Washing the car, rearranging the house, time with friends, more Indians: Snippets from unschooling this week

It’s been a particularly hectic week around here… and not looking to slow down any time soon!

This week, Chris and I are celebrating our seventh wedding anniversary with an out-of-town trip on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

When we come back, we’re headed to a demolition derby with our best friends and a large group of other friends.

My father-in-law comes to visit… then my brother comes from Arizona… then my uncle comes from eastern Pennsylvania… and amidst all that, we officially “wrap up” what would be Ashar’s sixth-grade year if she were in public school!

So what have we been doing?

1. Ah, Sculpey clay. This has been a passion of Ashar’s since earlier this year in public school, and she decided not too long ago that she wanted to make a baby dragon.

She wasn’t sure at first how to go about it – but then she realized that, on her fairy-tale bookends, there is a sculpted dragon hatching from an egg! Winner!

She did all of this herself – I just had to help her shape the egg around the dragon.

2. Ashar is spending today with a homeschooling friend at Black Rock Retreat’s Outdoor Education Day. It’s likely raining there, like it is here, and they’re going canoeing to see what birds they can spot from the water.

But she’s with her friend Paige from 4-H (and Paige’s grandpa), and hopefully the weather won’t spoil their fun!

3. I’ve been busy putting our portfolio together for our upcoming meeting with our evaluator on May 29. I’m pretty impressed, actually.

First, I’m impressed at all Ashar’s done and learned – to be fair, that includes both IN public school as well as since beginning our homeschooling journey.

Second, I’m impressed with myself! I kept good records, I have the appropriate amount of documentation – what’s required, but not too much – across a variety of subject areas, and I’m not waiting until the last minute to pull it together!

4. Ashar decided – completely out of the blue the other night – that she wanted to wash my car and my mom’s. So she got a bucket, a little bit of soap and some old washcloths and did just that!

She’s nothing if not thorough… she even figured out how to get up and wash the roof! I followed up by washing the windows and vacuuming the insides, so now we have two nice cars, as close to being detailed as they’ll probably ever come!

5. We sorted some more of Ashar’s postcard collection this week, as part of a massive house-reorganization project. Ashar used to have both a bedroom and a “playroom” upstairs (the playroom being kind of a landing outside her room and ours), and my scrapbooking stuff and my mom’s sewing stuff used to be in our finished basement.

But Ashar’s craft supplies and collections were also in the basement.

So we consolidated… she now has ownership of a full-out “rec room” in our basement (our family room, where our washer and dryer are, complete with couch), and that’s where all her stuffed animals, her desks, her Matchbox cars, her blocks, her art stuff, her building supplies, all of that is.

She and her friends from the neighborhood spend an awful lot of time hanging out down there anyway, so it seemed to make sense to move all her things there.

And the added bonus is that my mom’s sewing projects and my scrapbooking supplies now have a very easy-to-get-to spot near our bedrooms, giving us more space and more motivation (and more sunlight!) for our hobbies.

As part of doing this, though, Ashar decided she wanted to sort out her large postcard collection a bit more.

My best guess is that she has more than 1,500 postcards from all time periods and all around the world. She loves to get them out and look through them, and has learned a lot by exploring the places pictured!

Her organizational system, though, is pure Sarah. Her categories include “Art,” “M*A*S*H*,” “Kennedy Space Center,” “York County,” “Pennsylvania,” “States,” “Volcanoes,” “Ireland and Australia,” “Scenes by Water,” “Cities and Buildings,” “Scenery,” “Animals,” “People” and more.

Chris has a hard time helping her sort. I must think eclectically like Ashar does, though, because I can look at a postcard of a man holding a kookaburra in the middle of a crowded city and tell you right where it goes.

Any guesses? People? Animals? Cities and Buildings?

Well, it’s “Ireland and Australia,” of course. Because kookaburras and the kingfisher bird family, which are basically Ashar’s favorite animals ever, are found in Australia, making it her favorite place ever.

You just have to “get” how she thinks. Then you can help sort the cards. I think it’s kind of fun.

6. Our cowboys and Indians took a walk the other day with us to the former golf course near our house. Ashar wanted to set them up for a nature photo shoot – and we’d just read about Omri, the main character in the book “The Indian in the Cupboard,” taking his cowboy and Indian outside!

Apparently they didn’t mind standing on the edge of their equivalent of the Grand Canyon for a photo. And Ashar certainly didn’t mind making up stories about what they were doing!

7. Speaking of the golf course, Chris found us some new friends there.

We stood and watched this ant colony (which was previously under a rock, before Chris, uh, disturbed them) for quite a while. These guys were hustling! We weren’t sure at first if they were transporting their own egg sacs or some yummy grub food, but we’re pretty sure they were eating grubs/larvae. Yum yum yum?

So that’s a look at seven snippets from our unschooling life in the last week. What’s going on in your world?

