Today, we had a field trip with our homeschool group. It was a walking tour of our downtown. It was really interesting, and fun, too. If you live in a city, I highly recommend calling your city’s historic society and seeing if they give tours!

Here’s another recipe from Doodle’s birthday party last week.

Green Chile Pinwheels

Green Chile Pinwheels

8 oz. Neufchatel, brought to room temperature
1 can chopped green chiles
1 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 sun-dried tomato wraps or whole wheat tortillas

Mix the cheese, chiles, garlic, and salt. Spread on three tortillas and roll up tightly. Wrap in parchment or plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1-3 hours. Cut into 14 thin slices.

Servings: 14

Nutrition Facts
Nutrition (per serving of 3 pieces): 76 calories, 40 calories from fat, 4.5g total fat, 12.3mg cholesterol, 249.3mg sodium, 33.1mg potassium, 6.5g carbohydrates, <1g fiber, 0g sugar, 2.7g protein.

Linked to:

Tasty Tuesday

Tempt My Tummy Tuesday

Tuesdays at the Table

Tuesday Tastes

Delicious Dishes

I had bought a little “How to Make Sushi” kit at a bookstore on clearance awhile back. It included a DVD, a mat, and a cookbook. We watched the DVD a couple of weeks ago, and yesterday, we made the California rolls.

We couldn’t find any sushi rice at any of the stores nearby (we’d bought some from a far away store that didn’t make it into our bag, but the gas to go get it would have cost more than the rice), so we used medium grain rice. It worked just fine.  We rinsed and “massaged” it about 5 times, I think.

My 10 year-old massaging the rice

While the rice was in the rice cooker,we sliced up the cucumber, avocado, and imitation crab meat (we call that krab-with-a-k).

Both kids slicing up imitation crab.

Then we made the sushi-zu (the rice vinegar and sugar dressing for the sushi rice). Next time, we’ll do this first, though, since it needs to be cooled and poured over hot rice. My rice cooker kept the rice warm while the sushi-zu cooled, but being patient was hard. Then we poured the sushi-zu over the rice, and my 16 year-old cut and tossed it into the rice. Then we had to wait and fan the rice until it was cool, while Mommy snuck bites of the krab-with-a-k.

Since we only have one sushi mat (I’ll be getting more!), my 10 year-old got to go first. Here he is spreading the rice on his nori:

Making sushi!

(The little green bowl is for dipping fingers and knives into rice vinegar – that rice is sticky!)

After we rolled the sushi, it was time to cut it. So close…

They may not have been the prettiest rolls ever, but they sure were tasty.

We will definitely be doing this again – and trying other kinds of sushi, as well!

For enough ingredients to make nine rolls (54 pieces!), I spent less than I would have paid for one person at a nearby all-you-can-eat sushi train. We even have some pieces still in the fridge for snack today!

One of the things I love most about homeschooling is the opportunity to embrace learning experiences like this. Yesterday, we got to have an adventure in our own dining room.

Linked to:

Works for Me Wednesday

We Did It Wednesday

http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewblack/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

My oldest daughter, who is now 23, was riding the public buses since she was a young teen. That’s something I did as a young teen, too, and it really instills a sense of freedom and responsibility — “I can go anywhere in the city I need or want to go, as long as I research the route and have the fare, and make it to the stop on time.”

Over the years, when my daughter’s friends had car trouble or worried about finding parking somewhere, my daughter would suggest they take a bus, and they would balk, “I don’t know how!” Amusingly enough, some of those same friends thought it was odd that my daughter hadn’t learned to drive yet.  She always had a wonderful sense of pride that she could “rock the public transportation system” (her words).

And now my younger daughter, who is turning 16 in June, is following in her big sister’s footsteps. She wanted to see Alice in Wonderland (a movie I have absolutely no interest in seeing; I am not a fan of that book), and so yesterday, she looked up her bus schedules online. Today, she asked me break a $5 bill for her and headed off. I just got text from her that she’s there and seated in the movie theater, ready for the show.

Even through a text, I can feel her sense of pride and accomplishment. Like her big sister and her mother before her, she’s rocking the public transportation system.

