December 1st is the day that, as a family, we jump into holiday celebrations. We make decorations, and countdown chains, break out the holiday books, movies and music.
It’s also important, though, to stop and remember.
Today is World AIDS Day.
When I was in college, I volunteered at the local AIDS Project. I manned the phones, and I gave out a lot of advice (my favorite tidbit was that dental dams made from microwavable plastic wrap are not effective barriers - because of the more porous nature of the microwavable wrap - so you need to find non-microwavable wrap).
As much as I’d like to believe that in this day and age, we’re all aware of the truths behind HIV/AIDS, there may still be people who don’t know that HIV is a fragile virus. It cannot be transmitted through casual touch or even through kissing. (Another favorite fact from […]
Original post by piseco
Remember my temper tantrum last week, when the kids wouldn’t behave at the allergist? I told you I had a little inspiration for a project for BabyGirl, and here it is.
I crocheted six little handbags in different colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Admire the rustic, amateur quality of the bags that proves they’re homemade, won’t you? :) I used the yarns I had on hand, so the yellow rug-yarn bag is big and chunky and the orange sock-yarn is slippery and thin. No two bags are identical in size or stitches, but they’re all pretty close, and the kids think they’re wonderful with their unique qualities. JediBoy has asked for a purse of his own, and I’m halfway through a larger one in green.
Once I had the six bags done, I added rainbow buttons on the outside (we need to buy two […]
Original post by piseco
Hello, Mr. Murphy, and welcome.
Just as we had regained our emotional balance and returned to “normal” around here, we were hit with a stomach bug. BabyGirl, JediBoy and PisecoDad were all up sick from 2:15 am last night, sometimes in shifts and sometimes in tandem. Naturally, the Mom was up the whole time through, cleaning up, holding heads & fretting. Lots of laundry today.
Fortunately, they all seem to be improving already, though certainly worn down and still needing to rest. The boys are playing through a favorite video game a second time, trying to unlock secrets and hidden treasures. BabyGirl is unusually sedate, mostly just sitting with the boys and watching the screen.
That gives me, finally, a time to sit and catch my breath. Tonight I’m looking ahead, in a general way, to the next month and a half - Thanksgiving week and then […]
Original post by piseco
Can I help it if two of the kids’ activities I like to participate in overlapped this week?
Muffin Tin Monday was a themed lunch: exploring your family, your heritage, your ancestry through food.
The Unplug Your Kids challenge word was kitchen.
So we had to have an Unplugged Muffin Tin!
In order to prepare for today’s lunch, JediBoy and I were working even before breakfast. We decided to make homemade Polish egg noodles, or kluski. These were the best part of my Buszi’s homemade chicken noodle soup. One year when I was in college, my mother and I visited my grandmother and I watched her make pie crusts and placek and kluski - and wrote down what she was doing. Before that, I only knew how to help. Now I have my own recipe to follow.
We made the dough before breakfast - two eggs, two cups of flour, […]
Original post by piseco
A big smile on my face at getting this happy “blog award” from Mama over at The Outer Edge of Normal…
She said, sweetly, that I’m a blogger “who does so many fun things with her BEAUTIFUL children, and keeps me stocked with more ideas of fun things to do with my preschooler than I could ever conceivably use.”
Awww!
In the spirit of good-hearted blog awards, I’d like to pass this one on. First, my hat’s off to Mama herself and to most of the bloggers Mama Monkey awarded - Rose and Sara, JoVE and Meg, Theresa and Robin, Maura and Willa, Tara and Adesa - I read all your blogs daily and use them as a source of inspiration, comfort and entertainment (all at the appropriate times, of course!).
Two other bloggers come to mind for this award who I don’t think have received it yet:
reprehriestless warillever - who inspires me […]
Original post by piseco
JediBoy woke during the night last night, long enough to listen to all of Jim Weiss’s King Arthur and Patrick Stewart’s Peter and the Wolf, so once he got back to sleep today he slept until a few minutes after ten. That scooted all our meals off by a bit, so instead of our muffin tin as mid-morning snack, we’ve just finished it mid-afternoon. This week’s Muffin Tin Monday theme is Halloween, and I’m definitely going to use several of the great Halloween food ideas I’ve seen in other tins.
We decided to make a witch for our muffin tin:
The witch’s hair is spaghetti dyed green (I thought I had spinach pasta, but we were out), her eyes are carrot chunks with cream cheese and olive slices, her nose is a chunk of green pepper, her mouth is an apple slice with a section cut out and sliced almonds […]
Original post by piseco
It’s time for another Think! Challenge. You can check out the solution post for other creative ideas.
This week, our instructions were to:
Put the following out on a table: 2 cups, 2 spoons (plastic or real), 6 sticks of spaghetti, 15 inches of tape, two 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper, a measuring tape and lots of quarters or pennies (the measuring tape and quarters/pennies cannot be used in the solution). Using the cups as the ends, tell your students to build a bridge that spans 9 inches and will hold as much weight as possible. When the bridge is complete, measure its strength by placing quarters/pennies on it (or anything else you want). Count how many quarters the bridge holds.