15 May

How to make a lion-style paper fortune-teller, courtesy of Ashar and Google Translate

Making a paper fortune-teller designed like a lion

Remember how Ashar loves Pinterest now?

Well, today, she pinned something she wanted to make. It was a “fortune-teller” that looks like a lion. (If you’re not sure what a “fortune-teller” out of paper is, it’s basically an origami thing that has little fortunes or messages inside it, and you wiggle it back and forth a particular number of times to reveal your fortune.)

Anyway, the fortune-teller was super-cute. But the instructions on how to make it? They were in a foreign language.

Ashar also loves her some Google. And, apparently, she knows how to make it work for her. I was working and not paying any attention to her, and she turns to me and announces the following:

“Mom, I found something I want to make, but the instructions were in Dutch, so I used Google Translate so we can read them.”

She knew how to use the language auto-detect feature, converted the instructions to English, AND used the voice synthesizer to “read” the Dutch version so she’d know what it sounded like.

Here are the original instructions, with pictures.

But, to save you the translation, here is Ashar’s version of the instructions, helpfully in English!

First, download the two-page PDF template here.

A paper fortune-teller shaped like a lion with its mouth open

Print out both pages of the PDF, and cut out the square (“lion”) piece.
Cut the diamond-patterned page into a square the same size. “If you don’t know how to fold a square, take it and make a triangle, and then unfold it,” Ashar says.
Take that diamond-patterned paper and fold it in half horizontally, then unfold it again.
Do the same thing vertically – fold the diamond paper, then unfold it again.
Take the diamond-patterned paper and put the back of it against the back of the lion-printed paper.
With the diamond side facing up, fold one corner (of both pieces) toward the center. (You’ll see the lines on the lion side that show you where it should go.)
Repeat that for all the other corners.
Now turn the paper over, so that the plain blue side is up. Do the same thing back here – take each corner and fold it toward the middle.
Turn the paper over once more, and take the double layers at the corners and slide your fingers inside them, toward the corners, and fold them up. Your goal here is to make little “pockets” to put your fingers into.
Now you can make the lion open and close his mouth by using your fingers to move him back and forth! You might have to work at this a little; it’s hard to get the hang of at first. Ashar is modeling both “open” and “closed” lion mouths here, and you can also check out the pictures on the original for a better idea!

Give it a try! We had fun making it – and using Google Translate!

14 May

Our scrapbook: An evening at the tractor pull

Saturday night, Ashar and I went with my best friend and her son and boyfriend to Buck Motorsports Park (affectionately known as “The Buck”) in neighboring Lancaster County, PA, to see the truck and tractor pulls.

I hadn’t been to a “pull” since high school, and I’d never been to The Buck. (They’re going to take my central PA license away, right?!)

We had a great time, and Ashar got to see something completely new to her! She was – and I was surprised by this – interested in the physics and the setup of the whole thing; she wanted to know how the sled, or the weight box, worked, and she correctly guessed that the tractors with small front tires had less weight in the front and were easier to get good distance with. (That was later confirmed by the announcer; let me just tell you I had no clue!)

Fun times at The Buck

This was pretty cool – we were in one end of the arena, and Ashar and Brayden were able to play down in front of the stands because there wasn’t anyone to be walking past them! Though it’s a little hard to see, they used some rocks and built a “campfire” – with the gravel making a circle around the larger rocks, which were the charcoal.

Even better, they decided to make “gravel angels” – yep, you read that right. Like snow angels. In the gravel. Glad I didn’t let Ashar wear her new hoodie.

They raced several classes of vehicles – from modified “regular” farm tractors, to super-modified tractors with three or four engines, to 2-wheel-drive vehicles, to 4-wheel-drive trucks. Our favorites were the “regular” tractor class, which came first, and they were also the easiest to get good pictures of (less speed!)

Here are some of the highlights:

Fun times at The Buck

We had a great time – and yes, even here, we learned a lot. I’ll tell you one thing I learned: At one point, someone’s engine blew, and the announcer said it would a $100,000 repair.

Add that to the fact that there were some families there racing three or four tractors, and you think: Man, that’s an expensive hobby! Glad Ashar is content just to watch 🙂

Linking up today to Happy Family Times and the All Year Round Blog Carnival: Summer Edition.

13 May

Gettin’ social: Ashar learns Google+, Pinterest and Twitter

Though you wouldn’t believe it from the amount of time I spend on Facebook and Pinterest, I’m not a huge advocate of social networks. I enjoy those two personally, and I use Twitter and Google Plus as well, and I’m on all of those plus some other networks daily for my various jobs.

That said, while they’re a ton of fun and a huge boost to productivity and business relationships, I worry a lot because of things I see online. There are the “drama people” – you know the type – who post things like OMG IN TEARS *WHIMPER* and then 50 people ask them if they’re OK. (My advice: Save the drama for yo mama, folks.) That mostly borders on funny.

