Better Than Mr. Potato Head!

Buy an orange or small clementine and a couple small containers of "whole cloves."  You'll find them in the spice aisle and ours were 99 cents for a small package.  Pop the cloves stem-in into your orange during craft time.  They're actually easy for little hands to pop in once they're shown how.

And after your craft is done, it makes the kitchen smell lovely.   Here are Woodjie and Rose's creations sitting on my windowsill.

The Style. The Look.

Patrick loves these pants. Actually he has about six pairs of pants. They are all the same size, same brand, same colour. Seriously. His dad is the same way, but ol' Dad needs to buy new pants for work (same brand, same colour) when his old ones show signs of extreme wear. I got tired of Patrick putting mailing tape all over his pants at school and having people feel sorry for him. He must have come up with some odd story to tell his teachers that they would have sympathy for him and give him an entire roll of mailing tape AND a bit of masking tape so that he could make a smiley face on top of his knee.
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I SWEAR I asked him if he would like some new pants and shirts before the beginning of the school year. He said no, reasoning (correctly!) that I would take the old and ratty ones and throw them in the trash. Well. He didn't quite phrase it that way, but still. As you can see, I at least don't want him walking about with gaping holes over the winter and patched these up as best I could. Who thinks Patrick should ask his mom for three new pairs of pants? I mean, Mom orders these things on the internet, just type in the same size as always and *zing* order complete. Would YOU go to school like this to save your mom $25?

Gangsta Pants Tutorial

I bought the shorts in the first picture at the thrift store simply because I thought they were kewl. After Emperor began wearing them, G said they were "Gangsta." Apparently "Gangsta" is a good thing clothing-wise. Emperor had some ripped up jeans and I thought it would be a fun project to make our own sort of "Gangsta" pants. Emperor drew Hello Kitty, a vacuum flower Pokemon, and some chess pieces on his shorts. That's Gangsta (I guess). I sewed all over the shorts... hmm... I will need to use contrasting thread next time and maybe some dye. Or maybe we can gussy this up later by adding a different colour marker.

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Of course, Elf wanted his own "Gangsta" shorts as well. So I let him doodle on his new shorts. Why not. His are decorated with Pokemon. We had a lot of fun making these and they'll be used all summer long.

Sunday Selections: Enterprise

Its five-year mission: to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no Lego man has gone before. Currently, Enterprise is investigating the black Ticonderoga pencils, Black Pearl erasers and the happy squeezy heart. The entity "Elf" needs the squeezy heart, or he will crack his knuckles constantly and disrupt the space-time continuum. And do NOT try to pass off icky yellow non-Ticonderoga pencils on Elf, or else unexplained "Ut-ohh" homeschool phenomena occur. Same with the erasers: no pink erasers. Or else. Emperor likes the stinky Smencil pencils you see at the top of the pic. They come in about every smell you can imagine, and some you probably can't. Want to see more Sunday Selections? Pop on over to Kim's blog, dahling. Yeahh, my children watch that horrid "Green Acres," too. I never "got" that show. :)

Patching Jeans

Elf wore a hole in his threadbare hand-me-down jeans, so I sewed a patch from a way-too-small but destroyed favourite of his. I saved the zippy pocket from an old pair of camos. I turned the jeans I was repairing inside out and pinned the patch where I wanted it. I sewed it on, flipped the garment right-side out and cut the "window" where the patch is. On denim patches, this looks even more cool when the very edges fray a bit and you have a multidimensional look. But... I used the camos because some little boy loved those pants and that pocket. Looks a bit odd, but it will last him through the winter and he likes 'em.

A Disturbing Post - A Story in Pictures.



This is the potty that Elf and Emperor built. Note flush lever. Symmetry. Choice of blue for bowl contents.





Ummm... yeah. Elf and Emperor then add brown bricks.





Next: the plunger. We live in an old house, ok? What did you expect the next step to be? Flush it and forget it?

Sticky Tile Mosaics

We're just on a re-decorating spree, aren't we?  Emperor and Elf LOVED making these.  I have to tell you, it's wayyyy easier than the old-fashioned but more permanent method of making mosaics.  Don't they look fun?  I googled a bit and found a link at amazon... for $3 cheaper than I bought it at the curriculum fair.  Oh, well.  Certainly I need to consider getting a few sets for some children at Christmas.  In case you are wondering, the kit DOES have enough sticky tiles to get through the projects.  We have a good plenty extra still in the box.

