Homeschool Badges Week 1: Animal Care

Studying the matamata turtles

Week One of the Badge system of homeschooling has gone extremely well. We fleshed out our list (I can post as a document as soon as I figure out how :) ) and the children were so excited they didn't know what to choose first. They wanted to tackle the entire list in a month. What can I say? They share my starry-eyed idealism.

Their required badges, Spelling Star, Reading and Mathematics, are mine to choose. I'm still working on a way to break those subjects, especially spelling and reading, down into pieces that will be both challenging and manageable for continuous study. I'm open to suggestions, by the way, if anyone has any ideas. At the moment I am thinking that reading may work similar to the Book It program we had when I was a kid. If they read a certain number of age appropriate books in a month (no credit given for board books, for example), they will earn their Reading Badge for the month. I've been breaking math down by core skills. Spelling remains a bit of a challenge to quantify.

 The optional badges were easier. This months selections were Animal Care, First Aid, Detective Science and Archery.

I did some reasearch and adapted the Animal Care requirements from this list of Cub Scout activities from the UK. Our list is a bit different, but it gave me a jumping off point.

Animal Care Badge Requirements

Choose Four Activities

1. Visit a zoo or nature center. Interview a Zookeeper or Naturalist about the habitats and feeding habits of three different animals.

2. Visit a farm and assist with farm chores. Learn about common animal illnesses and how to prevent and treat them. Learn about the feeding and grooming of three different farm animals. Find out about how animals are cared for before, during and after birth.

3.  Read a book on the care of a specific animal you are interested in knowing more about.

4. Learn about five different fish or sea creatures in a particular aquatic habitat (rivers, lakes, deep sea, coral reef, etc.) Write a paper or give a presentation to your family and friends about the animals you have studied

5. Keep a nature journal for one month. Record the animals you view, or any evidence of animals you see (footprints, scat...) along with your observations of the animals. What are they doing? What do they eat? Are they alone or in groups? Are they frightened of you? Are they calm? Are they sleeping?

6. Care for an animal for one month.

Extra Credit:
-Participate in a junior farm or zookeeper volunteer program or class, such as the Junior Docent program at Como Zoo (http://www.comozooconservatory.org/) or a variety of programs at Gale Woods Farm in Minnestrista, http://www.threeriversparks.org/parks/gale-woods-farm.aspx
programs at the Minnesota Zoo (including a teen volunteer program) http://www.mnzoo.com/education/education_kidsFamilies.asp or the University of Minnesota’s Raptor Center. http://www.raptor.cvm.umn.edu/

The kids chose #s 1, 2, 3 and 6, although they are interested in doing all of them. We've already gone to the zoo and interviewed the zookeeper on the care and feeding of tigers. We registered for a farm helper program at Gale Woods Farm park (which includes breakfast from the farm, yum!) and they have taken over the care of our cat Shadow. All that's left is a trip to the library for a book about cat care and we are done with our first badge. Technically. I suspect they will push to accomplish all of the tasks, and I will be more than happy to accomodate their enthusiasm.

Our New Approach to Homeschooling: Scout Style

Image courtesy of Adafruit

I've been in a weird place with homeschooling lately. Sometimes my brain reminds me of a snowglobe. I've got all of these seemingly random ideas floating around in my head, and until I give them a chance to settle, I have a hard time seeing the pattern. I've been in one of these snowglobe phases with homeschooling the last few months. I could tell there was a plan brewing, but I couldn't really see it yet.

I have never been able to totally nail down our homeschooling style. On one hand, I really, really love classical education. I love its focus on quality reading materials and its rigorous standards. I was not especially challenged in school, at least academically. I'm not saying I was a straight A student, but the main cause of my stumbles was boredom. As an adult, I have struggled with the consequences of the lazy, undisciplined attitude that grew out of too many years of remaining unchallenged. Classical education does an excellent job of addressing that. The downfall is that a lot of classical education is very book oriented. That's great in some ways. We love to read. We love our poetry recitation and our Latin. We're a little obsessed with books, actually, but we are also very hands on learners. Any approach I take that doesn't consider that part of our learning style is going to be incomplete.

Because of our hands-on style, I also have a great love of project based homeschooling. I love its interdisciplinary approach. In the real world, almost nothing falls into neatly divided categories. You don't go to work and work on your math, reading and science. You go to work and do a whole job, often divided into projects. It seems like a more natural way of approaching a lot of learning oriented tasks and the hands-on aspect of it really helps to cement the concepts in the children's minds. We can (and do, all winter) read about gardening, but there's no amount of reading that replicates the experience of taking a garden through all of its stages, planning, planting, tending and harvesting. A project like that touches on a variety of subjects, from the composition of e-mails to a gardener friend asking for advice, reading books on different methods of growing, to the obvious science of actually planting and growing a variety of flowers and foods. The big downfall of this method is that it can be extremely hard to quantify what we have learned and make sure that nothing gets through the cracks.

