Almost Unschoolers

Groundhog Day Craft

2012-02-01T05:58:00.000-08:00

I set up a quick Groundhog Day craft for the younger girls (ages 5 and 7), using a groundhog template from AllKidsNetwork.com, construction paper circles, cotton balls, optional stickers, and crayons. Actually just about all the supplies are optional, any groundhog template could be used, you could even draw your own. I just happen to think the All Kids Network groundhog is especially cute.

The only thing you really have to have for this craft are the construction paper circles - two blue and one green for each child, and glue, and crayons. The rest is extra, just for fun.

The green circle gets cut in half and glued over the bottom half of each blue circle.

On one of the blue circles you need to write a message around the top half of the circle, something to the effect of - Six more weeks of winter. Then, flip the circle over, bringing the writing toward you, and print another message on the top of the backside, such as - Spring is coming soon, or something like that. I printed the messages for C (age 5), but had E (age 7) print her own.

So, you should have two blue circles, each with a green half, glued on the bottom of the front, and one with writing on each side, across the top.

Cover the top half of the blue circle, with the green bottom and no writing, with glue, and stick it to the back of the other circle, the side without the green, sticking the blank blue half, to the blank blue half of each circle. Or, if you take the "Spring is coming soon!" circle from the picture above and move it over on top of the green and blue circle with glue only on the blue part - you'll have it, too.

Have the children color in two groundhogs each, and trace, and cut out one black construction paper groundhog shadow. The size of the groundhogs will depend on the size of your circles. You want them to be about three quarters as long as the radius of the circles...

...so the children can glue them to the circles ,standing on the green "grass", with the words over them in the blue "sky". We also glued on a pulled-apart, cotton ball cloud, and colored flowers on the shadowless grass...

...and added a sticker dot sun in the sky, and glued on cotton ball snow, along with the shadow, under the groundhog predicting six more weeks of winter.

Now, we're ready...

...cloudy...

...or sunny, for Groundhog Day.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Valentine's Hand Sewing

2012-01-31T05:48:00.000-08:00

I worked with the older girls (ages 10 and 12) and one of their friends, this weekend, on a simple Valentine's sewing project from Holiday Crafts and Creations. The site offers a free printable template for felt heart bookmarks like those above (I thought it was a little big, and eyeballed the pattern instead).

To keep things simple, I cut out the felt pieces ahead of time...

...a laid them out with needles, embroidery floss, and paper clips for each girl.

Then, we sat down with the computer in front of us, to show the girls what we were making, and so we could follow the step-by-step instructions together.

It's an excellent tutorial with instructions for the backstitch, running stitch, and French knot (it was the first time I've been able to master that one). The length of the project is perfect for the 10-12 year old crowd...

...and as a bonus, the bookmarks are beautiful, and just the right size for slipping into a Valentine's Day card, or mailing off to cross-country friends.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Cereal Box Valentine Chair Backers

2012-01-30T06:18:00.000-08:00

While listening to our audio books this weekend (I might have reviews ready by next weekend), we had plenty of time to get a jump on February crafting.

The first project we tackled was to recycle cereal boxes into chair backers, to hold the Valentine's I hope the children will make for each other over the next couple of weeks.

First, we cut all except for four inches of the front and sides of the boxes away.

The part that remained intact formed the base of the box, while the long flap was folded and trimmed to become the lid. We found the easiest way to fold the lid was to flatten the box...

...and fold the flap down over it...

...then to set the box back up over the folded flap, to mark for the second fold...

...which we folded over a ruler. Then, we could trim the long part down to make a nice sized flap for the front of the box.

We unfolded the box completely (I've marked in the picture where we folded and trimmed the flap, for clarity), and traced it out on paper...

...to cut and glue onto the cardboard. We reverse folded all the folds before we glued the paper on, so the paper went on over what had been the inside of the box, to keep the printing from showing through.

I punched two holes on either side of the top of the back of each box with a hole punch.

Then we glued and taped, the sides and bottom of the boxes back together. Depending on each child's preference, the lid of their box either tucked in the top...

...or we added stick on Velcro to the front of the box, and the inside of the flap, so it could open and close like a purse.

Finally, all that was left was to lace yarn through the holes, for tying the boxes to the backs of the chairs, and adding stickers for decorations.

I gave the children label type dot stickers, thinking polka dot boxes would look cute in the dining room.

The children had other plans though, and pulled out all of our sticker stash to choose from, as well as crayons and markers - individualizing their boxes. T chose to leave his box undecorated. At 14, he's willing to receive Valentine's from his brother and sisters, especially if they happen to be chocolate, but not to have any part in decorating a frilly-dilly box.

It's great to be homeschooler.

Stuck in a Quantum Conundrum - A Silent Science Weekend

2012-01-27T17:37:00.000-08:00

Almost Unschoolers will be silent this weekend, but we should be back to our bloggy selves by Monday. I made the mistake of downloading the audio version of Michio Kaku's Physic's of the Future: How Science Will Change Daily Life by the Year 2100...

...before finishing Brian Greene's The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, mainly for me, but the children have been listening along, too.

Now, we're busy grappling with the fact, that all those Star Treks we've been watching might actually be more science, than fiction - well some of it anyway. I'll try to give a proper review once I've wrapped my mind around the books - but first I've got to run to the library and pick up one more title.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Pizza (and a Craft) for Everyone!

2012-01-26T15:25:00.000-08:00

Do you ever feel like you're loosing your mind? Yesterday, I came across a fabulous idea for making homemade Easy Bake Oven pizza, using refrigerator biscuit crust. Today, I can't find the link again to save my life. It wouldn't be so bad, except the site also mentioned making Easy Bake Oven monkey bread, and I really wanted to check that out.

The pizzas turned out terrific, though. And, true to their name, they are very easy to make.

Just pat down the biscuit dough (half a biscuit if you are using "grands") into a greased, Easy Bake cake pan...

...spread on a spoonful of sauce (we used pizza, spaghetti, or whatever)...

...sprinkle on cheese (we used shredded string cheese)...

...and add a single topping. I splurged and picked up some mini pepperonis, but almost any flat topping would do. You just don't want it to get too bulky, or it won't fit in the Easy Bake.

Place it into the preheated oven for the amount of time listed on the biscuit packaging (15 minutes in our case)...

...for a perfect little pizza.

My intention was to have the younger girls make a couple, for before lunch appetizers (also known as a mid-morning snack)...

...but all of the children decided they wanted to make one, so we switched over to a cookie sheet, and the big oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit (another idea from the website I can no longer locate).

While we waited for our pizzas to bake, I read the children Pizza for the Queen by Nancy Castaldo. It's a fun retelling of the history of Pizza Margherita, the basil, cheese and tomato pizza made in honor of the Italian queen in 1889.

In fact, there's even a recipe for Pizza Margherita at the back of the book, as well as some fun pizza facts. Did you know, for instance, that Americans eat 350 slices of pizza per second?

We already had our pizza for the day, so instead of trying out the recipe, we followed up the book with a cardboard, and paper pizza craft from babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, oh my! via Watcha Making Wednesday at The Ramblings and Adventures of a S.A.H.M....

...that called for cardboard crusts, paper toppings, and red paint (we opted for red colored glue) for sauce. The girls helped cut, and scrunch (for the sausage) the toppings.

Then, they happily put together pizzas, that might not have the Italian color scheme of Pizza Margherita...

...but our certainly fit for a queen.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Linked with stART(story + ART) at A Mommy's Adventures, and the History and Geography link-up at All Things Beautiful.

Watcha Making Wednesday - Baking With Bruno

2012-01-25T14:13:00.000-08:00

For Watcha Making Wednesday (a weekly link-up hosted by The Ramblings and Adventures of a S.A.H.M.) I checked out Lars Klinting's Bruno the Baker...

...more recently published as Harvey the Baker, part of the "Handy Harvey" series, in which the one time Bruno, turned Harvey, teaches children how to make a tool box, sew an apron, plant beans, paint a cupboard, and in this case - bake a cake.

I really couldn't be more pleased. The illustrations are adorable, the story is sweet, and the recipe, for a simple yellow cake is child friendly.

The girls enjoyed following along with Bruno, cracking eggs...

...using the electric mixer...

...stirring in ingredients...

...spooning the batter into a cake pan...

...and their favorite part - cleaning up the kitchen, while their cake baked (don't you love that age?).

They were having so much fun, I even let them frost the cake with our favorite chocolate peanut butter frosting, rather than simply sprinkling it with powdered sugar as suggested in the recipe.

Our thanks to the author for an enjoyable story, a delightful afternoon, and a delicious dessert!

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Proverb Cookies

2012-01-24T17:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Natalie over at Mouse Grows Mouse Learns posted about making fortune cookies, with her daughter, for the Chinese New Year. That reminded me of an idea the girls brought home from their aunt, for putting Bible verses into "fortune", or in this case - Proverb cookies.

The book of Proverbs is full of sage advice, dispensed out in bite sized couplets, perfect for wrapping up into cookies. The girls had a good time this morning, sorting through the book, picking and choosing their favorites.

After they had half a dozen proverbs printed out on strips of paper, we went to work mixing up the cookie dough, following the same "easy" recipe from Allrecipes.com, that Natalie had managed with success.

It didn't work as well for us.

Personally, I blame the Easter Egg Chicken eggs, we picked up from some of our homesteading friends. They come in beautiful shades of pink and green, but are very tiny. We might have needed to add an extra egg white to the recipe to compensate for the size.

Then again, it might have been user error. We had equally poor success with a second, oil based recipe from MomsWhoThink, which is even prefaced with the assurance:

A good fortune cookie recipe is as hard to come by as a good fortune in your cookie! This is the best one yet.

The greasy, sugar cookie like dough made for tasty cookies, but no matter how hot out of the oven they were, we couldn't manage to fold them around our slips of paper, without breaking them into pieces.

It wasn't a bad dough for wrapping, before baking, around chocolate chips, though.

As for the Proverb cookies...

...I found a terrific crochet pattern...

...and had a batch made up in no time. Bringing to mind another bite of Biblical advice:

Ecclesiastes 6:11 Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let not your hands be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.

Or, in other (Proverb cookie sized) words...

...always have a backup plan!

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Linked with Bible Alive! Tuesday at The Fantastic Five.

Mini Tea Cup and Saucer Crochet Pattern

2012-01-23T17:43:00.000-08:00

There's nothing better on a cold, gray, rainy afternoon, than a good audio book and a crochet project to keep your hands busy, unless maybe it's having a sunny cup of tea with your best sister.

I'm not happy with the teapot design, just yet. I'll keep tinkering with that. But, the cups and saucers turned out just the way I hoped, so I'll share the pattern, and record it for myself, below.

Cup
Chain 2.
Row 1: 6 sc (single crochet) in the first chain.
Row 2: 1 sc in first stitch, 2 scs in the next stitch, repeat 2 more times (9 stitches)
Row 3: 1 sc in the first 2 stitches, 2 scs in the next stitch, repeat 2 more times (12 stitches)
Row 4: 1 sc in the first 3 stitches, 2 scs in the next stitch, repeat 2 more times (15 stitches)
Rows 5 - 9: 1 sc in each stitch.
Tie off and weave in loose ends.

Handle
Leaving a tail for sewing on chain 4.
Sc in the second stitch from the last, and in the remaining stitch.
*Chain 1 and turn
Sc in the two stitches across*
Repeat between *s for more 6 rows.
Tie off, use the tail to sew the two long edges together.
Sew to cup.

Saucer
Chain 2.
Row 1: 6 sc in the first chain.
Row 2: 1 sc in the first stitch, 2 scs in the next stitch, repeat 2 more times (9 stitches)
Row 3: 1 sc in the first 2 stitches, 2 scs in the next stitch, repeat 2 more times (12 stitches)
Row 4: 1 sc in the first 3 stitches, 2 scs in the next stitch, repeat 2 more times (15 stitches)
Row 5: 1 sc in the first 4 stitches, 2 scs in the next stitch, repeat 2 more times (18 stitches)
Row 6: 1 sc in the first 5 stitches, 2 scs in the next stitch, repeat 2 more times (21 stitches)
Tie off and weave in loose ends.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Peanut Plant Update

2012-01-22T07:13:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we noticed our raw peanuts were not only sprouting roots, but also leaves.

