gone over the procedure multiple times, writing it out on a portable white board or something. Because once we got outside everyone was sooooo excited that it was a little hard to control who was doing what when.

I put the kids in groups of 2 or 3 (I assigned these basis on Annabeth's advice about who would work well together while actually getting something done). I had a couple of kids who said they didn't want to actually DO anything, and I told them it was okay, they could just observe their partner.

Round 1: Fill canister halfway with water, put in half tablet, put on lid, countdown to lid popping off (we didn't have enough watches or clocks for everyone, so I reminded them that Galileo used his pulse and they could simply count steadily).

Round 2: Fill canister 1/4 to 1/3 way with water, put in half tablet, put on lid, countdown to lid popoff. Does this take longer or shorter? (I had tried to engage them in predicting which it would be.)

Round 3: Fill canister 2/3 to 3/4 with water, put in half tablet, put on lid, countdown to lid popoff. Faster? Slower?

Bonus round: Fill canister halfway, put in half tablet, put on lid, put lid-first into plastic tube that's sealed at one end, hold facing some direction other than at me, shoot canister out of tube.

Okay, the above is the THEORY of what we were doing. In reality, the kids were so excited that they kept coming up with new things they wanted to try ("can we put in a whole tablet?" "No, the reaction would be so fast you can't get it covered and put in the tube before it would blow -- REMEMBER YOU GET ONE VARIABLE, AND THAT'S THE AMOUNT OF WATER -- EVERYTHING ELSE IS A CONTROL!!!"). The Alka Seltzer tablets kept falling apart into tinier pieces, we had water sloshed everywhere, at the lower water levels the lids sometimes didn't blow off (not put on well enough? slower reaction meant the gas could leak out enough that it didn't need to POP?), kids were filling the plastic tubes with water and throwing canisters and Alka Seltzer in to see what would happen, one boy flipped the canister upside down on the pavement with the plastic tube over it and waited for the entire thing to go flying (okay, actually that was partially my idea) ... the girl who didn't want to participate was plastered on the ground in the field next to the parking lot counting down with her lab partner as they waited for their canister to blow (I think they were pretending to be a bomb squad). The boy who didn't want to participate was jumping with excitement shouting to his lab partner that it was his turn to put in the tablet and put on the lid .... You know, I'm not sure they got the point of what was SUPPOSED to happen, but they sure experienced a lot exciting discoveries. I know that I discovered that several dozen Alka Seltzer in a quart or two of water, over the course of a half hour or so, gets amazingly sticky. Who knew?

And then I happened to glance at my phone to see the time, since I estimated this would take 15-20 minutes and we could then go play on the playground, and discovered class was OVER. Oops. Everyone grabbed something, we zoomed back inside. Maybe next week we'll try to go over what we learned. I'm pretty sure it was memorable.

Homeschool Update 9/24/11

2011-09-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

- New curriculum rundown:

Ananbeth has started Key to Decimals. She's starting with book 1 because, hey, why not -- it's easy peasy, and if there happens to be some super-simple concept that she doesn't know (and didn't even realize she didn't know) she'll catch it. I'm not grading it at this point. She thinks it's great fun.

She's also started Pandia Press Middle Ages Level 2. So far she thinks it's more fun and interesting than not. She enjoyed researching various saints, she zipped through all of A Door in the Wall in a couple of gloomy, rainy days, she hasn't been so thrilled with researching the various monastic orders (although I think that might be because she insists on looking for long, dull articles about them -- if I were in charge I'd look in a children's Catholic resource to find something short and to the point, but she doesn't want to do things that way). I made a very stripped down timeline for her to use -- drew a vertical line on cardstock, labelled it with a century, punched holes to fit in a 3-ring binder (which will need to be held sideways to view the timeline), and POOF, done. I was pondering doing something swankier, but she commented, "it's just a history program" with an eyeroll. You know how you hear about people making superduper timelines that their children can treasure for the rest of their lives? Not happening here. So if that's what you're looking for, move along.

In the meantime, Thalia has made a solid start in Jensen's Format Writing, discovering that it isn't really that difficult to crank out some paragraphs once you sit down to do it. The challenge, of course, is actually beginning the work.

Old curriculum rundown:

- Chapter 6 of Dave Ramsey DONE. We're halfway through the course.
- I actually helped on a physics problem, although I'm a bit fuzzy on why my solution worked. Overall, the course involves many phone calls back and forth amongst the students.
- No clue on what's happening with Notgrass History, Writeshop, or Shepherd's Life Science. These are all co-op classes, so mostly this week I just asked if the homework's done.
- Also, theater, and technical theater I don't have much to do with other than find out what happened each week so I can jot them down to form a course description (well, what happened other than XYZ and ABC got in trouble with the teacher, since it's fairly apparent that I'll be hearing that pretty much every single week about those same two adolescent boys).
- Much cooking and discussion of cooking now that the weather's cooler. Should we have a half-credit cooking class?
- Thalia is driving more and more places. Which isn't a class, but it's a learning experience.
- She'd really like a Spanish class, but we've ruled out Rosetta Stone and Visual Link. Not ready for dual enrollment yet. What other choices exist?

More Weekly Reports at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers, a veritable font of homeschool ramblings.

A Snapshot of the Reading Life

2011-09-22T06:03:00.000-07:00

Recently completed:

Heads You Lose by Lisa Lutz and David Hayward. I like Lisa Lutz's Spellman Files series, so I thought this would be appealing. Woops, wrong. It was contrived and annoying. I finished it out of a (probably misguided) desire for completion more than out of a desire to see what happened to any of the characters. Because, in the end, I didn't care -- not about the characters, not about the authors. Sorry, not much more I can say.

Star Wars Fate of the Jedi: Ascencion Book 8 of a 9 book series written on a rotating basis by 3 authors. If you ever wondered what Star Wars would be like if it had been written as a bodice ripper, this is the book for you. And, just like a bodice ripper, you can skip through it without losing track of the plot because there's just not a lot of plot there. Really. About 50-100 pages from the end I gave up, skipped to the last chapter or so, wrapped up the parts of the story that probably matter for the next book (oh, okay, Abeloth does THAT -- no big surprise there; the Sith do THIS -- again, no surprise; and Vestra is up to THAT -- huh, coulda written that myself; and Luke and the Jedi are pretty much up to the same ol' same old), and returned it to the library. But I shall persevere through to the final book because, yoohoo, STAR WARS!

Currently reading:

How to Become a Straight-A Student by Cal Newport. I think I've been reading this forever, although it's only been about 4-6 weeks. Really, it's a decent guide on how to organize your study time for maximum effect. It would be great for a college student to read, preferably before the beginning of the semester. It would probably be helpful for high school students. But, like I say, I'm not sure what's in it for me, other than being able to recommend it to people the appropriate age and occupation -- which I can already do, therefor no need for me to finish the book. Maybe I just like it because whilst reading I can fantasize about having been that clued in during college.

How to Be a High School Superstar by Cal Newport. Takes some of the same concepts from the college book (above) and applies them to high school so that kids have plenty of free time to develop "interestingness". Also purportedly claims to explain how to develop "interestingness". I'm only about a third of the way through, and this one is worth finishing to see where he's going with it. Homeschool theoretically could be the PERFECT for giving kids huge blocks of time to develop "interestingness", but plenty of homeschool kids aren't making the leap. C'mon, you've all heard the stories of homeschoolers who, given free rein over their time, fritter it away on various meaningless pursuits and are barely literate years later. I suspect Cal Newport doesn't have magical words of inspiration for those kids -- I suspect the inspiration to be a Superstar has to already be present, and Newport simply gives a way to channel it. But, hey, it looks like it will be an interesting read. And I'm attracted to the way the author challenges the status quo, stating that the typical way people try to make college applications stand out is really downright silly. But, will my love of all things status-quo-challenging blind me to the flaws in his premise? Hmm....

For the Love of Physics by Walter Lewin. I picked this up at random from the New Book shelves at the library, attracted to the cover picture of a guy swinging on a pendulum in a classroom. I often like science biographies (Lives of a Cell, for example). And the fact that I'm currently teaching physics to a bunch of grade-school-age kids adds to the attraction. Wow, this book is great for inspiration. Admittedly I can't show the exact same demos in my itty-bitty co-op class -- I don't have access to the swanky equipment to drag into the classroom -- but his enthusiasm for his subject is infectious. I wish, though, that the book had an appendix that listed out all the YouTube videos and cool websites he mentions in the text, since as it stands now I have all sort of crappy little bits of paper stuck in pages since I'm often reading the without an internet-connected computer by my side. Really, if you like reading about science topics, this is a book you don't want to miss.

Okay, there are probably more bookmark-ridden books languishing around here. But these are the ones I've been carrying around with me lately, and continue to carry around.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-09-21T05:21:00.000-07:00

Co-op Science Week 4

2011-09-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

I was operating in a state of exhaustion this week, and didn't even write out a lesson plan. Fortunately Newton's second law is pretty straightforward, so it was pretty easy to wing it.

I started by defining force, mass, and acceleration, writing each word on the board and then discussing. For "force" I pushed on various things (the wall, one of the kids, etc.). Easy and obvious. For "mass" I explained that it was little more complicated, but it has to do with how big and heavy something is BUT it isn't exactly that -- it's more along the lines of how much STUFF (matter) something has. I had a styrofoam cooler and a black ice pack -- the black ice pack was smaller in dimension, but weighed more while we're standing here on Earth. I chose those objects, by the way, because they I saw them in my house while I was pondering how to explain the concept. For "acceleration" I talked about the accelerator on a car and the acceleration lane on a highway. I also explained that scientists have much more precise definitions of these things that take direction into consideration, but we weren't going to worry about that now since we're just after a broad picture.

Next, some hands-on examples of the concept of Newton's 2nd law. We talked about how easy it was for H to zip that Barbie car across the floor in last week's class, and tried to picture how tough it would be for her to push MY car across the parking lot. That's an example of a greater mass needing more force to move it and attain the same acceleration. Then I whipped out a slingshot and pulled it back just a little to send a pingpong ball going a short distance; next pulled it back more so the pingpong ball bounced off the opposite wall and halfway back across the room (this was wildly popular) for another example of varying force, but this time holding mass constant so acceleration became greater. Finally, to demonstrate 2 different masses reacting to gravity, we did the ever-popular impact-crater demonstration, which oddly enough not one of the kids said they'd ever seen -- I put flour in a cake pan, covered it with a layer of cocoa, set the entire thing on a drop cloth on the flour, then dropped a pingpong ball and a golf ball in it at the same time. I explained to the kids that I hadn't tried it at home, but my hypothesis was that the golf ball would hit harder and make a bigger crater (again, this was wildly popular in that I admitted that I hadn't tried it out ahead of time -- plus the way the flour poofed all over our shoes -- I let one of the kids try it a second time, then fielded about a zillion questions about whether we could bake a cake in class sometime).

Next, I wrote out a simplified version of the law on the board and had them copy it onto a piece of paper for their booklet of Newton's Laws: The acceleration of an object depends upon its mass and the applied force. The kids who were stunned and horrified by the copying-off-the-board concept last week seemed less so this week.

After everyone had finished copying, I erased the board and wrote F=MA, which I explained, emphasizing that it was an incredibly important math equation, and that their parents would probably recognize it if they went home tonight and said they had studied it today.

Some of the kids were asking if they were going to draw something on their papers again this week (last week I had them draw or write about one of the demonstrations we did). I said they could use the space to design their next project it they wanted. Because we were going to apply our knowledge of force, mass and acceleration to CATAPULTS. I used AmiMental's blog post for my inspiration, although I tweaked it a bit (homeschoolers tweak everything, it seems), using slightly different supplies.

