Valentine Surprise Activity Box, Day 2 - Decorating Heart Shaped Cookies

The children are really warming to the idea of a daily, boxed, activity, leading up to Valentine's Day. Today the box was loaded with cookie mixes (left over from Christmas), canned frosting, heart shaped and cinnamon candy sprinkles, as well as the rolling pin, and heart shaped cookie cutters, freshly washed from yesterday's playdough activity.

E (age 10) was the first to get to the box, and claimed the right to mix up, and bake the cookies herself, for everyone to decorate.


I helped her divide the baked cookies...


...and set up the table for her brothers and sisters to join in.


It's not like it's the first time the children have ever baked or decorated cookies, but something about having all the supplies boxed up, and presented as a surprise, made it extra exciting.


The only disappointment for them was discovering they were only going to get to eat one cookie each before bed.


They'll have to wait until tomorrow to enjoy another one, and to find out what the box holds next.


It's great to be a homeschooler.

Valentine's Day Playdough

I wrapped up a box with a lid today, in Valentine's colored paper, borrowing an idea from Joanne Ryder's First Grade Valentines.


In the story, a first grade teacher presents her class with a similarly decorated box, in the week before Valentine's Day. Each day the box contains a new set of supplies for a Valentine's themed class activity. The book contains several good math, and craft activity suggestions (including instructions for folding origami bunnies), a couple of which I hope to use with the children, but for today I decided to start things off simply with Valentine's playdough.


It's just normal, homemade, cream of tarter playdough (click the link for instructions), with a teaspoon of vanilla added to a third, a few drops of strawberry extract and red food coloring to a third, and double the red food coloring with a teaspoon of cinnamon added to the last third, before microwaving.


I bagged up the dough, and placed it in the box with a rolling pin, several heart shaped cookie cutters, aluminum foil (for play mats), and a couple Easy Bake Oven accoutrements. Then, placed the lid on the box, and the box on the table, to be discovered after nap time.


It's great to be a homeschooler.

Another Listening Weekend - From Physics Back to the Birds

I finally got a chance to see the movie version of Mark Obmascik's book about competitive birding.


I've wanted to see The Big Year, since I listened to an audio version of the book, last spring. The movie came out in theaters in October, but didn't make it to our area, so I had to put off seeing it until it released to DVD, this week.

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. It has some language in it (less than the book), and a touch of sexual content (quite a bit less than most television programs), but other than that it's family friendly, with a pro-family, pro-marriage message strong enough to touch my Gen-X heart.

As far as the story goes, the facts have been changed, and shuffled around a bit, but the feel of the book is still there. It's less about the birds, and the birders than the book, and more about the balance between work, passion, and family, but in a way that will still be recognizable, and enjoyable to anyone who has read, and appreciated Obmascik's story. The fact that the book, and to a slightly lesser degree the movie, are based on a true story, makes them both so much the better.

After watching the DVD, I decided to download the audio version of the book from the library again, for this weekend.



It will be a welcome change from the heavy listening of last weekend, when I wandered into the world of modern theoretical physics, a place where science has crossed the line from experiment into mathematics driven philosophy.

Brian Greene is an American theoretical physicist, a proponent of string theory, and known as a popularizer of science. T (age 14) and I watched one of his TED presentations, and a NOVA episode dealing with one of his earlier books. He's fairly entertaining, and a clear speaker, so I thought I might be able to handle his introduction to the various theories of the multiverse, written for the layman - but I was wrong.

The book starts out strong, but bogs down quickly, and never picks back up again. I found myself confronted by science based in math, without any experimental evidence, and was alarmed to find that ideas such as multiple dimensions, in which everything that can happen, does happen somewhere (think Lt. Worf, in the "Parallels" episode from Star Trek TNG), or that we are all just part of a reflection or hologram of some reality somewhere else (sort of like the end of Star Trek TNG "Ship in a Bottle"), are actually being taught as possibilities inside science classrooms. Who knew Star Trek was really a physics primer?


I don't think Brian Greene would be all that surprised by feeling that this type of physics is counter intuitive to reality. In fact, I'm not alone in my thoughts, you can find them expressed, a good deal more eloquently, by Dr. Amir Aczel, in a conversation he had with Dr. Greene, about the book, last March, at the Boston Museum of Science.



I, or I should say we, because several of the children listened along too, had better luck with Michio Kaku's Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and our Daily Lives by the Year 2100. Basically, Kaku takes a look at where science is now, what's cutting edge, and in development, and then based on what's known to be possible within the laws of physics, draws a picture of what we might expect in the next 100 years.



He doesn't approach the subject with a great deal of imagination, and seems lacking in expertise when it comes to sociology and psychology. It should be noted too, that neither Brian Greene nor Michio Kaku are Christians, and so their books are full of a lot of Big Bang, cave man type evolutionary rhetoric.