Well, one had leaves, one had the beginning of a leaf, and one was just starting a root, but we decided it was time to move them out of the napkin filled cup and into an actual pot.

The children helped me prepare a large container with a small bag of vermiculite (to keep the soil loose), a few cups of sand (peanut plants like a sandy soil)...

...and a small bag of Miracle Grow potting soil.

I gave them a garden trowel to mix the dirt, and prepare one hole at a time for the plants. Playing with dirt inside the house was huge hit with the younger girls, who got to help by pouring water into the holes...

...and gently closing the dirt around the plants, while their sisters held the peanuts in place, keeping the roots down, and the leaves up.

After a week of keeping the soil lightly watered (too much water will rot the roots), Plant A (the one with leaves) has continued to grow taller, and is beginning to look well established.
Plant B (the one with just the beginning of a leaf) has sprouted above the dirt.

But, we are still waiting to see if Plant C (the one with just the beginning of a root) survived the transplant. It should take around 4 months for the plants to mature. I will try to post a monthly update, assuming we can keep them alive that long. It's a long shot for plants in our house, but time will tell.

In the meantime you can find more science themed ideas and activities for children at this week's Science Sunday link-up over at Adventures in Mommydom.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Our Penguin Party

2012-01-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

The decor for our party was very simple. Besides the penguin tablecloth with built in place mats, there was just the presents...

...wrapped as construction paper penguins...

...and a painted penguin, taped to the wall...

...for a game of Pin the Bow Tie on the Penguin.

Instead of a large pinata, I made individual sized "penguin eggs" (much like the dinosaur eggs I made for the children previously)...

...each filled with a sheet of penguin stickers, a penguin themed gummy fruit snack, and a hand sewn penguin bean bag.

The children had to waddle across the room penguin-style to the eggs, and then carry them back across the room on their feet, before opening them.

Then, they used the bean bags to toss...

...at ice blocks (squares of felt)...

...worth various amounts of points.

Finally, we played a rousing game of penguin bowling...

...knocking down painted pop bottle penguins with a rolled up sock "snowball"...

...and blew toilet paper roll penguins down the ice slide (a strip of freezer paper), to see whose penguin could make it the farthest without going off the edge of the ice.

While waiting for the cake, the children also used the painted cup penguins place markers, turning them to the black back sides, so the names weren't showing, for shell type games of find the egg, or M&M as it was in our case.

The cake was made by starting out with two 9'' cake rounds, and cutting one as pictured.

Both were popped into the freezer for a few hours for easier frosting (it keeps the cut edges from crumbling when you frost them). Then, the uncut cake round was frosted, with a well whipped butter cream frosting...

And, some of the cut pieces were stacked on top, and frosted one by one, in a stair stepish pattern.

A melted, and cooled, Jolly Rancher (blue raspberry) was placed into the frosting to resemble water.

The whole thing was sprinkled with powdered sugar...

...and finished off with a Tube of Penguins from Safari Ltd, which served as one last present.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Snow Play Dough - Made With Real Snow

2012-01-20T05:34:00.000-08:00

Our snow, our beautiful snow, that brought us so much joy over the past two days, is melting, has probably already melted by the time you read this. Even as I type now, snowmen all over the neighborhood are teetering and toppling, with snowflakes turning to rain.

But not to worry - we saved some. I brought in a bowl full, and told the younger girls (ages 5 and 7) we were going to transform it...

...by mixing it with flour, salt, cream of tarter, and a splash of vanilla for good measure.

I had checked the water content of the snow ahead of time by melting a cup worth on the counter, so I knew one cup of our snow would yield slightly less than a half cup of water. Which meant for 1 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of salt, 2 tablespoons of cream of tarter, and a teaspoon of vanilla, we needed somewhere around 2 1/2 cups of snow.

We chopped it up, and stirred it in, until it was looking fairly sloggy.

Then, we popped it in the microwave for a minute...

...and stirred it...

...and continued microwaving and stirring at 30 second intervals until it was looking somewhat solid. The girls' attention had turned to what remained of the bowl of melting snow, and they didn't see me pull the blob from the bowl to pat and knead it until it was smooth...

...so they were quite impressed when I dramatically presented them with the transformed snow.

I should mention, that while this trick worked like gangbusters with the younger crowd in the house, the older children rolled their eyes, and walked away as soon as they saw the ingredient list. Apparently, they were already on to the whole snow-turns-into-water thing. Even so, the younger girls, who never turn down a chance to play with play dough, were happy in the knowledge there was real snow, our snow, in the dough.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Penguin Place Mats (sort of)

2012-01-19T15:17:00.000-08:00

For our stART project (a weekly story + art link-up hosted by A Mommy's Adventures), I had the girls help me with a little more penguin party prep. We have a penguin birthday coming right up, but tomorrow is also National Penguin Awareness Day. This craft could work for either one.

To begin with, I laid out three long strips of freezer paper, that will serve as our party table cloth, with the waxy side down.

Then, in I drew a rough, egg shaped, penguin outline around a dinner plate, at each spot around the table.

Since I'm not sure whether we'll be eating our lunch on the "table cloth" or just our cake, I traced a circle for the penguins' white middles around a dessert plate. That way the penguins are large enough for dinner plates, but cake plates will be able to cover all their white middles.

Finally, the girls started coloring in the black part of the penguins, using the side of peeled crayons (penguins look very strange without their beaks, but trust me those are penguins).

I didn't want to tape the paper down to the table and risk tearing it when I went to roll it up before the party, so I placed books on top, to keep the sheets of paper from moving out of place as the girls moved around the table, coloring.

While they colored, I read Margret & H.A. Rey's Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World out loud. The story is about a penguin radio host, who sets off to see the world in hope of finding new stories to use on the air.

The children balked a little bit as his friends, Seal and Polar Bear, see Whiteback off on his journey. But, since the story begins and ends in fictional Penguinland, rather than Antarctica, and has an amusing refrain repeated throughout the story, that made them giggle, they decided to forgive the authors' mixing of North and South Pole creatures.

After the girls were done coloring, I rolled the papers up to keep them safe until the party, when I'll tape them down, and add beaks, feet, and forks (see it does look like a penguin).

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Lemon Snow Ice

2012-01-18T11:43:00.000-08:00

I had just barely placed our welcome rock penguins outside yesterday, when the snow starting falling...

...and falling, and is still falling. It's a pity I didn't wait to seal the rocks with a clear coat. I'm afraid the washable paint we used isn't going to hold up in the snow. Of course, they can always be repainted, that's half the fun of welcome rocks.

But, that will have to wait for another day, when the children have grown tired of snow, and decided to come back inside. I saw them briefly at breakfast, and lunch, and when I stepped outside to hand them a few cut lemons, and a baggie full of sugar for making lemon ices, like those in Andra Cheng's The Lemon Sisters.

Despite the title, the story is one of the sweetest I've read in a long time, so sweet in fact, I had a difficult time reading it aloud to the girls at breakfast, without bursting into tears. I read it to the girls, and not the boys, because it's a story about sisters, old and young, in different seasons of life, passing on memories, and making new ones, on a beautiful snowy day.

And, it includes a simple recipe for delicious lemon ice. Once the girls discovered the lemon juice mixed with sugar was not enough to turn the snow "yellow", they were all over it. They even made one for me.

A layer of snow, clean snow of course, fresh squeezed lemon juice, topped with sugar, and a little more snow is pretty good. But, when mixed by sisters, working together in winter harmony, it's memory making perfection.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Linked with Watcha Making Wednesdays at The Ramblings and Adventures of a S.A.H.M.

Painted Penguins - Three Projects for Children

2012-01-17T06:07:00.000-08:00

The girls (ages 5 and 7) went to work recycling previously painted rocks into penguin themed, winter, "welcome" rocks to stand outside our door. NOTE: It's best to use acrylic paint if you are not going to seal the rocks. Washable tempera paint will wash away in snow or rain.

While we had the paint out, I decided to have the girls help with party prep for our upcoming penguin themed party, by painting one and a half inch segments, cut from empty toilet paper tubes, and small (Dixie sized) paper cups, as well.

It was an extremely simple project to begin with, because all they had to do was paint everything black (and purple - C insisted at least one rock absolutely had to be purple).

Then, after the paint had time to dry, and the girls had been scrubbed clean, I helped them add the final details in white...

...and orange. The girls could have managed on their own, but I lent a hand to keep the mess down to a minimum, in order to avoid a third bath for them in one morning.

Then, we moved them to a paper covered counter top to dry, so they will be ready to grace the birthday table, as place holders (and a possible "find the pea", or in this case chocolate egg, type game)...

...or placed on their sides, like wheels, ready to be blown across the table table, in a face paced racing game (more on that later)...

...or propped up outside to welcome guests, and hopefully some winter snowflakes to our door.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Penguin Bean Bag

2012-01-16T05:20:00.000-08:00

With a penguin themed birthday party coming up, not to mention National Penguin Awareness Day at the end of the week, I thought it might be nice to have a penguin bean bag, or two, for a handy game of toss the penguin, or something like that. I'll tell you more about the game as soon as I figure out how we're actually going to play it.

But, the bean bag is simple, even easier than the turkey, or pilgrim bean bags.

Cut the pieces from felt, as shown, using a drinking glass to trace around for the body, and freehanding the eyes, beak, wings, and feet.

The white "tummy" is just a rough heart cut out of a circle the same size as the body.

Stitch the pieces together using matching colored threads...

...leaving the top open...

...so you can fill the body fairly snugly with rice, dried beans, or unpopped popcorn kernels (making this an ages 3 and up, choking hazard for babies, type toy).

Sew the top closed, and stitch a second time around the body for added strength.

And he, or she (it's so hard to tell with penguins) is ready to fly, as no penguin has flown before.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

The Cheerio Effect

2012-01-15T14:45:00.000-08:00

For Science Sunday (a weekly science themed link-up at Adventure's in Mommydom) we explored Einstein's concept of the fabric of spacetime, with a bowl of Cheerios. I think generally the experiment is carried out in a bowl of milk, usually during breakfast, but we had muffins for breakfast, and milk is too expensive to waste, so we used a bowl of water.

First, we observed how the surface of the water seemed to curve toward the edges of the bowl. Then we dropped a few pieces of cereal into the water.

The cereal made "dents" in the surface of the water.

As we dropped more cereal into the bowl we watched as some of the pieces fell into the dent at the edge of the bowl, and some placed close enough together, fell into each other's dents, making it appear as if the two pieces were being drawn together by an invisible force.

That's sort of the way Einstein described what's happening with our planets. It's not necessarily gravity keeping them in orbit around the sun, or keeping the moons around the planets, but just that they've rolled into each other's dents in the fabric of spacetime, sort of like a marble rolling around the inside of a funnel, but without the friction to stop the motion.

"The Cheerio Effect" is of course, an imperfect example, but still fun to play with. The children spent quite a bit of time dropping in Cheerios and Apple Jacks (to simulate a change in mass)...

...and trying to predict the way the pieces would move, based on the position of the rest of the cereal in the bowl.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Children's Books for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

2012-01-14T10:18:00.000-08:00

For the What My Child is Reading link-up at Mouse Grows Mouse Learns, I thought I'd share a few good biographies, for children, we've come across, for the holiday on Monday.

Young Martin Luther King, Jr. "I Have a Dream" by Joanne Mattern. As part of the "Troll First-Start Biography" series, this is a good choice to read to younger children. It is short, simple and to the point, but manages to cover Dr. King's life from childhood through death, touch briefly on the history of slavery, as well as unfair civil laws, and legacy of the civil rights movement in modern America.

Slightly older children (ages 8 and above) might enjoy Bonnie Bader's Who was Martin Luther King, Jr?...

...or Ellen Levine's If You Lived in the Time of Martin Luther King. Both books are fairly wordy, but still child friendly looks at the man and the time in which he lived. I appreciate the fact that Bonnie Bader includes brief biographies of several additional individuals who struggled, and in some cases lost their lives, for civil rights, as well. And, Levine's book includes the words and sheet music for the inspirational hymn, "We Shall Overcome" at the back.