Really, I should've added "measuring tape" to the list of supplies -- as kids finished their catapults they lined up and shot them off. We laid popsicle sticks on the floor to show where the various cotton balls hit.

I pretty much joined them in the building this time, helping kids who were drawing a blank on how to go about this to brainstorm ("hey, how about if we do THIS", or "do you think it would help if you added something here?"). Some of the boys built slingshots, claiming that they were a type of catapult. Um, not really. But I also said we'd probably be doing more with catapults later on when we get to machines, so I just sort of rolled my eyes and moved on.

Many of the kids handed in their creations at the end of the class period. I wrote their names on them, and plan to save them for our Open House display later in the fall.

Weekend Report

2011-09-19T06:03:00.000-07:00

Most of the weekend was spent messing with the bathroom. A couple of friends came over to help pull out the old vanity and sink top, and carry them to the garage. Then they decided to start pulling up the peel-and-stick floor, only to discover that it had been stuck on to luan that had been screwed into the floor and then painted grey. The paint made it almost impossible to find the screws. So that was quite an adventure to get up off the floor. So many floors in this house have been just plain weird.

Of course, this involved taking the toilet out AGAIN. We took it out last week to get the wallpaper remnants from behind it, and paint the wall blue.

ANYWAY, Annabeth and I spent Saturday night assembling the faucet and putting it on the sink. Then we set the sink top onto the new vanity.

Here's a plumbing tip -- have the smallest person in the family do the under-the-sink work. Here's an action shot of Annabeth installing the little doohickey that makes the drain stop go up and down:

Also, the sink doesn't have shut off valves (what's up with that?), so we had to keep turning off the water in the house. Rick wanted to install valves when we put it in the new sink, but, alas, Lowes doesn't stock the correct size for our pipes.

There was also much laying of backer board in preparation for tiling the floor.

In the meantime, Thalia went camping with her Girl Scout troop. It was an all-weekend campout, but I picked her up on Saturday so she could go to ballet.

This was her first ballet class at this place with this teacher. Wow, really big class, which is Beginning Ballet for Teens. The teacher seems really excellent -- they had a two-way mirror, so I sat out in the hallway and watched. Thalia's foot strength has diminished over the summer, but overall she "got" a lot of the stuff right away because so much of it's similar to Irish Dance.

Then a visit from my brother and sister-in-law, who had come to town to see the zoo, Botanical Garden, and Butterfly House. They stopped by to say howdy. They declined the offer to have supper together, saying they'd eaten so much in the last couple of days (Amighetti's, Joey B's, Charlie Gitto's, and some pancake place) (Oh, total digression -- when they said they were going to the zoo and the Botanical Garden I told them they should go out to eat on the Hill, and suggested Amighetti's for a sandwich, plus go somewhere for toasted ravioli. "Rick says if he only has 24 left to live he's going to have a sandwich from Amighetti's" -- bear in mind Rick is gluten-free and doesn't eat most of the stuff they put in the sandwich. So, we were talking about where all they'd been to eat, and Rick was saying that toasted ravioli is also on the 24-hour list, and the pancakes sounded pretty good so he'd consider adding them to the list also, and we started calling it the "Rick Death Tour of Restaurants".) So they went back to Forest Park to see the hot air balloons, and we continued doing bathroom rehab.

Sunday was church, followed by a meeting for the mission trip to the Dominican Republic that Thalia will be taking over Spring Break. They started meetings about this in August. Yesterday was about all the notarized paperwork, including things like what to do with her body if she drops dead in a foreign country -- yeah, you have to sign off on that. Things left to do: get a passport (someone advised us to simply wait until she was 16 to get the 10 year renewable version), find out her blood type which we can find no record of but it's not a big deal because we need to go to the doctor anyway for things like typhoid and malaria vaxes, get some sort of compressible packing system so she can haul along all of her own bedding, come up with about $1000 more to pay for airfare and lodging to add to the $500 we've already paid. Also, the kids who have been before were giving the scoop to the kids who are new to the experience -- the odd stuff like "take those powdered drink mix-ins, because the purified water starts tasting weird after a while", "really, you'll only want to wear sports bras", "the first year [XYZ] only took one pair of underwear for the entire week, so the 2nd year we threatened to all take underwear for him in our own luggage unless he packed more". In other words, those things adults don't think to put in the handouts.

Then home and back to church for choirs.

Hmm, when I write it out here it doesn't sound like so much. But really, it was exhausting, especially the bathroom stuff. And after messing with the pipes so much I'm so grateful every time I turn on a faucet and water comes out -- indoor plumbing is a wonderful thing.

Weekly Report 9/16/11

2011-09-17T07:15:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this during a bathroom remodel, a visit from relatives, picking up Thalia from camp, taking Thalia to her new ballet class, going to a DR meeting about the trip during Spring Break, etc., so it's even more disjoint than usual....

New curriculum purchased this week: Key to Decimals and Key to Percents. Time to bid adieu to Life of Fred, which will soon be appearing on the "For Sale" boards at the WTM.

Also new is the Pandia Press History Odyssey Level 2 for the Medieval time period. I haven't actually purchased that yet, but plan to get the e-book, which is currently on sale. This does't replace anything.

Those are both for Annabeth, who is also working on Writeshop in co-op. She emails her drafts to the teacher during the week, the teacher looks them over by class time and hands them back for re-writes. So far that system is working well, other than the grousing about the actual writing process. This week Annabeth wrote about a pet, which took an amazing amount of time since she couldn't decide WHICH pet (rats? cats? and we have pairs of each, so which one?). She eventually decided on our black cat, who is certainly full of personality (I used to call her a Sith Lord, but I think the Sith aren't quite so dumb as she tends to be, even in that scene where the Emperor got so caught up in the fun of killing Luke that he didn't notice Vader was about to toss him over the railing (give me a break, like this uber-powerful guy would be that clueless about sensing Vader's intentions in the Force)).

And for science she had her first test in Shepherd's Life Science. For the record, Apologia science tests are a lot easier to grade than Shepherd's Life Science. The answer book for Shepherd's tends to ramble on and on. I was glad I knew this stuff anyway, so I could just read the question and decide if I liked the way she answered it. This is also a co-op class, but the teacher isn't responsible for the tests -- frankly, the tests are optional in our co-op.

Since the Key to ... books just came in late in the week she worked on RightStart Geometry for most of the week. She says she's sick of triangles at this point. But, hey, it will make Jacob's Geometry so much easier for her years from now that she had to slog through these endless lessons.

Speaking of which, in Junior Analytical Grammar she needed to list the helping verbs on a test. Wow, how many dozens of times did we recite those in First Language Lessons? So it was incredibly easy for Annabeth to storm through that section of JAG.

Thalia's life continues to revolve around Kinetic Physics. In other mathy news, she's completed her first test in Lia'ls Intermediate Algebra, which has been pretty straightforward.

We' completed Chapter 5 of Dave Ramsey, learning about opportunity costs (a phrase we use a lot around here) and "90 days same as cash" deals (which we always use effectively but apparently most people don't -- who knew?).

She's got a slow start in Jensen's Format Writing; and continues to tolerate Notgrass World History, holding on to the belief that it will get better once they're out of ancient history.

Oh, and phys ed. -- I haven't mentioned this lately. Part of phys ed is weight lifting, right? You should've seen her carry the new bathroom vanity up the stairs a couple of days ago. Wow, It was really impressive.

Both have had at least one class of their new dance classes (ballet and tap), as well as musical theater, improv/acting, advanced musical theater, and technical theater. Thalia continues to thrive with her new voice teacher, which isn't to say the old one is bad but she gels so well with the new person. We're pondering whether we should continue piano lessons on top of all of this, considering they're both in at least one choir also -- it feels like we're spending plenty of time on music and performance arts already.

You can find out how other homeschool families have spent their week at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers, undoubtably featuring more coherent wrap-ups than this.

The Rats of Summer

2011-09-16T11:53:00.001-07:00

In case you were wondering what the household rodents have been up to lately, they've been:

Exploring trash cans.

Nothing like a can of trash -- a little piece of heaven on earth.

Eating seasonal veggies and fruits in the mornings. Also beans, which are a favorite. But Em will forego the beans if fresh raspberries are available. Later in the day they get Debbie Ducommon's Molasses Mix (Emily likes this, Farley is neutral), and in the evening they get Regal Rat (Farley likes this, but I think part of the attraction is that it's easy to carry around the house and hide).

Looks like this particular morning they had black beans, a little cucumber, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, mixed greens, and some grapes.

Remember when American Girl carried the Angelina Ballerina books and dolls? And the dolls were really fairly plump, just like the characters in the books (and unlike the current dolls and videos, which frankly look like anorexic rodents drawn by idiots). We ended up with loads of the stuff, including clothes, which actually sort of fit Emily. Sort of.

Better yet, we can also use the balance beam and stage we got from American Girl.

And when not pursuing her stage career, Farley likes to ride around on Annabeth's shoulder.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-09-14T04:29:00.000-07:00

Co-op Science Week 3

2011-09-13T12:38:00.000-07:00

This week we started talking about Isaac Newton, discussing his first law.

I introduced the concept by saying that Aristotle thought there must be force to have motion, but it appeared to him that the force must continue for the motion to continue. I demonstrated while talking by pushing a Barbie car across the carpeted floor, which came to a stop due to friction, of course. The kids totally understood, and could envision what would happen if we put the Barbie car on an ice rink, which would have less friction, which is what Galileo also figured out (well, not a Barbie car on an ice rink, but the idea that circumstances could exist in which other forces didn't slow the object down).

I'm having them write out a simplified version of each law, so for this week they copied off the board:

"An object at rest rends to remain at rest.
An object in motion tends to remain in motion in a straight line at a steady speed."

I demonstrated various activities that showed the concepts, also introducing them to the word "inertia". For a body at rest staying at rest we:

Put an index card on a glass, put a quarter on top of the index card, then flicked the card away. The quarter plopped into the jar with a satisfying plink. I also tried doing the same with glass bottles and dice, but couldn't get it to work there -- it had worked at home.

Stacked quarters, then flicked a quarter at the bottom of the stack and thus moved the bottom quarter of the stack. I couldn't do this at all, but one of the girls (who happened to come into the room early while I was setting up) was a champ, and could exchange quarters that way -- I had her demo this trick.

I also asked if they'd ever done that thing with the coins where you stack them on your elbow and then catch them with your hand when you drop your elbow. We used to do that when I was their age; one of the kids knew what I was talking about.

And, OF COURSE, I put a book on a piece of fabric on the table, then whipped the fabric out from under the book ... then tried it with a plastic plate ... then, yes, a breakable dinner plate with silverware and a glass (didn't put any liquids in the glass, instead using a beanie baby to add weight). This was by far the most popular demo. I tried it with a towel and the beanie baby, figuring the friction would send the animal flying, but, hey, it worked just fine.

Then I had the kids try whatever they wanted of these demonstrations at various stations in the room.

Afterwards they were to draw a picture of or write a couple of sentences about whichever activity they wanted to remember. I wrote titles for each on the board (some of the 3rd graders, especially the boys, seemed to be cringing at the concept of having to write, so I think having them copy my words as desired is just fine).

Moving on to a body in motion staying in motion, I spun a hardboiled egg and a raw egg. We looked at how fast I could get them to spin, and how quickly we could get them to stop. We discussed why. Some kids got it immediately (liquid inside the raw egg), some didn't.

We bashed the Barbie car into the wall and watched Barbie, Ken, and Kelly fly out of it. One of the girls was a pro at this, apparently having much experience with this concept at home -- she knew just how to place the dolls for the maximum effect.