The Hillbilly Housewife wrote an awesome post about manners. I love the quote she used, “It’s not a list of dos and don’ts designed to trip us up.  It’s a GPS that talks us through unfamiliar new territory.”

Well, this isn’t from a blog — my son found a free online version of Lemmings! It’s one of my all-time favorite video games, and it really sharpens those critical thinking skills.

I am so going to run with this idea and paint myself some shoes!

And I have a question: do you have a great link for learning how to grill on a gas grill? I have never ever grilled, and since it gets unbearably hot in my house if I used the stove in the summer, I decided that I’m buying a grill in a few weeks. Any advice, links, etc.?

How? Through “Conlanging” – constructing languages.

He started out by learning Esperanto, probably the most well-known constructed language — although that honor might be shared with Klingon and Tolkein’s elven languages. Now he spends his spare time constructing his own languages.

Awhile ago, I had him write an essay about constructing languages. Here are a few paragraphs out of that essay:

When making a language, you must start with the phonology, which is the set of sounds in the language. A phonology is divided into two parts: consonants and vowels. Consonants are defined in English by three separate features: place, manner, and voicing. Place is where in the mouth the sound is made: options include labial (such as b or f), dental (such as th or a Romance t) and velar (such as k or German ch). Manner is how the sound is made: options include stop (such as t or g) or fricative (such as s or v). Voicing has only two options, voiced and unvoiced, and is whether or not the vocal cords are vibrating when the sound is made. Some languages have more or less distinguishing features in consonants: for example, the Slavic languages have palatalization.
Vowels have three distinguishing features as well: height, place, and roundedness. Height is how open your mouth is: options include open (i, u), open-mid (o), and close (a). Place is where your tongue is: options include front (i, e) and back (o, u). Roundedness is how rounded your mouth is: options include rounded (o, u) and unrounded (i, e, a). Many languages also distinguish length, which is how long the vowel is pronounced. Some have more than two length categories, and some have more than two roundednesses.

[...]

After the morphology comes the grammar. A grammar can be fusional, agglutinative, or isolating. With a fusional grammar, one affix has a variety of meanings; for example, when the English -s is added to a verb, it means present tense, singular, and third person. With an agglutinative grammar, one affix has one meaning; for example, the English verbal -s would be composed of three separate affixes: one for present tenst, one for singular, and one for third person. With an isolating grammar, there are no affixes; the English verbal -s would use helper verbs, like English “will” for future tense. Once you’ve decided on a grammar type, you can start coining affixes and/or helper words, but remember that they have to fit your morphology. You also have to pick a syntax; first decide your order of subject, object, and verb (for example, English is SVO, and Latin is SOV; Yoda-speak is OSV), and then your order of modifier and head (English is modifier-head; Romance languages are head-modifier). Once you’re finished with the grammar, you create your vocabulary. Simply create words and define their meanings; make sure they fit your morphology.

Okay, I’ll quit showing off now. I’m a proud Mommy.

I asked my son for some links for beginners to Conlanging, and he enthusiastically shared these three:

The Language Construction Kit

Geoff’s Homepage (which includes “Creating an Earthlike Planet” and “The Climate Cookbook”, too)

How to Create a Language

I’m very impressed with the way my son’s knowledge of language has grown through his hobby of constructing languages.

Another site I recently found is The Teaching Company. They aren’t free, but their courses are outstanding. They’re available in audio CD, DVD and audio download.  They are pretty pricey – too pricey for me at their regular prices – but they always have many courses on sale, and if you have one in mind, check back every month and eventually, it’ll be on sale, too.

Our car in the snow this morning

We’re getting hit by a lovely snowstorm here. It started snowing in the wee hours yesterday, and isn’t supposed to let up until tonight. We’re getting a good amount of accumulation.

We’re measuring the snow every three hours (during the day – I’m not THAT dedicated) and recording it. Tomorrow, we’ll make a graph of the snowfall. It has felt very steady, and it will be interesting to see if it really has been, or if it has fallen in waves.