Finally, for a family read-aloud, you might consider Blast to the Past, King's Courage by Stacia Deutsch and Rhody Cohon, part of the authors' time travel, historical, adventure series, in which a group of school friends must travel to the past to encourage individuals to carry on at pivotal, but seemingly hopeless, moments in history.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Darth Paper Strikes Back - The Return of Origami

2012-01-13T13:57:00.000-08:00

We spent our morning folding origami Darth Vaders, with step-by-step instructions from Tom Angleberger's Darth Paper Strikes Back...

...a sequel to his earlier story of Dwight, an introverted middle schooler, who gains attention if not popularity, when he discovers he can communicate, and dispense "sage" advice through a folded paper Yoda finger puppet.

Darth Paper Strikes Back finds Dwight in trouble due largely to misunderstanding, and a few malicious forces. It's up to his friends, and some emergency folding, to straighten things out.

The back of the book has instructions for folding a paper Darth Vader (the puppet of choice for the villain of the book). There are also separate, and different instructions on the author's website. The large white Darth Vader in the picture at the top is what we got following the website instructions as closely as we could manage. The Darth "Penguin", black and white versions are what happened when we followed the instructions but switched to origami paper (our black paper had white on the back).

And the skinny fellow, with lady bugs on his "teeth" is from following the instructions in the book, using whatever origami paper we happened to have had left.

The book also contains instructions for playing out the Star Wars "Death Star" battle, on paper. It's not particularly pretty...

...but we found it surprisingly entertaining.

I noticed Amazon has the book listed for ages 8 and up. As far as reading level goes, that's probably about right, but since the story revolves around a group of middle school aged boys, I would suggest a slightly higher age recommendation. It should be clear to older readers, that Dwight speaks through his puppet, because of shyness, and that the puppet, even though it looks like Yoda, does not have any special powers or knowledge of its own, younger children might be confused.

Still, it's a cute story, and inspired my 14 year old to spend a few minutes doing origami, and playing a game that didn't have to be plugged in, which is a good enough recommendation for me.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Koch Tortilla Snowflake Snack

2012-01-12T07:01:00.000-08:00

After our snow fun (as brief as it was) yesterday, making cinnamon and sugar tortilla snowflakes, for an evening snack, seemed like a natural choice. I decided to give our snowflakes a little extra math twist, by using a Koch snowflake design (another one of those fabulous, infinity bound in a finite space, fractals).

D (age 8) made the comment, while we were observing snowflakes, that their six sided designs do not fit into the Fibonacci sequence, suggesting that maybe the Fibonacci sequence is not as prevalent in nature as people like to think. He was actually jumping ahead of me, into a lesson I had hoped to share with the children using the latest series of video doodlings from Vi Hart, "Spirals, Fibonacci, and Being a Plant".

If you click the link, be warned, the Man of the House reacted to Vi Hart's fast paced banter in a manner usually reserved for Anne of Green Gables, but the children were mesmerized, inspired and entertained.

As to the tortilla, I spread it with butter and granulated sugar, on top of a greased cookie sheet, as normal...

...but before sprinkling on the cinnamon, I centered a Koch snowflake design, cut from paper, in the middle of the tortilla. There are a number of print and cut patterns for the snowflake online. My printer is still on the fritz, so I just sketched one out myself, using a 6in x 6in triangle, and its corners for a template (it was either sit sketch triangles, or go fold the laundry, so it didn't seem like much of a chore).

Then, I gave the tortilla a generous dusting of cinnamon...

...removed the paper...

...baked the tortilla in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes, and backed up a page on Vi Hart's blog, to start our snack time off with a "Triangle Party", which ends very conveniently for me, with a Koch snowflake.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Flat Snowmen - For Children With Very Little Snow

2012-01-11T13:07:00.000-08:00

We finally did get about an inch of snow, at around midnight last night. It's already melted off, but for a brief bit this morning, it looked like winter.

We rushed out first thing, to take a look of the jumble of tiny snowflakes through our handheld microscopes.

Then, we quickly set to work crossing at least one project off of our winter to-do list. There wasn't quite enough snow to make a proper snowman - at least not in 3D, but by pressing the rim of a plastic bowl into the snow, and with the addition of a few carrot shreds from our salad mix, dirt clods form the garden, and twigs from under trees...

...we could make all the two dimensional snowman we wanted.

At least until around noontime, when the melting started in earnest. Then, we retreated to the house for lunch with hot chocolate, and snow themed audio story.

After I read to the children yesterday, about Snowflake Bentley, A (age 10) remembered that she had read about him already in Megan McDonald's Judy Moody and Stink, The Holly Joliday. By the time she got around to asking me what a stellar dendrite was (Stinks costume in the book), I decided to download the audio story from the library, so we could all listen to it together. It turns out to be much more about snow than about Christmas - making it the perfect addition to any (ever so slight) snow day.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Waiting For Snowflakes - Craft and Cookies

2012-01-10T18:26:00.000-08:00

I had hoped to bundle the children up, and send them out with handheld microscopes today, to view snowflakes up close, before reading to them about Wilson Bentley, the man who discovered, that no two snowflakes are alike.

Unfortunately, despite our weatherman's promise of snow, we were met this morning with rain, giving way to a beautiful, and balmy, blue sky covered afternoon. I still sent the younger children out to play, considerably less bundled, and without the microscopes, while the older girls went to work on "plan b", forming six pointed, snowflake designs out of pony beads...

...on a tinfoil covered cookie sheet...

...to melt and fuse together in a 400 degree Fahrenheit oven (it takes about 15 minutes, and smells terrible - with what I can only assume are toxic fumes - I was glad it was warm to throw the windows open).

We had planned on poking holes in the tops of each snowflake for hanging, while they were still hot, but they cooled very quickly, and still looked melted, so we missed the chance. I'm thinking we might try melting them slightly again, so we can add the holes.

But first, we had cookies to bake. I made up a half batch of chocolate sugar cookie dough, and added a few drops of black food coloring, rolled it out, and cut it into squares before baking...

...to serve as a background for Snowflake Bentley inspired, melted white chocolate chip, snowflakes.

They're not as beautiful as Mr. Bentley's pictures of the real thing...

...but they're as close as we could get today.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter - Fluffernutter Playdough

2012-01-09T13:22:00.000-08:00

I made up a quick batch of fluffernutter dough, edible peanut butter and marshmallow playdough, as a snacktivity to go along with our growing peanut plants.

Really, I just had to see for myself, if you can mix two things as sticky, and messy as peanut butter and marshmallow cream, together...

...and end up with a pliable, pleasant playdough. It turns out that you can.

And, when you put it together with chocolate playdough, or tootsie roll dough as we like to call it (a half batch is just right), it's pure snack time, boredom buster, genius.

I was thinking we'd make something educational, like maybe Fibonacci inspired flowers.

The children had other plans, though.

But, I'll get them back, because there's actually a short science lesson to go along with the recipe for the fluffernutter dough at Homeschool Science Tools. If you're interested in playdough science, you might want to check it out, there is also a recipe for adding gelatin to the everyday cream of tartar, cooked playdough recipe. And, for even more science themed, playdough ideas, check out this link courtesy of The Learning Hypothesis.

Oh, and for those of you who want to know, this is what our peanut plants look like, today.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Make Your Own Chocolate Kit - Review

2012-01-08T05:45:00.000-08:00

Last week, while we were experimenting with our left over Christmas candies, the older girls mentioned they would like to try making chocolate themselves. It wasn't exactly in my plans, as the goal of our chocolate experiments was to use up some of our candy supply, not add to it, but when I saw Glee Gum's Make Your Own Chocolate Kit, and read that it not only comes with all the supplies you need to make 8 oz. of dark chocolate, but also with a couple of cocoa beans to sample, I just couldn't resist.

After watching, The Magic School Bus in the Rain Forest, as well as several from bean to bar type chocolate making documentaries, I was about as curious as the children were to see, smell and taste a real cocoa bean.

I ordered the kit from Amazon, and it arrived just in time for a Friday surprise. I slipped in an audio version of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and placed the kit on the table, just after breakfast.

The girls were delighted. We unpacked the supplies:

* instructions and a brief history of chocolate
* cocoa powder
* cocoa butter
* confectioners sugar
* chocolate seed crystals (a chopped up candy bar)
* two stick on thermometers
* a number of paper candy liners
* and two and a half cocoa beans.

We made short work of removing the shells from the cocoa beans, releasing a wonderful, deep, chocolaty aroma from the nibs. The taste was about what I had expected, somewhere between an espresso bean and baker's chocolate - enough to drive all but the serious chocolate makers from the kitchen.

The older girls (ages 10 and 12) proceeded from there, pretty much on their own, examining...

...and melting the cocoa butter in the microwave (the bowl got extremely hot)...

...stirring in the cocoa powder and sugar, then returning the chocolate mixture to the microwave for a few more seconds...

...before stirring in a touch of vanilla extract (an optional ingredient not in the kit), and waiting for the temperature of the chocolate to drop to exactly 94 degrees Fahrenheit, before stirring in the seed crystals for proper tempering.

The instructions provided a very good, child friendly explanation of the science behind tempering chocolate. That, really added a nice layer of deeper understanding to the chocolate waterfall passage from the book.

And, Dahl's imagination, along with a little encouragement from the kit instructions, sparked some real creativity in the girls, as they added nuts, marshmallows and peanut butter to their chocolates.

Overall, I was very impressed with the kit, and it's not too often I can say that about "science" kits for children. This one though, provided a history and geography lesson, a good bit of math, and just enough science to make it interesting but not overwhelming.

It didn't hurt either, that the chocolates turned out very good. I wasn't expecting too much. A few of the customer reviews on Amazon mentioned the chocolate turning out inferior, or grainy. Perhaps we hit just the right kind of day, weather-wise, or maybe the girls followed the instructions more closely than the reviewers, but their chocolates were very good - gold ticket good, even. I think even Willie Wonka would have been pleased.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Linked with Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom (a peanut plant update is coming up next).

Fibonacci For Children - Pony Beads and Pipe Cleaners

2012-01-07T08:30:00.000-08:00

I saw a great idea by Susan Caplan over at Suite101, that went perfectly with our reading to the week...

...using pony beads and pipe cleaners to allow younger children to explore the Fibonacci sequence.

I added a simple, cereal and pipe cleaner counting frame...

...that we had made earlier in the week, following instructions from the back of Virginia Walton Pilegard's The Warlord's Beads, the second book from her math-themed series too, because an abacus plays heavily in the illustrations of Joseph D'Agnese's BLOCKHEAD, the Life of Fibonacci...

...and, because it proved very useful for adding up the numbers in Fibonacci's sequence, for counting out beads, and for keeping track of which number in the sequence we were on.

First though, we sorted the pony beads by color, to get us into a mathematical mood, and to bring some order to the chaos, before we started arranging the colored beads according to the pattern of the sequence.

I folded one end of a pipe cleaner back for each girl, so the beads wouldn't fall off as they threaded on a different color for each number in the sequence. When they reached the end of a pipe cleaner, we twisted on another, and continued on.

After a while, we decided to bend the pipe cleaners at the junctions between numbers, so the girls could see the ever widening spiral they were forming.

By the time we had to stop, I had reached 233 in the number sequence, E (age 7) was only one step behind me at 144, and C (age 5) was just one step behind her at 89 beads.

At which point, although we weren't completely out of beads, we were running low on work space.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Linked to:

What My Child is Reading at Mouse Grows Mouse Learns

and

Math Monday at Love2Learn2Day.

Fibonacci Sugar Cookies

2012-01-06T05:36:00.000-08:00

I had some extra cookie dough to use up, and an excellent, math themed, picture book, biography to read with the children, that was just begging for a story time snack.

With the Fibonacci's sequence, and the golden rectangle in mind, I started dividing the dough into thirds (sort of estimating the proportions of the rectangles).

I placed two thirds of the dough into a bowl, and then divided the final third into thirds again. I placed two thirds of that dough into a second bowl, and divided the final third into thirds again, continuing that way, until I had the dough divided into six portions.

