Making homemade ice pops and studying freezing

Something entirely prompted by Sarah 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.

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!)

Sarah 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.

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

In the meantime, Sarah 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.

We're lucky to have a cool-bottomed electric teapot, which allows Sarah 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!

 And, yes, we ate our popsicles - here's Sarah with one of the lemonade ones. They tasted pretty good! :)

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

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 Sarah about ME from Mari at Nothing in Particular. Second, I shamelessly interviewed Sarah 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!

So, first up, let's hear what Sarah 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 Sarah's first day of 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.

My note: This actually made me a little sad in a way. I don't want Sarah 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.

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. Sarah 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 Sarah 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: Sarah 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 Sarah 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!"

Our scrapbook: A whirlwind day at the shore

(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, Sarah 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...

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.

 Then you end up with real-life "Angry Birds!"

We went to the Ripley's Believe it or Not! odditorium, which I mentioned yesterday, and Sarah 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 Sarah 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.

The scene at the right of Lucy was probably my favorite part of our trip. Sarah 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.

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

 

Sarah'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, Sarah's petting a cat she dubbed Cinnamon, who was incredibly young and friendly and soft. Sarah says she wants to donate to Alley Cat Allies to help fund the Boardwalk Cats project; you can read more about that project here.

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.

Linking up today to Happy Family Times and Moments to Remember... both of which always have lots of good stuff, check them out!

Family reading roundup: All about animals

Since our last reading roundup, Sarah has focused most of her reading time on animals. All sorts of animals.

These have, by far, been her three favorites. We read parts of the National Geographic Book of Mammals almost every night - having worked through the topics of whales, elephants, porpoises, hamsters ... and we intersperse that with things like the True or False books, just to mix it up.

The reading level in the true or false books is probably slightly young for Sarah, while the writing in the National Geographic book is probably just slightly more advanced than she's used to. I figure that balances out? All of these are definitely some of our favorite animal-learning resources!

She's also been reading about Ripley's Believe It or Not! after we visited their "Odditorium" in Atlantic City, N.J. (more on that to come tomorrow).

The rest of our family has very little to offer in terms of reading this week. Chris said he's been "in browsing mode," but not invested in any particular book, and I finished a regency romance called "Beloved Avenger." I know, you're amazed by our literary prowess, are you not?

So what's your family reading this week?

A homemade skateboard from an old bookcase and used roller blades

While we were working to clean up our basement family room a bit earlier this month, Sarah found a no-longer-needed removable shelf from a cheap bookcase, and she had a brainstorm.

"I want to make my own skateboard!"

She has been playing with the board ever since, sliding it across the family room carpet, using it as a miniature see-saw, all sorts of things. We kept telling her that we'd have to figure out some "real" wheels if she wanted it to actually bear up to her weight, and I'd thought we'd scope out some yard sales a little later in the spring.

Well, remember our trip to the Salvation Army half-price sale earlier this week, where we found our pyramid-building kit for a dollar? Well, on the same trip, we found an old pair of roller blades with blue wheels - Sarah's favorite color - also for the winning price of a buck. I looked them over, decided it would be doable to get the wheels out of the blade assembly, and we brought them home. (Homeschooling on the Cheap friends - may I recommend the Salvation Army store for MANY of your homeschooling projects? We <3 it!!)

Today, Sarah comes upstairs with her hands FULL of tons of building materials. "What's this?" I asked. "We're going to make my skateboard!" she announced.

So we set to work. Sarah fetched our biggest screwdriver, and I helped remove the wheels from the roller blades. The other main part I helped with involved the saw - I'm not THAT brave of a mom.

See the board at right? That's our shelf. The smaller pieces sitting on it were cut from a thin piece the same length as the shelf; it was supposed to be a piece of the frame, to hide the "feet" of the bookcase or something. So Sarah marked the right size, I sawed the thin piece of wood, and she nailed the smaller pieces in place to serve as axles for our wheels.

See me at left, above? I'm explaining to Sarah how we can use either nails or screws, and having her test how the wheels spin with each method. We ended up using nails all around, in part because the particleboard wasn't really "receptive" to a lot of our screwdriver efforts, but also because Sarah liked how the wheels spun on them. She also figured out the nail length - how long would they need to be in order to attach things the way she wanted without coming out the other side


The other two photos prove that we were at least marginally successful - Sarah's skateboard DID hold her weight. Nails, though, don't stay real well in crummy particleboard, so the wheels have a tendency to come out pretty easily. We just told her to be careful, and she was.

 

Sarah was pretty proud of her finished product! I was so proud of her for having an idea and working out how to see it through. (And her hammering skills are REALLY improving, and she even knows which kind of screwdriver is which. A few weeks ago, she didn't know the difference between a nail and a screw!)