Went outside and ran past a target on the ground dropping tennis balls on it, seeing if we could hit it, sort of like old bomber pilots trying to bomb a target (yelling "use the force, Luke!" was optional). The kids took turns doing this, with the others supposedly observing from the sidelines. One of them likened it to the car -- "the tennis ball stays in motion forward just like the dolls in the car stayed in motion." Wow, that's was an excellent way to describe what he saw!

After that we had about 10 minutes left, it was a glorious day, they'd been in various classes for 2 hours, so I said they should go to the playground and maybe explore forces there on the slides and all. Or whatever. Mostly they should run and yell and have fun before their next class.

I collected all of their papers so they didn't get lost. We'll make booklets of Newton's Laws which we can display at the open house later this fall.

Discoveries

2011-09-11T18:50:00.000-07:00

-- Getting ready on Friday night for the ACT the next day is sort of like getting ready for a feis, but involves things like sharpening #2 pencils instead of polishing shoes.

-- Getting up early on Saturday to go to the ACT is like getting up early to go to a feis, but with a calculator instead of a wig.

-- Driving downtown on a Saturday morning to go to a feis, I still crave peanut M&Ms, which were my snack food of choice during that last entire year of feiseanna. But since I was just dropping off a couple of dresses I hadn't loaded up on snacks.

-- A new choreography team is being formed. Which needs new collars. At first I thought she said there would be 60 dancers -- WOWZA! I DIDN'T KNOW YOU COULD HAVE A TEAM THAT BIG! Then I realized that she'd said 16. Anyway, time to get some more crochet thread. I'm not sure how many of which size, and what the time frame is (Oireachtas? Nationals?) These things shall be revealed unto me over time, but in the meantime, I can sort of guess that a couple in each size probably would be a good idea.

-- Overall, going to a feis is more fun if you can just spend some time talking to friends and then leave whenever you want. Although sometimes you miss seeing people that way. Also, no wig pictures for Ami, alas.

-- When the ACT admission ticket says dismissal is at 1pm, they actually mean that it could be a half hour earlier. Which means we could've made it to ballet.

-- The head of ballet at the place Thalia is going thought the ACT was more important than a dance class.

-- The essay prompt on Saturday's test was the same as the one Thalia used as a practice essay Friday.

-- You know those mints I'm always eating? The ones I kept crunching on, and then the one molar felt like it was starting to split from chomping on something so hard, and I had to have the filling removed and replaced, and spent most of the summer paranoid about chewing on that side until I got it all taken care of? Yeah, those. Whole Foods has stopped carrying them. At least, the one store has. I might have to drive to the other store and check there. This is serious. I need those mints.

-- The blue the kids chose for the bathroom is a really fun blue. The plan is to put fish clings on the walls. I thought it would be cool to hang plastic fish from the ceiling on little wires. And maybe paint the ceiling to look like you're inside of a fishbowl with a giant person peering in (no clue how you'd accomplish that, but wouldn't it look cool? I wonder if the guy in charge of the theater sets could figure it out -- since they're not doing Nemo this year after all he might have some fun fish ideas he wanted to paint somewhere.)

-- Annabeth wants to be a cat for Halloween. Again. For the fourth time. Out of 12 Halloweens. One third of her life as a cat (well, her Halloween life). Negotiations continue.

More Random Bits

2011-09-09T08:20:00.000-07:00

Life seems to be comprised of disparate pieces right now. I'm not seeing a unifying theme, just little bits and pieces jumbled around.

Thalia is supposed to start her new ballet class tomorrow in U City. It starts at the same time she is dismissed from the ACT, which she's taking in an entirely different place that's at least half an hour away. So I've had to call the head of the ballet department AGAIN to say if she shows up at all it would just be for the last few minutes, which is likely not worth it. This is a place with a major, major phone tree, and never a live person with which to speak. So I'm emailing this woman (not even her teacher, who I've no idea how to get hold of) or calling her repeatedly, leaving messages. She must think we're totally troublesome twits, and the class hasn't even started yet. Sigh.

But we have all the proper attire. Except Annabeth's tights ended up not fitting for HER ballet class, which is at a different school. So we'll need to trade those in. More niggling details. And the time of her tap class might change. Or not. The teacher is amazing though -- if you're in the area and thinking about tap, this is the place to be.

The ACT ... do we have number 2 pencils? Correct calculators? Somehow I thought she had the earlier dismissal (12:15). But, no, it's 1pm. So, from 8am to 1pm she's testing. Blech. Really, it's just a trial run. We've put various school things on hold so she could prep for this. I'll be glad when it's over and we can move forward. We had talked about a birthday party this weekend, but she decided she'd be too wiped out.

While straightening up bookshelves last week prepping for the appraisal I realized how much Waldorf curriculum I have on the shelves that I'll never look at again in my life. I'm listing the books online for sale. So far 2 books have gone, which is nice. It's a weird time of year to sell curriculum, though. I figure I'll just keep re-posting it until it goes.

Oh, and other odd online thing -- the place I'm posting the books, which is a homeschool forum, suddenly has a plethora of questions about Irish Dance. Which I've felt compelled to answer, since it's confused newbies. "If my daughter isn't starting until now, when she's 12, how quickly can she move up?" Um, it depends on how hard you work at it, how much you compete. Here's how it works, blah blah blah. "How can I tell if it's a good school?" Well, what you consider "good" someone else might consider "living hell", so, again, it depends on what you want to accomplish.

I've done nothing, absolutely nothing, towards next week's co-op science class. Too focussed on the appraisal and the ACT to think that far ahead. I should do a little towards each event each day, I know, but I tend to get obsessive and focus on one thing at a time.

Actually, last week I was mostly obsessed with Girl Scouts. Weren't the new books supposed to arrive at the Council shop this week? I need to call and get Annabeth signed up as a Juliette, and ask how she's supposed to do cookie sales. She might have to be part of a troop for that, which I consider sort of silly. Does the troop get the money? Can we pick the troop? I have a sneaking suspicion that I won't find out on my first phone call, and it will take a while before I find someone at Council who actually knows how this works. So I keep putting it off.

And today we're going to try to pull a mirror off of the bathroom wall -- it's been glued there for 30 years. I've been reading online horror stories about people getting major injuries from the broken glass when they attempt this, which hasn't been a really good lead-in to the project.

Then tomorrow the ACT, and maybe swing by the feis to offer Thalia's solo dress(es) for sale. This was going to include a drive by U City as a scouting mission, but maybe now I won't do that after all. I need to rethink how tomorrow will work, now. Assuming we haven't all been hospitalized for flying mirror shards piercing our bodies, severing tendons, etc.

Random Bits

2011-09-06T07:05:00.000-07:00

What we've been up to that we've been too busy to write about:

1. Refinancing the house. Lots and lots of paperwork. When we got the original loan we basically said, "Hey, we'd like some money, and we promise we'll pay it back!" Or something like that. In the intervening years the loan procedures have tightened up a lot, and we need to provide copies of our last dental check ups, along with affidavits detailing how many clean pairs of underwear are currently in the dresser drawer. So, lots of signing of papers, delivering of papers. An assessment of the house, which means it should be relatively clean, which has meant lots of cleaning. That's what we spent the Labor Day weekend doing -- cleaning, throwing out stuff, taking stuff to Goodwill.

2. Signing up for classes. Life was simpler when we just signed up for a boatload of Irish Dance classes, and then tried to figure out how to fit in piano lessons. Now we're figuring out where and when to take ballet and tap and voice and musical theater and piano lessons. Also, assessments for which level of tap and ballet. And what is the dress code at THIS place and THAT place? Yeesh.

3. Signing up for Girl Scouts. Or not, as the case may be. Thalia had thought she'd stay in until she completed her Gold Award, which she had sort of thought she'd storm through this year. But now Physics Class has happened, and, well, when you take physics pretty much all you have time to mess with is physics (well, and all of that stuff mentioned above, plus babysitting one morning per week). So, we'll see where we go with this. In the meantime, much weirdness has occurred in Annabeth's troop. I had sort of heard about it last year, but ignored it, figuring it didn't involve me (thankfully). Now, however, the repercussions are hitting, and it DOES involve Annabeth and some of the other girls (the weirdness was a parental thing, as is so often the case). So it looks like she's going to be doing this year as a Juliette, which in this Council is known as PEG. Looking on the bright side, this means we can pick out the Journey we want to do, do it how we want to do it, then move on to the Silver Award. I look forward to going at our own pace, which should be more streamlined. But she's disappointed that she won't be camping with her friends. Current plan is to return to the troop next year, which is why we're even bothering to do anything at all this year. The Journeys have no intrinsic appeal, and we wouldn't mess with them if we didn't see extrinsic reward -- in contrast, the old badges were pretty cool, and we would've done them whether we needed to or not.

4. Hot weather. Dry heat. At the beginning of August we had hot and humid, and at the end we had dry heat. I've decided that once you're over 100F or so, it doesn't matter if it's humid or not -- either way you're miserable.

5. Gah! Cool weather! Annabeth needs long pants! To my knowledge, long pants are not manufactured and sold in her size. She really really really wants store bought pants -- the charm of homemade has worn off. Alas, it's the only way to get pants that fit her. Time for panic sewing!

Co-op Science Week 2

2011-08-29T12:49:00.000-07:00

First, review concepts from last week: hypothesis, constant, variable

Next, introduce Galileo. The kids in this group who are also taking co-op history will be studying him later in the fall -- the co-op history class for grade 3-5 is using Story of the World 3, Early Modern Times -- mention this to the kids. Ask what the class already knows about Galileo. One boy mentions that he worked with gravity. Explain that he also worked with pendulums and telescopes. He's considered one of the father's of modern science.

For pendulums, describe how he would watch the chandeliers swinging in the chapel and wonder about the period (time to swing back and forth). Point out to the kids that Galileo didn't have a watch since they hadn't yet been invented, so he sometimes used his pulse to measure elapsed time. Draw a picture of a pendulum on the board, and ask the class what things we could vary to see if we could change the period. The kids came up with length of string, how far we pull it back, how much the bob on the end of the string weighs.

Set up pendulum on edge of table by using string, electrical tape, a paper clip, and hex nuts. Use iPad stopwatch function to time a minute's worth of swings while counting the number of periods (it's really, really hard to time a single swing with a stopwatch, so I chose to do it this way). Record results. Pull pendulum back higher, count, record (actually, I let the kids do this part); add more weight, count, record; shorten string, count, record. Discover that the length of the string is what governs the speed at which the pendulum swings. Write Galileo's mathematical equation on the board and explain it briefly to them (many blank faces while explaining pi and square roots). Mention that another way to change the period is to go to, say, Jupiter where the gravity is different ... digress into discussion of why this isn't a viable field trip option, and why H claims if we went to Jupiter we'd be "stuck". And quick mention that Jupiter is so big its gravity makes the sun wobble (bonus material!).

For gravity, discuss the question of whether heavy things fall more quickly than light things. Drop feather and hammer as example. What would happen if we ruled out air currents? Hold up ping pong ball and golf ball; drop simultaneously on the table (which is loud). Show Youtube video of hammer/feather drop on moon during Apollo 15 mission (which the high school physics class at co-op ALSO watched this week).

Discuss that Galileo didn't have slow motion cameras, etc., to use to figure this stuff out, so he did a lot with incline planes. Discuss problems of friction, and the advantages of waxing a slide on the playground. How does all of this relate to sledding in the winter? (We live in a hilly area -- the kids are pretty savvy on comparative advantages of sled-riding positions.) Segue into our engineering project of the day: Getting a ping pong ball down a zip line.

Some of the kids LOVED the engineering project. Some didn't have time to finish their designs, while some managed multiple tries. A couple didn't even try to make anything -- I need to figure out why that is, and see if it's something we can work on. For example, if it's fear of failure, the entire point of the exercise is to mess around and probably fail, and then think up new ways to work around the failure. In any case, I plan to have more engineering projects through out the year, as long as my supply of paper cups, string, and duct tape holds out.