I cut the smallest piece into 12, 1x1 squares (using 1/2 cm as my unit of 1), and placed two squares side by side on the cookie sheet, for each of the six cookies a half batch of dough will make (click here for the recipe).

I mixed food coloring into the rest of the dough, a different color for each bowl, and a couple of teaspoons of baker's cocoa into the largest lump of dough...

...and then continued dividing them out into squares following the Fibonacci sequence. So, the second square was 2x2 (keeping in mind that my unit of 1 was 1/2 cm, making the sides of the square 1 cm).

Then, onto a 3x3 unit square...

...and so on, and so on, forming a golden rectangle. Or rather, trying to form a golden rectangle, because I was so busy worrying about cutting the dough into the right sized squares, while still keeping them all the same thickness, and making sure I had enough dough in each bowl for all six cookies, that I didn't even notice until after the cookies were baked, that I had reversed the position of the 1s and 2s.

Not to worry though, a quick slice with a butter knife while they were hot, a dab of frosting after they cooled, and everything was right again...

...and ready for the older children to pipe melted chocolate chip, across the corners of the squares...

...to form golden spirals, an image found throughout John O'Brien's illustrations.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Sprouting Peanuts

2012-01-05T10:36:00.000-08:00

Doing a little more after Christmas cupboard cleaning, I realized that besides all the candy,which is slowly dwindling, we also have quite a large bag of raw peanuts left over from peanut brittle making.

Generally I buy more than I think we're going to need, so that when we end up with one gooey batch, and one burned batch, we still have enough left for at least one good batch. This year, the weather before Christmas was cold and dry - perfect peanut brittle making weather, resulting in three good batches of brittle, and peanuts left over to spare.

That's okay though, because we've been meaning to try sprouting peanuts, ever since we took a look at the beginning of the plants inside the peanuts, last year.

We decided to go with the clear plastic cup method, so we will be able to watch our sprouting plants grow.

I gathered together the supplies:

* Clear plastic cups (ours are semi-clear)
* Raw (unroasted) peanuts (I also pulled out a bag of roasted peanuts, for comparison)
* Napkins
* Dark construction paper (cut to fit around the inside of the cup)
* And water.

I let the children shell a few of the roasted peanuts.

They had the same little plant part on the inside, but tasted much better than the raw peanuts.

To "plant" the peanuts, the children placed the construction paper strips around the inside of their cups...

...wadded up the napkins, to fill them...

...slipped peanuts, spaced apart, between the construction paper, and the inside of the cups...

...and poured in enough water to soak the napkins.

Then, we placed the cups into a dark cupboard, where they won't get knocked over, and left them for a day. When we checked them this morning, to see if we needed to add more water to the napkins, their peanuts had already started to sprout.

We took a quick look at one of the peanuts, before putting it back into the cup, and the cup back into the cupboard.

I'll try to remember to report on their progress for Science Sunday. Once the plants get to be about three inches tall, or so, we ought to be able to transplant them to a large, dirt filled pot, and after four months, we might even get to see peanuts ready to harvest - probably not enough for another batch of peanut brittle, but I'll let you know.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Happy Birthday Isaac Newton!

2012-01-04T11:51:00.000-08:00

It's Isaac Newton's birthday. At least, it's the anniversary of his birth - January 4, 1643, according the the Gregorian calendar.

If you're a purist, you might have already marked the anniversary of his birth, on December 25th. As according to the Julian calendar, in use in England, at the time of his birth, the scientific great was born on Christmas Day, 1642.

Either way, there's a "free feature", animated, video clip (meaning you can view it without a subscription) about his life, at BrainPop.com, today.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Picture credit from Wikipedia : Godfrey Kneller's 1689 portrait of Isaac Newton
(age 46)

Lowercase Letter Cookie Activity

2012-01-03T19:46:00.000-08:00

While helping the children with their Christmas thank you notes, I noticed C (age 5) had reverted to printing all her letters in capitals. In fact, she insisted on using nothing but capitals to spell out the thanks in her notes.

I haven't been too worried about it because of her age, but I have been trying to find ways to encourage her to print lower case letters more often. With that in mind, I set up a cookie baking activity for the two of us, this evening.

Before I called her in, I prepared a half batch of sugar cookie dough (click the link for the recipe), and got out paper and crayons, to go along with the sprinkles and cookie sheets.

I started out printing each lower case letter for C to copy on the paper, and then rolling some of the dough into a rope, and forming it into the letters on the cookie sheet. For each lowercase letter she was willing to copy...

...she got to add sprinkles to its cookie dough counterpart.

D took over printing letters for C to copy, while I rolled the dough...

...and in no time at all, she had happily printed, and sprinkled, all 26 lowercase letters.

While the cookies baked, we read Audrey Wood's alphabet rescue, a letter adventure that starts out with a lowercase alphabet...

...and ends, conveniently enough, with a thank you note, written with the help of those lowercase letters.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Linked with Watcha Making Wednesdays at The Ramblings and Adventures of a SAHM.

Tangrams and Cinquains for Children

2012-01-02T14:00:00.000-08:00

Our jump back into "school" for the new year is off to an odd, but I'd have to say typical, almost unschooled beginning. I read The Warlord's Puzzle to the children at breakfast.

It's the first of a math themed series, set in ancient China, by Virginia Walton Pilegard.

Each of the engaging stories has a short Chinese history lesson at the back, as well as a suggestion for an easy to make, math themed, craftivity, and there are additional study guides for many of the books on the publisher's website.

As you might imagine there is a pattern for a tangram puzzle at the back of the book we read today. Since the story is about a contest to try to put a broken tile back together into its original square shape, I thought it might be fun to cut a puzzle out for each of the children to monkey with at lunch, to see who could be the first to form the square.

The children are familiar with tangrams, but usually we use them to make various shapes, and pictures. It's not too often, that we remake the original square. A (age 10) solved the problem by flipping to the back of the book, and looking at the pattern there.

I told her that was cheating, and then happily played the audio version of Barbara Park's Junie B., First Grader: Cheater Pants...

...which I had downloaded from our library's online catalogue last night, after reading the suggestion from publisher's study guide for The Warlord's Puzzle to introduce children to cinquains (5 line poems, pronounced sing-cane, as a combination of the French words cinq, for five, and quatrain, for four lined poem, made popular by American poet Adelaide Crapsey in early 1900s as a nod to the haiku), which somehow reminded the author of the love of nature shown by Chinese poets in their writing.

It just so happens that Junie B., First Grader: Cheater Pants, in addition to addressing and defining the problem of cheating, also has a very clearly spelled out lesson on cinquains for children.

1st line: One word (title)
2nd line: Two words that describe the title
3rd line: Three action words about the title
4th line: Four words that express a thought or feeling about the title
5th line: One word that means the same thing as the title.

Which, is how we ended up spending our morning, and part of the afternoon working Chinese puzzles while creating silly little American, French named, Japanese inspired poems.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Chocolate Unit Links and Books

2012-01-01T12:30:00.000-08:00

We weren't really planning on a chocolate themed study last week, but along the way of exploding chocolate Santas in the microwave, seizing and "saving" melted chocolate, testing the "melt in your mouth, not in your hands" quality of M&Ms, blooming chocolate, and watching it melt (my personal favorite), we learned enough about the geography, history, mathematics, and science of chocolate, mainly from the video links below, to easily create an entire unit study.

Video Links (move your mouse over the titles to find the links):

The Magic School Bus in the Rain Forest

"Chocolate" on BrainPop.com (this is a subscription service, so an account is required to view the video clip.

The Food Network's Good Eats episodes "The Art of Darkness I, II and III" with Alton Brown.

The Science Channel's How It's Made: Cocoa Beans.

Hershey's "Making our Chocolate" (sort of has a 1950s Disney feel to it).

After all we learned from these clips, I decided to stick with chocolate themed fiction for fun, as a compliment to our experiments, instead of checking out any of the non-fiction, from bean to bar type books for the children.

The younger children, and I enjoyed Margret & H.A. Rey's Curious George Goes to a Chocolate Shop. The librarian who checked it out for us, glanced down at the cover, and without even cracking a grin said, "I bet he's going to into trouble, but it will work out in the end." That pretty well sums up all the Curious George books, doesn't it? This particular title reminded me of the I Love Lucy chocolate factory episode, which naturally, we had to watch, too.

Our favorite book of the week was Patrick Skene Catling's take on the Midas touch - The Chocolate Touch. It's a Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle meets Bread and Jam for Frances cautionary tale about the dangers of being greedy when it comes to chocolate...

...as is Robert Kimmel Smith's Chocolate Fever, though told with a slightly less magic flair.

Chocolate by Hershey, A Story about Milton S. Hershey by Betty Burford was the one non-fiction, simple chapter book I did pick up, for additional reading after watching the biography of the inspiring entrepreneur on Biography.com.

I also brought in a few of Jerry Pallota's chocolate themed math books. They are fairly simple, but always a big hit with the younger children.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Linked with What My Child is Reading at Mouse Grows Mouse Learns.

Building a Bigger Pyramid - Marshmallow and Toothpick Tetrahedrons Take II

2011-12-31T19:27:00.000-08:00

I had every intention of posting a number of video links, and book recommendations to round out, and finish off our "chocolate week". But, what started out this morning, as a quick and easy boredom buster for the younger children...

...turned into a full scale family building project...

...as the older children joined in, to end out the year in an effort to outdo...

...A's marshmallow and toothpick Sierpinski inspired creation from the first of the year.

It took all day, two bags of marshmallows, and somewhere around five boxes of toothpicks, but we did it!

Unfortunately, one of our tetrahedral towers proved unstable, and before I had even finished snapping photos...

...we realized our pyramid was becoming a kinetic sculpture.

That proved to be entertaining, too.

Eying the destruction, we realized it really was only one of the structures that had failed.

And, with some quick work we were able to rescue the other three.

The younger children want to fix up the failed tetrahedron, too...

...but they have they have quite a bit of work ahead, enough at least, to last us into the new year.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Kitchen Rheology for Kids, or Watching Chocolate Melt

2011-12-30T13:55:00.000-08:00

Chocolate is a complex, non-Newtonian, emulsion of fine, semi-solid particles suspended in a polymorphic fat. Which basically just means, in addition to it being delicious, it's a lot of fun to watch it melt.

Depending on the chocolate, and the level of cocoa butter it contains...

...it might pool into a molten puddle as you heat it...

...or it might hold its shape...

...until it's touched.

And, sometimes it can be really surprising to see which chocolate candies will do which.

So far, we've found the slices of our chocolate orange melt into a pool, as do squares of bittersweet chocolate, Hershey Candy Cane Kisses, and even our baker's chocolate (which says on the package it will hold its shape while melting), while dark chocolate Hershey bars, our chocolate Christmas coins, pretty well all of our chocolate chips, and Hershey Milk Chocolate Kisses hold their shape after they are melted until they are touched.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Left Over Christmas Candy Science Experiments - Part 4: Blooming Chocolate

2011-12-29T19:31:00.000-08:00

Another thing we learned about chocolate this week, is that is can bloom. In fact, we found some blooming, right in our own cupboard. See the white film on the baker's chocolate below? It's called fat bloom, and is caused when chocolate has been stored at temperatures above 75 degrees Fahrenheit, allowing the cocoa butter to separate from the solids, and rise to the surface of the bar.

If you rub fat bloom, it will feel greasy, and will melt, or appear to rub off. The magnified picture below on the left is of the chocolate before it was touched, and the picture on the right is after the bloom was wiped off. If I understand correctly, the light brown spots are the cocoa butter.

We tried to produce this same kind of bloom on some of our chocolate coins by melting them, and then allowing them to cool overnight.

Our results were less than impressive, until we melted the chocolate again, stuck it in the freezer to harden, and then let it sit out on the counter. Our chocolate bloomed alright...

...this time with a sugar bloom.

Sugar bloom occurs when chocolate is stored in a humid environment, or when it "sweats" as it is brought from a cold storage, such as the freezer, into a warm room. Condensation beads on the surface of the chocolate, and draws out the sugar. When the water evaporates the sugar is left crystallized on the surface of the chocolate.