JediBoy was excited to build a bridge. First, he carefully lined up the six pieces of spaghetti between the two cups, and they held about 6 quarters before rolling […]
Original post by piseco
We’re jumping on board a new challenge over at Think! This is their fifth week of challenges, and you can head over here to see other kids’ solutions.
This week, the challenge is to
Place the following materials on the table:
1 bag of marshmallows
2 paper cups
10 paperclips
5 sticks of spaghetti
1 inch of tape
10 inches of string
“Suspend” as many marshmallows as possible at least 1 inch above the table.
JediBoy was eager to try the challenge today. Here is his first try, with six marshmallows:
He wanted to stack more in a similar way, but they wouldn’t stay put and he started to get frustrated. I suggested he stack them a different way, so he tried stacking them vertically:
This was even more frustrating, and he asked me why I wasn’t trying anything! So I played around a bit and came up with a “bridge” that used his first idea but […]
Original post by piseco
Muffin Tin Monday, hosted at Sycamore Stirrings, is the easy response to the bento box lunch craze - serve your kids lunch in a muffin tin, putting different yummy foods in each cup. We have been enjoying the idea of Muffin Tin Monday for several weeks, but I hadn’t snapped a picture of our snack yet! This week they were having a themed Muffin Tin Monday: Shapes. Head over there to see all the deliciousness; here’s ours.
We had: candy corn (triangle), banana slices (circle), cheddar cubes (square), starfruit slices (star), the O’s from Heart to Heart cereal (circle), celery slices (crescent), green pepper slices (circle and crescent), the hearts from Heart to Heart cereal (heart), ham slices cut with a cookie cutter (star), TLC crackers (rectangle), chick peas (circle), Laughing Cow Swiss cheese (triangle).
BabyGirl is a big eater who loves to sample many things and graze throughout the day. […]
Original post by piseco
I’ve joined the team at Mom’s Marbles and I’ll be posting there twice a week… it’s a blog full of little ideas to get us through the days without losing our marbles. Come take a look!
Original post by piseco
This is what happens when BabyGirl wakes me up at 7:00 on a Sunday morning, and everyone else in the house falls back asleep for two hours: I start planning out our week and before I know it, I’ve happened onto eighteen rabbit-trails that I want to tie together into a spontaneous unit study, if you can call it that.
Today’s rabbit-trail got started when I saw in my calendar that we’re going to see a local opera company’s production of The Three Little Pigs on Friday.
When JediBoy was little, he used to ask me to tell him the story of the Three Little Pigs almost daily as we drove places in the car. I could stretch it out for a long drive or squeeze it together for a trip home from the store. He loved it, but I realized that BabyGirl doesn’t know the story yet. A-ha! […]
Original post by piseco
I’ve enjoyed reading Amy’s Notebook lists - weekly lists of links to great ideas or fun projects she’s found. I bookmarked several of the ideas as things I wanted to try. This week, Amy has an exciting contest! Those of us who complete an “experiment” - take on a project or craft we found through her notebook - will be entered to win a great prize.
The list of “experimenters” and contest entry page can be found here.
A few weeks ago, in Amy’s Notebook entry from July 31st, I spotted a link to - let’s see if I can get this straight - an idea Amy found on Craftzine linking to Sakurako Kitsa’s flickr site featuring an idea she originally spotted on Iron Chef America! The funny thing was, I had just seen the same basic idea in the latest issue of Family Fun magazine.
It’s one of those […]
Original post by piseco
The 137th Carnival of Homeschooling is up over at Janice Campbell’s blog. Here are my personal favorite entries from the list…
In the post Homeschool Games, Carletta writes about what chess is teaching her family. I wanted to add that Idaho is now making chess an optional part of their statewide curriculum, aimed at 2nd and 3rd grades! Their program - First Move - is just following in our awesome homeschooling/gaming footsteps.
Silvia posts about her daughter’s making of slingshots… and JediBoy is deeply inspired! Thanks, Silvia, for all the great instructional links.
Cristina coins the phrase “Carpe Degrium” - or, seize the educational moment.
This one has been making the rounds - if you haven’t read (or sung aloud) the homeschooling version of “I Will Survive,” read it here.
Original post by piseco
I blame Andrea.
Between reading Zahi Hawass’s book Curse of the Pharaoh, resalting the Pharaoh’s Chicken, making step pyramids out of Legos and sugar cubes, and going to another good animal presentation on the library, I have had precious little time on the computer today.
And I spent what little time I had laughing out loud, to the amazement of my children, who laughed along with me even when they didn’t get the joke.
Read about the worst cakes ever baked or decorated by so-called professionals at Cake Wrecks.
Take a look at the worst photos ever attached to real estate listings at It’s Lovely! I’ll Take It!
Then, since I was laughing anyway, I had to catch up with The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks and the often side-splitting Passive-Aggressive Notes.
Go ahead. Go laugh. I’ll wait.
Original post by piseco
The latest edition of the Carnival of Cool Homeschoolers is up over at Homeschooled Twins… and this week it includes a link back to my post about our Good Knight adventure.