Weekly Report 8/27/11

2011-08-27T06:06:00.000-07:00

We were sick this week. It doesn't make for a very productive week. The kids had (have) colds, and I had some weird stomach thing going.

So, right off the bat we cancelled the voice lesson and the piano lessons.

Thalia struggled through Kinetic Physics this week in spite of her clogged brain and inability to focus. Her class is using the online homework package in which the teacher sets a due date beyond which the students are unable to enter their homework. The teacher has given pretty generous due dates -- the kids have several days to get the assignments done -- but, still, it's pretty apparent that falling behind will lead to a world of hurt. She had Rick help her with one of the problems, which gave him a chance to see what the program was like.

She kept up with Notgrass World History, sharing some of the odder tidbits. I'd share them here, but she was announcing these things on the day that I was really not operating at full capacity mentally, so I think I surely heard some of it wrong.

And Dave Ramsey told us how and when to save for college, after which we 1. practiced figuring out how much to put in a 401k vs. a Roth IRA at different income levels and varying company matching programs, and 2. practiced the ever popular rule of 72.

She got a start in logic, in which she'll be earning a half credit. I can already see applications for this in her discussions with her friends, not to mention her critiques of her various textbooks.

We laid out a course for Algebra 2 and for composition, but have put those off for a bit until we're more functional.

In the meantime, Annabeth has decided she doesn't like Life of Fred, but feels she should complete the book (percents and decimals). I can go either way with it -- there are other math programs that would be fine to use, after all.

She completed her first WriteShop assignment and emailed it her teacher after a brieg panic because our internet was out for a couple of hours on Friday (thus demonstrating why you shouldn't wait until the last minute).

Shepherd Life Science simply involved reading the next lesson and answering the study questions. Labs will be done in class -- I think the teacher is drawing in labs from Apologia Biology since she has quite a bit of experience teaching it.

She's been whipping through Junior Analytical Grammar. I need to figure out what to do when she's finished with it, since that day is quickly approaching.

And she's pointed out that we need to come up with some sort of history for her. My vote is another pass through SOTW2, but she's leaning towards the Renaissance. Hmmm....

Still not up to full speed on all of our subjects, but edging closer. I feel like we're still using impulse engines, moving out of space dock, but soon we'll be able to go to warp. Woot.

See more Weekly Reports (and link your own) at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Lunch at Co-op

2011-08-26T05:03:00.000-07:00

Annabeth announced that she didn't want to have to deal with a bento for lunch and that she'd rather just take a sandwich. So I used her bento box myself.

Vegetable egg rolls from Whole Foods (the dipping sauce was put in a little container to the side -- I didn't trust their little plastic carrying cup to stay together in a bento), chopped red and yellow pepper (the yellow pepper was the garnish WF used for the egg rolls), rice, chopped apple dipped in lemon water. I took a fork to eat it with (pink plastic Hello Kitty fork -- matched the bento box nicely, I thought); Thalia took the exact same thing with her usual chopsticks.

First class of co-op science

2011-08-24T07:02:00.000-07:00

Some background:

We have 11 kids in the class at this point, ostensibly grades 3-5 although I think one of the boys might be younger. Whatever. Also, another boy can't be there the first 2 weeks.

The emphasis of the class will be in-class activities. To a great extent this decision is based on past experience that kids in this co-op really stink at remembering to bring in their homework; plus the onus of at-home projects tends to rest with the parents at this age, and most parents are juggling enough without worrying about their kid's bean sprouts, or whatever other project they're supposed to observe at home. That pretty much rules out botany

I'd like to get them thinking in terms of the scientific method. I'd like to give them experience in writing simple lab reports -- the type of thing they'll do in Apologia General Science and Physical Science, which are popular middle school choices for these families.

Last year's science classes were zoology for grades 3-5, and earth science for grades K-2. I have student from both those classes, plus some other families that just started co-op. Striking off in a new direction, we're doing physical science.

Okay, what we did the first day:

Discuss why we're studying science. (Quick pep talk about them being the future Newtons and Einsteins.) We're learning what those that came before us discovered, and we're learning how to make our own discoveries.

Discuss forming a HYPOTHESIS. Use example of MythBusters putting a Mento into a bottle of soda -- they had a hypothesis of why the soda bubbled up out of the bottle. I'm discussing this with a 12oz. bottle of root beer in a large plastic pie plate set in front of me, whilst waving around a Mento. MythBuster formed a hypothesis, had one VARIABLE and everything else was CONSTANT. (Words in caps written on white board while I'm talking.)

Throw Mento in bottle. Root beer foams up. One kid, J, wonders what would happen if we threw in another Mento. Since I already knew what would happen (nothing) I did.

Discuss what other experiments we could do with Mentos and soda. Attempt to get them to think of other variables. This was fairly unsuccessful -- I need to work on my technique for getting this age group to brainstorm. Since we are a group of strangers it's even harder. Anyway, I listed out several on the board -- bottle shape, soda brand (someone called out that Diet Coke is best -- we discussed briefly), temperature of soda, number of Mentos. Circled "number of Mentos" and said that consulting with my own kids we'd decided this would be the best one to do in the group, so LET'S HEAD OUTDOORS AND DO THIS.

Grab 4 2 liter bottles of 7up from my car (I didn't feel like dragging them to the 2nd floor and then back down). I also have Geyser tubes, Mentos, a portable white board, and some triangular cardboard sleeves I'd made to hold the soda bottle upright since the center of gravity on them is such that when you pull the strings of the Geyser tubes it's entirely possible that you'll knock over the soda bottle and have it spewing out sideways.

I explained that we were using regular 7up because that's what Walmart had on sale.

We set off 2 bottles simultaneously -- one with 3 Mentos and one with 7 Mentos. I had the kids load them, but pulled the strings myself since it's nearly impossible for 2 people to pull the strings at the same time. Also, I left the top caps off of the Geyser tubes because the caps make so much back pressure that the soda squirts out the sides of the tube -- fun to watch, but we're trying to compare height.

The bottle with 7 spewed nearly twice as high as the bottle with 3 (NB: at home we tried setting off 3 bottles at a time, and it was almost too much to look at so quickly, thus the decision to only use 2 bottles at a time). The bottle with 3 went about as high as J is tall, which was easy to see since J pretty much refused to move out of the way with everyone else. I drew the relationship on the white board, noting that sometimes in middle school Apologia they'd have to draw what their experiments look like.

Then I said we'd set off a bottle with 7 Mentos and a bottle with 11 (11 is the most Mentos that will fit in a Geyser tube). One of the kids suggested that it would've made more sense to set off the bottles on the base of the volleyball-net poles. Wow, I hadn't thought of that -- we discussed pros and cons, and then switched over to setting them off there. The bottle with 11 didn't shoot off that much higher than the bottle with 7. I drew it out, explained that people have tested every single number from 1 to 12 and graphed it, and 7 seems to be the optimum number due to diminishing marginal returns (fairly obvious they hadn't heard that phrase before, although we use it at our house all the time).

Quick review of HYPOTHESIS, VARIABLE, and CONSTANT.

Next, I commented, "You know, these Geyser Tubes come with all sorts of different shaped caps, and they claim that they spew out different shapes. I'm not sure if that's true. You want to see if it works?" Head back to my car to get 4 more 2 liter bottles, this time the generic diet cola from Walmart (which, by the way, didn't spew as high in our backyard testing). Set them off 2 at a time, this time with kids setting them up, pulling strings, whatever they want to do as long as they take turns. The soda spews out the sides of the geyser tubes as well as the tops. J stands in the fountain made by the sodas. We don't see much difference, except the one with 3 holes in the cap really does look more like a fountain.

By this time I've had B ask about a dozen times "Can we eat the Mentos?", and in spite of my assurances that the soda is nasty to drink with the Mentos in it, several kids want to try it. Looking at my watch (yeah, I now own a watch, purchased just for the occasion) I say, "Okay, let's go into the kitchen and see if we can find any plastic cups." The rest of the hour was spent sampling soda with Mentos, as desired (some kids wisely declined), being horrified that I was pouring the soda down the kitchen sink (how could I throw it out?) while trying to keep the Mentos left in the bottles from going down the sink ("picture if we plugged up the sink and a plumber had to come, and said, 'hey, your pipes are plugged up with all these Mentos!'"), washing off the stickiness of the day, then sending them on to their next class.

Overall, an okay class. J was appalled that I had purchased Geyser Tubes, saying you could make your own, and sort of designing it on the fly as he was discussing the concept. I suggested that he make one and bring it in next week -- I'll supply the soda and Mentos if he'll supply his design. I think J is going to be a lot of fun to teach. I'm sure the other personalities will begin to emerge over the next few weeks.

Weekend Report

2011-08-23T05:11:00.000-07:00

The important thing to note is that this was the weekend in which the younger Girl Scouts did backyard camping, and the next morning was the incident with the yellow jackets. And by "the incident with the yellow jackets" I'm referring to Annabeth apparently sort of stepping on some in the yard which stung her on the ankle (which she said initially just felt like yet another blister from dance -- what does it say about life when your kid thinks stinging pain in the ankle is a normal part of existence?), then other girls started getting stung, they ran into the house, the yellow jackets followed, the older brother of the house swatted and killed about 10 with a flip flop. I arrived a bit later to find kids coated with baking soda and holding bags of ice cubes to various body parts. The mom in charge was soooo apologetic that the insects were in her yard. I pointed out that they all got to have an impromptu first aid lesson. And when she called later that afternoon to check on Annabeth I commented that 5 years from now the girls will STILL be talking about this, and those who missed it would be sort of envious they missed out because it was going to be part of the legend of their friendships.

Really, can't you picture in 20 years some of them using whatever future Facebook-equivalent to say, "It reminded me of that time with the yellow jackets". Legendary, I tell you.

The stings on Annabeth's arms turned out to be very minor, but her ankle has swollen into a cankle. She's soaked it in epsom salts. I've since learned that tobacco is great first aid for the stings. Who knew?

(There were other stressful incidents during this backyard campout. Another offshoot was a girl being diagnosed with diabetes. That girl didn't get stung, so at least she has THAT to be thankful for. And other stuff happened with other kids. I think the hosting mom may really hesitate to host something like this ever again.)

Thalia also had a Girl Scout overnighter. But they stayed indoors, and it was just a typical sleepover. Hohum.

Saturday we watched O Brother, Where Art Thou to finish up our study of The Odyssey. I think I enjoyed it more having just read the book. I wouldn't have caught some of the parallels had it not been so fresh in my mind. The hair pomade, the beards they were wearing at the end, even the blind man on the rail car (okay, really I couldn't think who the heck that was -- I really drifted during that particular trip to Hades, apparently, and had to go back and figure it out later).

This was also the weekend Rick was out of town -- he went to Cincinnati to watch pro tennis. So Sunday afternoon we girls watched a chic flick -- Letters to Juliet. Fun, sweet, extremely similar to Leap Year (east coast girl goes to Europe, meets guy from British Isles she initially dislikes, falls in love, rejoins her boyfriend/fiance, yada, yada). Final scene was very weak, which was a shame.

So, movies and yellow jackets. And tennis. A weekend to remember.

Weekly Report 8/19/11

2011-08-19T17:13:00.000-07:00

Co-op classes start Monday, and the kids have been getting emails from their teachers with assignments to have completed by then. Time to start gearing up!

Thalia:

Has started Kinetic Physics. Has never had to deal with significant digits before, so we found a couple of printouts via google. Also viewed a Khan lecture on the subject, but I think she liked the handouts better (or maybe that was me -- I'm not very patient with videos, preferring to skim through a page for the exact info I need instead). So far she's giving a thumbs up to the writing style of the text.

