The Science Chef Makes Popcorn Balls

He's a scientist. He's a chef. He loves to do science experiments and he loves to cook. I decided that I should get him a book that connects science and cooking, so we got a copy of The Science Chef. The first experiment he chose to do was to make popcorn balls.

He says:

I have one major problem with this book. It always says to use margarine instead of"butter" or "margarine or butter". One of the most annoying recipes was for strawberry butter. It said here is a recipe for strawberry butter that doesn't even use butter. It uses margarine! In another place it says, they substitute applesauce for margarine and oil,, but then they use margarine! That is just plain idiotic.

The first recipe I chose to make was popcorn balls. I chose this because I like popcorn balls. You need to use an edible adhesive.

The science behind popcorn popping is this: Popcorn kernels pop, after they've been dried, because of a small droplet of water inside the kernel. It turns into steam and it cracks the hard outer shell with explosive force resulting in fluffy popcorn. This also explains the dud kernels. No matter how much you heat them they just won't pop. This isn't a problem with your popping strategy, but simply that the water droplet has evaporated, and/or because the outer shell has already cracked. You can show this by hitting an un-popped kernel hard with a hammer to crack the shell. Then, if you try to pop that, it won't pop.

The first thing I did was pop 10 cups of popcorn.

Then what I needed to do was melt a half cup of butter (or "margarine")in a pan over medium heat. Once the butter was melted I added 11.5 ounces of marshmallows and turned the heat to low.

Ingredients: popcorn, butter, honey, marshmallows (little sister "helper" optional)

When the marshmallows were melted I added 1/4 cup of honey and waited for it to melt in. After that happened I took it off the heat and let it cool for five minutes. Then I poured this on the popcorn and tossed the popcorn to get it well coated. Next I moistened my hands with water and started forming the balls which I put on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper. Finally, I let them cool in the refrigerator for one hour.

rolling the popcorn balls

The marshmallows were stale the first time and so they didn't melt properly. They ended up turning into a big pile of silly-putty-like goo. So, I threw that away and waited a couple of hours for my mom to take my baby sister (She insists she is not a baby) to soccer practice and on the way home she would pick up some marshmallows (non-stale ones). When she got home I  continued with the recipe and made some popcorn balls. I rolled them up, let them cool, and put them in a bag.

I learned that I should not give any popcorn balls to my baby sister because she only ate half of it and the other half got thrown away. The next day, I told my mom not to let her have one, but she gave it to her any way. There was another one thrown into the trash!

The Best Week of School, When the Kids Learned Nothing

A couple of weeks ago Papa took the boys backpacking in Yosemite for the week. We pointed out to them that this was their school assignment for the week. They left on Monday and came home on Friday.

The trip plan from Tenaya Lake to Happy Isles (red), with side trip to Half Dome (blue)

After spending the night in Yosemite Valley on Monday night, they were up early on Tuesday catch the shuttle bus that would take them to the trail head. From Tuesday through Friday they hiked almost 22 miles with a total elevation gain of about 13,000 feet. They summited both Cloud's Rest and Half Dome along the way.

The first day on the trail

They came home full of excitement. They'd had a great time!

Back at the car, before getting a shower

I was pretty disappointed to hear, that in the rush to get to the shuttle bus on time, the camera had been left behind in the car. I was really feeling jealous of their adventures (while I stayed home with Little Miss, age 2) and was eager to relive their trek with them through the pictures they had taken. As luck would have it, they met a nice couple on the same route who took some photos of them along the way and e-mailed them to us!

A view from Cloud's Rest towards Half Dome and Yosemite Valley

A couple of days after the trip Curly announced, "That was the best week of school, EVER!"

"Great!", I responded. "What did you learn?"

"Nothing."

I just laughed. I wasn't about to argue with him, and ruin his perfect week of school. I know how much time Papa has spent with them, teaching them to read topographic maps, using a map and compass, learning how to read a trail map, how to start a fire (about 10 different ways), how to pack for a trip, how to write out and leave an outing plan, how to calculate the right weight of your backpack based on your own body weight, and just about everything else there is to know about backpacking, hiking, rock climbing, and camping.