But I’ve seen relationships – friendships and even marriages – torn apart by things done and said via Facebook (and other social networks). While, granted, those relationships had much larger issues, of which the online drama was just a tiny piece, this has taught me a few lessons:

1. EVERYTHING is public. (As a side note – this is why I make no attempt to hide our identities on this blog; we are very much of the “if you think something’s private online, you’re deluding yourself” camp, and we’re OK with that.) But in a social-media sense, this means don’t post, Tweet, pin or plus anything you wouldn’t share with your pastor. (And I have several pastors as Facebook friends!)

2. Facebook and teenagers don’t mix. I do have several “friends” on Facebook who are younger family members, my daughter’s friends, members of groups we attend, etc. I can think of two people out of the two dozen or so I know that age who are without drama (either of their own creation or someone else’s), and the rest have had all sorts of issues, some incredibly scary and serious. Middle and high school are hard enough without that stress, and even if YOU at that age are old enough to be responsible, you can be seriously hurt by the many people who aren’t!

3. A lot of the “problems” with social media could be solved if people treated it more like a social situation. If you would not announce something about your underwear at a party with 30 guests, why on EARTH would you post it to 500 “friends”? (True story – saw that, and from someone who works as a social media coordinator for a large company!) If you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, why post it or message it to them? And so on.

So all of this is a very LONG preface to the learning that’s been taking place in our house. We have been adamant so far that Ashar not create a Facebook profile. Among other things, Facebook’s terms of use say you have to be 13, and I really don’t want to encourage my kid to lie about her age, so that’s been enough to hold her off.

But she is a huge devotee of All That Is Google, and as part of writing her own blog via Blogger, she does have a Google profile, which we said she could build out into a Google Plus account.

She LOVES it. She is on Google Plus all the stinkin’ time. She blows up my feed – as I don’t have a whole ton of friends who DO like to use G+! But she gets it. She has found who to put in her circles (Earth, Albert Einstein and Johnny Depp are among her favorites) and she goes happily about the Internet each day, “+1″ing her little heart out.

Her favorite thing to do is to +1 my blog posts or Chris’s, and then tell us that she’s helping us get traffic. She also figured out, entirely without any help, how to tag us in her posts, so she will share things that she thinks Chris or I will like and tag us. (She did that above – and she was really funny!)

We worried a bit when she learned how to start a “hangout” with video chat, but she was 100% OK with the idea that she only uses that to talk to our family members and some particular friends of ours who also use G+ and who I trust implicitly!

Well, then came Pinterest.

I’ve been on Pinterest since its beta, and I have to say, as much as Facebook is essential to big parts of my life, Pinterest is definitely my “network of choice.” I’m not very complex – I like pretty things and happy thoughts and positive people. For at least 90% of its content, that’s Pinterest.

So I’ve been pinning things like crazy, especially as we started planning our homeschooling/unschooling journey, and Ashar would sometimes sit down with me and find things for me to pin to my “Stuff for Sarah” board.

Once she had clearly mastered Google Plus, I started thinking: Hey, she could do Pinterest. I wouldn’t have a problem with that. So I “invited” her.

Only issue is, you have to have either a Facebook or a Twitter profile to join.

Back to square one – no Facebook. At LEAST not for another year, til she’s 13, and maybe not then.

So we started thinking about Twitter. My idea was, I’ll set this up, she’ll use it to log in for Pinterest, and then whatever. It can languish into Twitter Purgatory or whatever.

Nope. As you see, she chose a background, followed NASA and every English-speaking National Geographic brand there is (and her dad and I) and immediately learned how to retweet.

I am not kidding when I say I believe Ashar is gifted. She might not be gifted in a math-testing, essay-writing, science-fair-winning kind of way, but she is absolutely able to learn certain things at a rate that is MUCH higher than that of other people. And she doesn’t just learn “how” to do this stuff. She gets why.

She has an intrinsic understanding of how to find what she’s looking for on any platform, and how to know what platform will most likely have a particular type of material or welcome a post about the same. (In the past, I’ve met adults who can’t always grasp this – some of them are rather fire-hosey; you know, like let’s put the same thing in FIVE social networks at one time, because that makes sense.)

Well, anyway, after the mild Twitter distraction, we were on to Pinterest.

My absolute favorite part? Ashar’s first question: “Is there a limit to how many boards you can have?” I cracked up. It was just a very Ashar question, and there again, she was building her plans for her profile and who she was following around the capability of the technology.

She set to work repinning, oh, I don’t know, approximately every photo of the Titanic currently on Pinterest, as well as cats and butterflies. She added her second-favorite magazine (after National Geographic), Birds & Blooms, because she remembered reading in their editor’s letter last month that they pin a lot.

So the coolest thing to me about all this is that Ashar taught herself all these things.