 

Because of its lack of ability to keep all four wheels together consistently, Sarah decided her skateboard would make a better animal wagon for Winter, Atlantic and Lucy, her stuffed animals acquired this weekend. (THEIR story will make another post, maybe tomorrow; here's a hint, they accompany Sarah's new hoodie, seen in today's photos!)

From homeschooled student to homeschooling mom: Going full circle, Part 2

As we start to settle in just slightly to our new "this is what learning is to us now" rhythm, I've been thinking a LOT lately about my own educational experiences. In some ways, I'm very different than Sarah - and that can be hard - but in a lot of ways, the more I think about it, the more I realize that if our personalities are different, well, our educational experiences have an awful lot in common! This was supposed to be the second half of the two-part event, but I realized well into it that it should be a trilogy; if you haven't already, before reading today's post about the first part of Sarah's educational journey, please read this post to learn about MY educational background and how it influenced me, and follow today's post up with a read of the conclusion here! It's long, as was the first part, but I promise cute pictures and, hopefully, a better understanding of how we've found ourselves where we are!

Sarah was an incredibly easy-going baby and toddler. She was born while I was in my second semester of college and working full-time, so I consider this a complete sign that there is a God and he cares about my life. I would truly not have made it if she'd been the kind of baby who didn't sleep, who cried all the time, who hated to be left with a sitter.

In fact, Sarah was the opposite of all of that.

This was the baby who slept 12 to 14 hours a night, so much so that I took her to the doctor and said, "Are they supposed to do that?" (He thought I was nuts.)

This was the baby who had no problem leaving me to go to a sitter, which was good, because lacking the ability to afford actual daycare, Sarah spent a lot of time with friends and friends of friends and friends' parents and friendly coworkers. No matter where I left her, she had a big smile when I dropped her off and an even bigger one when I picked her up.

I became a full-time single mom when Sarah was about a year old and her biological father and I split up, and even that didn't seem to be "a big deal" to her. Not because she didn't miss Josh - especially at first, I think she did - but she was truly resilient, and we were lucky to have some great friends in our lives who really filled the gap. (Funny story: I have a friend - ALSO named Josh, different guy, though - who is several years younger than me, and who I call my "little brother." His parents were Sarah's regular babysitters for quite a long time, and he doted on her as well. Sarah would get confused about the name, though, and when THIS Josh's parents would take her along with them to his soccer games at his Catholic high school, she'd run along the field yelling, "Daddy! Daddy!" I admit some slight delight in the awkwardness of this.)

Anyway, Sarah was what I always considered to be above-average, especially in an intelligence sense. She would learn things quickly, and she seemed to really pay attention to things around her. ("Mom, picture moved. Why moved picture? Not moved picture!" So much for furniture rearranging with a toddler.)

The photo above is from Sarah's kindergarten class; she's the smiling girl in the yellow-topped dress, second from left in the second row from the bottom. She absolutely loved this class, especially her teacher (at top right) and teacher's aide (top left). 

Our scrapbook: The one where we made the pyramids, a cake and our own bowling alley

Here's a look at just a few of the fun things we've done this week, all involving "stuff we've made."

First off, Sarah made and iced a cake! It was a boxed mix and packaged vanilla icing, but she did it all on her own and then chose how she wanted to decorate it! (It tasted pretty good... I'm not a big cake fan, but I was impressed.)

Then Sarah had a great idea... she wanted to make our own bowling game. (Out of recyclables... kind of a theme with us.)

There were 18 "pins" and some interesting rules, like if you knocked over the biggest one, you got a bonus equal to five times the number of pins you had knocked down. No spares - one shot per frame - and bonus points were given for shot creativity (but those "didn't really count," Sarah said.) She, Chris and I played this for quite a while!

Finally, we SUPER lucked out at half-price day at the Salvation Army. (Does that make me sound really cheap? If so, I hope in a good way!) There was a kit with everything you needed to make a model pyramid out of foam... originally $2, on sale for $1. Completely unused. Guess who took that home with them?!

She worked on this for probably close to an hour last night; then, today, she found a word search puzzle in a book she has about deserts, read all sorts of accompanying facts about them, and then started making a PowerPoint about Egyptian history, complete with pyramid background template.

Talk about good fun at all the right prices... this is my kind of week!

Super science with stuff around the house

Amazing day today - and it really didn't even kick off until 2 p.m., when I got home from an in-office shift for my part-time job!

When I got home, Sarah greeted me with a hot cup of tea she'd made me; the dishwasher was running - because she needed a small plate to use to microwave her lunch - and, while she'd dropped a plate earlier and it had broken, she'd cleaned it all up and calmly told me about it!

(At this point, I'm thinking perhaps I'm in the Twilight Zone... this is super-nice, but a little surprising!)

Next, Sarah decides - and I'm not even sure how this came up - that she wants to bake a cake. More on this to come tomorrow, but she did it almost entirely herself, icing and decorating and all. Wait'll you see the finished product - it turned out super-cool.

THEN she tells me she's going to put away the dishes, and so she does.