It appears grainy, and can't be rubbed off...

...and is incredibly interesting to view through a handheld microscope. You took my advice last year, and picked one of those up, right?

According to the labeling on our box of baker's chocolate, blooming does not hurt the taste or quality of the chocolate. There are many who disagree, and advise against using bloomed chocolate. My children however, found it to be just fine, except for the baker's chocolate - which of course, I let them taste, too :).

For an excellent, but easy to understand, scientific explanation chocolate bloom, as well as a great diagrammed explanation of the purpose of emulsifiers in chocolate, check out this post from Bite-Sized Biology.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Left Over Christmas Candy Science Experiments - Part 3: M&Ms

2011-12-29T08:15:00.000-08:00

Melting chocolate yesterday, made us think of M&Ms, and their claim to "melt in your mouth, and not in your hands". Naturally, we had to check out the validity of the claim.

We cut open an M&M, and observed the thin candy coating around the chocolate center. Then, we placed the M&M with a few others into a bowl...

...and used a blow dryer to heat the M&Ms, keeping track of the temperature with a candy thermometer.

At around 100 degrees Fahrenheit (we were aiming for body temperature - the temperature an M&M would be at in your hand, but it's difficult to be accurate with a blow dryer), we poked the chocolate with a toothpick. It was melted, but the candy shell was not.

In fact, the candy shell did not melt even when we increased the temperature (by moving the blow dryer closer to the bowl) to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature at which we found a Lifesaver candy would begin to melt.

Clearly, the heat of your hand will not melt the candy shell of an M&M. Rather than melt, the candy coating dissolves when it comes in contact with moisture (which is why if you have sweaty hands, all bets are off).

To check our thinking, we poured a small amount of cold water (we were curious to see if temperature mattered) in a bowl of fresh M&Ms.

The candy shells started to dissolve immediately.

Finally, we poured enough water into the bowl to completely cover the candies, so we could watch the edible M stickers float to the top, which is pretty cool!

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Left Over Christmas Candy Science Experiments - Part 2, Seizing the Chocolate

2011-12-28T12:57:00.000-08:00

When melted chocolate, like say a few of those chocolate coins from the children's stockings stuck in the microwave for 30 seconds and stirred (or melted on top of a heat pad, if you prefer)...

...comes into contact with water, even a little water, like a single drop from a clean straw, it seizes, or clumps up...

...just like sugar on the back of a wet spoon. It happens for pretty much the same reason, too. Although melted chocolate is in a liquid state, it doesn't contain water (I'm not actually sure about the chocolate coins, but pure chocolate doesn't have liquid in it), so the solid bits floating in the fat are drawn to the water, causing the entire batch to clump up (or something like that).

Of course, if you dip the sugar clumped spoon into your tea, the sugar will dissolve just like normal. The same is also true for the chocolate. You can't melt it back to normal, but you can "save" it, by mixing it into a liquid, such as warm milk. The rule of thumb is 1 teaspoon of liquid for every ounce of seized chocolate.

In our case, we found with a little stirring, 3/4 cup of milk was just about right for turning 5 or 6 coins worth of seized chocolate...

...into something pretty good to drink.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Left Over Christmas Candy Science Experiments - Part 1

2011-12-27T15:10:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you, but we have an obscene amount of left over Christmas candy in the house, right now. The children are determined to do their best to eat it all, but I'm hoping to sidetrack at least some of their snacking schemes with a few fun filled, candy themed, science experiments.

I've been wanting to try exploding a chocolate covered marshmallow creation in the microwave, with the children, since seeing a similar demonstration, with left over Halloween candy, in a Science Sunday post from The Hmmm...schooling Mom.

After a quick review, for the younger children, of what happens to both chocolate chips, and marshmallows in the microwave (and why)...

...we were ready to move on to theorizing about what would happen to our chocolate covered Santas. Most of the children thought the melting chocolate would mix with the melting marshmallow as it expanded, and form a gooey brown mess.

When I pointed out to them, that the chocolate chips had held their form, even when melted, until touched, a few of the children decided that the expanding marshmallow might crack and burst through the chocolate layer.

Interestingly enough, the marshmallow did burst through the chocolate, ripping it apart down an even seam, and folding the chocolate back, as the marshmallow expanded...

...leaving all the chocolate melted underneath the gooey marshmallow remains...

...at which point, the children remembered their determination to eat all of their remaining Christmas candy, and decided to slip graham crackers under the last few Santas, before popping them into the microwave for 15 seconds, what they found to be the optimal melting time...

...for perfect, melted candy s'mores.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Winter Snowflake List - Things to Do While the Snow's Still Falling

2011-12-27T07:14:00.000-08:00

The picture to the right is from a few weeks ago. We don't actually have any snow falling, or even on the ground right now, so the title of this post is a little optimistic, but I'm sure you get the idea - it's our Winter To-Do list.

Winter may have officially started last week, but of course, being in the middle of the pre-Christmas rush, we didn't pay much attention to its arrival, except to give a quick cheer, that we'd finally passed the shortest day of the year.

Yesterday, once the tree was gone, and the children were feeling a somewhat glum, I reminded them, it was time to start planning some wintertime time. They informed me, that winter isn't going to be any fun, because we don't have any snow.

I assured them the snow will be back (surely it will be back - this is Montana, after all), and until then, there are lots of fun things to do, that require cold, but not snow, like making popsicles outside, or blowing frozen bubbles. It wasn't long before we had a list assembled.

Winter Snowflake List
Make a snowman (hopefully out of snow)
Have a snowball fight
Make lemon ice ala The Lemon Sisters by Andrea Cheng
Blow bubbles outside and watch them freeze
Make popsicles outside
Make snow ice cream
Put together a 1000 or more piece puzzle
Have a family game night
Make snowman hot chocolate
Shovel snow for the neighbors
Have a pajama day
Build a snow fort
Make snow sculptures
Decorate heart cookies
Pick a new calendar
Look for animal tracks in the snow
Make Valentine's "mail" boxes
Make Valentine's
Do a heart craft
Do a snowman craft
Do a penguin craft
Do a "lion and lamb" craft

And celebrate:

New Year's Day
D's Birthday
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Valentine's Day
A's Birthday
President's Day
National Cherry Pie Day
Valentine's Day
Leap Day

If the rest of our snow delays until spring, we might have to get creative with a few of the items on our list, but I'm pretty optimistic we'll have more of the white stuff any day now.

We didn't add any family movie nights to the list, because I'm not sure of any really good, family movies with winter DVD release dates. Any ideas?

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Happy Boxing Day!

2011-12-26T15:18:00.000-08:00

Christmas is over. The last present has been opened, the candy canes eaten (most of them, anyway), the hot chocolate has been drunk, and the Christmas crackers popped with proper pomp and silliness.

It's time to remove the empty advent calendars...

...box up the ornaments and decorations for next year...

...haul away the tree...

...and stash the nativity figures in a place of easy access for Easter, when we'll need them again. I tucked ours into a drawer in the living room, except for baby Jesus, who went missing after the younger girls decided to have a Nativity scavenger hunt. We'll continue to seek Him in the days to come - which has a nice symbolic ring to it, I think.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Simple Christmas Themed Lunch - Making Christmas Magic

2011-12-23T14:37:00.000-08:00

One of the things I love most about children is how simple their expectations really can be. Cut circle, snowmen sandwiches, with olive piece buttons, carrot slice noses, and bread crust hats and scarves.

Pair them with Christmas tree brownies for dessert...

...and suddenly peanut butter and jelly is magical.

I'll be off for the next few days, making the magic happen, and focusing fully on Christmas with family, then probably napping for at least one entire day after that. In the meantime...

Merry Christmas!

Bread Maker Panettone

2011-12-22T06:50:00.000-08:00

Last year, I made a bread maker version of the Italian Christmas bread, panettone, for the children, to go along with our study of the Italian legend of Befana (the old woman so busy around her house, she misses a chance to see the Christ Child).

Apparently, I hadn't yet discovered Tony dePaola's retelling of the legend of the first panettone, Tony's Bread. I came across the story of the baker, his daughter, and the nobleman who wants to marry her, this year, in my search for Christmas picture books, with recipes included. Unfortunately, even though this is one of those stories, that begs to have a recipe included - it does not.

So, it was back to the bread maker for us.

This year, I had some candied fruit on hand, and added a half a cup of it to the recipe. I also discovered the fruit can be added right on top of the flour, without having to wait to catch any beeps for add-ins (so much easier). I chucked a handful of nuts into mine, I don't think that's traditional, but I like nuts. In the end, the taste might be more Montana than Milan, but that won't stop it from becoming a tradition around here.

Bread Machine Panettone (by a total non-Italian)

1/2 cup warm water
1/4 cup, fresh squeezed, orange juice
1/4 teaspoon orange zest
1/4 cup butter, cubed
2 eggs
1 and 1/8 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon anise extract
3 and 1/4 cups flour (bread flour, if you have it)
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 tablespoons dry milk powder (you can use milk instead, just add it with the wet ingredients)
1 and 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons yeast
1/4 cup golden raisins, and craisins, or any mixture of dried fruit
1/2 cup candied fruit (like the stuff for fruitcake)
1/4 cup chopped nuts (totally optional).

Add the ingredients to the bread machine in the order they are listed. Select light crust for white, and start the machine.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Christmas and Winter Themed Picture Books With Recipes or Crafts Included

2011-12-21T14:50:00.000-08:00

This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the Christmas picture books, out there, with recipes or crafts included. About the time you think you've found them all, you bump into another one. But, the books below ought to be enough to provide quite a bit of crafting, baking, and story time fun for the Christmas season (for next year, if not this one), and well beyond into winter.

If there is a link present, it should take you to our review and activity post related to that particular title.

A Pioneer Christmas by Barbara Greenwood (multiple crafts and recipes).

The Cookie Store Cat by Cythia Rylant (multiple cookie recipes).

The Very Best Christmas Ever! by Emilie Barnes (multiple crafts, recipes and activity ideas).

Max & Mo Make a Snowman by Patricia Lakin (cut and glue snowman craft).

Zoo Flakes ABC by Will C. Howell (paper dollish type paper snowflakes).

I Am Snow by Jean Marzollo (paper snowflakes).

Snip, Snip...Snow! by Nancy Poydar (paper snowflakes).

A Blue's Clues Holiday by Angela Santomero (a paper chain, paper plate snowflakes, and pecan snowball cookies).

The Candymaker's Gift by David and Helen Haidle (candy cane cookie recipe, and multiple activity ideas, including stirring hot chocolate with a candy cane).

Gingerbread Friends by Jan Brett (gingerbread men).

World Book's Christmas Around the World Series (multiple crafts and recipes in each volume).

Look-Alikes Christmas by Joan Steiner (peanut bear ornaments, and lollipop elves).

If You Take a Mouse to the Movies by Laura Numeroff (contains a CD, sheet music, multiple recipes, and craft instructions).

Counting to Christmas by Nancy Tafuri (popcorn and cranberry garland, fruit slice ornaments, and peanut butter, pinecone, bird feeders)

Christmas Delicious by Lyn Loates (Raisin and Rice Christmas treats, basically Rice Krispie treats with chocolate chips melted in with the marshmallows, and raisins added).

Cranberry Christmas by Wende and Harry Devlin (Maggie's Favorite Cranberry Cookies).

Christmastime is Here! (a cut, glue, and glitter, Strawberry Shortcake inspired, Christmas ornament craft)

Christmas Cookies: Bite Sized Holiday Lessons by Amy Krouse Rosenthal (sugar cookies).

The Gift of the Christmas Cookie, Sharing the True Meaning of Jesus' Birth by Dandi Daley Mackall (sugar cookies).

Jingle the Christmas Clown by Tomie de Paolo (star cookie).

The Snow Show by Carolyn Fisher (popsicles).

Snowballs by Lois Ehlert (popcorn balls).

Gingerbread from the Heart by Janice K. Mineer (gingerbread house).

Christmas Turtles by Sara Ann Denson (turtle candies).

The Shortest Day : Celebrating the Winter Solstice by Wendy Pfeffer (cupcakes and simple science activities).