The second-coolest, though, is that she is open to talking about the ups and downs of social media and the best practices for using it – including that she shares what she posts with Chris and I and connects with us (and other adults in our world) across these networks.

I won’t be surprised if she ends up with a Facebook account at some point in the next few years. But I feel like we’re setting a good foundation based on making social networks fun, open, informative, productive and uplifting – and that makes me worry a lot less.

And, of course, since I am so big on the “everything’s public” idea: If you’d like to join either Ashar’s or my networks, here’s where you can find us!

Pinterest: I’m pinterest.com/unschoolrules and Ashar is pinterest.com/awesomesaucer.
Twitter: I’m twitter.com/definity and Ashar is twitter.com/dixonsdemon
Facebook: That’s just me, but I’m at facebook.com/jsconcilio and facebook.com/unschoolRULES

Hope you’ll check us out – and if you feel strongly about your children and social media, I would LOVE to know your thoughts! This is 100% just what works for us, not by any means a dictate against what other families choose!

09 May

Cowboys and Indians

This post was dictated to me by Ashar about the way we spent our day – on a hunt for the Wild West, you could say!

I got interested in cowboys and Indians by the book “The Indian in the Cupboard.” I really like the book, and when we finish Book 1, I want to be able to read Book 2, where the Indian in the cupboard returns.

Last night when me and my mom were reading “The Indian in the Cupboard,” chapter 2, when we were done I jerked up and said “I want toy Indians and cowboys!” And so today, we went out and we found some, and I am very, very pleased.

We went out shopping for toy cowboys and Indians and we went to a lot of places. But some places we went to were Toys R Us, antique stores, and finally we found them at a hobby shop that also sold trains and an RMS Titanic model that I really wanted. But it cost a lot of money.

Cowboy silhouetted

I got two bags of Indians and one bag of cowboys. My three favorite cowboys are my red cowboy that you see above, named John, and also one that I named Buffalo Bill (in a blue shirt) and in black, last but not least, Jedadiah. (Can you guess why I named him Jedadiah? You should put your guess why in the comments and I will tell you if you are right.)

Indian silhouetted

My three favorite Indians besides the one that I think is like the character from the book, which we will talk about later, are my chief, named after the famous chief Sitting Bull, then two hunters named Soaring Eagle (who is wearing yellow pants) and Running Deer (wearing blue pants). I guess Indians didn’t really wear shirts back then.

The chief has white eye makeup near his nose. He has white braids hanging from his headdress, and a fancy bow and a fancy rifle. He has a loincloth over his pants with a fancy design on it that I like.

Cowboys and Indians

When we got home, I set all the figures and the tepees up on the table. I separated the cowboys on one side and the Indians on the other. Don’t put them together, bad idea. Then I took pictures in the “sunset.” Which was really light shining into the dining room when it was dark.

But back to the book. Little Bear is the main character, well, actually, the boy (Omri) is the main character but he has the toy Indian named Little Bear who comes to life every night because of a special cupboard. So when I got my Indians, I looked through all of them and tried to find one that looked like the picture on the cover, of Little Bear. And Little Bear has a knife, and one of my Indians wearing blue pants has a knife. So I named him Little Bear. He also has an axe, but he’s Little Bear anyway.

Creating a model of The Indian in the Cupboard

Here’s my Little Bear and the book cover’s Little Bear and you can see that they are almost alike!

I like putting the cowboys and Indians that have the plastic piece across the bottom over my fingers and flipping them upside-down in a circle. If these came to life like Omri’s, I would be stabbed for doing that. And shot at, because the cowboys have guns. (Jedadiah has two guns, and he could easily shoot me and it might not hurt but I don’t think I’d like it even though it was only a little teeny tiny bullet.)

We will be reading more of the book tonight – in fact, right now! And I hope to tell you more about it!

06 May

Computers, robots, geese, sports and Squinkies: Snippets from unschooling this week

In case it isn’t pretty obvious from reading about our day-to-day learning activities, we’re pretty firmly in the “unschooling” spectrum of homeschooling.

That could mean any number of things – but to us, it means we are intentional about learning in everyday life, but we choose not to follow a curriculum, give tests or grades, or require things like essays.

The thing is, people maybe wonder what we, you know, do all day, what with no required textbook reading or worksheets or memory work. And as we near our first meeting with Ashar’s evaluator and start putting together our portfolio, I’ve had some questions from friends and family members – as well as strangers – along the lines of, “But how can you tell she’s learning?”

To that, I usually just smile. The answer is pretty simple – I talk to my daughter. And I take pictures. Lots of pictures. When you see them, I think it’s pretty obvious that not only is she learning, she’s retaining – and she’s having fun.

So with that in mind, here’s a look at 7 “snippets” from our unschooling life in the past week or so, part of a linkup by the awesome Carma at Winging It.