After that, I went to tae kwon do class, she hung out at home for a while, and while I was gone, Chris came home from work. And that's where the fun really kicks in.

As someone - cough, me - might have possibly forgotten to put the pork in the slow cooker this morning, we didn't have the planned menu for dinner. Instead, Sarah microwaved some packaged noodles and cheese for herself, and I had a light snack of string cheese and fruit before heading to my class. Well, when Chris comes home, not having a specific meal ready to go, he digs into his treat from the grocery store - fried chicken. Sarah even tried some, probably a first for her, and was kind of middle-of-the-road on it. But, when she saw Chris eating the meat off the chicken bones, well, that was interesting.

God bless Chris... he goes, "Hey, my dinner is turning into a biology lesson in here." He had started to explain to Sarah, by breaking open one of the bones, that birds' bones are often hollow inside so they can be light enough to allow for wing-flapping and flying. (You can read more about that here.)

Well, then Sarah goes, "Hey, I have a bone... I have the wishbone from the turkey, and we made it bendy. Can we make these bones bendy?" Well, into a jar with vinegar two of the bones go, and from there, things kind of took off.

First of all, Sarah wanted to know if the chicken bones would do the same thing her turkey wishbone did, so we Googled it. Up comes "Science Bob," who apparently is a pretty well known "science performer," having been on things like Jimmy Kimmel Live and what have you. Here's his version of the "rubber bone" experiment.

Well, we start reading via Science Bob, and I really like his style - it's not just, "Hey, kids, here's a neat thing to do," but he really explains WHY the bone starts to bend and gives you ideas on how to go from a demonstration to an experiment. (Do differently sized bones become bendy at different times? That's one Sarah's working on - her two from Chris's dinner are wildly different in size. She made a good hypothesis and everything.)

Then, I start clicking around on Science Bob's site and get a huge list of science experiments you can do right at home. Sarah decided that we HAD to try to clean pennies with vinegar. (Science Bob, by the way, DEFINITELY wins for "favorite resource this week." I might have a mom-crush on him.)

Check out that before-and-after! All you need is about a quarter-cup of vinegar, a small bowl (not glass), and a teaspoon of salt. Once you've mixed the salt and vinegar, add the pennies - and really watch them. You'll see the copper oxide (the thing that makes them dark and grungy-looking) begin to disappear almost right away.

Well, Science Bob's version of this keeps going, and so did ours. After several rounds of pennies, we did, as he suggests, try putting some household hardware - nuts and bolts - into the vinegar solution. Try it - you'll be amazed. The metal attracts the copper that's been leached out of the pennies, and the shiny silver will change to a coppery-black color!

At right is what our washers looked like when we started. We left the one on the right alone, but we put the one at left into the vinegar-salt mixture after we'd "cleaned" our pennies, and that's what happened! Even more amazingly, after we'd left it there for some time, you could see what we believe was the salt forming almost a "halo" over the washer in the bowl. It was pretty phenomenal! Sarah also experimented by pouring salt directly onto some of the hardware, to see the effect that might have.

Finally - because by this time it was about 10:45 at night, and Mom was getting pretty beat! - we decided to make lava in a cup. This is a density experiment - first, you fill a cup about 2/3 full with water; then, you add about 5 drops of food coloring, if you'd like, just to jazz it up, and finally you pour in about a quarter-cup of vegetable oil. Sarah noticed right away how it separated and the oil rose to the top.

The fun part, though, is that you next dump in about a teaspoon of salt. That's heavier than the oil, so it sinks through it into the water, carrying little bits of oil along with it; then, when the salt dissolves in the water, the oil pops back up, and you get a sort of a lava-lamp effect.

Our first attempt at this didn't work as well; we used a HUGE plastic tumbler, and Sarah believes (and I agree) that there was too much water for it to really be a dramatic "bubbling" effect. Next, we tried a smaller glass, and this worked a good bit better; you can see some of our "bubbling" at right.

We also tried pouring in sugar to see if it would work the same way, but as the sugar was a bit lighter, it didn't tend to sink down through the oil as well. We also talked about saturation - when the salt or sugar would not dissolve in the water any more, then no "bubbles" happened, and we'd have to start fresh.

Finally, we tried a very small juice glass, with no food coloring, and that bubbled pretty fast! (Not nearly as pretty, though.)

Sarah could have worked on these all night, but I had to rescue my salt container, which was nearing emptiness. (And we're almost two weeks out from our next grocery trip!) After using all this kitchen stuff for our impromptu "science lab," I reloaded the dishwasher, realized it was already full (again) and got out the detergent.

You know what's coming, right?

Sarah watches me and says, "Oh, I didn't put any of that stuff in when I did the dishes earlier. Will that matter?"

::Cue Twilight Zone music, doo de doo doo, doo de doo doo::

(Also linking up today with Happy Family Times... this was definitely the highlight of our week!)