Skirt Finishing Tutorial

The finished products!  To make the scrunchie, use a 8-12 inch bit of fabric about 4 inches wide.  Fold together so that the pretty sides are touching each other and the not-beautiful side is what you see as you sew.  Sew together.    It should look like a long bookmark.  Turn right side out (use a closed pen to push fabric through if necessary), thread about 5 in. of elastic through (use a safety pin so you can "find" the elastic inside as you're threading it).  Then tie the elastics together tightly and sew your scrunchie ends together so that the elastic doesn't show.   If you measure your fabric and elastic (I never do), you will have a more "standard" product.



Skirt Step One:  The cloth is laid on my vinyl floor.  I count two and a half squares over and cut... meaning that my cloth strips are approximately seven inches wide but that my measurements are very rough.  It doesn't have to be exact with ruffles!  Part of the prettiness is the uneven rumpled look.  Next I lay several pieces, right (pretty) sides together and sew them end-to-end so that I have a long, long strip.



Step Two:  finish the bottom of the ruffle. Otherwise, your cloth will fray.  Fold in about a centimeter, then fold in again so that none of the fray-able ends show.  Sew about in the middle, but closer to where your folds will meet the "wrong" end of the fabric so that the ends are held together nicely.  This will keep the bottom of your skirt from fraying.  By the way, if you're using fleece instead of cotton, you can skip this step entirely!

Step Three:  Sew to denim skirt.  I use the hemline on the denim skirt as a natural place to align my other fabric.  About every three inches I fold the fabric over about an inch.  For more fluffy ruffles, use more folds.  As you round about the end where you began, you'll want to leave a gap and sew the two ends of your pretty fabric together, leaving a little extra space to sew to the skirt as the final ruffle.  Enjoy!  PS.  Do you have a BOY you need to sew for?  Try my tutorial on lengthening shorts/converting hole-y jeans into shorts!













Making a Hello Kitty Doll

Did I mention Emperor has a thing for Hello Kitty? He sewed this doll from a kit we got at Jo-Ann fabric store. He takes this little dolly about everywhere with him, puts it with some of his other dollies, and builds houses for them. He also has an extensive tinkertoy gun collection for Hello Kitty. Apparently Kitty is VERY BIG into the whole idea of defending fortresses and testing launching weapons. (I guess she is in the red jumper militia.)

Making a Tile Mosaic

This is Elf's art project. He designed what he wanted to do with his tiles and made a detailed drawing. Then, we broke the tiles and glued them down to the base. He picked just the right tiles for the edges and then "filled" the other spaces with smaller broken pieces. After this dried, we mixed the grout and filled it in. We let it dry 15 minutes and wiped the top. Then, after it was completely dry, we wiped it until it was completely free of grout on the tile surfaces. Here it is, finished! Elf says that it took a long time, but it was worth it. It's a volcano at sunset.

Love in a Time of Homeschooling

Nice set of articles on Psychology Today blog. Usually, the articles on that blog are a little... crazy, really. But this set is pretty well-balanced. It almost seems like homeschool apologetics: a real-live actual, educated, working mom not only considers that hippie, wack-o, cult ranch form of education... she actually DOES IT. Pulls her normal kid out of her normal school and messes with her normal little mind and twists it.

For a whole year!

Ahhh... ok, that sounds a bit sarcastic, but actually, I love this series of posts. There's just something so oddishly new about seeing what you do every day defended by someone who might not want to live your lifestyle forever, but has at least seen what it's like for a time and is "translating" the experience to other people.

"The word 'homeschooling' makes some people cringe," she writes. "They envision a fundamentalist Christian Mom teaching creationism at the kitchen table, or a counter-culture bohemian, making tie-dye shirts and ignoring algebra."

Um... I teach my creationism at the DINING ROOM table, thankyouverymuch. And hippie that we all know that I am, I'm thinking that tye-dyes are more fun than algebra lessons. One thing the article didn't cover (and I wish there were a series on this too!) is that HELLOOOO, fundamentalist Christians who believe in a young earth also send their children to public schools sometimes. So do hippies! Sure, we're the parents the teacher never wants to deal with but we are out there. Some of us are even nice people.

