50 States: West Virginia

We decided we'd like to take the kids to all 50 states before they leave for college.  We're collecting shirts, too, to turn into a quilt for each of them to take with them.  We started last week with a trip to Wisconsin.

Because I still get tired so quickly, we decided we'd start easy and go to West Virginia to see my godmother, Beth.  It was so nice to get a visit with Beth and her husband David.  Typically, we come out for big events they have for all the cousins in their family, and we don't get to spend a lot of time with them one-on-one, so this was special.  We went to a place called JayDees, which was a combination waterpark/Chuck E. Cheese/putt-putt and they also had a nature center, which was like a fantastic children's museum and was only $5!! The kids had a ton of fun walking around to each of the rooms, although we could only spend an hour because the nature center closed earlier than the rest of the facility, and then we took a short train ride on a mini train so the kids could "pan" for gemstones, which is always a huge hit with Logan who's my little collector.  After that, we went to see Despicable Me 2, which the kids really loved, especially the boys.  The adults all had fun, too, as it was a cute love story without being too lovey-dovey :)

Beth and David were so kind and hospitable, and we enjoyed being with them.  They've totally changed their diet over to organic and mostly fruit and veggie based, and we really enjoyed all the yummy food they had for us.  My kids chowed down on berries, grapes, tomatoes, broccoli, and of course the roast turkey they fixed us for dinner.  We left early in the morning, but we had a great little visit and it was such fun to have Beth and David all to ourselves :)

50 States Before Graduation
2 Down (Virginia, West Virginia)
48 More To Go!!

Cycle 1 Week 4 Science- Plant Cell

Tell you some parts of a plant cell?

I could....but I'd rather nom on some parts of a plant cell :) Hot on the heels of our Animal Cell Brownie  we bring you plant cell veggie bread.

Veggie bread is the brainchild of a friend of mine, who even brought me some at 11pm one night when I was putting together CC materials for our community.  Love her!  We went to her house so our kids could work together making their cells.

You'll need 1 8-ounce cream cheese, softened, 1/2 a packet of Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix, and a can of refrigerator crescent rolls, which they even sell without perforations in a flat sheet.

Step one: Unroll the crescent dough and lay it flat on a cookie sheet.  Bake until golden and delicious according to the package directions.

Step two: using a hand mixer (or muscles, whatever), combine the ranch dressing mix and cream cheese until well-combined and spreadable.

Also, you'll need veggies.  We used cucumber for chloroplasts, carrot peelings for golgi bodies, broccoli for mitochondria, the ranch cream cheese for cytoplasm, the crescent bread for cell membrane, the baking sheet for cell wall, a pile of chopped cauliflower for vacuoles and a tomato slice for the nucleus.

We had 4 children and let them each take turns putting the organelles and telling us what each one does.  This was great review for last week, too!

We recommend making 2 of these....one like this for the kiddos and one with finer chopped veggies for the grown ups to enjoy :) Happy cell making!

CC Week 3 Science- Tasty Tasty Cells

I think that it's a generally accepted fact that if you can craft something out of food, your children will remember it.

Or, maybe that generally accepted fact is that calories don't count if they are educational.

Something like that.  One of those must be true.

Science week 3 is tell me some parts of an animal cell.  Armed with my debit card, and the need to fill up my tank of gas, and the desire to burn an afternoon, I picked up several kinds of candy, and when we got home, I had my oldest make brownies as a reading comprehension exercise.  (That means he reads and follows the directions and I sit and try to keep my mouth shut unless he's read a fraction incorrectly and is about to put "1 or 2 cups of oil" instead of 1/2 cup of oil).

 A cake would work equally as well.  You'll need a cell base (cake or brownies, we used a round pan), frosting (because cytoplasm tastes better as sugar), and then various things to use as organelles.

 Optional, but I labeled a paper plate and put stars on the ones we actually had in the memory work.  I may have over-bought treats.  We used a cookie for the nucleus, honey cashews for the mitochondria, peanut butter M&Ms for the vacuoles, gummy worms for golgi bodies, and skittles for the lysomes and centrisomes.  I used cake sprinkles for ribosomes.