We’ll have some fun, and learn and paractice real-life application of math concepts,  working with patterns, choosing which graph is appropriate and then making the graphs, along with whatever else just happens naturally.

This post is linked to Thirsty Thursday at FiveJ’s. You won’t regret it if you go read the articles linked on today’s carnival and on previous weeks. Neat, neat ideas.

It makes it really simple for me to email math assignments to my kids. My kids don’t respond well to a “mommy lectures us” form of teaching, so this way they can learn independently, asking me for help when needed.

We do supplement with lots of real-life math (cooking, writing checks, balancing a checkbook, measuring things in the house when necessary, etc.), but we do that with everything.

I love this math program! (The one drawback, or potential drawback, anyway – you might have to explain the “funny” spellings to your kids, since the site is British.)

This post linked to: Thirsty Thursday at Five J’s.

Then a few months ago, I bought a CD set of an audiobook of the history of the United States and we started listening to that in the car. The kids started hoping it was a longer drive to go places, so they could hear the CD! “Mommy, can we listen to history, please?”

I got a subscription to Audible.com, and when we were done with the history CD, we all agreed on the new topic and I downloaded an audiobook about mythology to my Zune and we listen to that in the car.

Not only does it make the drives less boring and make that time educational, it also sparks really interesting discussions. Frequently, we’ll end up pausing the book so we can talk about what was just said. Since we’re all listening together, instead of all reading separately, it gives us the opportunity for some great conversations.

Recently, I found out that a lot of public libraries will let you “check out” audiobooks not only as CDs or tapes at the actual library building, but you can download the checked out audiobook for free over the ‘net. You can search Overdrive to find books in your area.

This post linked to: Thirsty Thursday on FiveJ’s

One of our favorite yearly experiences in our homeschool is participating in Young Ameritowne. We’ve done Ameritowne for four years now, but this will be our first time at International Towne.

Doodle as a college counselor at our first year at Ameritowne

I feel incredibly lucky to live in a city that offers such a neat resource. Ameritowne and International Towne are usually offered to public school kids, but the organization who hosts them, Young Americans Center for Financial Education, is happy to work with homeschool groups, too.

At Ameritowne, the kids each have a job (police officer, bank teller, delivery person, disc jockey, etc.) in different businesses (the bank, the college, the warehouse, etc.) to help make the Towne run. The setup at the location is adorable and really cool. The kids also have to write checks, make deposits, buy stamps, and learn about money management, supply and demand, and other financial and civic concepts.

Xbot, the police officer, taking a break at Ameritowne when he was 6

A huge curriculum is made available to teachers (and, of course, homeschool parents). Teachers at a school can use this curriculum over the course of the school year, leading up to Ameritowne as the culminating experience. In our homeschool groups, each parent makes the decision how much they want to teach beforehand, but we have two training sessions in the two weeks prior to the event, in which we have the elections, learn about some of the concepts (supply and demand, advertising), have job interviews and get training for the individual jobs, and learn to fill out a check and keep a check register.  When the day arrives, the kids are excited and ready to buckle down and work! You’d be amazed at how hard even 6 or 7 year-old kids will work.

Bobo as a news reporter at Ameritowne in 2007

International Towne is different – it’s aimed at older kids, and the emphasis is on global economics. Instead of different businesses, the kids will each work in different countries. They will be working with exchange rates, international trade, cultural awareness, currency exchange. It’s still got a cute setup, and I’ll be sure to take pictures next week when we go for the actual event.

The towne square - with Towne Hall straight ahead

Last week, we had our first training, and the kids got to be interviewed (I got to be one of the interviewers – I love that part). They also did an international taste test, learned about some of the countries, and did a paper craft. This week, they’ll find out what their jobs and countries are and train for those. And next week is the big day, when we go to International Towne.  If it’s even half as cool as Ameritowne, it’s going to be an amazing experience – and we hear from other homeschooling friends who have done both that it’s even cooler.

If you live in Colorado and you homeschool, please look into taking your kids to Young Ameritowne or International Towne. If you live in Colorado and you public school, find out if your school participates in one of these programs – and if they don’t, ask them to! It really is that awesome.