Has also started Notgrass World History. She says the writing is acceptable, although not too exciting. She likes the format -- each day read a section, answer some questions, take a quiz at the end of the week, write an essay, then repeat it all the next week. She's only doing the history component (it also has a Bible component and a lit component, each of which could be worth a credit).

Speaking of lit, THE ODYSSEY IS DONE! Woot! We stormed through several books of it this week, had Elizabeth Vandiver tell us what they meant via The Teaching Company DVDs on the subject. Now we need to watch O Brother Where Art Thou and wrap this Ancient Lit class up. I don't remember Brother well, but I think it will contain significantly fewer bath scenes than the book.

We also spent some quality time with Dave Ramsey learning about Personal Finance. We're blazing through this course, hoping to have the entire half credit done sometime in October.

She's supposedly studying for the ACT in September, too, although I think only about an hour was devoted to that this week.

Since she wants to take a tech theater class this year which we'll count for a half credit, I decided the desire to go see Joseph and the Amzing Technicolor Dreamcoat at a local church this week could count as homework -- we could look over sets and lighting and all. It was a free performance, with an offering taken partway through. We got what we paid for -- they had changed the musical to be churchier or fit their theology or because they couldn't competently do it as written or something. I threw a couple of bucks into the offering in hopes they'd use it to pay someone who knew how to do lighting. The amazing thing was the place was PACKED (and this was their 4th performance of 7) and they were getting a standing ovation ("If we stand up we're leaving NOW, okay?" "Fine!" so we beat all of the traffic out of the parking lot). Okay, seriously, there were some bright spots -- some people who were talented, some scenes that were well done. But it was a few hours of my life I'll never get back. "A few hours" because when we got home I HAD to watch the 1999 film version, partially to prove that yes, they really DID change the words to that song, and partially because they had ditched Any Dream Will Do (objectionable theology? bad vocal range? desire to substitute really insipid song about family that made for an incredibly botched ending? who knows). Annabeth said Any Dream Will Do was one of her favorite songs from the film, and it just wasn't right to have the musical without it, so we HAD to watch the film to hear the song.

Which reminds me,

Annabeth:

Has been reading Shepherd's Life Science. And sewing horse blankets. And has been reminded daily that she needs to get back to doing math sometime soon.

and finally,

Me:

I've been throwing Mentos into bottles of diet soda and coming up with reasons this is a valid thing to do in a 3rd to 5th science class. I mean, valid reasons other than "it's pretty much fun." You know, some educational aspect. Because the class I'm teaching starts Monday, too. And I had to give an extemporaneous class description last week (it was extemporaneous because I'd neglected to read the meeting agenda and thus discover we were expected to do it), so I summed up my vision for the class with "Um, well, I think we're going to blow things up." Let me tell you, if you announce that in a parents' meeting, people tend to remember it. So I guess we need to blow some things up right off the bat and get THAT out of the way. Then we can get on to whatever other interesting Physical Science experiments I can come up with. Like setting things on fire (I need to check the location of smoke alarms on Monday).

And furthermore ...

2011-08-15T05:06:00.000-07:00

Non-homeschool things we've been doing:

1. Lost one of the phone handsets. Again. It showed up several days later in the laundry room, an apparent victim of multi-tasking. Last time we lost the handset it was weeks until we discovered it rolled up in a sleeping bag.

In related news, I finally found the mini-muffin tins I couldn't find back in June (and already purchased a replacement for).

2. The kids went to see the Winnie the Pooh movie at the theater, which they said was quite charming. Annabeth dressed as Piglet for the occasion, using bits from a very old Halloween costume I'd made from Butterick 5172 when Thalia was 2 or 3 years old. Only the vest and hat fit; she wore a pink shirt and pink skirt under them. The other kids who went didn't see this as a cosplay opportunity -- go figure.

3. Went to Target and Walmart to see if they had floor cushions and beanbag chairs in stock, which typically happens during the back-to-school sales, after which they disappear. We found both. The color of the year seems to be black, as we found both items in that color. This means we tend to lose track of the cat:

Ack! The flash woke me up! Prepare to die!

4. Went to Bye Bye Birdie at the Muny, which was the final performance of the season. We thought it was really fun. Rick's aunt went on Wednesday and thought it was awful -- nearly left at intermission. On one hand, this is the woman who DID leave during Little Mermaid, declaring she really disliked Ursula (the best character of a great show!). On the other hand, I think maybe the shows vary quite a bit with the weather. She really loved Seven Brides for Seven Brothers the Wednesday before, while we thought it was rushed and disjoint on Saturday. The Saturday we went was hot, and the show lasted less that 2 hours; when she saw it on Wednesday the weather was cooler and the show lasted 2 hours and 15 minutes. Interesting, yes?

Anyway, the entire Muny-season-ticket experience has been fun this summer. We loved taking various friends and relatives. We loved discussing the shows with other friends and relatives. I don't know if we'll do it again -- sort of depends on what shows they offer.

5. Enoyed the cooler weather, which meant we could do things like sit on the playset and read

and also leave the windows open for hours at a time

6. Spent quite a bit of time reading. I checked 2 books out of the library -- Scratch Beginnings and How to Become a Straight-A Student. I couldn't decide which to read first, so I decided to alternate chapters. Wow, what a bizarre experience -- the authors are guys about the same age, and frankly their writing sounds a bit alike. Yet one is telling about how to work hard and succeed in college while the other is telling how to work hard and get out of a homeless shelter. The undertone of each book, though, is that it really sucks to drift through life without goals since that tends to lead to a downward spiral. But it's been a weird juxtaposition that's really affecting how I view each book.

Homeschool Update

2011-08-13T09:36:00.001-07:00

This week Thalia and I have been working our way through The Odyssey, having recovered enough from the trauma of The Iliad to attempt another epic.

We're listening to Sir Ian McKellen read the Fagles translation while Thalia follows along in a paperback version of Fagles and I follow along on the iPad with a translation by Murray that's main attraction is that it's free online. Murray is fond of phrases such as "I ween". We're also watching the Teaching Company lectures by Elizabeth Vandiver on the subject.

While the main images I retained from The Iliad were 1. Achilles whining, 2. intestines unfurling on the ground, 3. black blood gushing forth, and 4. other random sharp objects being thrust through other random people's heads, the main images from The Odyssey have been 1. baths, which are typically followed up by an olive oil moisturizer and something fluffy to wear, 2. Dawn's rosy fingers, and 3. people stretching forth their hands to eat the good things before them (at a feast). It sort of comes across as chic lit after all the gore of The Iliad. If I were to write a paper on the subject, I think I'd make it about the baths.

We're also zooming through her half-credit requirement in Personal Finance using Dave Ramsey's Foundations in Personal Finance High School Edition. I'd never seen Dave Ramsey before. He's reasonably engaging, most of the things he talks about have been the same things we've talked about around the kitchen table for years (topics like "why we're too cheap to take up cigarette smoking"). We've now reached the point in the course where Dave wants the student to follow 4 Mutual Funds and 2 stocks; Rick thinks that the financial markets have changed enough since the course was written that it would be better to follow 2 Exchange Traded Funds and 4 stocks.

Local public and private schools will be starting in the next week, and a co op we belong to starts in about a week. We've been amassing other curricula, including Lial's Intermediate Algebra, Kinetic Physics, Notgrass World History for Thalia, Shepherd Life Science and Writeshop for Annabeth. I'm not too thrilled about those latter 2, but they're co op classes and she seems to be pleased to be taking them.

We still need to get our English course together for Thalia, and can't purchase Visual Link Spanish until later in the month when they release the new Mac version. We also have a lot of ACT study guides floating around the table where we're dumping all of our shiny new curricula (plus a copy of My Life as a White Trash Zombie for comic relief, as all these text books and study guides looked a little too earnest and it was a 4-for-3 on Amazon.com with the ACT guides). And we're in negotiations about what acting, musical theater, dance, and voice lessons will be taking place beyond all of this school work -- the kids think "all available", but we'll see what's affordable and what can be justified by somehow fitting onto the transcript.

Gearing up for the next season of schooling -- I wonder what adventures are ahead of us.

The Dorothy Dress

2011-08-07T05:59:00.001-07:00

Annabeth decided that she, too, would like to actually own her costume for Wizard of Oz. One of her arguments was that the purchased costumes tend to look sort of dippy -- they tend to be one-piece affairs with a faux-jumper front and a very simple back. Some of them even involved shiny, glittery fabric, shudder. And one of my thoughts was that we'd never find a ready-made costume that fit her well since she's more slender than the current average U.S. child.

Biggest argument against making a costume -- the gingham fabric. I was pretty sure that it would be difficult to find.

But, having made Thalia's witch costume, there was also the issue of Equitable Treatment of Offspring. So, in the end, I made the costume.

The children's version of the Wizard of Oz is Simplicity 4139. I opted to use size 8 and make it larger/taller where necessary.

Next, fabric. The director felt that 1/4 inch gingham would be okay since the venue was small (in a large theater you'd want something bigger). And, as predicted, this was impossible to find in St. Louis. The few 1/4 inch ginghams I could find tended to be baby pastels. (Also, various quilting stores apparently consider it an insult if you call them and ask if they carry gingham because they are SO MUCH BETTER THAN THAT.) I found some online at Fabric.com and also at another place, the name of which I forget.

Next adventure -- ordering fabric online. The pattern calls for 3.25 yards of gingham for the size 8 costume; I decided to purchase 4 yards for a bit on insurance. Since we were on a constricted timeline (putting the show together in 3 weeks) I decided to see about expedited delivery. Here's how expedited delivery works at Fabric.com: first you call them to ask about how to do it, wait patiently for 15 minutes or so for your turn "in line" on the phone, then have the customer service rep accidentally (I assume) hang up on you when you reach the head of the queue. Then you try the online chat, and discover that you have to place your order, then call them to tell them that you might want expedited delivery, and then they'll call you back "in a day or 2" to let you know how much the special delivery will cost. NO HINT AT ALL HOW MUCH IT WILL COST, which, of course, makes it impossible to comparison shop (although the only other place that had the blue gingham ALSO involved calling the customer service rep, which was a non-toll free call, and the person was away from their desk "so please leave a message").

Also, the concept that they'd call "in a day or 2" pretty much means don't expect to hear from them for 2 days. Meaning that if you don't like their charges in comparison to some other shop's, you've already wasted 2 days on waiting for them to call.

So I placed my little 4 yard order, then called them AGAIN to tell them to flag this order to indicate my interest in expedited shipping, since there's no place to check off that box while you're ordering.

And when they did finally call (2 days later almost to the hour), it was to tell me that the shipping charge for my 4 yards of gingham (a lightweight fabric that runs about $3 - $4 per yard) would be $50 to get it there the next day, $40 to get it there Monday, or the regular ol' $5 to get it there on Tuesday via "normal" delivery. Wow. I assume at least $10 of that goes to pay for all the frickin' phone calls customers have to make to even ask if the delivery is available, and another $10 for the various other inefficiencies of their system. I took the Tuesday delivery.

So, in review, poor service, poor shipping procedures, overall NOT IMPRESSED WITH FABRIC.COM!

Okay, now, back to the dress itself.

Guess what! This pattern is for a one piece dress, rather than a separate blouse and jumper. Surprise! Hahaha -- that's why we made the dress -- in order to have 2 pieces instead of 1. I guess the joke's on us! Not to worry, though -- I figured I could wing it to make it a two piece outfit.