The comments were pretty telling as well. One detailed the abuse suffered in a public school for years. I think commenters (in other places, not this series, thankfully) who say things along the lines of, "Well, if you pull your kid because you don't like the school or the teachers, you're just teaching the kid that he never has to face up to his problems" can go rot. You face up to your problems when it's a couple mean kids who need a good reality check (then you take the detention for your 'unkind' words or *ahem* whatever... sigh). Or you face up to your problems when you haven't studied for a test and you flunk. I think we can all agree that almost always, people don't pull their kids from public school on a flighty little whim.

One thing I thought interesting was that although she had no stated religious reasons for homeschooling, that she wrote about homeschool parents feeling guilty when they send their children back to school. And that she felt the need to explain why she did that to her own kid. That made me sad.

I hope we are not so insular and so judgmental that we can't support someone else's decisions with their own kids. Parental rights, you know. The school funding issue and whether there should be schools at all is rather a separate issue. So long as there are schools, and so long as there are parents who want to enroll their children, I think we should try to be just as tolerant as we'd want someone else to be of us.

PS. I am going to a homeschooling convention soon. I am so seriously going to look around and see if I can find a tye-dying kit. The Happy Elf Homeschool needs to get groooovy. :)

Panda Time

We made ours with Bendaroos. These are wax-covered strings that can be bent, cut and otherwise formed so that one can make all kinds of objects. We found these hard to work with, although the directions were quite simple. It was hard to get the tubes to "stick" together and stay when more things were added. As you can see, we had to go through all kinds of mechanations to occupy Woodjie and Rose whilst making our creations. I had to drag out the puzzles and eventually just fed them lunch so we could keep working. It took that long. After we finished, Emperor wanted to know if we could do a zebra next. As in, right now? Nope.

All About China

Patrick will be going to China in June, as he has raised enough money for his trip. So I thought our next Social Studies unit would be "stuff I pieced together all about China." Emperor and Elf used the stencils of Chinese symbols to design their very own Happy Elf Homeschool t-shirts. (Our school slogan is, "Happy Elf Homeschool: The Home of the Happy Elf," because I'm original like that).

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D, G and I went to the Chinatown market in downtown Kansas City to search for things to share with the family. I bought lychees in a can. Patrick informs me that these are exactly the same consistency as a dissecting frog. Eeew, and they smell bad, too. D is scared that the can's contents could be poisonous, or need to be cooked first, and that sort of thing. SO I had to look it up on wikipedia. It's fine. We just didn't eat it.

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I also bought some chili-ginger candies that... well, now that I have 'em out of the wrappers, look like sugar-coated cat poo. And have nuts in them. I also bought some sort of peach/ginger candy that no one could eat because the plastic is melted onto the candy and peels off in tiny strips. You will *never* get the candy free; one would have to eat a half-plastic, half-candy concoction. Needless to say, it's becoming obvious that Patrick will be mighty hungry by the end of his trip to China if this is the sort of food he'll be eating. But I did also buy Chinese pears. Apparently these taste just like apples, but they are about five times as expensive. (Oh, well.)

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Another thing I bought at the market was a New Year's hanging of some kind. And I bought some cute paper money called joss paper. Welllll... you're supposed to BURN this money to help your ancestor ghosts. There was a lot of this stuff at the market, so I assumed it was a big part of Chinese culture, since it's important enough to have several brand names. The younger boys are enjoying it anyway. Patrick refuses to touch it now, even though he was very eager to play with the pretend money before he found out its usual purpose.

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We are working on a BJU Booklink titled, "These Are My People," the story of Gladys Aylward. We also watched an old movie about Aylward titled "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness." Elf and Emperor found several inconsistencies between the book and the movie, but I think they very much enjoyed the movie now that they have read most of the book. We've done tear-paper pictures and shadow puppets as well as our t-shirt art and regular worksheets and reading. I'm reading the Chinese Stencils book with the children as, in addition to some really neat paper stencils, it gives the history of each design and a pretty nifty overview of the nation itself, its art, major religions, and what homes looked like in ancient times.