1. Almost a year ago, we had one desktop computer shared between all our family members, and when it died, we replaced it with a fairly inexpensive laptop. That’s mostly used by Chris, as Ashar has her own netbook (a Christmas present), my mom has an iPad, and I have my work laptop that I do almost everything on.

I put the desktop tower in the trunk of the car, intending to probably drop it off at my friend’s repair shop and see if he wanted it for parts… or run a magnet over it to erase it… or, well, something.

This week, I had it. It’d been in the trunk since AT LEAST Christmastime, maybe earlier. So I said to Chris, “Do you think Ashar would want to take it apart and see what’s inside?”

She did – and she loved it. We tore it apart together, and talked all about circuit boards, resistors, the hard drive, the power source and more. She’s saved all the pieces and intends to use them to build a real working robot with my brother, an engineering genius, when he comes to visit this summer. Is it likely they’ll end up with a “real working robot”? Well, uh, no, but I’m sure not telling her that. She’s excited about trying to figure it out, and even if it’s just a model of a robot made from computer parts, well, that’s pretty cool too.

2. With that “mechanical” mood going on, Ashar decided she wanted to build her tin-can robot from the kit we’d bought several weeks earlier. (We’d just found the perfect can the day before at a local antique store; we didn’t just want any can.

Check out the robot, creatively (?) named Royal Crown, in action.

Post by Joan Concilio Otto.

3. My sister Linda and brother-in-law Mike took Ashar with them to our local Atlantic League baseball team’s game Saturday night – and Ashar loved it. We’ve gone several times and are really lucky to have the stadium right in town. They were in the skybox for the newspaper company where Chris and I work, along with Linda! Linda was actually working an event – a promo for our women’s magazine – along with some other employees, and another woman brought her 10-year-old daughter and her daughter’s friend. Ashar enjoyed hanging out with them and making new friends!

She also wore her “lucky” shirt to help the team, but alas, that didn’t work.

4. Another week, another trip to Kiwanis Lake, this time to see the ducklings and goslings that recently hatched, as well as to spy on the night herons and great egrets that roost there. If you’ve seen the movie The Aristocats… well, then, you’ll get why I title this picture “Think GOOSE!”

Ashar, by the way, got friendly enough with one overprotective set of goose parents to almost touch a gosling, which is pretty amazing. The ducklings were even cuter, in my opinion – they’re SO little – but Ashar liked this goose family best.

5. One random York County attraction is a combination miniature golf course/zoo/ice cream shop/basketball park in the eastern end of our town. I mean, doesn’t everyone play mini golf while staring at a live black bear, then feed a llama and shoot hoops before getting ice cream?

An interesting side note is that I truly believe Ashar gets much more exercise since she left public school. AND, she doesn’t freak out about having to wear a gym uniform that doesn’t fit her tiny waist, which was a social and sensory disaster. We were all burning calories this day! (And I learned I’m pretty awful at basketball.)

6. In some random linking action, we’ve been reading and enjoying a bunch of stuff online. I personally LOVED How Unschooling is Like Lunch on Everyday Snapshots. And as I was reading other sites in this unschooling linkup, I learned about MathMovesU from Eclectic Ramblings. MathMovesU is designed for approximately middle-schoolers and shows how you use math in everyday life. It’s FREE – and it’s made by Raytheon, the defense contractor for which my brother, David, works. (Which totally upped its cred in Ashar’s world; this is the guy who’s coming from Tucson to supposedly help fuel her robot dreams.) Even math-hating Ashar spent about 45 minutes on it, which was pretty stellar. And Ashar’s recycled Stegosaurus was featured on the Makedo blog!! THAT was super-amazing-awesome-exciting-etc. for my fame-loving girl.

7. This is an “online find” that gets a special shout-out because Ashar completely discovered it and acted on it herself. She loves Squinkies – and if you don’t have the, er, good fortune to know what they are, you can conveniently see photos on her blog. She searched for “house for Squinkies” and found this one based from an Altoids tin. At the time, we had no Altoids, so Ashar improvised, and COMPLETELY without any assistance came up with this:

Underneath the parents on the queen-sized bed, the “bedspread” says WE ARE AN ECO FAMILY, because Ashar built their house all from recycled materials, like a former jewelry box, old cardboard scraps, odds and ends of scrapbooking paper, bottle caps and more.

In the top picture, looking out the window, the family can see trees (the green). On TV, they’re watching a program about rare butterflies, probably on the National Geographic Channel.

We have, by the way, since acquired an Altoids tin, thanks to my brother-in-law John in New Jersey, who we saw when we went with my sister Carol to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (more on that in another post). So, I’m sure the Squinkies will continue to expand their recycled abodes.

So that’s a look at seven snippets from our unschooling life in the last week. I’m so excited… it’s really sinking in to me now that we’ve almost finished what would be Ashar’s sixth-grade year if she were still in public school, and she’s made such progress since the start of the year. That’s exciting… and I can’t wait to keep rolling right into our next set of experiences!