I chose to make the blouse from permanent press muslin with a ric rac for the border. I chose a royal blue ric rac for the trim because I couldn't find a blue that matched the gingham better (side note: I ended up using the nedium blue gingham even though the cover of our DVD shows Judy Garland in more of a royal blue gingham -- Annabeth liked the medium blue better, and the director didn't seem to care -- the medium blue is currently sort of a periwinkle, and the current medium blue ric rac has more of a yellow undertone). I extended the length of the "blouse" pieces, left out the darts (I figured they were only there to accommodate the blouse-sewn-to-jumper nature of the Simplicity design), and extended the back pieces beyond the center back so I could use buttons instead of a zipper. I ended up scooping out the neckline more than the pattern -- it was going to choke Annabeth if I didn't. That involved making a new, longer collar; I also sewed a snap on the back of the collar to fasten the overlap of the button band. It sewed up quickly and easily, although for some reason I put the button holes on horizontally rather than vertically, which looks fairly stupid.

(By the way, you could theoretically skip this entire blouse-making adventure by going to a Catholic school uniform shop and buying a puff-sleeve blouse with blue trim, since we used to own one just like it.)

Then I started cutting out the precious, virtually irreplaceable (at this point, since deliver from Fabric.com is sooooo slooooow) gingham. First, cut out the skirt. I was familiar with the weirdness of cutting 3 identical pieces since I'd run into that while cutting out Thalia's witch costume. And I was pleased to note that the children's pattern has a separate pattern piece for each size of child, unlike the adult pattern.

BUT, while cutting out piece number 3 (having cut out pieces 1 and 2 and thus using yards of the fabric) I suddenly realized that the top and bottom of the pattern piece is CURVED. WTF? Why am I cutting a curve on the regimentally straight checks of gingham? I looked at the DVD cover again, and, indeed, the gingham checks do appear to disappear unevenly as though cut on a curve. But, hey, the adult size pattern cuts these pieces straight -- why does the kid size seek to drive us nuts with this? So, Ichopped off the curve and cut them off straight, slightly panicking that I'd ruined the damned thing. In the end, it was okay -- the length was still fine, the skirt hung okay, it was exponentially easier to hem and to apply the bias strip in a straight line since I could just follow the lines of the gingham.

I decided to line the bodice since it was not longer sewn directly to the blouse. I used some sort of slick lining from JoAnn Fabric. I'd considered using muslin, but decided the blouse might tend to stick to the bodice if I did that.

By the way, the bodice suffers from a common problem of Big 4 patterns -- it assumes that small girls have a bustline and curves that don't normally appear until years later. So a bit of adjustment is necessary to compensate (ironic since the original was designed to help de-emphasize Judy Garland's curves).

Then sew on the straps and trims, gather and attach the skirt, sew in the zipper, place it on the hanger, and realize that the reason you DON'T want to make this a separate jumper is because the bias-cut straps cannot support the weight of all of that gingham in the skirt without looking like a stretched-out mess. That's why it's supposed to have the jumper sewn directly onto the blouse -- to support the weight. Doh.

After pondering this, I decided to add a strap of grosgrain ribbon on each side, going all the way down the inside of the bodice to attach to the skirt both front and back. I machine sewed the ribbon all the way up the front and back of the bodice to help distribute the weight:

I'd made the straps (which actually have a "front" and "back" since they're supposed to be sewn directly onto the blouse) a bit long since I didn't know how long I'd want them. It was pretty easy to figure out with the grosgrain ribbon -- I just had Annabeth try it on, then pinned up the excess over her shoulders. It was just a matter of machine sewing the folds down, then. I left the sides of the folds open in case I wanted to have a velcro bar to keep the straps in place on the blouse, but that turned out to be unnecessary.

The bias-cut gingham straps on the outside of the bodice cover the grosgrain straps completely,

and the jumper really hangs pretty decently from the grosgrain straps.

I also added a tiny patch pocket to store dog treats for Toto.

Finished product back:

(Click on pictures to enlarge)

and front:

In the end it looked pretty good, but there were definitely times when I wondered what the heck I'd gotten myself into.

One Short Day in the Emerald City

2011-08-06T13:54:00.000-07:00

Miss Gultch being mean:

(Remember, clicking on a picture enlarges it.)

Cutest Munchkin of the batch:

The gang:

The Wicked Witch spying on them as they walk through the woods:

Poppies. Toto had issues with the scene -- in rehearsal he would play dead for about 5 seconds, but during the performance it was all too exciting. Dorothy managed to keep a firm grip on her/him though (plenty of lifetime practice with cranky cats that don't want to be held).

Emerald City:

Afterwards lots of people wanted pictures taken with Dorothy or the Wicked Witch. As it got later, Dorothy started to drift to the dark side.

Possible Christmas card photo:

Whew -- hard to believe it's all over!

In the Home Stretch

2011-08-04T05:24:00.000-07:00

Still needs some hand work and a small pocket for dog treats. But essentially done.

I'll post more about the construction later. Including an explanation of why it was really, really stupid to make this a separate blouse and jumper. Also, doesn't that blouse look like a Clarkson beginner blouse?

In the meantime, Dayspring School of the Arts has made an event on their Facebook page for Wizard of Oz, and if you click on it you can see a picture of Thalia dressed as the witch (although her hair hadn't yet been dyed black at that point). I can't figure out how to download the picture to my computer, unfortunately. But maybe we can get some good shots in the next couple of days.

EDITED TO ADD:

Okay, we found a few downloadable ones on Facebook, including the WIcked Witch terrorizing the Scarecrow

and Annabeth pretending to be a Munchkin

Non-sewing part of the weekend

2011-08-01T06:02:00.000-07:00

Although much time this weekend was spent sewing, we also managed to make it to the Muny to see Little Shop of Horrors. Thalia had gotten a huge head-eating flower to wear for the occasion.

(I swiped this picture off of Trish's facebook.)

And went to a family reunion to see a boatload of cousins we don't often see. This is one family, for example:

Sisters.

The kids kindly explained to Uncle Mark how to send pictures from his phone to facebook.

There was some action with super soakers and water balloons, but mostly people just wanted to talk.

The cat keeps walking across the keyboard typing goofy things, and I need to round up kids and get them to Musical Theater camp, so I'm thinking I should leave it at that.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

2011-07-31T15:58:00.000-07:00

Thalia auditioned for Wizard of Oz with hopes of being cast as the Wicked Witch. The director said she might need her for a singing role (since Thalia can actually sing, yet the Wicked Witch does not), but when the cast was announced she got the part!

Thalia sort of hoped she could have her own personal witch costume. The director noted that the witch costumes are crazily expensive, so if we wanted to be in charge of getting our own, she was fine with it. That way we could keep it when the show's over.

So I discussed what the costume should look like with the director. Simplicity 4136 is the official movie knockoff. But we both liked the idea of a skirt and top combo so she could wear the skirt at Miss Gultch and then simply slip on a different top as the Wicked Witch. She wanted a high neck, buttons down the front, and more of a pointed bottom to the bodice -- more like Elphaba in Wicked. Also, puff-top sleeves "like Anne wanted in Anne of Green Gables". The fabric would be some sort of dull black bottom weight.

So I picked up a copy of Simplicity 4136 at the handily-timed sale Hancock Fabrics had on Simplicity patterns ($1.99 each). And got to work.

First step -- cut out skirt and probably just add a waist band. Except, wow, there is ONE skirt pattern piece for all sizes (envelope has sizes 6-12 in it) and all views. And that piece as gobs of fabric around the waist. That's great for Glinda and probably okay for lightweight gingham-wearing Dorothy, but it's waaaaay too much fabric for a witch skirt in a bottom weight (possibly a cheapy costume satin would work, but that's not what we'd decided on). Thalia is using the largest size, size 12, which fits her 26.5 inch waist -- I can't imagine how that would work for a tiny little size 6 with a 23 inch waist -- they'd be swamped in fabric.

You cut out 3 iterations of the skirt piece, each of which is about 37 inches across the waist, as I recall .... I decided to whack it down to 3 times Thalia's waist size plus ease of 1 inch plus seam allowances by making the waist pattern 26.5 inches (the size of her waist) plus the extra I needed for seams plus ease. The bottom edge of the skirt is 48 inches across. Really, you could just draw a trapezoid on the fabric and not bother with the pattern. Here I'm working on it on folded fabric

with my little helper.

"I love this color!"

Now that the waist was 3 times Thalia's, I could use box pleats to draw the fabric in nice and neatly, since box pleats have a 3x ratio from beginning width to finished width. Also, I could fudge them around a little since I did massive amounts of rounding as I did the math for my finished width. I didn't press them into knife pleats -- just sewed them along the upper seam line sans any sort of pressing

added a 7" zipper to the back, then stuck on a simple rectangular waist band. Large trouser hook in the back to close the waistband, a hem, et voila

A skirt that be worn by either Miss Gultch

or a witch. (We're experimenting with hats trying to figure out what might work. The shirt is from the men's section of the Goodwill, purchased for a play a couple of years ago.)

For the bodice I used the Feis Dress pattern I was messing around with last year. I'd made the princess seam version into a drop waist with a V front, and made it it's own separate entity with a separating back zipper. (The director okayed using zippers in all the costumes.)

I deepened the armscye a bit to accommodate the Simplicity sleeve; Feis Dress has an extremely fitted armscye, and Simplicity's is HUGE. I stuck more towards the fitted, since I think it works better in this type of top. And used the Simplicity collar, which I had to make longer to fit around the Feis Dress neckline. And, finally, loosened the entire thing a bit since she isn't in an Irish Dance competition so it doesn't need to fit like a glove.

Front, pre-buttons:

Back:

The sleeves ended up way too short, probably partially because the Feis Dress shoulders aren't so baggy (dumpy) as the Simplicity shoulders, so I added a cuff.

Then, that special coating of black fur

"Why they want a dorky dog in this show when they could have a quality character like me, I don't know. But it saves me the work of showing up and having to deal with my adoring public."

Just add black boots, black gloves, and green skin:

Still to come: temporary black hair dye. I hope it rinses out better than the red "temporary" dye she used for Peppermint Patty, which is still in her hair all these months later.

And in the meantime, I'm moving on to white fabric:

More Lunches

2011-07-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

The kids are in the midst of a 3 week Musical Theater camp. It was originally scheduled for MWF, but then was announced that kids ages 11 and up could come to work days on TTh to help build sets (I'm pretty sure the age was set at 11 to accommodate Annabeth). So, of course, they're going 5 days a week now. And also talking about how much they want to take a class in technical theater during the school year.

Anyway, on MWF they'e been taking bento boxes, and on TTh just taking something fairly light since they've been working in triple-digit heat out on the asphalt behind the building. And I've discovered that it's really, really handy to have pictures of all of these lunches, since then I don't have to think about how to arrange them in boxes. I'm going back and tagging all the old posts on the subject so they're easier for me to find.

So here are a couple more lunches for my future reference:

Hotdog tulips with cucumber leaves set on lettuce leaves, mac-and-cheese balls from Trader Joe's frozen food section, some raw broccoli, extra hotdog slices in case Holly stays for lunch and tries to take some of Annabeth's lunch (Holly will be starring as Toto -- she and Annabeth hang out together MWF mornings, and hotdogs are one of her favorite foods), assorted fruit.

And lunch #2 is rice, orange slices, red pepper slices, teriyaki beef from the Trader Joe's beef skewer packs (also in the frozen food section -- the skewers didn't fit in the bento, so we got rid of them), snipped green onion. I think it probably needed more to give it some "pop", but at this point we're all sort of tired and just trying to get through the day.

One more week to go. Also, much sewing to accomplish before then. Eek!

Books

2011-07-15T05:17:00.000-07:00

9. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. This book wasn't on my list of sci fi to use for lit class -- I picked it up simply because I saw it mentioned in Melissa Wiley's blog and I have great confidence in Melissa Wiley's book recommendations. Sure enough, I enjoyed it immensely.