These Are My People

We're going through the Bob Jones Booklink on the true story of Gladys Aylward, the Chinese missionary. The Booklinks have several fun hands-on activities as well as the usual worksheets you'd expect. Here are our "shadow puppets" made of black paper, brads, masking tape and straws. D has set up a large light he uses for leatherworking in the background so that the boys could put on shows for Miss Pretty-Pretty and the Playskool gang.

Quilt Craft

I got this sweet idea for a paper quilt craft from crayola.com. Emperor was a little reluctant to do the craft. He knows cutting things and stringing things are not his strong points. As it is, it took him over two hours to do this project with much help. He worked very hard on it but was motivated to finish as he is a HUGE, HUGE Hello Kitty fan and Mom let him have some of her stationery to decorate the squares. Now, it's hanging in his room and he's very proud of his work.

The Zhu Zhu Pets Are HERE!

When I log onto my email account, I get *plenty* of notices about the Zhu Zhu Something Whatever Pets. They are at such and such location at 6 a.m. Be there EARLY to be sure to have your opportunity to purchase one of 50 located in each store!! GO NOW!!!

Um, we don't need pets, real or otherwise. I had no clue there were even these "Zhu Zhu" pets in existence until the constant ALL CAPS emails screamed to me about my absolute need to get them for my children. They're what every kid wants for Christmas! What kind of bad Mom would I be if my children didn't have a "perfect" Christmas with these recycled Furby-looking things?

Elf and Emperor have never heard of Zhu Zhu, but I have been asked for a pony, a goat and a horse within the last month. Oh! And a Crusader outfit. You just can't play holy war properly with the paint stirrer sticks provided by Mom and Home Depot. One *must* have the Crusader outfit to rid the world of infidels/ jab our brothers in the ribs.

I don't think I'm going to tell them about this great new Zhu Zhu "need" they have when they already are not getting the pet chickens and Robin Hood bow and arrow sets on their list. They are getting Tinkertoys, some Pokemon cards and a couple of Spongebob books I found at the thrift store. I have also bought some paint and we will repaint their room. I am hoping someday to replace the furniture as well. I have some pennies aside and hopefully D will let us get something cool sometime.

The Zhu Zhu link provided in these emails makes the "pet" look like a small rock covered in fake fur with a couple of buttons for eyes. I don't know what a kid would do with a little non-living gerbil, but then again, I remember the "pet rocks" we used to have as kids. Since we lived in the Stone Age, we thought a rock with some glue-on google eyes and a doodled smile was an awesome pet. What's really hilarious? Our parents probably paid a lot of money for them. If we were really rich, our "pet" got carried in a basket and had some Easter straw for a bed.

By the way, I'm seeing a LOT of those Billy Bass Singing Fish things in the thrift stores now. Remember how clever everyone thought they were? And how they paid $19 for 'em? They're $1.98 now, boyo, but if you go on Sunday morning, the blue tag items are a quarter and you might just glue a little fake fur and a boa on there and pass one off on Christmas morning as Zsa Zsa, Zhu Zhu's outdated if flamboyant cousin.

They would be a real hit, dahling.

Beware Samurai Bearing Gifts

Many thanks to Sue for directing us to this neat tutorial on YouTube on how to make samurai kabuto (war helmet). Click here to see the craaazy picture she posted that inspired us to ask for help in making our own! And yes, this counts toward our Social Studies hours, mmmkay?

A Pokemon Christmas

We've already decorated the tree, and we're using some "Pokemon" themed art made with iron-together beads the boys have been making throughout the year. After Christmas, they will still want to hang these in their room or in the kitchen window.

Time for Art!

We studied Georges Seurat today in art class. Why? Because I had some "Color Explosion" paper from Crayola, and the website gives all kinds of craft ideas. You can look up craft ideas based on the season or, in our case, we had a really cool supply that we wanted new ideas on how to use.

Fixing Short-Short-Shorts.

They make shorts too stinkin' short for little girls. If I left this as-is, Rose's diaper would hang out the back end if she wore it in public next summer. Then again, I couldn't pass up paying 20 cents for the shorts... I took an old piece of a skirt that is too small for me and attached it to the bottom of the shorts. I had cut off the "legs" first, but I think next time, I'll just flip the shorts around and sew through the open waistline so that there is a modesty cover under the skirt. :]