Easter Ideas to Execute or Just...Consider

Last weekend the girls and I were feeling crafty, and the Easter box from the garage provided some inspiration.  We created a simple papier mache/decoupage egg project out of three materials:  plastic eggs, cut/torn tissue paper, and gluey water. 

All the eggs are waiting for now is a little Modge Podge shellacking, or some glitter glue stripes or ribbon, stickers, or...?  Note:  littler fingers can get frustrated with the gooey tissue paper...but I, who had many more important tasks to accomplish, found decorating these eggs (and "fixing" Little Sis's attempts) to be conveniently soothing and distracting.

We're going to a party on Saturday, and I'm tempted to make these cake pops (find recipe here):

We could shape them into eggy ovals and cover them with white chocolate and decorate...they don't require baking, and don't have eggs...perfect for our friend with allergies.   

But there's a very real possibility that the Easter Bunny will never get around to Modge Podge-ing the eggs above (I believe the Podge is packed in the storage container), and has enough to do figuring out how she's going to fill some baskets (and hide some eggs QUIETLY) on Sunday. 

What about you?  Any dyeing or decorating or basket-filling buds of inspiration?

What I Learned Today: Constraint Breeds Creativity

This morning at our school's staff development, we rotated through three different teachers' classrooms to sample their instructional approaches.  It's my favorite form of staff development, as teachers are invariably inspired by experiencing what their colleagues do with students, and it's free and easy. 

I was volunteered to "hold fire" in the chemistry class as we learned about combustion:

But that wasn't necessarily the most exciting part.  We learned that our woodshop teacher is not so much running a "shop" as a studio. 

The first thing he asked us to do was design a table using pencil and paper.  Then he collected our sketches and displayed them.  Like his students, he noted, most of us drew rectangle tables with four legs. 

His curricular challenge is to move his students beyond the "rectilinear," and move his course beyond the board-and-glue birdhouse. One way he disrupts students' thinking is by creating profiles of potential users for their tables.  When Mr. H asks his students what kind of table they'd design for a 16-year-old girl who uses a wheelchair and lives in an igloo, he inspires intriguing results.

This is because, he shared, constraints breed creativity. 

We see this all over, but I don't always appreciate how rules, restrictions, and limited resources arouse ingenuity, innovation, and beauty.  People living in small houses find creative ways to store stuff.  Reality cooking and fashion shows provide contestants with similar ingredients and materials, but the resulting products demonstrate the work of distinct, imaginative minds.  Cities and buildings find ways to use pockets of space, walls, and roofs. 

Back in the day, MacGyver showed us how to jury rig cabbages and shoelaces into lifesaving devices. 

It's sort of what I was trying to demonstrate to Big Sis with her spelling sentences:  we are often more motivated by tasks with a restricting challenge. 

Our world will increasingly benefit from this kind of thinking outside the rectangle, particularly as we grapple with increasingly limited resources, sharing of space, and the challenge of reconciling our natural environment with new technologies. 

Mr. H showed us slides of students with their tables of varying shapes and sizes and functions.  And in the back of the room, we could see the skateboard decks they were designing. 

Another day I'm proud to be an educator.

Black Friday, Move Over for "Make Something" Day

Last year on the Friday after Thanksgiving we took some friends up on their offer to visit their house for "Make Something" Day.  We ate and crafted and had a truly wonderful time with neighbors.  Alas, at the end of the summer, our friends moved to the East Coast.  And though I wasn't prepared to host a neighborhood party this Black Friday, I was determined to shun the malls--and even online shopping--and embark on a creative project with the girls.

We knew we would want to share our made goods.  But what could we make that wasn't sweet, which capitalized on resources already available, and that others would appreciate?

Succulent bowls:  we have a surplus of ceramic bowls and planters (from good causes!), plus, we could hit up two local businesses for the soil and plants we needed.  We stopped by the awesome flower shop where Cousin Travis works, and our favorite nursery/landscaper friend's neighborhood outpost.

While I set up our succulent assembly line, the girls launched independent projects:

Little Sis painted and tiled a wooden box

Big Sis sculpted oven-bake clay "charms"

Then, together we put together twelve little planters to deliver to neighbors and friends.

Re-purposed container, soil, plants, rocks, and glass "stones"

Complete with a note explaining our mission.

Little Sis hand-wrote twelve of these!