 Spreading is an important pre-writing skill. (I can't prove that)

The finished cell.  It was delicious! Everyone asked for a piece based on the type of organelles they wanted to get, and they told daddy about the various parts and functions before we dug in.

In Which We Renovate the Bathroom

This project.

Oh, this project.

We started this renovation in 2010, after not having a truly usable bathroom for some time.  The shower was moldy (even when I cleaned it repeatedly with straight Clorox), the toilet leaked to the living room ceiling, and, it was ugly.  So....

I hit it with a hammer.  We learned a few valuable things, including that the previous owners had thrown up tile over unsealed drywall.  Yup, that'll make it mold.  The wall in the shower came down in giant pieces because the back was so gross!

 Before.  I never really liked this setup.  If you were looking at the shower, there would be a closet to your left, which was nice for storage, but the shelves weren't wide enough for towels and if the closet door was open, you couldn't open the bathroom door.  #FacePalm.

 You may be asking yourself, "Self, what color ARE those tiles". The answer, my friends, is a combination of off-beige and off-pink.  It NEVER looks clean or fresh.  Anyhow.  Since we were going to be breaking things anyway, I decided that I wanted to reclaim some space by taking out the closet, moving the shower so that you didn't have to navigate the toilet to get in, and moving the toilet into an alcove.  Bless my father and our family friend "Uncle Tom" for re-plumbing that all for me!!

 Ta da!  This color green photographed a little funny, but this is my new, spa-inspired bathroom.  This vanity has shelves so I'll put baskets of rolled towels on the top shelf and a basket of necessities under.

 Bam! That shower just happened!  These are the same tiles as the ones on the floor and I bought them at Home Depot when they were on Black Friday Sale for $.33 a square foot.  I have learned that the wet saw and I are mortal enemies, and I'm obsessed with the river rocks we used for borders.  They were not as expensive as they could have been since I used them as an accent, although they seriously sucked up some grout!! There'll be a 1/4 round border at the top of the shower, but we literally finished grouting last night.

It's a potty alcove! With a medicine cabinet above for storage.  Ahhhhh, so nice!

Now....after a brief recovery period for both sanity and money (our long pause had a lot to do with a flooded basement that we had to completely re-do from carpet to drywall! I'll have to do before/after pictures of that, too), I think that our bedroom is next :)

More Fun With the Afternoon Class

I don't really have to do anything in particular with the afternoon class, which makes it really fun, but also challenging since I led high with the space rovers!! I don't want to let them down with something lame!

 Week 2 I bought a bag of dry-ice (check your local supermarkets- our Harris Teeters sell blocks by the pound.  Buy a little more than you think you'll need and wrap it in a kitchen towel to keep it cool.  You CANNOT put it in  your fridge or freezer, it'll freak out your thermostat and break it.  If you have a cooler, you can use that, but keep it slightly propped open so that it doesn't pop off.  Since Dry Ice is literally solid carbon dioxide gas, when it "melts" it lets off gas.

 We did several fun experiments.  First, we put a piece of regular ice on paper towel, and a piece of dry ice.  This was to prove that when Dry Ice "melts" it is changing from a solid to a gas.  We talked about how things typically have to change phases from a solid to a liquid to a gas and that skipping from a solid to a gas is called sublimation.  Then, we needed to prove that the gas being released was carbon dioxide.  We talked about how carbon dioxide smothers fire (which is really just rapid oxidation) and then lit a candle inside a flower vase.  When you put a chunk of dry ice next to it, the flame is smothered.  Then we did some fun stuff- dry ice in hot water (which makes lots of steam!) to show that the gas is leaving (mark the water level on the cup before adding the dry ice) and nothing is added to the water.  We also showed the difference between a mixture and a solution.  By adding food coloring and dish soap to water and then adding the dry ice, you can make regular bubbles because the food coloring is not changing or reacting with the bubble solution.  You will make lots of bubbles.