05 May

Where have we been hiding out?

Making a hideout fort

It’s been a week since I posted – I’m a terrible Blog Mommy, huh? 🙂

Since then, we’ve been hiding out all over the place – and more details on our adventures, which included Vincent Van Gogh, Rocky, an antique store, a live bear, a walking robot and more, will be forthcoming – but in the meantime, I thought I’d show you where some of us have literally been hiding out.

Welcome to Ashar’s hideout.

It all starts when I decided that, since I’m working from home almost all the time now, I might really want to consider a new office chair. Off we went to the Office Max sale a few weeks ago, and home came a new chair, a thing of wonder, beauty and fewer trips to the chiropractor.

It came in a large box, with some assembly required. Ashar scoped out the box, decided the wanted to keep it for “a project,” and carted it to her basement workshop.

Last weekend, it returned upstairs. Ashar showed us that she could get INSIDE the box (which was almost frightening, to be honest), and then she said she wanted to turn it into a hideout.

Well, leave it to Mom – I decided it might be a bit more comfortable if we raised the roof. So we used a box-cutter (I helped with this part) and slit along both edges of the larger, flat side. Effectively, that left us with a base and two short sides, plus a tall “back” with a flap that hangs down a bit in the front.

We braced the back with Ashar’s yardstick (the blue stick up the center) and used painter’s tape to help affix the box to the wall. You can’t see it too well, but it’s wedged between my piano and the wall in the dining room, and after decorating it with stickers, a bow, and a mailbox that we were all instructed we needed to deliver messages to, a hideout was born.

It wasn’t long before Ashar realized that a blanket would pad it out a bit. She pulled our green afghan in and sat and played with her stuffed animals and her 3DS.

Sleeping in a hideout fort

Well, you know what that turned into. “Mom, I can sleep here! I can sleep in my hideout!” That was big for Ashar, who really doesn’t like to sleep anywhere different, and the first night, she got all settled, then decided she’d rather go up to bed after all.

But the following two nights, she got over the initial weirdness and decided she LIKED her new abode.

Sleeping in a hideout fort

Yep, my kid sleeps in a box in the corner of the dining room. What of it? 🙂

27 Apr

Making homemade ice pops and studying freezing

Something entirely prompted by Ashar this week was a study of freezing and boiling… and she decided to start by asking, “Can we make our own ice popsicles?” We ended up making not only a true “ice popsicle” out of water, but also an orange juice pop, two lemonade pops and an iced tea pop.

Ingredients for homemade ice pops

Here are our ingredients – including popsicle sticks, press-and-seal to hold the sticks in place, and our drinks, as well as some Crummy Disposable Plastic Cups (all I had to contribute to her spur-of-the-moment idea; they made some weird-shaped pops, but they’re easy to crack to get off the popsicle!)

Ice pops before being frozen

Ashar poured the liquid into the cups (leaving room for the ice to expand); I helped her cover the tops with press-and-seal, and we cut small slits in the covers to slide the popsicle sticks through.

Homemade ice pops in the freezer

Into the freezer they went… and we promptly kind of forgot about them for a day or so!

In the meantime, Ashar decided to “play” with boiling water and a pan full of ice. She figured out that ice floats (and I explained why); learned why the ice cracks when you pour hot water onto it; and guessed and then experimented to see which would “win” – whether the ice would make the boiling water cold first, or the boiling water would melt the ice first.

Experimenting with boiling water and ice cubes

We’re lucky to have a cool-bottomed electric teapot, which allows Ashar to do things like make tea and experiment with hot water without hurting herself on the kettle!

She did all sorts of boiling-freezing-floating-sinking experiments, and we talked about why the different things happened the way they did. We also reenacted the Titanic sinking with an old spray-paint-can lid in the pot of water (THAT was something!)

All in all, she must have spent a few hours discovering new facts about the simplest thing – water – and trying to hypothesize and test what it would do in different situations. I was thrilled… and she was almost entirely self-directed, which was also neat!

Eating a homemade ice pop

And, yes, we ate our popsicles – here’s Ashar with one of the lemonade ones. They tasted pretty good! 🙂

Linking up today to the All Year Round Blog Party: Summer Edition.

26 Apr

Two interviews: Me, through my daughter’s eyes, and her views on money, life and happiness

Today’s post is kind of a two-fer. First, I borrowed the idea of interviewing Ashar about ME from Mari at Nothing in Particular. Second, I shamelessly interviewed Ashar for a post on Man Vs. Debt, the blog for which I’m the community manager and editor, and I want to share HER fun responses because I think they give a great insight into what she has learned about life!

Mother-daughter 5K run

So, first up, let’s hear what Ashar has to say about Mom.

Me: What is something I always say to you?

Sarah: I love you. Yart!