Here's where I admit we could use a new computer (ours keeps shutting down at inopportune moments), and I'm sure I'd be tempted by deals to be had on flat-screen TVs (we still have a box).

But today, we had a great day despite their absence.

Happy Leftovers (and Make Something) Day!!

List: Final Thoughts on TEDx

Here are a few of the exciting new technologies and ideas being developed by presenters at last weekend's TEDxYouthSanDiego conference:

1.  You can actually own a 3D printer for as little as $1200, which uses drawings to produce 3-D models in plastic (or other materials).  One of the speakers is researching the regeneration of organs from cells, using 3D printing to create a soluble sugar frame for blood vessels within them.  He uses a hacker space to share ideas and developments with people worldwide who collaborate on this lifesaving project, meant to lessen our reliance on organ donors for those in need of transplants.

2.  Jim Mumford is building green roofs and researching new ways to bring more plants inside buildings (plant wall/air filtration systems) to improve air, aesthetics, and quality of life.

3.  Rocio Ortega is a freshman at Wellesley College who is championing girls' education through organizations such as Girl Up and Global Girls.

4.  David Carroll is developing a kind of felt pouch that charges cell phones using nanotechnology.  He made a shirt that charges phones, but the military is borrowing it right now.

5.  Caroline Heldman spoke on the objectification of women observed that men are "being sold that they are sexual subjects (in control), and women are objects.  Moreover, boys are raised (by society) to view their bodies as tools for mastering their environment, while girls are raised to see their bodies as projects to continually work on.  What if we raised girls to view their bodies as tools for mastering their environment?

6.  Alex Day, YouTube phenom, chronicled the saga of his success, explaining that he really wanted to achieve something he didn't know how to do.  But, he pointed out, not knowing how to do something doesn't affect one's burning desire to do it.  Go for it.

7.  Charity Tillemann-Dick sang an aria for us, and then revealed she'd had two lung transplants.  She paid homage to her doctor, who told her that doctors are meant to make safe choices when it comes to patient care, and "we're measured by outcomes." But, her surgeon confided, he measures himself by whether or not he did what he felt was the right decision for his patients.  She's a result of courageous medical care, and generous folks who donated their organs (not to mention her own amazing talent and determination).

8.  Daniel Wilson challenged us to consider what a "bionic human" is anymore, with so many of us with replaced hips, prosthetic limbs, and even neural implants.  He didn't shy away from asking us to consider how society will respond to the possible "advantages" provided by body technology--Oscar Pistorius was allowed to compete in the 2012 Olympics with prosthetic limbs, but what about next time?  What does it mean to 'level the playing field', anyway?  Questions we will increasingly grapple with as new technologies develop.

9.  Representatives from the Right to Play organization encouraged the notion that games and play help learning and community building.  They train educators across the globe in their methods, which transform schools, kids, and communities.

10.  Finally, Esther Earl's father spoke to us about the importance of life, even in grief.  He lost his daughter Esther to cancer when she was only 16, but, he argues, life is the most significant part of life, not death.  Make it so, he  urged his young audience.

Bar Tricks

That right there in the foreground, folks, is the cherry stem I tied in a knot with my tongue a few weeks ago.

In the background is the rum punch I drank to celebrate this feat.

I didn't accomplish much while on vacation with my daughters and extended family in the USVI (the point of the trip was less doing, more being), but there you go.

Here's to the stuff that doesn't happen every day, including ordering drinks garnished with maraschino cherries.

Lanyard Love

Big Sis went to summer camp and came home full of camp cliches--three-legged races, corny and nonsensical (still trying to solve the mystery of Princess Pat and her "ricka bamboo") songs, and lanyards.  Oh, the lanyards!  We invested in some plastic lanyard cord and metal clips for endless braiding and looping and weaving.  We have lanyards as "flair" on backpacks, in the hair-tie basket, and under the couch.  Alas, Little Sis's fine-motor skill development to date prevented her from much success with sophisticated lanyard-weaving. 