I had just finished reading Canticle for Leibowitz, with its intense scenes of a bombed out abbey and characters speaking in ecclesiastical Latin, before I started this book ... which began in a bombed out Coventry Cathedral, and turned out to have characters quoting Latin (although these were professors preferring Herodotus -- a background in, say, Henley Latin would be more to the point with this book). Of course, there the similarities end -- this book is a time travel/mystery/romp through the Victorian age, with WWII, 1930s mystery genre, and acres of Tennyson thrown in, to say nothing of the dog. And cats. So much fun, although the less you know about the cultural contexts the less fun (and more annoying) it has potential to be.

I'm glad I took a detour from my "official" sci fi book list to read this.

10. Enchantress From the Stars by Sylvia Louise Engdahl. Another entry on my "official" sci fi list. I'd found it mentioned on the Well Trained Mind homeschooling forums, from whence I'd derived most of the list. It was tossed into the suggestion list as an accessible book by a female author. And I've gotta admit, it was a much quicker read than Frankenstein or Left Hand of Darkness, neither of which I've finished.

I'd never read nor heard of this book before, although while I was dragging it around various places over the past couple of days we ran into a high school student who recognized the cover and commented how much she enjoyed it. And I was absolutely enchanted by it. First of all, the main concept is that a group of people who have sort of Jedi-like power, but with less tendency to start whacking on each other with light sabers, is patrolling the universe, and they take the Prime Directive seriously, not just having it out there as a plot element that they violate at least once per season. Second, the story is told from 3 vantage points -- one is a very stylized fairy tale, one is more along the lines of, I don't know, early space heroes (I pictured this crowd looking like the gang back on Krypton during the original episode of the original Superman television series, although they sort of had a Romulan vibe going, too), and the third is a first person narrative of a teenage-ish girl. So, right there, fodder for much discussion in our future lit class about how the writer integrated these styles.

(Aside: Thinking of using different writing styles to help differentiate the different viewpoints of the characters, before I read Enchantress From the Stars I spent a day trying to read Albert Brooks' 2030. Everyone in the latter book sounds pretty much exactly the same, like a bunch of paper dolls drawn by a fairly unimaginative artist. It was, in a way, the opposite of what Engdahl did in Enchantress. It was also quite boring not to mention annoying, so I didn't bother finishing the book.)

10 BOOKS COMPLETED FOR SUMER READ. This is a first for me -- actually completing the program during the time allotment. Unfinished books still litter the house, as usual -- the 10 books finished are just a fraction of the books started during this time. Plus there are the various books started BEFORE this time that I read bits of during the past few weeks.

Also, as a bonus, I've used this SummerRead program to read and re-read several of the books we'll be using in our sci fi lit class during the coming school year. Now to read the rest of THAT stack, as well as the stack I've compiled for teaching 3rd-5th grade science at co-op.

The Stunning Cluelessness of Homeschoolers

2011-07-12T11:54:00.001-07:00

The title of this post was taken from a google search that led someone to my blog. Doesn't it grab your attention? I love it because it gives such latitude for speculation. For example, is the person who typed it in aware that google searches for words rather than concepts? So, unless someone posted something along the lines of "Gosh, I, a homeschooler, just did something stunningly clueless," or unless someone else compiled anecdotes or data on the subject, it's rather a pointless search. (Digression: Dinner table discussion last night was on the idea that "the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'", which phrase should preferably be delivered in a scathing tone of voice.)

So, you know, I find myself contemplating The Stunning Cluelessness of People Using Google.

It also takes me back to the years I spent helping out at the reference desk at a university library, trying to explain how to search the computerized card catalog. No matter how explicitly we explained that the typed search was going to take the exact string of letters typed in and attempt to match it to the same exact string of letters in the cataloged information (that is, the title, the Library of Congress subject headings, perhaps a brief description), there were plenty of students who just Did Not Get It. They thought if they typed in "learning" they should get books that had the word "education" in the title, because, hey, it's sort of the same idea. Yeah, like a small public university library in the early 90s suddenly came up with a computer system that used fuzzy logic. These were usually Elementary Ed majors (hence the example of "learning" and "education"). I had a theory that they chose to major in El Ed because they hoped small children would be stupider than they were. I also have a (more optimistic) theory that most of them did not get jobs in their chosen field. I've no idea if either of these theories are correct. So, file all of that under The Stunning Cluelessness of Many Elementary Ed Majors at a Certain University.

But perhaps it was entered by a youngish teenager. It really does sound like something Thalia would type in just because she could. It definitely sounds like something she would say. So it might have been typed by someone who just wanted the thrill of typing in that phrase, someone not worried about the viability of the search.

Which reminds me, we got Annabeth's ITBS scores back. Her lowest score was in Reference Materials -- things like using the library card catalog, searching for information, etc. She only scored as well as an 8th grader on those questions. I'm not too worried about that. I mean, she's just finished 5th grade, and I'm not too sure the ITBS really tests one's conceptual understanding of how to gather information. I wonder how our Stunning Cluelessness (Stunningly Clueless?) googler would've scored on that section of the test.

For the record, most of the searches leading to my blog have to do with Girl Scout badges. Most often people are looking for information on how to earn the badges, but occasionally someone is searching for information on all the badges being discontinued. If you came here on that sort of search, they ARE all being discontinued, by the way. But I'm not surprised you did random google searches rather than using the GSUSA website, since it's a mess (google The Stunning Cluelessness of GS for further information).Which reminds me of yet another thing, that today I came up with a really cool idea on how GSUSA should've been running their website and badge program -- assuming they were actually interested in having girls and leaders join and stay with the program, and not just interested in selling more books and junk. But that's another story.

By the way, the Stunning Cluelessness search led to a post about Thalia's theatre class putting on Clue. And we're homeschoolers. And I overuse the word "stunning", particularly in tandem with comments about Swarovsky crystals, which is an Irish Dance joke. So it all adds up to our family being the go-to people regarding The Stunning Cluelessness of Homeschoolers.

Sweltering

2011-07-12T04:50:00.001-07:00

Up at 5am, and the temperature out is 80F. The windows are steamed up -- condensation on the outside due to the relative cool inside the house.

Yesterday we went to the pool when it opened at noon. It was lovely to be in the still water, but as it got more crowded the kids asked to leave. They said it was too hot and sweaty to swim laps. Yes, the water was that warm. So we came home and ate watermelon that had been kept in the refrigerator icy cold.

Later we discussed how lovely it would be to have some ice cream bars, but it was too hot to go to the store.

This is summer in St. Louis. Just a few months ago it was so cold school was cancelled due to safety concerns for children going out in the cold wind. Now we have heat advisories.

Little Mermaid at the Muny

2011-07-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

As a lead in to going to see the show, Thalia's Girl Scout troop took a backstage tour of the set on Wednesday. No photos allowed backstage, but here they are on stage. If you look above the guy's head you'll see a little green sign (next to a red arrow) that says "B3". That's where our seats are.

Wednesday was opening night, so they were doing some sort of television news interview while we were there. This shot is probably "wrong" in that it shows part of the scrim, and also back out in the wings you can see part of King Triton's palace, which was purply-pink and very glittery.

On Friday night we went to the actual show, arriving early enough to have a picnic in Forest Park. Annabeth practiced her mermaid poses before the show.

I was really glad we went early, since the place was PACKED and the traffic got progressively weirder as showtime approached. The show started late, presumably because so many people were still trying to park and get in at the actual start time. But we were already in our seats, frozen lemonades in hand.

The show was attended by a large number of little girls in princess outfits, as you can imagine. Although the lady in front of us was apparently a Sebastian fan.

(Every one of the empty seats you're seeing in these photos was filled by showtime, by the way.)

Gorgeous weather. Great show. The kids came home and watched the movie; in general, we think we like the musical better than the movie. You should go see it.

Books

2011-07-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, actually "Book" since I only completed reading one book this week, another SciFi classic,

8. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller. I had read this years ago, and remembered it as a fairly dark, depressing novel. Re-reading after several decades, though, I found a lot of humor in it. I also found it much easier to read.

For one thing, in the intervening years I've learned some Latin -- the book is full of Latin quotes, although if you've worked through Latina Christiana you'll be comfortable with it, since the quotes are typically liturgical. Also, while looking up the word "grex" online I discovered entire web pages of Latin translations for this book. Having a clue what the Latin is about sped up the reading since I wasn't left wondering if I'd missed out on something.

Also, through the years I've gotten lots more comfortable with the idea that people aren't necessarily the "good guys" or the "bad guys", and that life has much vague, grey area. And I've read, discussed, and thought about enough theology and philosophy to make those discussions familiar territory. Overall, growing up and getting older made it a simpler book, although I don't think I would've understood that back when I was in my late teens (or whenever I read it before).

I liked the book quite a lot this time through. It was humorous, ingenious, and thought-provoking.

Okay, 2 books to go by Aug. 8, and I'm midway through another scifi book and have started 2 others. However, my attention is starting to drift -- I've other things I'd like to accomplish this month other than reading, and I have less time to read at the moment. We'll see.

Long Holiday Weekend

2011-07-06T05:35:00.001-07:00

Our Fourth of July Weekend lasted until last night -- Rick took the day off yesterday. So we're just getting back to the swing of things today.

Over the weekend ...

-- I sewed a sleeveless dress using Simplicity 3775, which I've sewn a couple of times before. This time I left off the ruching around the waist since I thought it would be too hot. The fabric is some 4-way stretch knit from joAnn.

The plan was to whip this together to wear to the Muny Friday night, since Friday was hot and a sleeveless dress sounded cool. But I decided it would be really quick to just zip it up on the serger ... fail. The threads tangled repeatedly, the needle broke, the blade stopped cutting all the layers of fabric (I suspect it's dull). I felt like the serger and I were doing battle. And eventually finished the dress Saturday night.

-- We went to the Muny to see Kiss Me Kate. It was hot out, the male lead was average, the female lead was quite good, the gangsters were excellent. The dancing was the best we've ever seen at the Muny, which was a nice surprise. The girls and I had watched the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton version of Taming of the Shrew earlier in the week as a lead in, which I appreciated while watching the musical as it really was easier to follow. And we went with friends who really like Cole Porter (who wrote the musical), so it was a fun evening.

-- We went to Aunt Vi and Uncle C's to swim quite a bit.

-- We also made it to the public pool, although you can't try such crazy things off the diving board there, like jumping onto rafts, doing backbends off the board into the water, etc. etc.

-- We went to the fireworks with a friend.

We decided not to go to the Arch, choosing a more low key celebration out in the county in a park (but this year we had a better idea of where to sit and where to park).

The kids spent time waiting for the fireworks taking dozens of pictures of each other

and also took dozens of pictures of the fireworks.

-- We stayed up late and watched Galaxy Quest, which I'd never seen before. Actually, we ended up watching it twice since Rick skipped it the first time because he wanted to get to bed (although between Thalia dropping the large metal popcorn bowl on the wooden floor -- which made an unbelievably loud ring -- and the major cat fight about 45 minutes later in the upstairs hall he didn't get any extra sleep anyway).

-- We also went to see Green Lantern, which was really fun -- great space opera. Thalia noted that the Lanterns were inspired by the Lensmen. We spent much of the rest of the weekend discussing how much we wanted a green ring and a lantern.

And also the usual grilling, sleeping in late (like, you know, 7:30am), reading, etc. Overall good, busy weekend.

Books

2011-06-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

More books completed for Adult Summer Read. I've decided to start working my way through the pile of scifi we set aside for a possible literary analysis course for Thalia this coming school year.

6. Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. I think I've read this before, but I've absolutely, utterly forgotten it, except for There Will Come Soft Rains which I've read in some anthology somewhere in the past year or two.