My note: Yart is our family secret (or not-so-secret) way of saying I love you. We have our own “speak” for a few things, and we love it!

Me: So what makes me happy?

Sarah: When I give you kisses! When I’m good… when I obey. Just being around me.

My note: Well, sure!

Me: What makes me sad?

Sarah: When I bite my fingers. When I’m being bad.

My note: Yes, although I wouldn’t have expected her to say that. I actually didn’t expect her answers to focus on how she and I interacted, so that was a surprise!

Me: What makes me laugh?

Sarah: The riddles I read you out of my riddle book. Me. Daddy.

My note: They sure do. Well, at least the last two do.

Me: What do you think I was like as a child?

Sarah: Smart. Loved to read. Loved to do math.

My note: Man, I sound dorky. If you actually want to read more about how dorky, this post is a good indicator.

Me: How old am I?

Sarah: 29.

My note: That’s too easy.

Me: How tall am I?

Sarah: 5 feet, 5 inches tall?

My note: Like, 5’4″, so yeah.

Me: What do you think is my favorite thing to do?

Sarah: Be around me! Scrapbooking. Being around friends. Being around family.

Me: What else? There isn’t anywhere that I go, like, five nights a week, sometimes twice in a night?

Sarah: Tae kwon do?

My note: Are you serious? I just got back from being at class for THREE HOURS and I had to remind her I liked this. This cracked me up. I do like those other things too, though. This photo is of both of us early in our tae kwon do journey, back in 2010. I tested for my yellow belt on Ashar’s first day of class!

Family ready for tae kwon do class

Me: What do I do when you’re not around?

Sarah: Work. Sleep.

My note: This doesn’t reflect real great on me, does it? Also, the funny thing is – now that we’re homeschooling? There’s almost never such a time, unless you want to get technical and say when she goes to bed for the night and so do I!

Me: If I became famous, what would it be for?

Sarah: Being my mother. Ask Joan.

My note: Yeah to the Ask Joan part. I was the polling place sensation this week at our primary, actually. It was kinda fun. And today I had a speaking engagement related to that, so I can see where she got that idea. If I’m “famous” for being her mother, though, that worries me.

Me: What am I really good at?

Sarah: Sleeping. Working for Baker. Being my mother.

Me: What am I not very good at?

Sarah: You know what, I never really thought about it. Because every time I see you do something, even if you don’t get it on the first try, you still seem good at it. Like when we were playing soccer outside with my new soccer ball, yeah, you weren’t that good at it, but you tried, and honestly, you did very good. I don’t think you’re bad at anything. I’m not just saying that to be nice, it’s true.

Mother and daughter

My note: This actually made me a little sad in a way. I don’t want Ashar to grow up thinking Mom’s good at everything and never struggles with anything. I want to do a better job showing her the things I’m less good at, though she’s certainly seen some!

Me: What do I do for a job?

Sarah: Check Baker’s emails for him. Type a lot on the computer. Be my mother, be my teacher. A lot of other things. Sometimes you go into the newspaper but not always.

Me: What’s my favorite food?

Sarah: Cheese.

My note: Uh, probably. Or products containing it. Which isn’t ideal when you’re lactose intolerant!

Me: What makes you proud of me?

Sarah: A lot of things. I can give you some examples… you teach me how to be positive about myself. You help me to learn things that I didn’t know. You’re a very good mother and I’m glad I am your daughter.

My note: OK, tearjerker. I had no idea she was going to say that. I figured she’d say that I write blogs or something.

Me: If I was a cartoon character, who would I be?

Sarah: No one. Because you are a human being and I love you, and I would not let any such thing happen to you.

My note: ASPIE LITERAL ALERT! This cracked me up. I knew when I read this question what her answer would be.

Me: So what do you and I do together?

Sarah: Read. Math. Blog posts especially for homeschooling. We play games together.

Me: So in what ways are you and I the same?

Sarah: We look alike. We’re both females. We both kind of have the same hairdos. We both go to the same tae kwon do place. Really a lot of things. We both have blankies.

Me: Do I have to post that?

Sarah: Not if you don’t want to, just tell people don’t laugh.

Daughter and mom with blankies

My note: First of all, again with the literal; yes, we’re both female. And, yes, I have my blankie. In fact, I usually use it just like we’re pictured here, almost like a shawl or a snuggie. My dad got me this blanket – formerly a Minnie Mouse and Mickey Mouse sleeping bag – the Christmas before he died, along with my teddy bear, and yes, I’m proud to say I still have the bear too. The blanket has long since been patched by tons of meaningful things – like my high school quiz bowl T-shirt, which is the gray piece you see above. Ashar got her blankie at birth and shows no signs of parting with it any sooner than I do mine. If you laugh, try to do it quietly.

Me: And how are we different from each other?

Sarah: You like radishes and I don’t. You like glazed carrots and I don’t. You drink more soda than I can in a week. (No offense.)