Original post by piseco
We’re melting in the heat today! I hope you’re staying cool. We had a nice, lazy day reading, watching Robin Hood, and then playing on the EdVideo Online site, which is a resource of educational video and audio that’s free to educators, including homeschoolers, through local PBS stations (HT: Leigh!).
The collection is huge and contains videos in many subjects, including history, and so I’ve earmarked several about Ancient Egypt and other Ancient Civilizations to watch as we work our way through Story of the World. It also has a collection of more than 350 children’s books animated or read aloud, including more than 60 of the great Rabbit Ears productions and more than a dozen of the Westin Woods videos. JediBoy was most caught up by the collection of Horrible History videos available, and suddenly the computer wasn’t mine to use anymore! He had a great time watching those this […]
Original post by piseco
new from Joss Whedon…
part I today, parts II and III later this week
Original post by piseco
Semicolon has decided to host author celebrations on Thursdays - to celebrate the birthdays of some of our favorite authors. I just read about it now (so we have no Charlotte Zolotow cupcakes hiding in the wings) but wanted to hop on board to promote a great idea.
Our family loves to celebrate birthdays - we always celebrate the birthdays of A.A. Milne and Dr. Seuss (as well as Mozart), and I get the e-newsletter from Evan Moor Publishing that lists upcoming author birthdays so we celebrate random author birthdays as the inspiration strikes us.
Today we’re celebrating the birthday of Charlotte Zolotow. She is 93 and has written more than 70 books for children. We have read many of them at the library over the years, but four were dear enough that we added them to our personal collection: William’s Doll, Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, Some […]
Original post by piseco
JediBoy and I have been enjoying certain things from Hulu, a free source of video online. Where else can you go to choose from not only Buffy, Angel and Firefly, Bones and House but also Doogie Howser, Buck Rogers, Speed Racer, The Three Stooges and Saturday Night Live? There’s serious parental screening required - he enjoys Speed Racer but I don’t want him watching Buffy or Bones, obviously. The site is geared much more towards adults, but we have found some kid-friendly choices
This morning we watched another episode of Scientific American Frontiers, which we enjoy. This one was about robots and he loved the first two robots especially, and has spent a large part of the morning imitating them and talking about building his own robot. (Donations to his MIT college fund can be sent to … )
I can’t embed Hulu videos on this blog, […]
Original post by piseco
Huge HT to Phil at A Family Runs Through It for the had-me-laughing-off-my-chair video of the morning. Just wait for couple #3… if you’re a child of 80’s music and a Star Wars geek (yes, like me) for a meshing of those two worlds like you never thought possible.
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Original post by piseco
A big thank you goes out to Celebrity Baby Blog and Daisy Rock today. Way back in January, I won a contest for three For The Kids cds and a beautiful butterfly guitar. When JediBoy saw what we’d won, he immediately thought of giving it to Em, who dreamed deeply of having such a guitar for herself. There were a few hiccups with shipping, but the guitar arrived safe and sound last week, and today Em gave me a private concert.
She loves it, and we love watching her love it. Now she can rock like Miley Cyrus!
Original post by piseco
Although I love reading today’s blogs - stories of people’s lives, a peek into other homes, especially blogs about homeschooling and/or international adoption - I do sometimes miss the time when a blog was still a weblog - a list of the places its author had visited on the web and found interesting. We were out Way. Too. Late. last night playing games at Leigh’s (Ruse and Bruise, Stonehenge, Colosseum) and I don’t have the energy to post something content-heavy this afternoon, so here’s your peek into where I’m spending my computer time; ten sites I’ve visited this week.
For my surrealist moments - Garfield Minus Garfield describes itself this way: “Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?”
Adding to a list of websites with tv content […]
Original post by piseco
I love giveaways! After posting that I have (slightly) better than average luck at things like bloggy giveaways, I’ve heard that I’ve won 8 prizes this weekend. Some of the most interesting are my new handmade BRA PURSE from Shana,
handknit BABY UGGS from Laura,
and six homemade MINT CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES from Kelsey, who even posted the recipe on her site so we can all try it. Yum! Thanks to all of you, and Heather, Erin, Geri, Tracee and Stephanie too - and all of you who had contests for us to enter.
Original post by piseco
There are almost 700 contests at Shannon’s Bloggy Giveaways tonight. I can’t stop. So many of them are for darling handmade items (the crocheted bonbons? the polymer clay pendants? the family tree print or the family name tile?). I just can’t stop. Forgive my bloggy silence, and head over there yourself to win some good stuff.
Original post by piseco
Today is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and all around the blogosphere, folks are taking a moment to write about the importance of a woman’s right to choose.
You can read what Doc had to say, or Elishevah, or Toni, just a few of the bloggers who turned up with this button on my Google Reader today.
I was much more vocal on this topic when I was in college, but being a stay-at-home mom in the comfortable semi-suburbs leaves me with less opportunities to discuss heady philosophical issues, and more opportunities to discuss the everyday issues. (Seriously. I couldn’t make this up. As I was typing the last sentence, my husband wandered into the office and asked, “Is the peanut butter in here? Because I can’t find it in the kitchen.” Those are my issues now.)
But before I sign off to track down the peanut butter, I will say: […]
Original post by piseco
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