One of the first stories, Ylla, reminded me of Italo Calvino (some of whose books I love). But, alas, as I kept reading I became more and more disenchanted. By the end of the book I was recalling that the reason I haven't read anything by Bradbury for years and years is because I don't like reading things by Bradbury. Many of the stories have a 1960s sitcom vibe -- very embedded in the time in which they were written. But where, say, The Beverly Hillbillies had a certain affection for its country yokels, Bradbury seems to dislike his characters. By the end of the book I'm not so sure Bradbury doesn't dislike most of humanity, including me, the reader. So he and I are even, I guess.

I could enjoy these as short stories read over several months. Plowing through the entire book at once, though, was ... annoying.

7. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I've never read this before. Wow. I absolutely loved it. Could barely put it down. I found myself mentally comparing it to other books I've read this summer. For example, the climax didn't come as much of a surprise, yet it was still thrilling to read how Card portrayed it; contrast that to Demon's Lexicon where the climax wasn't particularly surprising OR interesting by the time we got to it.

I was tempted to run out and get all the other books from the series out of the library, but I'm worried I'd be disappointed. What I enjoyed about the book is how the writing style meshed so well with the subject; the same writing style would probably be inappropriate for the next segment, so, what then? What if I dislike it, and then the magic is gone?

As a side note, I had left these 2 books out on an end table in the family room during the cast party Saturday night, thus discovering that one of the other moms is an absolute scifi addict. What fun! Too bad I was so exhausted that my brain was practically nonfunctional -- she was flinging authors names around a mile a minute, and I was staring into space trying to remember what the heck those people had written that I'd read. Totally drawing a blank. I woke up the next day with an entire list in my head of books I wanted to discuss with her, but the moment had passed, alas.

So, 70 percent of the books read, approximately 50 percent of the time elapsed (I'm staring at the calendar coming up with this thing lasting 11 weeks instead of the 12 weeks they say it lasts -- where am I missing a week?). I've started Ursula LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness (I thought I'd read it before, but it's not seeming very familiar) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (definitely never read before, and seems pretty necessary for a scifi course), but I'm not sure I'll finish either any time soon. I might need to find another quick read in the meantime, just to pad the list with quantity -- I can worry about quality some other time.

Shakespeare Family Festival 2011

2011-06-26T14:37:00.000-07:00

Time once again for the Shakespeare Family Festival at Millenium Park in Creve Coeur. Last year the festival lasted two days. This year the Powers That Be decided to try having it all on one day.

It seemed to work pretty well, particularly since the weather was about 30 degrees cooler than last year.

So, we had many of the same entertainments as last year, such face painting, crafts, fencing demos, the Tower Grove singers performing music of the era, and people dressed as Shakespearean characters:

And at 11am we had a performance of Comedy of Errors:

Then an break for the early afternoon where the concession stands shut down and the various performers took some time off (many of the kids in the play went to someone's house for a swimming party, which I heard was fairly crazy).

Then the fair resumed at 6pm with Morris dancers, roving musicians:

the Classical Guitar Society

Only one clown this year, but he's very noticeable:

Then the mayor of Creve Coeur welcomed us all

And we had another performance of Comedy of Errors

After the bows

the kids struck the set and the concessions packed up. I got all the costumes (I have become Official Costume Transportation over the past couple of years), lightening and thunder started as they were loading the pieces of the set onto the truck, we packed kids into cars

and everyone came to our house for the cast party.

(very small sampling -- I think we had about 30 people running in and out, up and down the stairs)

Which was supposed to last until 11:30, but accidentally lasted until 1am.

What a day. Can't wait until next year! And if you live around here, you really should stop by next time. Free admission, and lots of fun.

More Lunches

2011-06-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, right now I'm peeved at an insurance company (Allstate), so I'm going to breathe slowly and think about something bland, like what we've packed in the bento boxes the past couple of days.

The kids were really impressed with the look of the Chicken Kijiyaki Bento in The Just Bento Cookbook, but I wasn't really inclined to actually MAKE Chicken Kijiyaki. We decided that it bore a strong visual resemblance to chicken drummies, so we decided to use the package of frozen crispy, spicy chicken wings we had from Trader Joe's (I don't recall the actual name of the wings and have thrown out the package).

Thalia also wanted the cucumber and turnip salad with yuza, except I've no clue where to find yuza around here and wasn't interested in running all over town looking, so I used lime instead since we usually have plenty of limes in the house. Also note that I figured the kids wouldn't want the sliced pan-steamed sweet potato, so I used the stash of mini-muffins. And for fruit we used raspberries and blueberries, mostly because they're in season.

For Annabeth I just chopped up baby cucumbers, since she thinks these salad-type things Thalia is trying are weird.

Then today was the quick-and-easy Orange Mandarin Chicken from Trader Joe's.

Sliced red peppers and chopped green onions for garnish on the chicken, rice, and some chopped up apple for a fruit.

Okay, I'm fairly sure my head isn't going to actually explode as long as no one says the word "Allstate", particularly if I can find something else to distract me, like, say, vigorous, vengeful housecleaning. Thus we move ahead through our days....

Lunches

2011-06-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

B: So, is your mom Japanese?
My kids: Uh, no ... and you've met our mom before, remember?
B: Well, she keeps making all these bentos, so I just wondered.

Monday the kids each took basically the same thing -- mini-burgers, cheese flowers, veggies, grapes plus blueberries (on sale for a really good price last week), rice.

The rice has a face because when I asked Thalia what she wanted in a bento (as opposed to a plain ol' sack lunch) she said, "food with faces on it." Which certainly wasn't the answer I was expecting.

The mini-burgers were based on the Idea from The Just Bento Cookbook by Makiko Itoh, which suggested that they be made more like little meatloafs, with bread crumbs and egg, since that way they wouldn't be so tough and dry when they were served room temperature. She also suggested that they could be wrapped in bacon and fried up that way, so we tried that for Annabeth's:

She said it was really sort of disturbing when it came time to eat them. But it was pretty easy to just take the bacon off and eat the burger plain. Both kids had a side container of Ranch dip.

On Tuesdays they are allowed to bring peanuts and tree nuts into the building (those are outlawed on MWF due to allergies of another student in the building those days). Annabeth wanted an almond-butter-and-jelly sandwich, so I made a couple out of thin sliced bread, then cut them into butterflies. Down below on the "ground" are tulips made out of hotdogs, skewered with cucumber leaves, and a couple of apple-slice bunnies nestled in lettuce leaves. Some grapes and grape tomatoes fill in some of the gaps. A garden theme.

Thalia wanted something more exotic, so she selected a box pretty much straight out of the Just Bento cookbook:

Soba noodles with nori strip garnish; also toasted sesame seeds and snipped green onion for garnish (I put these in Saran wrap because I didn't have any appropriate little containers). A hardboiled egg -- first time I tried cutting one so fancy, which was sort of fun (she was supposed to do it herself this morning, but by the time everyone got showered and dressed I'd already done it -- Annabeth was covered in paint from painting sets yesterday, and it's held up to repeated showers and scrubbing). Slaw of cabbage and crab. Grape tomatoes. An extra apple bunny (I wrapped this in Saran wrap also since I didn't trust the slaw to keep to itself during travel). A side container of dipping sauce made from dashi stock and kaeshi. THIS was the type of thing I expected her to ask for -- she's more adventurous about food than Annabeth. But they're both trying new things this week, so that's great.

Weekend

2011-06-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

Sleeping in to the decadently late time of 6:30am Saturday morning, I awoke with a start when Rick asked, "Is that the tornado siren?" I couldn't tell over the sound of the storm outside and the sound of the fan inside, so I went a window to listen. No siren. But I decided to check the weather maps since the tour bus was driving through the night to get home that morning, and I wondered if they were in the wicked weather. (Side note: they drove through the night partially in order to save money on a hotel stay, partially to get home earlier.)

Let's see, their estimated time of arrival is 10am, so they should be just east of Kansas City now ... the map shows KC is clear, so they must be on the west side of the storm ... the worst of it should be past us by the time they get here.

About 5 minutes later the phone rang. "Hey, Mom? We're passing the mall now, just to let you know. We'll need to unload stuff when we get to the church, though, so no big rush."

Apparently the tour leader likes to pad her trip estimates quite a bit (her daughter was chastising her about this, saying she does this every single time they drive home from Colorado. "But we had to change bus drivers this time, so I added more time." "Mom, it doesn't take 2 hours to change a bus driver!")

Anyway, the kids were all home safely. They had slept some on the bus overnight, so Thalia was reasonably coherent. And after she unpacked and we started laundry we took a trip to Animeggroll to get bento supplies. Thalia had been wanting to go there, and this was the only time we could go that they were actually open in about a 3 week span.

In addition to a beach towel from a favorite manga, she selected a bento set:

bento box, chopsticks, and bag. I know I've seen this one on Amazon.com because I remember the reviews commenting on the mysterious wording on the top:

Lube Sheep? Really? Boggles the mind.

And Annabeth got a new 2 tiered box that matches her old box and bag, plus we found the matching chopsticks:

which has the more sensible phrase of

on it. We also saw this one on Amazon.com, but would rather support a local merchant. Plus it was cheaper at Animeggroll, plus that instant gratification thing. So, a big win.

Then, having satisfied our bento "needs", the kids sort of hung around the rest of the day while we go usual Saturday stuff done, although no yardwork due to all the rain and storms.

That night I took Thalia, Annabeth, and a friend to the park in St. Charles to see Much Ado About Nothing.

Pretty good crowd, thousands upon thousands of mosquitoes, and, wow, it was insanely muddy -- standing water in spots. But we enjoyed the show. Dogberry and the watchmen were FANTASTIC -- definitely our favorites of the evening.

I'd forgotten how angsty the play gets in spots. Sheesh. Scene from Hero's wedding and supposed death:

The last time we saw this particular play was a high school dress rehearsal for a Shakespeare-in-a-week performance, and we were struck by the fact that 1. it's much more fun to watch when everyone remembers their lines, as they did this weekend (which I should've said more loudly in earshot of Antipholus of Syracuse, who was with us and will undoubtably forget his lines during Comedy of Errors next week), and 2. we actually thought the high school Benedick was better in the part, interestingly.

Then up the next morning for the final performance of the 2011 choir tour

which was also the final performance ever for this director, who is now moving on to other things. The performance was fantastic, reflecting that the kids had been on the road with it for a week -- it had that amazing energy you get at the end of a good run of a show. And was followed by a reception for the director.

Father's Day was spent relaxing, playing Stratego, and going to the pool. Good weekend overall, but many complaints of tiredness and sleepiness this Monday morning. Woops.

Friday's Lunch

2011-06-17T07:58:00.000-07:00

When we remodeled the kitchen a couple of years ago I streamlined what I put back insofar as gadgets, pots and pans were concerned. And I apparently got rid of the mini-muffin pans, little realizing that less than 2 years later I'd be baking batches of them while thinking about how much easier my life would be if I had a bunch of nori punches and silicon baran tucked away in the drawers. So much for streamlining.

But I found a fairly cheap new muffin pan at Walmart, and have moved ahead. Another of Annabeth's favorite foods is cornbread. So, why not tiny little corn muffins? And, while we're at it, why not some little banana mini-chocolate chip mini-muffins?

So today we have 2 of each kind of muffin -- the brighter yellow are the corn muffins, which have been carefully split and spread with butter, then reassembled (by Annabeth).

Also, celery sticks, a hotdog cut in half and made into 2 octopi (only eyes for a face per her request), grapes and blueberries, and a couple of monty jack stars. I offered a side container of dips -- ranch for the celery or ketchup/mustard for the hotdog -- but she declined.

I froze the muffins for use as the weather heats back up (that would be today and tomorrow) but she ate a ton of them anyway, giving them a quick thaw in the microwave. Wow, mini-muffins are so fun to eat. What was I thinking when I got rid of those pans?