Christmas Around the World by Mary D. Lanford (pinecone pine trees, nativity scenes, paper stars, Christmas cards, cornucopias, party crackers, and advent calendars).

Christmas USA by Mary D. Lanford (multiple activities, crafts, and recipes - including a very neat Scripture Cake, that would be fun to try anytime of year).

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Picture Books with Latke Recipes Included

2011-12-20T18:46:00.000-08:00

Looking for a good, child friendly, latke recipe for Hanukkah? There's more than enough recipes included in the picture books below to fill all eight nights of the holiday, and then some. Links on the book titles, when present, will take you to the authors', or another, website, where you can view the recipe for yourself, if you find all the books already checked out at your local library.

Malke's Secret Recipe by David A. Adler

The Runaway Latkes by Leslie Kimmelman

I Have a Little Dreidel by Maxie Baum. This book also includes instructions for playing Dreidel, and sheet music for the Dreidel Song. The entire text can be sung to the tune of the song.

Inside-Out Grandma, A Hanukkah Story by Joan Rothenberg.

The Very Best Hanukkah Gift by Joanne Rocklin. This one contains a recipe for zucchini latkes (you have to page down a bit on the website I linked, to view the recipe, but it's there, and listed with the book title).

It's Hanukkah Time! by Latifa Berry Kropf, contains a recipe for Sufganiyot (donuts) instead of Latkes, but since I don't have a separate "books with donut recipes" list, I decided to include it here.

The Borrowed Hanukkah Latkes by Linda Glaser. Click here, for a review of this book, and a tip or two for making latkes, from Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

Latkes, Latkes Good to Eat, a Chanukah Story by Naomi Howland.

Lots of Latkes a Hanukkah Story by Sandy Lanton.

Latkes and Applesauce, A Hanukkah Story by Fran Manushkin. This book also contains rules for playing Dreidel. Both the rules, and the recipe can be viewed in Amazon's "Look Inside This Book" feature, here, by typing "recipe" in the search box.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Christmas Traditions - The Gingerbread House

2011-12-20T13:55:00.000-08:00

I was busy last night, after the children went to bed, mixing, rolling, cutting and baking...

...following a recipe from the front pages of Janice K. Mineer's Gingerbread from the Heart, for our annual gingerbread house.

There is a house template in the book too, but since it is very similar to the template from The Recipe Link, I already have cut out, and paper clipped into the back of my cookbook, I decided to go ahead and use that one, instead.

As to the recipe, which you can also find here, on the author's website, it makes for a nice stiff, easy to work with dough (I did have to add a little extra flour).

The story is about three children decorating special gingerbread houses, to cheer up their injured grandmother, at Christmastime.

We liked the details of the difficulties the children encountered in decorating their houses - the wavering attention of a toddler, a roof that won't stay put, and a can, used as a brace, forgotten inside one of the houses. It all sounds very true to life.

There are helpful tips on the author's website, for making the assembly process easier. I'm thinking I should have followed a few more of them. I didn't forget to remove the cans...

...there's a little gingerbread man standing inside of our house instead, waiting to be found.

...but I did have some difficulty keeping the roof on. In fact, the house collapsed three times as I was trying to decorate it, mainly because I let the butter cream frosting I was using for glue, get too warm and melty. The instructions in the book suggest using royal icing, but I generally use butter cream, because we like to eat our house, and butter cream frosting tastes better.

I ended up scaling back my decorating plans. The way things were going...

...I was just happy to see the house standing on its own. I was thankful too, for the dose of gingerbread-house-building perspective from Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas, passed on this week by Natalie at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns - it's about the children and happy memories, not perfection and points in some Super Mom contest.

Speaking of children, Mineer has the children in her story building, and decorating their houses on their own, with the exception of the toddler, who has help from their mother, with a graham cracker house. It's our tradition for me to decorate the house without the children, as a sort of surprise (if a yearly tradition can really be a surprise).

I try to do the baking, and decorating when they are in bed, or otherwise occupied, and present to them a completed house sometime in the days approaching Christmas Eve. Then, they ooh and aah (as I've said before, when it comes to candy covered cookies, they aren't too critical), in the happy assurance, that if the gingerbread house is here, Christmas can't be far behind.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Healthy Holiday Snack

2011-12-19T13:23:00.000-08:00

Fruit...

...can be festive, too.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Science Sunday - Nuts

2011-12-18T13:24:00.000-08:00

As a last second thought, I grabbed a scoop of mixed nuts in their shells, as we passed through the produce section at the grocery store yesterday, for a very simple Science Sunday activity, today.

When I was a child we always had a bowl of mixed nuts, with a nutcracker sitting in the middle of the table around Christmastime. We don't generally buy nuts in their shells now though, and since there are not many nuts growing around our area (there are a few nut trees hardy enough to grow in Montana, but not many do), the children are not that familiar with nuts, beyond the chopped and bagged variety I sometimes buy for cookies.

I thought it might be fun to test their knowledge, by shelling the nuts, and placing a few with nuts still in their shells...

...to see if they could recognize which nut went with which shell, and if they could name them.

Once we had the nuts organized, I demonstrated to the children why I had not put out a shelled Brazil nut. Those things are impossible to crack without pulverizing the nuts inside!

After that, Science Sunday deteriorated into a debate between the Man of the House and myself, as to the correct name for the hazelnut. He was pretty sure it was a filbert, and I was pretty sure they are the same thing. It turns out that a filbert is a variety of hazelnut, so filberts are hazelnuts, but not all hazelnuts are filberts - go figure.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Melted Candy Cane Stars

2011-12-17T17:06:00.000-08:00

My sister very sweetly sent the children each a box of candy canes. Unfortunately, the delivery men apparently drop kicked her package all the way from Texas to Montana, breaking most of the candy canes into pieces.

Sorting through the pieces today, deciding which might make good gingerbread house siding, and which should be crushed for stained glass windows, I was reminded of the melted candy cane hearts I always see after Christmas and wish I'd saved enough candy canes to make . Then, I remembered our pretzel stars (thanks Christy), and decided it might be fun to morph the two ideas.

We made five pointed stars with our pretzels, but after fiddling around with the candy canes for a while, I decided six pointed stars would be a lot easier.

Each star takes six straight pieces of candy cane, about the same length. You can put broken pieces together, to make up the length on any short pieces.

Arrange them on a greased, tinfoil covered cookie sheet, in equilateral triangles - two for each star.

Place them in a 300 degree Fahrenheit oven for about five minutes, or until they start to look melted.

Let them cool for a minute or two to harden back up. Then, use a spatula to lift half the triangles off the cookie sheet. Position them upside down on top of the other triangles, to form stars...

...and pop them back in the oven for another four or five minutes at 300 degrees, until they begin to melt again.

Remove them from the oven, and let them cool completely before lifting them from the cookie sheet.

Tie a ribbon through one of the points, for hanging...

...or eat them as they are.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Tinsel Tail Bird Ornament Craft - Christmas in Brazil

2011-12-17T12:23:00.000-08:00

We still had some glitter glue left after C (age 5) finished with her Strawberry Shortcake ornament. Clearly, another craft was in order.

This time, I decided we'd add a touch of the tropical rain forest to our tree, with an ornament craft from the back of World Book's Christmas in Brazil.

I copied a template for a tropical bird, right from the back of the book. If you want to make a tinsel tail bird ornament too, but don't have access to the book, you could probably copy just about any tropical bird from a coloring sheet, then repeat it, so you have two identical birds, backwards from each other, tail to tail.

The girls colored the birds in bright, tropical colors...

...and then added a layer of glitter on top. .

C informed her sister, that it would take a long time for the glitter to dry. I guess she noticed the drying time for her strawberry ornament, more than I thought

Once the glue was dry, I cut the birds out for the girls...

...and helped them to fold, and glue them in half, back sides together. Then, we punched holes in the tails, and backs of the birds, tying tinsel to the tail...

...and a ribbon for hanging, on the back.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

A Berry Sparkly Ornament Craft

2011-12-16T18:23:00.000-08:00

C's little hands have been itching to get ahold of the assortment of Christmas colored glitter glue, that came in Aunt Esther's Christmas box. She was thrilled when I pulled out Siobhan Ciminera's Christmas is Here!

Not only is it an easy reader, Christmas story, featuring Strawberry Shortcake and her pals (already enough to please the heart of a certain five year old), but it has instructions at the back for making a glitter covered, strawberry shaped ornament, perfect for any glitter obsessed, Strawberry Shortcake fan.

The craft took us a little longer, for drying time, because we used glitter glue instead of the sprinkle on kind, on top of a glue stick spread strawberry, as suggested in the book. We had to wait for one side of the strawberry to dry completely, before we could sparkle up the other. Luckily there's enough distraction at this time of year, that C didn't mind the wait.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Christmas Treats for the Dogs

2011-12-16T10:20:00.000-08:00

While putting together our goodie plates for the neighbors...

...the children decided we should add treats for their dogs, as well.

They made cheese and garlic dog (and people) biscuits, following a recipe from the back of...

...Maggie Stern's George and Diggety (you can view the recipe on the author's website, here). The book is actually a collection of three short, easy chapter book type stories. The dog biscuits go along with a birthday story, but there is a story about a snow day, entitled "Sledding", so I figured that was good enough to let us include the book as one of our countdown to Christmas, picture books, with crafts or recipes included.

After we cut biscuits for our neighborhood dogs, and had them baking, we rolled the remaining dough out extra thin, and made some people crackers for the children to snack on. In Stern's story George and his family and friends eat up all the "dog" biscuits before Diggety, the dog, gets any.

We didn't want to take any chances.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Christmas Traditions - Sugar Cookie Decorating

2011-12-15T20:07:00.000-08:00

After a day of baking, and candy making, goodies to share with the neighbors - gingersnaps, fudge, peanut brittle, and sugar cookies, I figured it was a good time (the kitchen's going to need a thorough mopping anyway) to let the children decorate the sugar cookies we'd made to go along with Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Christmas Cookies, Bite Sized Holiday Lessons, a quirky vocabulary lesson, in which every definition has to do with making Christmas cookies.

This is an activity we enjoy every year. I pull the leaves out of the table, so everyone can reach everything easily, send the Man of the House off to the garage where he won't have to witness the mess, turn on the Christmas music, and set the children up with plain sugar cookies, plates to work on, plenty of spoons and butter knives, frosting in multiple colors, and lots and lots of sprinkles.

It's their time to frost...

...and pipe...

...and sprinkle...

...and generally have fun together.

The end results are never beautiful...

...but they go nicely with a glass of milk, and a story, like Dandi Daley Mackall's legend of the first Christmas cookies - The Gift of the Christmas Cookie, Sharing the True Meaning of Jesus' Birth.

Both Mackall and Rosenthal's stories have recipes for sugar cookies at the back. I have to admit we didn't try either of them. With all the baking we were already doing, I decided to let the children make their cookies with a sugar cookie mix, sent to them in a box of Christmas goodies, from their Aunt Esther, or the Queen of Christmas, as the children are calling her now - it was a really big box.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Christmas Tree Mobile

2011-12-14T18:44:00.000-08:00

The title of Maggie Smith's Christmas With the Mousekins, A Story With Crafts, Recipes, Poems and More! really sums it all up. It is a very homey story about a family, who in this case happen to be mice but could just as easily be human, preparing for Christmas, interspersed with recipes, crafts, and poems fitting into the flow of the narrative.

Nanna Mousekin comes to visit for Christmas, cookies and presents are made, and shared with neighbors, letters are written to Santa Mouse, there's time for board games, and sledding, Christmas trees, and snowmen. All in all it is a very cozy, if secular, picture of a family holiday.

My children are not believers in Santa, but they thought it was nice, that the story ends off the day after Christmas, with one of the mouse children writing a thank you note to the Man in Red. It's a nice touch of gratitude.

The book includes recipes for "Gingerbread Mice", and "Cinnamon Snails" (cookies shaped like snails), and instructions for making paper garlands and hats, a sock puppet, an angel mouse tree topper, and a couple of felt projects - a mitten bookmark, that would make a very nice teacher, or friend gift, and a mobile.

