Live Love Laugh Learn

Unschooling is...

Making pumpkin bread in your jammies.

Another Cooking Experiment

Chloe's been in the kitchen so much lately it's hard to keep up.  The other day she wanted to make some naan to go with some leftover Indian food we had.  We discovered that you need plain yogurt for naan, but it was late and we had only vanilla yogurt.  She decided to make chapatis which didn't call for yogurt.  They came out a little dense, though she liked them. 

I got some plain yogurt since then, so she decided to make the naan last night.  The dough was really nice, but we had some trouble with the first few.  I think because she turned them on the griddle rather than cooking them only one side. 

They should be cooked on one side, then put under a broiler to puff for a minute.  Anyway, the first few weren't so good and didn't puff, but the last ones came out pretty good.

Yum!  I had mine with butter and honey because the Indian food was gone by then!

Love, Ryan

We had such a great visit today with my brother's family.  They are visiting from Virginia for a ski vacation.  Luckily, the mountain has snow even though it's almost spring-like down here.  Today we had lunch, cookie decorating, a walk with Scrabble and Valentine making!  First, the cousins had to get to know each other again.  It was two years ago that we last saw them and Dasha is not quite 3.  We brought out the wooden toys and the girls had a wonderful time playing with all the animals.

Cookie decorating was lots of fun for everyone.

Then we took a little walk and came back for tea and cookies.

Ryan and Dasha bonded over a book.

Then we all made Valentines.  The kitchen island was covered in supplies, and we spent hours making them.  Embossing turned out to be the favorite activity.   

Ryan really became engrossed in the embossing, enough to start calling himself the flossing/frosting/'bossing man!  He was amazing.  Like I said in the last post he's not much for arts and crafts, but he spent several hours doing them and when he was finished had about 30 Valentines!  We are saving some for Campfire, some for the family Valentine dinner and some are being mailed to relatives.

Be Mine

Today our homeschool group was due to meet at the library for a Valentine making craft.  Ryan was really antsy to get going, but we had a couple of hours to go, so he decided to make one on his own.  This is completely his own creation except that Chloe helped him cut the large heart and I made a template for him to draw around.  This is the very first multimedia art project he has devised on his own and actually carried out!  I am so proud of him and you can see how proud he is too.  This is for someone special...

Just after this we made cookies to bring to the party and the kids had a good time decorating.  Chloe had a friend sleep over last night, so we had many hands helping!

Lastly, look out Hollywood!  Chloe and Ryan are spending the evening making another one of their movies.  These movies are so cute.  Chloe usually gets a story idea from Ryan and composes the dialogue, then they both narrate it while Chloe operates the camera and moves the pieces around.  These are such treasures.  I think we need a digital video camera so we can put them online.

Have a great weekend!  We'll be selling Campfire candy and starting a weeklong visit with my brother and his family from Virginia.  This is such a treat to have cousins come and visit US!

Celebration #3

On Tuesday Chloe wanted to bring cupcakes to Campfire to celebrate her birthday, so she spent Monday evening making them.  It was really great.  She made them all by herself from start to finish, with only a couple of questions for me.  They came out really delicious, but the really cool thing was that she decorated each one individually with the interests of each kid in mind.  Here she is with her new Alton Brown apron.  Alton is the host of Good Eats which I believe is Chloe's favorite show right now.  She decorated these with the icings and sprinkles that she got for her birthday from her Grammy and Grampa.

I think it's safe to say the cupcakes were very popular!  We lucked out with the weather early this week.  We had 4 days of temps in the 60's.  This is early February in Central Oregon when it should be in the 20's or 30's.  We decided to meet at the park for Campfire because of the beautiful weather, but we didn't do any CF activities because playing was the order of the day.  It was so nice to have a break from all the Campfire candy selling. 

Early this week Chloe also made this adorable dragon to accompany this book which she got for her birthday.  The dragon is made of Sculpey clay.

Final thought:  If you've ever wondered if an unschooled child would be interested in (or even know about) certain things, take a look at what I found on Chloe's door the other morning.

