Grocery Store Wars

Regular readers will know I am a BIG fan of the sustainable and local food movement. I'm a believer that God gave us this beautiful planet and with this gift comes great responsibility to make sure this gift is taken care of and nurtured. ANYHOW...AH and I came across this silly and fun video on YouTube today. We both love Star Wars so this was right up our alley. I hope you enjoy it...we had a laugh!

A Blast from the Past

Do you remember the set of books, Childcraft? I loved them as a child. We didn't have all of them, but the ones we had were old and well loved. I was browsing the bookshelves of Goodwill last week when I came upon 2 pristine Childcraft books from the 1990 How and Why series. Each was priced at $2.99 and I grabbed both of them and began to search the shelves for more. Alas, I didn't find more, but the ones I did buy have been a hoot! AH and I paged through Volume 13, Mathemagic last night. Remember, this is a child who has had issues with math for most of his school life. He loves this book!! We solved rebuses, attempted to solve brainteasers and read about squaring numbers. He came up with amazingly creative solutions to some of the brainteasers, even if they weren't the "right answer" and that is exactly what I'm striving for: problem solving creativity. It seems to me that creativity and using your imagination is the key to liking math and understanding it. A natural and playful creativity cannot but make math beautiful and (gasp) fun. AH actually asked if we could do some more of the activities in that book today! I know he has a long way to go, but at least we have found part of the path and are enjoying our walk.

My favorite math websites and blogs:
Math Mama Writes
Living Math

An long, but very interesting, article on math and creativity:
A Mathematician's Lament

The Answers

AH posted some puzzle pictures the other day and I'm here to give you the answers. How did you do?

A Puzzle

A post by AH:

Today I took my mom's camera outside and took a bunch of pictures of things in our backyard. Try and see if you can figure out what some of these things are. Answers will be posted tomorrow. Have fun.

Book Arts

We were off to another home school adventure recently. This time to Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) in the Open Book Building in Minneapolis. This is a great resource that I'm just beginning to learn about. I signed AH up for 3 classes: Journal making, marbling and book making. I usually have to ask AH before I sign him up for field trips, but this one was filling fast and I made the decision alone. Poor me...for the entire 45 minute drive I heard a litany of complaints about too many field trips, how this one sounded "lame" and why can't we just do stuff at home?! AH really is a homebody. He can entertain himself for days on end without complaint. The key to getting AH to enjoy something, is to just get him there. I think the confinement of the car can wreak havoc with his psyche. He hates long drives and Minneapolis is about a 40 to 45 minute drive from our home. But once he is at the destination, he usually has a blast! We usually try to listen to our history CD, The Story of the World, or things like Beethoven Lives Upstairs to make the trip go faster. The trip to MCBA was great once we got there. We walked in and immediately recognized one of his favorite homeschool friends. AH had no idea what classes he was signed up for and I was a little apprehensive about his reaction to the marbling class. I had nothing to fear! He does love art and this was art and magic combined. They say a picture is worth a thousand words... Using the comb to drag through the paints

Another technique using a chop stick

One of his finished projects which we matted and framed.

Making a book starts with covering the front and back covers

Attaching the covers to the binding tape

The finished book and journal!

A fun project

AH is a pesto lover. Has been since he was 3. It didn't matter that it was green...he loved it! He still does. Tortellini and Pesto is his favorite dinner in the entire universe. I love to make homemade pesto using our own basil. I grow basil every year, but it just doesn't get as big as I want it to. A while back I bought the book, The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City by Kelly Coyne and Eric Knutzen . I find stories of homesteading a fascinating read, and I was not disappointed by this one. The fun aspect of this book is that it has projects you can do. I've been looking forward to doing one in particular and have been collecting materials to accomplish it. Today AH and I built ourselves a self watering container(or, as they call it now, a sub-irrigated planter) for a basil plant. According the the authors, basil needs even amounts of water. I am really not known as being the most organized of gardeners and my plants usually have to deal with a bit of dryness between the times I remember to water. So it was with pleasure I had AH help with this project. He is an enthusiastic gardener, is thrilled at the prospect of more pesto, and, besides, he got to use the electric drill!! Of course I have pictures:

AH with the finished project and the book that inspired it

AH filling the reservoir with water (that's Solvay, our Samoyed, making sure he's doing it right!)

What is the deal between boys and electric tools?!

The authors have a website called Homegrown Evolution. Check it out!

"Hey Mom, I have an Idea..."

Those were the words I heard one morning about two weeks ago. I should have known those words were going to mean work for me!! I don't mind work, but usually AH's projects have me doing the grunt work and this was no exception.

"I want to sell stuff on e-bay and make some money!

"Okay," I replied. "What stuff do you have that you can sell?"

He thought for a moment and then was gone. He came back 5 minutes later with 3 books. Good choices, too. They were books that were given to him that were WAY over his reading level. He had given them a good try, but they were too much work to read to have any fun.

We were off to the computer to list our items on e-bay. Since it was easier to just use my account instead of setting up a new one with a cool name (which he couldn't decide on, anyway!) we got right into it. We found the stock photo. We researched prices, we guessed on postage and then listed our items. For 4 days, there was nothing. He lost interest. I had to keep checking! He thought it was cool that he finally had a bid after 6 days. After the 7 day auction he had sold one item. We learned not to guess on the postage...I thought I had guessed high, but I was short $.45. Oh well, not a horrible mistake. AH is just happy to have made about US$4.00. (I paid for the envelope, mailed it in a timely manner and pretty much handled everything.) He is pumped for his next sale and to become the next mega retailer on e-bay!! I think I'll let him do the work from now on...