I made the mobile with C (age 5), but out of construction paper, not felt. There is a pattern to trace and cut out in the book.

I did the tracing and cutting...

...and C did the gluing and decorating...

...with a little help from me to keep the pieces straight.

It reminds me of the Calder inspired mobiles we made last Valentine's Day.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

More Christmas/Holiday/Winter Themed Picture Books With Recipes or Craft Instructions Included at the Back

2011-12-14T06:59:00.000-08:00

It's been a few days since I've posted about our picture book (with recipe or crafts included), countdown to Christmas. So, once again, before I get completely confused, and out of order, I'll quickly review what we've read so far. Hopefully this way, by Christmas we'll have a complete list, with 24 or more books to recommend.

Clicking the links below will take you to our review and project post for each book, unless otherwise stated.

Nov. 27 - A Pioneer Christmas by Barbara Greenwood - contains multiple crafts and recipes. We made a cup and ball game following instructions in the book.

Nov. 28 - The Cookie Store Cat by Cythia Rylant - contains multiple cookie recipes. We made Frosty Fruit Squares, and played "cookie shop" with cardboard cookies.

Nov. 29 - The Very Best Christmas Ever! by Emilie Barnes - contains multiple crafts and recipes. We held a peppermint tea, with peppermint dipped marshmallows and triple chocolate cake (recipe included in the book).

Nov. 30 - Max & Mo Make a Snowman by Patricia Lakin - contains a snowman craft, which we made.

Dec. 1 - Zoo Flakes ABC by Will C. Howell - contains instructions for cutting paper dollish type snowflakes. We also found snowflake folding, and cutting instructions in I Am Snow by Jean Marzollo, and Snip, Snip...Snow! by Nancy Poydar.

Dec. 2 - A Blue's Clues Holiday by Angela Santomero, contains instructions and suggestions for making a paper chain, and paper plate snowflakes, and has a recipe for pecan snowball cookies, which we tried out.

Dec. 3 - The Candymaker's Gift by David and Helen Haidle (the link will take to to our review of the book from last year), contains a candy cane cookie recipe, and multiple activity ideas, including stirring hot chocolate with a candy cane, which we enjoyed again this year.

Dec. 4 - Gingerbread Friends by Jan Brett includes a recipe for gingerbread men.

Dec. 5 - World Book's Christmas in Finland, contains a number of recipes and instructions for crafts out of Finland. We made ice lanterns.

Dec. 6 - Look-Alikes Christmas by Joan Steiner has instructions for making peanut bear ornaments, which we attempted, and lollipop elves.

Dec. 7 - World Book's Christmas in Denmark includes multiple recipes and crafts from Denmark. We made three-dimensional paper stars.

Dec. 8 - If You Take a Mouse to the Movies, Special Christmas Edition, by Laura Numeroff, contains a CD, sheet music, multiple recipes, and craft instructions. We made Mouse's Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Dec. 9 - Counting to Christmas by Nancy Tafuri has three projects for sharing Christmas with the birds. We made peanut butter covered pine cone bird feeders.

Dec. 10 -Christmas Delicious by Lyn Loates...

...has a recipe at the back for "Raisin and Rice Christmas Treats". They are basically Rice Krispie treats, with chocolate chips melted in with the marshmallows, and raisins added. We left the raisins out of ours, but otherwise thought they were quite good.

Dec. 11 - Cranberry Christmas by Wende and Harry Devlin - this link will take you to our review of the book from last year, which includes a link to an animated special based on the story, as well as a link...

...to Taste of Home's copy of the recipe, from the back cover of the book, for "Maggie's Favorite Cranberry Cookies".

If I had read last year's review, before making the cookies this year, I might have remembered the recipe makes eight dozen cookies (as is stated at the end of the recipe). Luckily, the dough works for bar cookies, a lot like cranberry bread, by simply reducing the oven temperature to 325 degrees Fahrenheit, and increasing the baking time from 15 minutes to 25 or 30, and baking the dough, spread out in a greased, 9''x13'' pan.

That nearly brings us up-to-date, with the exception of the last few posts, hopefully coming your way later today and tomorrow.

It's great to be a homeschooler

Christmas Tangrams

2011-12-13T06:51:00.000-08:00

We pulled out our really big tangram puzzle set, last night, to work through the Christmas story with.

First though, I had to replace a missing piece. Apparently Mr. Nobody ran away with it when the rest of us weren't looking. I'd be really annoyed with that guy, but he was such a good friend of mine when I was I child, I can never stay angry with him for long.

Anyway, I replaced the piece with the only poster board I had on hand, saved from a ladybug birthday party. It's a different color, but still Christmasy, so we decided it worked.

While Googling for Christmas tangram puzzles, I came across the entire Christmas story in tangrams, at logicville.com. We used some of the patterns suggested there, and then headed out to Google images for inspiration for others.

Below is what we came up with.

Our story started with an angel delivering the message...

...to Mary and Joseph, that Mary would give birth to the Son of God.

Late in the pregnancy, they had to travel to the crowded city of Bethlehem, to be counted in a census.

There Mary gave birth the Baby, Jesus, in a stable - the only place left to stay.

Nearby in the fields were shepherds, with their sheep.

An angel appeared to them, and told them the Good News about the Baby.

They hurried to the stable to worship Him...

...and then rushed out to share the news...

...you know, over the hills and everywhere...

...like in the song.

Sometime later, when the Child was a little older, there was a star...

...and wise men who followed it from the east...

...to bring gifts to the new King.

Today, we've added a lot of symbols to our celebrations, some pulled from pagan traditions, and transformed to help us remember the story, like the evergreen tree, to remind us of the eternal life that Baby brought...

...as a free gift from God.

And candles, that remind us that the Baby born in Bethlehem was the fulfillment of ancient promises.

Isaiah 9:2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned.

And, having been given such a great gift in a dark world, we've been told -

In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds, and glorify your Father in heaven. Matthew 5:16

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Linked to Math Monday at Love2Learn2Day.

Pretzel Stick Stars

2011-12-12T13:14:00.000-08:00

Brimful Curiosities posted a tutorial for a simple, but beautiful, star twig ornament the other day, and I couldn't help but think - what a great idea for a Christmas snack. Of course, you have to substitute pretzels for the twigs, and melted peanut butter chips for the hot glue, but other than that the concept is pretty much the same.

Melt a quarter of a cup, or so, of peanut butter chips in the microwave for 30 seconds. Then, give them a stir...

...and spoon them into a Ziploc-type baggie. Snip of the corner of the bag, and you're ready to start piping it on...

...as you arrange the pretzel sticks...

...on top of wax paper...

...into star shapes.

Give them a minute or two to set up...

...and they're sturdy enough to pick up, and admire. You could probably even add a ribbon, and hang them on the tree.

But, we suggest eating them.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Science Sunday - Science in The Sky

2011-12-11T15:35:00.000-08:00

This month has been such an easy month for science around our house. All we've had to do is walk outside and look up, and then run inside to Google and find out what exactly we are seeing.

We noticed a planet near the moon, which turned out to be Jupiter, for instance...

...and one on the western horizon, just after sunset, which turned out to be Venus (sometimes the morning star, but this month playing the part of an evening star, just after sunset).

Speaking of the morning star, just for kicks, we read Isaiah 14:12-15, talking about the pride of the morning star, in reference to the king of Babylon - written as Lucifer - depending on which translation you're reading, and then I brought up a picture of the sun, also taken this week, just a few hours ahead of our Venus shot above, to bring home the message of the passage.

Then, we were back to science, learning from earthsky.org, that Venus and Jupiter are only two of the five planets visible in our December night sky, but we'd need to be up in the wee hours of the morning to spot Saturn, Mercury or Mars.

Of course, we were up early on Saturday, but our eyes were focused on the lunar eclipse...

...with the exception of one quick lesson about coronas, like the one we saw around the moon, earlier in the week, when we were looking up at Jupiter.

I had the children blow on the cold windows, to fog them up, then we looked through the fog, at the light of the moon, and a nearby streetlight, diffracted into slightly colorful coronas, just like what we had seen in the sky.

If I'm following all the online sources correctly, a lunar corona is created by moonlight being diffracted by water droplets in a thin cloud cloud layer, in much the same way as a rainbow formed during the day.

Lunar halos, which are also rings around the moon, but with a space between the ring, and edge of the moon, are made by a refraction (depending on the source you read, diffraction and refraction are used interchangeably, so take my words here with a grain of salt - I'm a mom not a scientist) of the moonlight through ice crystals in a high, cirrus cloud layer.

There is weather folklore attached to lunar halos that says, "ring around the moon, means snow soon." Apparently the presence of the cirrus clouds can be an indication of an approaching low pressure front, that can often raise the temperature, and bring rain, or snow.

I'm not sure if the folklore is true for coronas as well, but I do know two days after we spotted one around the moon, the sky was looking pretty cloudy...

...which by this point is how my head is feeling.

I was actually just taking the garbage out to the curb, when I spotted the corona around the moon, and alerted the children, who noticed the planet, which led us to earthsky.org, where we read about the other planets, and the lunar eclipse, as well as a few other events, such as a meteor shower, and comet approaching, that we'd still like to check out, not to mention all the constellations overhead, that have been larger than life on these clear winter nights.

So, if you're looking for some fun, and challenging science projects with your children, I'd suggest standing outside, and looking up - either that, or clicking over this week's Science Sunday link-up hosted by Adventures in Mommydom.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

A Feast for our Feathered Friends

2011-12-10T15:32:00.000-08:00

After making and partaking of so many yummy Christmas treats ourselves, we were inspired by Nancy Tafuri's Counting to Christmas, to share some of the bounty of the season with the birds.

The book is a very simple story about a little girl getting ready for Christmas, mainly for Santa's coming, but also finding ways to share the Christmas joy with others, including the birds, and wild animals around her home.

There are instructions for making sliced fruit ornaments, a popcorn and cranberry garland, and pine cone bird feeders at the back of the book. I thought maybe the younger children might like making pine cone feeders, as we've never done that before (I know, I know, what kind of a terrible mother am I?), but it turned out the older girls were more interested in the project.

We'd heard that peanut butter might be dangerous for birds, so before we started I checked with Cornell University's All About Birds website. It turns out, peanut butter is not only safe (especially in cold climates) for birds, but it's also a good source of fat for them during the winter months.

We opted to mix cornmeal with our peanut butter, to make it grainier, which might make it even safer for small birds, but at the very least added another source of fat to our feeders. Other than that we proceeded pretty much as you might expect, by tying on ribbons for hanging...

...spreading the peanut butter on the pine cones...

...rolling them in birdseed...

...and then tying them outside.

The girls wanted to hang them on the railings of our deck, near to the house, so they can get a good look at the snacking birds.

I'm not sure if we'll have any birds brave enough to come that near, with all the commotion that goes on just inside...

...but I did spot some potential takers eying our offering from the trees behind our house, just after the girls came back inside...

...so we'll see.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Lunar Eclipses and the Pros and Cons of Being a Homeschooler

2011-12-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

One of the definite pros of homeschooling is not having to get up at the crack of dawn, every weekday, to get ready for school.

One of the cons is that if there happens to be a total lunar eclipse at 5:30 in the morning on a Saturday - there's no way your mother is going to let you miss it.

Of course, there's always the chance that she would have woken you up to see it, even if you went to public school.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Mouse's Favorite (Christmasy) Chocolate Chip Cookies

2011-12-09T07:20:00.000-08:00

If you've read Laura Numeroff's If You Take a Mouse to the Movies, but have never checked out the Special Christmas Edition of the book, then you've really been missing out.

The Christmas Edition, includes the original story, but also...

Instructions for Crafts:

An Elf Ornament template

Sketched directions for candle, and drum ornaments

A fill in the blank, make your own story, activity

And, a seek-and-find page.

Recipes:

Mouse's Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies

Felicia Bond's Chocolate Refrigerator Roll

Laura Numeroff's Favorite Norwegian Christmas Cookies

Sheet Music for some Mouse-modified Christmas Songs:

Mouse's 12 Days of Christmas

A Christmas Medley: Mouse Style

"Real-life" Christmas anecdotes from the author and illustrator.