She did this completely on her own using the information in the book, English From the Roots Up.  She's be so taken with word orgins for the last year or two that she's taken to carrying this book around.  She loves to tell me when she's figured out another set of words that are related by a root.  So, I guess it's not too surprising that she would be interested in the Greek alphabet.  I still thought it was cool.  Here's a close-up view of the circle.  Can you read it?

 

Little of This, Little of That

We had a nice birthday celebration for Chloe today.  It was just us and my parents and we played games, made homemade pizza and ate cake and icecream.  It was a nice, relaxing afternoon/evening after the craziness of the week.

First of all, for her birthday, Chloe chose her favorite celebration breakfast which is homemade cinnamon rolls.  These are a cinch to make and are sooooo delicious!  She joined in while I was making them.  It's so cool to see her having a great time in the kitchen.  She never showed much interest in cooking until last year, except for the occasional cookie decorating.  Since she discovered the food network and Alton Brown (her favorite celebrity chef) she's been making all kinds of stuff.  We got her an Alton Brown apron for her birthday and I think she was most excited to open that one!  She makes fabulous homemade macaroni and cheese, cookies of all kinds and her pesto, mozzarella sandwiches which make the whole house smell fabulous.  Now, she's trying out bread making.  Very Cool! 

Here are the rolls ready to go in the fridge overnight. What I like best about this recipe is that you make them the day before, let them rise in the fridge overnight, then bake them in the morning.  You can get up and have steaming hot cinnamon rolls in a half an hour!  I didn't get an after photo, but trust me, these are delicious!

Another thing that Chloe has been doing lately is making up her own knitting patterns for these adorable animals.  She designed each one and hopes to have an Etsy shop some day.  I'd like to do that too, but haven't had time to think about what I want to sell.  She tends to make a plan and execute it right away.

Okay, I was just about to download today's photos and inadvertently deleted them all!  Oh, I am so mad, but I know what I did wrong.  I wanted to protect the new ones and delete the old ones before downloading because I didn't want to wait for 150 pictures to download, when I had downloaded most of them yesterday.  Now I have none from Chloe's birthday, what a shame! 

Well, here's the goodies in the mail lately.  I participated in two swaps on Imagination Tribe lately.  On the left is the beautiful basket I received in the artful container trade.  This one is woven and beaded and made by Linda.  It's so pretty and just right for holding my new ATC's that I got in trade!  On the right is the altered board book I received.  In real life the colors in these are so similar that they always catch my eye in my studio.  I keep them on a high chest and everytime I look over the colors are so similar.  It doesn't show up so much here though.

The book is really cool.  It's all about what an unschooler will do this year.  Here are some of the inside pages.

I'd like to post the name of the person who made this book, but I can't get in my studio right now, without waking my husband up.  I think it was made by Sheila.  Anyway, we love it!  Thanks to both of the talented artists who have enriched our lives lately.

Random Sample

Lots of stuff happening here.  Chloe read about Dungeons and Dragons here and decided to make a game of her own.  She researched D & D online and at the library and decided she could make her own rules, board and use all the household critters for the figures.  It was so cool to listen to Chloe and Ryan play the game.  Ryan, who normally doesn't like game playing found this one really cool because of the role-playing involved.  He could make his dinosaurs battle and it was part of the game!

One day last week Ryan got the idea to make foil replicas of his cars.  He spent quite a while forming them, then raced them and had a great time.

Chloe got the idea to make pretzels a few days ago, so we made these and brought them to our COOL group.  Yum!

At the COOL meeting we did a little Destination Imagination fun.  The kids split into two groups and had the task of creating the tallest tower they could with two drinking straws, a handful of marshmallows (can't remember the exact number) and 20 toothpicks.

Yesterday, the Campfire club met at a local ice skating rink.  My kids don't have much experience with skating, so they clung to the rail at first.  It took Chloe a while to feel comfortable, but she really enjoyed it.  Ryan stayed on the rail the whole time, until one of the moms took him out for a ride.  He had a good time and lasted much longer than the last time we tried it!  I hope we can get out to try this again this winter.

Chloe and I just hosted an Artful Container trade on Imagination Tribe.  It was fun to see what we got.  There was quite a variety in media, from pottery to papier mache, to weaving, to papercraft.  Here are our entries (Chloe's first).  More photos can be found on Flickr.