Cheesemaking

I've been trying to integrate these ideas for a while, with varying degrees of success, but I've lacked that key something that would make it feel like a more cohesive school experience. Then yesterday, while I was conversing with a friend about her son's progress in Boy Scouts, it hit me. Badges!

I've seen these Maker Skill Badges from Adafruit before and really liked the idea, but what if I put together my own system of badges that correspond with skills or academic units that we want to cover? Each badge will have a specific set of activities associated with it that have to be completed. Some badges, like mathematics related badges or reading related badges, will be required. Others will be chosen by me on a monthly basis and others will be chosen by the children themselves. Badges that cannot be purchased, we will make using a button maker. We'll make each of the children a wall-hanging to put over their bed to display the badges they have earned.

We have been brainstorming our lists all morning as we recover from our latest bout of sickness. Here is a sample of what we are thinking of. Some of these ideas are borrowed from the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts or Adafruit, others are our own creation.

Car care

Carpentry
Circuits
Biohacking
Aeronautics
Fossil Hunter
Naturalist
Tesla Coil
Ohm's Law
Soldering (already working on)
Solar Panels
Cooking (Series of Badges)
Baking
Money Manager
Adventure (borrowed from Cub scout list)
Farmer
Animal Care
Communicator
Reader (Series)
Cyclist
Equestrian
Geologist
Marine Biology
Navigator
Faith (Series of badges)
Personal Safety
Road Safety
First Aid
Out of Your Comfort Zone
Mathematician (series of badges by skill)
Programming
Historian (series of badges by historical era)
Ornithologist
Winter Sports/Recreation
Summer Sports/Recreation
Child Development
Detective
Spelling Star
Foreign Language (Series)
Orienteering
Storytelling
Poetry
Gardener
Nutrition
Swimming
Family Camp
Fire Safety
Knife safety
Knots and ropes
Fiber Arts (series, knitting, crochet, sewing, embroidery)
Fine Arts (series, drawing, painting, sculpture)
Paper crafts
Pottery
Bike Repair
Robotics
Wild Life
Adventure Racing
Music (series)
Meteorology
Traveler
World Cultures
Scientist (series)
Theater
Domestic Skills
The Great Outdoors
Fishing
Jewelery making
Architecture
Photography
Map Master (Geography)
Corporal Works of Mercy
Citizenship and Government
Fiction Writing
Non-fiction writing
NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)
Journaling/blogging
Journalism
Nature Journaling
Memory Master
Hospitality
Manners
Handwriting Hero
Adventure Sports/Recreation
Photography
Crafts (series)
Gymnastics
Human Anatomy
Martial Arts
Dance
Letterboxing

Geocaching

Scuba Diving

Obviously, this is quite a hodge podge of ideas, some of which will have to be sifted through, organized and sorted, but its an exciting list of learning activities that should help to get the brain juice flowing.

Help us Solve a Mystery!

Bella is a mystery lover, especially when the mysteries involve art. She spent a full month talking her siblings out of playing Avengers and into playing Finding the Rembrandt's Storm on the Sea of Galilee for the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum. If she were any less sincere, it would be unbearably pretentious. She comes by it honestly. We are art lovers in our family. My sister owns an art gallery. When she and I were homeschooled as teens we'd get our work done by noon and spend the rest of the day at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. 

 

That said, we are not exactly on a fine art budget here in the Griffith household, so I get most of my artwork at the Goodwill Gallery. I brought these two pictures home the other day for $5 a piece, with another $5 for the candle sconce between them. I was sick to death of looking at the bare walls and these just kind of fell into my cart. (tangentially, whenever I am thrift store shopping I'll look at the prices and think, "Are you kidding? $5! This is not Target! You're a thrift store. Price like one." Then I get home and think, "Actually, that was a pretty sweet deal.")

 

 

 

As we were hangning these beauties, Isabella read the back of this one, on which someone had written A Little Princess, with a bunch of numbers above and below it. (and a price, written in another hand, of $40. I guess it was a good deal.) She set about trying to find out which princess and prince these pictures could be.

 



 

We searched the internet for the name of the picture and, not surprisingly, came up with nothing but a bunch of links to Amazon selling the Frances Hodgson Burnett novel by the same name. 