And, a CD with the songs, and story being read by Jason Alexander.

While flipping through the recipes, we noticed the recipe for "Mouse's Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies" is basically the one you find on the back of a package of chocolate chips, cut in half, but with one Christmasy substitution.

Mouse, like the folk's at Nestle and Hershey, uses butter in his cookies, which as we've discovered before, makes for a flat, spread out, cakey, batch of cookies. Still, a recipe from a story, is a recipe from a story, so we followed it faithfully.

But, I also mixed up a batch using shortening in place of the butter.

I hate to sound like a Crisco commercial, but it really does make a difference when it comes to chocolate chip cookies.

Plain old shortening (which is what I happened to have on hand this time), doesn't have the delicious buttery flavor chocolate chip cookies need, though. So, if you don't have butter-flavored shortening on hand, I'd stick with the real thing - your cookies might be flat, but they'll taste better.

The younger children ate up most of ours, while listening to the story and song CD, that came with the book. The older children had to settle for the Crisco batch, later (in our house snoozers are losers when it comes to hot, out of the oven, cookies). But, without the butter flavored batch for comparison, they didn't know they were missing out, anyway.

As to the younger children, and the CD, when it came to "Mouse's 12 Days of Christmas" - and the 12th day when...

...my mouse gave to me twelve movie tickets, eleven ornaments glittering, ten radios blaring, nine cozy blankets, eight snowmen melting, seven snowballs flying, six perfect pine trees, five pairs of boxer shorts (green with candy canes), four popcorn strings, three sips of milk, two bendy straws, and a great big choc'late chip cookie!

I couldn't resist showing the children the Mouse ornament on our tree (one that came with a mini, hardcover, edition of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, back in T's preschool days)...

...is indeed wearing boxer shorts under his overalls, and they are green with candy canes, just like in the song, a detail they had not noticed before.

Thanks to Laura Numeroff, Felicia Bond, Jason Alexander, and Sarah Weeks (author of the song lyrics), for a fun, and giggle-filled, pre-Christmas afternoon.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Three-Dimensional Paper Star Craft

2011-12-08T06:38:00.000-08:00

We followed along with World Book from Christmas in Finland to Christmas in Denmark.

As I' mentioned previously, these books are part of a series for children. I've added a smattering of them into our Christmas Countdown, because each volume contains, not only a nice description of the Christmas customs of each country, but also recipes for traditional desserts and dishes, and instructions for several crafts. Another year, we might countdown to Christmas with this series alone.

The children were intrigued to find that the Danes decorate for Christmas with hearts. In fact, one of the crafts at the back of the book is for woven paper hearts, like the ones we made to hold our cards and candy at Valentine's Day.

The children flatly refused to do a "Valentine's craft" at Christmastime, and opted instead to try making three dimensional, cut paper star ornaments, to hang from the knobs of our kitchen cupboards.

There is a pattern to trace and follow in the book (and also reproduced, here, on flicker). We opted to freehand the star shape, so we could make our stars a bit smaller - which also makes the additional cuts harder - too hard for younger children, though the general idea of the craft is simple enough.

Basically, it involves folding a piece of paper in half, and cutting half of an eight pointed star from the folded edge of the paper...

...then cutting three concentric lines in from the outside edge, on both sides, starting at the fold line...

...but not quite meeting at the top.

The star is then unfolded...

...and starting with the outside edge, the cut edges on the left are folded back...

...and the ones on the right are folded forward, to give the star a three-dimensional look.

Once we had the edges folded out, about evenly spaced around the star, we used a threaded needle to poke through a string for hanging, near the top point.

We proceeded to fiddle with the folds for pretty much the entire day, until we were finally happy with the spacing. But, they are mesmerizing shapes, as they twirl and move, with each breath of air in the room.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Linked with the History and Geography meme at All Things Beautiful.

Peanut Bear Ornaments

2011-12-07T14:39:00.000-08:00

One of the most intriguing, and perhaps bazaar books so far, in our Christmas countdown list, of picture books with recipe or crafts included, has been Joan Steiner's Look-Alikes Christmas.

The cover claims, "The more you look, the more you see!" And, with over a thousand hidden objects to locate in nine, two-page, picture spreads, I'd have to agree. There is a lot to look at.

In fact, it was difficult to pull the children away from the hunt, long enough to do one of the three projects from the the back of the book.

Once we started, we quickly realized how much true, artistic talent, Steiner demonstrated in her books. It's not just a matter of picking the right pieces...

...there's a real finesse needed to put them together in a way that both pleases, and fools the eye.

Even though we followed Steiner's instructions as closely as possible, with the exception of using tacky glue in place of hot glue...

...making our ornaments a good deal more fragile, but the building process friendlier to little hands...

...our "bears" ended up...

...looking more...

...like strange, muscle bound, cats.

Our hats our off to Steiner, who could make peanuts look like shoes, or siding, or even bears - and not just any old bears, but really cute Christmas bears, at that. It's not as easy as she made it look.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Winter Ice Lanterns

2011-12-06T08:39:00.000-08:00

I lived in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan for most of my teen years, and during those years, it was popular at Christmastime, to line the walkways in front of houses with lanterns made of ice, with a candle set inside.

Our Montana winters our not nearly as cold as the ones I remember from my Saskatchewan days, but we usually spend at least a few weeks well below zero. The frosty, cold, clear nights of winter always remind me of the beautiful flicker of candlelight in the snow.

It just so happens we're experiencing a cold snap this week, and our Christmas countdown book yesterday, was World Book's Christmas in Finland (part of a really excellent Christmas Around the World series for children).

The book is filled with maps, pictures (including a slightly risque shot, at least to my American eyes, of a family sauna), and descriptions of the Christmas festivities in that part of the world. There are ten recipes, and instructions for four craft projects, including an ice lantern very much like what I remember making in Canada, at the back of book. I knew as soon as I saw it, I'd have to make one, or maybe several, with the the children.

We used to make our lanterns by freezing water in empty 1 gallon ice cream buckets (we lived on a college campus and there were lots of teenagers, so we had an abundance of empty ice cream buckets). Just the thought of that much ice cream makes me gain weight now. Luckily the World Book volume suggests using a mixing bowl for a mold, instead.

The children and I filled the bottom of a 1 liter mixing bowl with water, making sure a Dixie-type cup would be able to reach the top of the bowl, from the top of the water...

...and that we had a candle that would fit inside the cup.

We put the bowl in the freezer, and waited a few hours, until the water in the bottom of bowl was frozen solid. Then, we placed our paper cup, weighted with marbles, on top of the layer of ice, filled the rest of the bowl with water, and placed it back into the freezer.

It's important to make sure the water in the bottom of the bowl is frozen completely solid, and not just frozen over, or else your cup will fall through the ice, to the bottom of the bowl, when you add the additional water (we had that happen a couple of times, before we finally decided to be patient enough to do it right).

If it's really cold outside, you can just set the bowl outside, instead of into the freezer.

When the additional water was frozen, we removed ice from bowl, and the cup from the middle of the ice, using warm water, to help release the ice (be careful not to crack your bowl - ours is a temperature safe, Pyrex bowl).

Then, we dropped our candle into the hole where the cup had been, and lit it.

It was pretty on the counter...

...but even prettier outside, where the candle flame flickered, and reflected through the ice, out onto the snow.

The ice does melt a little from the heat of the candle flame, but our tea light burned out, after about an hour (drowned in melted wax), without melting through the sides, or bottom of the ice holder. It will still be good to relight, and use for several more nights, or as long as the temperatures stay below freezing.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Baking a Batch of Gingerbread Friends

2011-12-05T15:17:00.000-08:00

The older children were visiting a great aunt, on the east side of the state, when we had our first snow of the fall, and made our gingerbread men.

With the snow returning this weekend, the older girls decided it was the first snow for them, and they should their own gingerbread men. I thought they might feel that way, and had Jan Brett's Gingerbread Friends standing by in our Christmas Countdown.

The story, which is a sequel to Brett's Gingerbread Baby, finds the cookie feeling lonely, and on the lookout for friends. While he is out, unsuccessfully, searching the local cookie shops, and bakeries, Mattie, the little boy who designs the Gingerbread Baby a beautiful house in the first story, goes to work, mixing up an oven full of friends for him.

Mattie's actions, and the recipe he uses, can be followed in the sidebar illustrations on the story pages. There is a similar gingerbread recipe, on the author's website. She has upped the ginger from 2 teaspoons to a tablespoon, and added a teaspoon of vanilla, and a few additional mixing instructions, but other than that it's the same.

The girls stayed with the quantities listed in the book, and mixed everything together in the same order as Mattie, as they read the story.

The dough is soft, and makes for soft cookies, but even cut thick, it didn't really spread, which was nice for gingerbread men.

They made about a dozen gingerbread friends, which they allowed to cool, and then decorated with a butter cream frosting, piped from a Ziploc type baggie, with a corner snipped out.

The rest of the dough they rolled into 1 inch balls, coated in sugar, and patted down, to make a dozen or so ginger "snaps", as well.

They are quite good. I think I will use this recipe again, for company this weekend, and include a few on the goodie plates for our neighbors.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Holiday Picture Books With Crafts or Recipes Included - A Partial List

2011-12-05T06:52:00.000-08:00

I fell behind, this weekend, posting about the picture books (containing recipes or crafts) that we've been reading each day to countdown (or really count-up) to Christmas, and since I was already writing about them a day after the fact, I figured it wouldn't be long before I was completely confused, and left one out.

Eventually I hope to create a complete list of wintry/Christmas/holiday picture books containing activity suggestions (at least the one's we've found), but that might not be until much closer to Christmas. For now, here's what we've read and enjoyed, so far, with links back to the review and activity posts.

Nov. 27 - A Pioneer Christmas by Barbara Greenwood - contains multiple crafts and recipes - we made a cup and ball game.

Nov. 28 - The Cookie Store Cat by Cythia Rylant - contains multiple cookie recipes - we made Frosty Fruit Squares, and played "cookie shop" with cardboard cookies.

Nov. 29 - The Very Best Christmas Ever! by Emilie Barnes - contains multiple crafts and recipes - we held a peppermint tea, with peppermint dipped marshmallows and triple chocolate cake.

Nov. 30 - Max & Mo Make a Snowman by Patricia Lakin - contains a snowman craft, which we made.

Dec. 1 - Zoo Flakes ABC by Will C. Howell - contains instructions for cutting paper dollish type snowflakes. We also found snowflake folding and cutting instructions in I Am Snow by Jean Marzollo, and Snip, Snip...Snow! by Nancy Poydar.

Dec. 2 - A Blue's Clues Holiday by Angela Santomero, contains instructions and suggestions for making a paper chain, and paper plate snowflakes, and a recipe for pecan snowball cookies, which we tried out.

Dec. 3 - The Candymaker's Gift by David and Helen Haidle (the link will take to to our review of the book from last year), contains a candy cane cookie recipe, and multiple activity ideas, including stirring hot chocolate with a candy cane, which we enjoyed again this year.

And, that catches us up through yesterday, which I hope to post about later today.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Crafts and Cookies With Blue and Steve

2011-12-04T19:24:00.000-08:00

C and E (ages 5 and 7) made a paper chain to decorate our living room, this weekend, just like Blue did in A Blue's Clues Holiday.

We also tried out a recipe for Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper's Snowball Cookies (click the link to see the recipe).

The story is pretty much like the old (when Steve was still around) Blue's Clues holiday special, that you can still watch, at least in part, on Nickjr.com, except with the bonus of a few craft suggestions (the paper chains, and paper plate snowflakes), and Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper's cookies.

The recipe is cleverly illustrated, so even non-reading preschoolers would be able follow along, and the girls thought the cookies were a lot of fun to make.

Unfortunately, we found them to be a tiny bit dry, and crumbly...

...and pretty messy. I'm not sure I would have picked snowball cookies, which generally call for powdered sugar, as a cookie of choice for younger children.

But, I think the enjoyable experience of following the recipe from the book, and the children's love and appreciation of Blue and Steve, even though we've outgrown the show, made for a good deal of festive fun.

It's great to be a homeschooler.