My note: Really, that’s all she can think of? I laughed.

Me: How do you know that I love you?

Sarah: Because you show it in your expressions and because I know that I’m in your heart.

Me: What do you think I like most about Dad? (Chris makes a silly face as I ask this.)

Sarah: Not when he does that. Um, that he loves me and accepts me as his daughter. That he’s your husband. Because if he’s not, we got issues.

My note: This REALLY made me smile, the daughter part. I had no idea Ashar thought that, but how cool!

Me: What do you think Dad likes most about me?

Sarah: You’re cute. That you’re his wife. That he’s married to you.

My note: Ashar originally said something else here – something with a double entendre, which she completely didn’t get – and I was in the awkward position of telling her I couldn’t say that on our blog. Oops!

Me: What’s my favorite place to go?

Sarah: The Coach store.

My note: Honestly, it’s Pinchot Park or anywhere else near water, but OK.

Me: What other stuff do you want to tell the readers about me and Dad?

Sarah: That you guys make the perfect mom and dad for me and that I’m glad that I’m able to have a mom and dad like you. I wouldn’t ask for any other! And, my dad has funny puns.

Now, if you want to hear what Ashar has to say in response to some (hopefully fun) questions from me, including what her best “money advice” is and why everyone should be happy, check out her interview on Man Vs. Debt – “Conversations with my 12-year-old daughter about money, work and happiness.”

I think she did a GREAT job … and she loves that she is “famous!”

25 Apr

Our scrapbook: A whirlwind day at the shore

Re-enacting The Karate Kid on the beach

(Surely you’ve seen The Karate Kid, right?)

Last week, my mom was in Florida on vacation with one of my sisters, who has a vacation property in Treasure Island. Mom flew home last Friday, while my sister and brother-in-law stayed another week in Florida, so it was up to me to make sure she got picked up at the airport in Atlantic City, N.J.

Well, rather than make it a “drive all day alone” deal, I enlisted the rest of the Otto crew, and it turned into an overnight getaway for Chris, Ashar and me.

We left late in the day Thursday, spent the night at the Showboat in Atlantic City, and then got up Friday morning and enjoyed an amazing day at all sorts of shore points along the New Jersey coast, from Atlantic City all the way south to Avalon.

Here’s a look at some of the best parts of our trip…

Seagulls attack!

Hypothetically, if you feed the birds on the beach your leftover french fries after lunch at the Rainforest Cafe, said birds might get a little insistent and try to eat your head.

Real-life Angry Birds on the beach

Then you end up with real-life “Angry Birds!”

Ripley's Believe It or Not and other Atlantic City attractions

We went to the Ripley’s Believe it or Not! odditorium, which I mentioned yesterday, and Ashar saw a statue of one of the world’s tallest-ever men, Robert Wadlow, who she was slightly shortly than. She also compared herself to Mr. Peanut, who was a bit closer in stature.

We also saw “Lucy the Elephant” in Margate, N.J., and Ashar was fascinated. It helped that she’d earlier chosen a stuffed elephant, who she’d named Atlantic, as her souvenir at the Rainforest Cafe. Well, then at Lucy, she got another stuffed elephant, who she named… wait for it… Lucy. I know, you’re shocked. She has plans to write a post on her own blog about Lucy’s history.

Lucy the Elephant and other Atlantic City attractions

The scene at the right of Lucy was probably my favorite part of our trip. Ashar tends to HATE the feel of anything “weird.” She’s the kid who hates finger-painting, hates mud… and, historically, would not take off her shoes on the beach. So imagine how surprised I was when, while we walked along the beach in Ocean City, N.J., she said, “Mom, can I take off my shoes and go in the water?” Of course I said yes – and she ran back and forth in the surf for close to an hour. She was freezing by the time we were done – but she had a blast. (And, thankfully, we had dry clothes available!) That made me so happy I almost cried… here was my beautiful girl, willing to do something new and having a lot of fun, smiling the whole time.

A wet hug on the beach

She was also very willing to give Daddy a wet hug. He was thrilled!

The Atlantic City boardwalk cats

Ashar’s favorite part of the trip by far was meeting the Atlantic City “Boardwalk Cats.” This feral cat colony of about 175 animals is trapped, neutered and returned through a program by Alley Cat Allies, and some of the cats are friendly enough for human interaction. Here, Ashar’s petting a cat she dubbed Cinnamon, who was incredibly young and friendly and soft. Ashar says she wants to donate to Alley Cat Allies to help fund the Boardwalk Cats project; you can read more about that project here.

Happy on the beach

Best part of the day for me, like I said, was just seeing my girl smile as she ran in and out of that ocean. For a lot of reasons, it summed up our journey toward homeschooling and our experiences since then… it’s like we were afraid of so many things, and then once we took off our shoes and waded in, we just took off running. And I love it.