I prefaced the books for the children with a quick look at Proverbs 16:9, Psalm 14:1, and I Corinthians 1:20.

All the same, it was fun to hear which of the gizmos and gadgets from our favorite science fiction stories might actually be on shelves soon. I'm sorry to say, it sounds like food replicators won't be available in my lifetime. But, glasses that let you look at the night sky, and see a map of the constellations overlaying the stars, might be possible.

As a follow-up to Greene and Kaku, I picked up Diane Swanson's Nibbling on Einstein's Brain: The Good the Bad & the Bogus in Science. After reading about multiple universes, and the possibility we might all just be images in some sort of cosmic computer program, it seemed appropriate.


The book itself, although for children, is a little dry. I've been reading it out loud to the children, a small bit at a time, at the dinner table. Some of the illustrations, like the one on the cover, are on the gross side, but once you get past those, you find a very good guide for telling the difference between the quacks and the scientists, media hype and real reporting, and those sorts of things that most of us have had to learn from experience, often at the expense of our pocket books.

Time, and hopefully experimental evidence, will tell to which category theoretical physics and the current theories of the multiverse belong. In the meantime, I'm happy to be heading back to the birds.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Groundhog Shadow Cookies

We enjoyed reading about Punxsutawney Phil today, and watching him online. Apparently, he's predicting six more weeks of winter.


Of course, Phil is not the only groundhog in the country. We read that not only are all groundhogs not named Phil, but many are not even called groundhogs. Sometimes they are called woodchucks, marmots, or whistle pigs. Actually, we already knew that. In fact, in our corner of Montana we have yellow-bellied marmots.


Our local marmot of note, chose not to come out of his burrow for the news cameras today though, much like the groundhog in Maurice Sendak's Little Bear, The Search for Spring.


With no marmot to be seen, we had to come up with a stand-in, like the children in Mrs. Connor's class in Margaret McNamara's Groundhog Day. They used the class hamster.


We used a crocheted groundhog, after finding the pattern through Google images, while looking at different groundhogs from across the country.


Our groundhog did not see his shadow.


We were a little disappointed, as it seems like we've hardly had any winter at all this year. We were hoping for six more weeks. So, we decided to take matters into our own hands, with a batch of chocolate sugar cookie dough, dyed black (click here, for the recipe), and the groundhog template from All Kids Network (the same one we used for our groundhog craft, just resized for cookies).


Looking at the plate full of shadowy cookies, I'm pretty sure I could see fear in our groundhog's eyes. Maybe we'll have a few more weeks of winter, after all.


It's great to be a homeschooler.

Cranberry Valentine - To The Brink of Disaster and Back Again

I love Wende and Harry Devlin's Cranberry series, mainly because I fell in love with the authors' work as a child. Their Old Black Witch is the first book I remember reading with a recipe at the back, and I was hooked on the concept from then on.

I've enjoyed rediscovering the Devlins' work with my children, and have been pleasantly surprised to find they like the books, too. Even though the stories appear old fashioned, and not the sort the children usually pick, the characters have a timeless appeal, and a charm that has drawn them in. Not to mention the fact, that each and every story in the series has a recipe at the back.

Cranberry Valentine, which we read yesterday, for instance, includes a recipe for "Cranberry Upside-Down Cake". You can view the recipe through the "Look Inside" feature at Amazon.com (I am an Amazon associate, but am not being paid for this link), just type "cake" in the "Search Inside This Book" box. However, I really recommend you check the entire book out, it's quickly become my second favorite in the series, right behind Cranberry Thanksgiving.

The younger girls assisted me with the recipe, filling the pan with butter...



...chopped nuts (the recipe calls for walnuts, but we used pecans)...


...cranberries...


...sugar (quite a lot of sugar)...



...and a cake mix.


I cut the recipe in half, because I wasn't sure if the children would like it, or not, and I didn't want to waste too many cranberries or nuts, if they didn't like it, so we only needed half the batter from a cake mix.


I reduced the baking time slightly, from the 40 to 50 minutes recommended in the book, to 35 minutes, because of the smaller size of our cake. Checking the cake with a toothpick, it appeared to be done, but after I flipped it out onto a plate (the younger children were very impressed with this process)...


...it became immediately evident, that the cake was not done.


I still hated to waste the cranberries and nuts, so I decided to flip the entire thing back into a clean, and greased pan, and bake it for another 15 minutes. Even the older children were watching by this point.


Amazingly enough, it worked, which is a good thing, because the cake is delicious. I practically had to fight the Man of the House off with a broom, for the children to each get a piece. Next time, we won't cut the recipe in half.


It's great to be a homeschooler.

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

Groundhog Day Craft

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.