Finally, we made ice cream.  You need to use a bowl fully 3 times as large as the amount of liquid you have.  We used a pint of heavy cream, an individual serving of strawberry milk, 1/2 a cup of sugar, and 1t of vanilla (mainly so I'd have more jobs for kids).  Before you start your experiments, place a 2-3 inch square of dry ice inside 2 heat duty Ziplock bags.  DO NOT SEAL ALL THE WAY (remember that gas? they'll pop!).  Then beat the dry ice until you have a very fine powder.  Be diligent! You don't want a child biting down on a piece of dry ice! You'll make instant ice cream when you add the powder and stir.  You'll notice I used too small of a bowl! The ice cream tastes a lot like an ice cream float because of the carbonation you're adding to it.  The kids loved having a taste.  I don't let them eat more than a spoonful each, but they enjoy the whole process!

 This week, I decided that we'd do tie-dying.  There was no real point to this.  We even made tie-dyed snack by spreading colored frosting dots with toothpicks.  I used canned frosting.  It was gross, but the sugar addicts seemed to enjoy ;)

 Decorating graham crackers.  It's intense work!!

To make these shirts, you insert a dixie cup under the top layer with the open side of the cup facing up.  Place a rubber band around the cup, and then draw a design with sharpie markers.  Designs with LESS area covered, like dots, stars, or small dashes, do the best.  After you're done drawing, drop rubbing alcohol over the area (the cup catches the excess) using eye droppers or straws (put the straw in the cup, put your finger over the top opening of the straw, release over the shirt).  

Here's thing 1 in a shirt he made at cub scouts the same way.  We first tried this technique at the Children's Museum near the Outer Banks, and it's really really fun and a fairly clean way to tie-dye!!

Classical Conversations Week 21 Bonus

Tutoring was really fun! I'm not sure how well I did, but the kids and the parents were very kind if I messed up :)

I wanted to share my math supplement

It's pretty easy, just a printout with the 2 laws and 3 categories.  We did addition, mainly because multiplication would have required too many M&Ms.  The Associative Law for Addition is
(a + b) + c = a + (b + c).  Before class, I put one of the sheets and the candies (2 orange, 3 blue, 5 green, but you can obviously use any color) in a ziplock baggie.  Then we took moved the candies around  to do 5 + 5 and 2 +8.  Either way it's 10!

The woman that I subbed for also left an activity.  It was a printout with the two laws in a much larger font, and then she cut out parenthesis from construction paper for the kids to glue in the appropriate places. 

For my afternoon class, I decided that we would do something that "followed" our history sentence a little.  I brought giant bags of recycling and some boxes, along with tape, glue, markers, tin foil, and whatever else I could dig up.  Then I tasked the kids with creating a rover to explore a new planet I made up.  I provided them with some printouts of the Mars Rover and some guiding questions (How will it get to the planet, how will it move on the planet, what information will it collect and how, how will it communicate with earth) and then I turned them lose in teams. 

The kids had so much fun! I actually had to stop them so that I could get them to present to each other! We spend about an hour and 40 minutes on this activity and then we did a few seconds of outside play.  The kids did a fantastic job.

Savannah Lynn's Birthday

I am a huge sap for birthdays.  I figure that our kids will only really want 10 or 12 birthday parties, if I'm lucky, and I want to do them up right.

I seriously would  love it if there were random rich people out there that would pay me to decorate and prep crafts for their children's birthdays.  It makes me so happy to think of all the fun memories!!

For Savannah Lynn this year, we did a Princess Party at home.  There are about 2,000 pictures in this post, I apologize.

Tea party-style foods are cuter :) I use my stackable serving platters.  There are storebought lemon cookies, butter cookies with frosting and pink and red sprinkles, sliced cheese I cut using a flower cutter, and butterfly crackers.   I went super simple for the cake, just a pearl S.  One of
the best investments I ever made was in pink fabric when there was a yardage sale with a coupon at JoAnn Fabrics.  I got tulle, beautiful organza, and even prints, and I reuse them each year to decorate.  I used my mom's cricut with baby pinks and greens to make the birthday banner, and then I fill in with balloons and streamers.  I like that I'm saving money by reusing and also being a little bit greener :) I got these crowns at Tar-jay for a very decent price, and put out one for each little girl.  For crafts, I found plain boxes at Michael's for $1 each and painted them (the blue ones are for brothers) and then put in edging, stickers, and self-adhesive jewels for each girl to make a treasure box.  When they were done, we filled them up with necklaces and pink candy (gum, truffles, and kisses) and then wrapped a pink balloon around them.  Each girl took that and her crown home instead of doing a goody bag.