Enter the Creative Weavers' Guild.  We encountered them at a weekend art walk, where they were weaving as well as giving away kits for making cool yarn lanyard-y thingies.  The handy little craft was ingeniously simple and somewhat addicting:  my daughters and their friend spent the rest of the day weaving away.  To fashion the kits, a guild member cut a hole in the center of a foam square, and knotted seven strings of yarn and fed them up through the middle with the knot underneath.  Two slits were cut in each side of the foam square, and one string of yarn pulled through each notch, leaving one empty.  To weave the lanyard, one simply counts to the third string to the right (or left--it's only important to remain consistent with direction) of the empty slit, pull that third string out, and pop it back into the empty notch, leaving a new slit vacant.  And over and over again (it's important to run one's fingers through the strings on occasion to keep them from tangling).  A neato braid appears below the square.  We finished the yarn weavings and then made a few out of plastic cord, too.  I imagine these braids could be made from more than seven strands, too, by just cutting more slits in the square.  It's a perfect activity for long car or plane rides...a birthday party or holiday craft...add beads or bells...

Keeping Them Busy, One Braid at a Time

And what do you know?  I even stumbled upon a lovely poem, "The Lanyard," by one of my favorite poets, Billy Collins.  Enjoy. 

Summer Ain't Over

I head back into the office next Tuesday whilst my children wait another month for their new school years to begin.  Some of you have weeks remaining of travel!  Entertaining children!  Sunburns, late-to-beds, sibling squabbles!  Family get-togethers!  I am vowing not to let work kill my summer mojo.  Summer shall simply commence each day when I drive away from school.  Plenty of daylight hours left for sandcastles, picnics, zoo trips, sails, and cartwheels in the backyard.

We've traveled quite a bit this summer and made it a goal to be out and about in our hometown.  But some quieter days at home have been an important part of free time, too.  We've made pies.  Forts.  Elaborate fairy jungle gyms.  Mostly, we've painted:  rocks, glass stones, paper, shells, faces, and ourselves. 

If you have some summer left, I recommend getting the paints out and letting your kids decorate a cardboard box/house.  I splurged for the castle (below), but my mom had a box at her house that lasted months of kids drawing on and playing in it.  Even the nine-year-old nephew had a piece of that timeshare.  Everyone can claim a side and be design king of that section. 

What projects are keeping your kids busy?

Catapult

Last night Big Sis's elementary school hosted a Family Science Night with assistance from the local Science Museum.  Our school's teachers volunteered to man the tables and demonstrated the experiments, all simple hands-on applied physics concepts. 

Among the highlights:  constructing an "earthquake-proof" structure out of toothpicks and mini-marshmallows, designing and executing a rollercoaster for marbles using pipe insulation (cut in half lengthwise) and masking tape (we even made loops that worked!), watching coffee-filter chromatography, launching balloon rockets, and constructing catapults. 

I enjoyed the fact that this was an event I attended alone with Big Sis; I could focus completely on her and the projects.  For once, we had each other's attention exclusively.  Big Sis skipped all the way home. 

She was excited to explain the experiments to her sister.  And lo and behold, when I walked into their bedroom this morning, I found the catapult we made last night, and another that she constructed for Little Sis (these contraptions and some cotton balls would make a great birthday party game, by the way!): 

Cork, tongue depressors, plastic spoons, rubber bands.  Awesome. 

Blossoming Books

Our daughter has her own Piles o' Stuff accumulating. I'm a little concerned we're growing a hoarder. On Saturday she and her cousin broke the plastic tee into six pieces while hitting lemons off it in the backyard, and I directed them to throw it away. Big Sis responded in what's becoming a familiar refrain: "But, Mom, I could use the pieces for something."

For a while she had a candy wrapper collection. Her backpack...eeeeeek. I think we'll plan on cleaning it out over the holidays. Last time I peered inside, I found a morass of silly bands, pebbles, small coins, loose tissues, string, bottle caps, dried flowers, and pencil nubs and useless erasers. She has stashes of "treasures" just about everywhere I look.

The tower of books by her bedside became our latest challenge. She sleeps in a top bunk and stacks her readings and journals on the adjacent dresser. On more than one occasion her hill of books has tumbled over onto the head of an unwitting victim sitting on the carpet below. She knocks her water over weekly. 

I had heard somewhere the idea of mounting a window box to the side of a bunk bed to store books (and other trash), so this was our project tonight: 



Because no project I undertake is done properly, you will note that the window box ledge-bracket-thingies stick out a dangerous distance from the bottom of the window box. Not the right size box or brackets. Oh well; we installed it anyway. But placed it over the dresser so no one pokes an eye out.

I'll save the eye-poking for myself, for when I clean out another of her stashes and risk the wrath of Big Hoarder Sis.