 

Next we decided to look for the clues in the pictures. The castle in the background, for example. Windsor Castle, maybe? We're not sure, but it could be. 

 

We asked my dad, who thought they looked a bit like the work of Thomas Gainsborough (The Blue Boy, which we saw at the Huntington Library just last winter). 

 

I can see his point. We did a search on Gainsborough and discovered that he painted King George III, who had 15 children. We looked up each of his children and found nothing that convinced us one way or the other.

And then I thought, I have a whole lot of nerdball friends and family. There's someone out there who can help us with this. Any ideas? What era is the clothing? Recognize the castle? The country? The style of painting? Do a nerdy seven year old a solid and help her find the answers.

Weekend Goodies

 

Zach surprised me this Friday with a dinner date night. Actually, he surprised himself, too, since he had forgotten that he had found a babysitter until she e-mailed him that day to confirm. I had already assembled the pizza and rosemary focaccia for dinner, so I held off on baking it until the babysitter was on her way. The kids got pizza and a movie night with our good friends, Mary and Gabe, and I got to eat without cutting up other people's food. It was a win all around.

We go out on a lot of dates, actually. With my dad living here too, we are pretty much free to go once the kids are all in bed, which is usually between 8:00-8:30 for the older ones, earlier for the littles. Usually we end up having half price Happy Hour appetizers somewhere. Dinner dates, though, are rare.

With five little kids, we don't often go out to eat as a family, at least not for full meals. Don't get me wrong, the kids are actually pretty well behaved at restaurants, but it's not cheap to feed the hordes when we dine out. Consequently, I find myself often thinking, "I'd like to try that place. Maybe the next time we get a dinner date." Then, when that magic day comes, I get in a panic and my mind draws a complete blank. Luckily, this time, Zach remembered that I had wanted to try a cafe that a Facebook friend had recently opened, Betty's Cafe and Pies in Eagan.

Delicious

I am a big, fat wimp about trying new things in restaurants. I'm cheap and like to know what I'm getting for my money, so although there is a part of me that is always vowing to try something different next time, I usually end up with my standards. French Silk is my default pie. I loved their French Silk. It actually tasted like chocolate instead of chocolate-flavoured sugar, a sin many french silks fall victim to.

Anyway, with a partial loaf of Rosemary Olive Oil Bread and a partial loaf of Rosemary Foccacia leftover the following day, I decided to make a batch of croutons.

 

Usually, I can take or leave croutons. The one exception was the croutons at a restaurant I volunteered at in my youth, St Martin's Table in Minneapolis. I believe the restaurant is now closed, but I still have fond memories of it. After my final layoff from my brief career in IT, I had hit a crisis period in my life. I knew I didn't want to go back to another software job, but I had no idea what I did want to do. It was a cold, harsh winter, both literally and spiritually. Rather than sitting around in my pajamas feeling sorry for myself, I decided to fill the void with acts of service.

 St Martin's was a non-profit restaurant staffed mostly by volunteers, with a small core staff of some of the kindest, most gentle people I knew. They served fresh baked bread, homemade soups, salads and sandwiches, hot tea, coffee and some lovely desserts. It reminded me of a hobbit-hole, with its simple, natural decor and hearty portions of simple, wholesome food. I worked several times a week as a volunteer waitress, with tips going to a different hunger related charity every month. It was the bright spot in my otherwise bleak winter. Consequently, salad has become something of a comfort food to me. This time of year, that is a very good thing.

I didn't add any herbs to this batch because the bread itself was herbed, but I did add garlic. I don't know what I like more about this recipe, the croutons themselves or the little, buttery crumbs on the bottom of the pan. Both are delicious. Only half of them made it into the salad. The kids (with, maybe, a little help from their mother) ate the rest as a snack.

On the Fourth Day of Christmas...

Candles lit from the Peace Light

 

Today is the fourth day of Christmas. Yes. It is still Christmas through Epiphany. I love celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas, but over the years it's become an increasingly simplified celebration. My mom was always good at the big, over-the-top celebrations. I think it's a gift she has. She has an eye for the beautiful and we always looked forward to her perfectly wrapped presents, the house decked, as it were, with boughs of holly and the dozens and dozens of Christmas cookies, candies and treats. Those count among some of my best memories. She jokingly called herself The Queen of Christmas, and she was. She made it a special, magical time for us and she seemed to find a lot of joy in the process. When we had our own family, I tried that once and quickly realized that I was going to have to blaze my own trail. I am not the heir to that throne.