Savannah borrowed a pageant dress from her friend Katie-Marie (who is now a size 8 and didn't need it for the party!) and looked adorable. 

Grandma came, which always makes a party more fun :) Even mommy got some time to cheese for what are, unfortunately, really bad cellphone pictures, but we had a great time :)

Riley and Logan dressed up in their suits for the party, although Riley quickly retreated downstairs to play Legos.  I love this picture of him and Savannah.  He loves his little sister something fierce.  She loves her bubbas both tremendously.  

Riley was retreating from our special surprise- a REAL PRINCESS!!  Princess Genevieve from the Kingdom of Azuria came and spent some time with the girls.

She started off telling stories about her kingdom and showing off her treasures.  The girls were so excited they couldn't move or speak!  Logan, however, had a blast and even went to get his treasure box and tell her all about Vava Land (where Vavas and Vivos live)

After, the girls and Princess Genevieve enjoyed some singing, dancing, and twirling, and the girls got much more comfortable.  When it was time for snacks and lemonade, Genevieve made herself right at home on the floor with the little princesses, who enjoyed her company greatly.

We had a fantastic time, and I very much enjoyed our very girly party :)

In Which We Bunny Party

Logan is OBSESSED with bunnies.  He always has been.  He pretends to be a vava (that's 1/2 dolphin, 1/2 bunny for those of you unfamiliar).  There are red vavas and blue vavas.  Red ones live on land and are good.  Blue ones live in the water and eat little kids.  I like to think this is a result of my years of training him to be a republican ;)

Anyhow, one day we came across this little gem on youtube:

And ever since, my sweet baby Logan has made me listen to that silly song 1,330,023,404,239 times.  He's also been asking for about a month to have his own Bunny Party.  With Hurricane Irene threatening our outdoor plans, including football, we invited Uncle Kevin and Miss Lauren (the love of Logan's life), and Gram and Papa over for a bunny party.  On the heels of getting home from New York, this involved some substantial laundry-doing on my part, but we got it done.  Logan worked very hard on everything from plates with construction paper ears to bunny-shaped foods.

 What a nosh, huh? There's chocolate fondue with strawberries and brownies, in the bunny ceramic there's Annie Organics Bunny shaped fruit snacks, there is a very lovely carrot centerpiece, crudite, chicken wings (I have no clue, but he insisted bunny parties have them), bunny pizzas, bunny pear salads, chips and salsa and veggie dip.

 This picture hates me and will not rotate, but it's 1/2 a canned pear in juice, well drained, with 2 sliced almond ears, 1 raisin split in half for eyes, and a dollop of cottage cheese for a tail.

Bunny pizzas! These are a split english muffin, the top half cut into two ears (leaving a middle triangle which I am using for breadcrumbs).  The ears get just a line of sauce, the "faces" get a pepperoni triangle for a nose and green pepper eyes and smile.  I think they're cute, and Logan was able to do it all by himself, minus cutting the ears.  He especially enjoyed smushing the ears onto the faces before adding the toppings, which really did work to make them stick!!

And, of course, there was cake for dessert.  Logan made this (minus the cutting), too! It's 2 round cakes (one 8 inch one 9 inch) the smaller of which was cut to make ears.  The remaining piece makes a bow tie if you so desire, but Logan did not.  The eyes are kissed, the nose and ears are strawberries and the smile is bunny fruit snacks.  The frosting turned out surprisingly good since I couldn't find my MASSIVE bottle of vanilla from BJ's wholesale ANYWHERE, and I ended up using Bailey's Warm Vanilla Toffee coffee creamer.  It was actually really good! (Note: the coffee creamers are non-alcoholic).

Gram and Papa brought Bun Bun Steve over in her cage, and a fun time was had by all.  Logan was so cute instructing us in the way of the bunny party, and after we put the kids to bed (We Finished Treasure Island!! My least favorite read-aloud ever because the kids insisted I do pirate voices and laughed at me all 34 chapters!)  the adults enjoyed some games....which, although not bunny themed, were quite fun!