 

By knowing my limits, keeping things simple and mostly avoiding celebrating Christmas until Advent is actually over, the Twelve Days of Christmas are a joyful time, not just for the kids, but for me as well. The one thing I can't hack beyond Christmas Day, though, is Christmas eating. Enough is as good as a feast, as Mary Poppins once said. After a few days of constant eating, my body is ready to slow things down and get back to basics.

  



In a pretty glass to make it celebratory

 Zach grew up with a dad who was very much a fan of health food and a food he has a particular, and somewhat odd, sense of nostaliga for is carrot juice. I can't manage straight carrot juice myself. It's just not, well, fruity enough for me. Add an apple, though, and I'm good. Carrots are good, cheap food (we get a mega bag at Costco for maybe $5 or $6) and they juice up quickly. Since the only way to keep fruit for any length of time in this house is to buy it in quantities that would suffice to feed the monkey house at Como Zoo, by Fridays of most weeks I usually have a few thises and thats in need of using up. Friday is my juicing day. Basically, I juice some carrots and then toss in anything else that needs to be used up. This week it is, apples, oranges, clementines, ginger and grapefruit.

A gallon pitcher that will be full when I am done

I juice the carrots and anything else that might have useful pulp first and set it aside. From this batch I saved the carrot, apple and ginger pulp. You have to add a little extra liquid, but it makes a very tasty carrot bread. Or carrot apple ginger bread, as the case may be. If you put the juice in a pretty glass and put a little butter on the bread, it works for a celebratory Christmas breakfast.

Settling in for Winter

 

 

Winter is finally here! Well, winter weather has been here for a month, but I refuse to acknowledge winter's existance until it is really, truly winter according to the calendar. This is Minnesota. If you let the weather make those kinds of decisions for you, you'll lose out on a good chunk of spring and fall. I used to hate winter, so much so that I packed my bags in my early 20s and moved out West to find the sun, only to discover after a few Los Angeles winters that it is exhausting to have nothing but sunshine. I like weather. I like to have an excuse to sit in my pajamas by a warm fire with a cup of cocoa and do needlework.

 

 

 

 

I love bread baking and soup making. I've been making this Rosemary Olive Oil Bread a lot this fall and winter. It makes four loaves at a time and I always end up thinking that there will be some leftover to freeze, but it's so good that it never lasts that long. I'm lucky if there is some for lunch the next day. It's been a while since I baked bread regularly. The past two winters I was pregnant and tired, but I seem to have gotten my feet under me after three babies in a row, so there will be more bread this year.

My grain mill might even find its way out of the pantry. It was a hand-me-down from my father-in-law, his spare grain mill. We were just sitting there in his cabin in Arkansas talking about how much I wanted to try milling my own grains someday and he went to his cupboard and got me one. That is why I love him.  

 



 

Rosemary Olive Oil Bread

 

 

Even in winter, though, it's nice to have signs of life. I bought this at the store thinking it was just cut, fresh rosemary, and it turned out to be a live plant. I'm going to repot it and see if it grows. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but it's worth a try. 

 

 

Which reminds me of another sign of life in the Bleak Midwinter. The arrival of the first seed catalogs. Is it funny that seed catalogs always remind me of winter? Probably not.

 



 

 

Happy Feast of St Stephen!

Today is the feast day of St Stephen, the first martyr of the church (stoned to death) and patron saint of both myself and my father, Steve. It's kind of a tough thing, finding a way to celebrate our feast day after eating our weekly allotment of calories in the matter of a few hours just the day before. I'm not even kidding you, we have gone through three dozen eggs and two pounds of butter in the past two days. The last thing I am in the mood for is more dessert. In the past we have sometimes done brunch, but alas, I am nearly out of eggs and it just wouldn't feel celebratory dragging five Christmased up kids to a restaurant. Still, we wanted to make it special and it is, after all, still the 12 days of Christmas.

Dad came up with a plan. He and a friend of ours went to visit our friends at the Queen of Peace Friary and brought home the Bethlehem Peace Light.

 

The Bethlehem Peace Light is lit from the grotto in Bethlehem where Jesus was born and carried in a blast-proof miners lamp, first to Europe, then to North America, with a message of peace. It travels to various churches and from there, people can bring it to their homes. The Franciscan Brothers of Peace have it available in their chapel along with an oil lantern to transport it (which you have to bring back to the friary).

Dad bought an entire case of 6 day candles to put in our lantern at home. We're going to see if we can keep the flame burning until next year. It was a lovely, simple way of celebrating our feast day. Much nicer than Dad's original suggestion of making rock candy. :)