About to get on the cables on Half Dome

The boys told me all about a movie they saw their first night, camping in Yosemite Valley and things they had learned (oops!) about the history of the park. They know, and I'm sure learned more, about the local rocks, fora and fauna than most people. They told me that they saw one marmot. They did not see any pika, but apparently there were some pretty cool pika finger puppets in a the camp store.

Heading up the cables (not learning anything)

At the top of Half Dome with Clouds Rest behind them

I'm feeling pretty good about the nothing they learned that week with their dad!

World Geography

My kids often come up with much better lessons than I plan for them. This "World Geography Lesson" is one of many examples. 

The best geography lesson I never came up with.

Now, if was at the point where I was ready to 100% embrace unschooling, this is what school would be like all of the time. I've talked about toying with unschooling in some of my previous posts, ( Homeschool Changes and (F)unschooling), but is not something we do 100% of the time. From what I've learned, you are not really unschooling unless you do it 100%. I'll be honest here, this annoys me a little bit. I, like so many homeschoolers, have a very eclectic approach. I like to take the parts of things that I like.


According to Carol Edson,

“Unschooling to me means learning what one wants, when one wants, in the way one wants, where one wants, for one’s own reasons. The learning is learner-directed; advisors or facilitators are sought out as desired by the learner. There are no curricula, lesson plans, schedules, or agendas. Most of the learning is quiet, even invisible, as there is not a focus on creating a lot of ‘products.’”

Mary Griffith defines it more precisely as needing these three factors:
From On Unschooling

1. An Environment Conducive to Exploration and Experimentation.
2. Adults as Models and Facilitators
3. Trust That the Child Will Learn.


I do really well with "rules" 1 and 2. I kind of agree with number three, but I'm unable to completely "let-go" and not guide my child's learning in some way. I DO give "assignments". We use the Workboxes System which is, by its nature, parent directed. The assignments I give, and put into the workboxes, are based on my kids and how well I know them. Scootch told me, at the end of the summer, that he wanted to study geometry and physics. So, when I give him math and science assignments, they are in these areas. I ask him to pick out experiments he wants to try from the book on physics experiments. I put books and magazines in their boxes that I think they would want to read. I assign them lego projects from Lego Quest.

We only spend a couple of hours a day (if even that, and rarely 5 days a week) on assignments I give them. The rest of the time they have available to get creative and come up with their own great learning activities (although they think they are just playing!).  The majority of their time is spent with lots of "1 and 2". I don't want to spend any more time than that on math lessons I think they need to learn. In the words of Mark Twain, I don't want their schooling to get in the way of their education.

Last week they came up with a great World Geography lesson. They asked if they could take down the large world map that is on the wall. They often use this map while doing another great learning activity they came up with: One child is on the computer on Google Earth, and the other child stands at the map. The child at the computer "flies" around the world, and the one at the map charts the course, and gives directions as needed. I'll hear things like, "NO! You need to go North of France!" and "Don't go that way, you'll end up in the Arctic Ocean!" When Scootch found that I had put a Google Earth App on the ipad he was so excited!

I allowed the removal of the wall map, although at first I was a bit skeptical, as I often am about their plans. They took it into their room and proceeded to play a game where they had Lego guys and vehicles that were going around the world claiming territories (kind of their own version of Risk, a board game they have never seen). They had very detailed rules about how you moved, how you could claim or take over countries. I'm pretty sure I heard, "That's not fair! I'm stuck over here in Australia!" The next day they took the game to the next level by inventing and creating their own world map using construction paper taped together, with made up land forms. I think that counts for both art and social studies!


The next day they took the game to the next level by inventing and creating their own world map using construction paper taped together, with made up land forms. I think that counts for both art and social studies!

A whole new world!

If nothing else, at least they know their geography! 

Homeschool Changes!

Well, we did it. We have gone out on our own.

This is our second year of homeschooling. Last year we were able to enroll in the "Homeschool Academy" with our local school district. That gave us access to the district curriculum. We worked one on one with a teacher there, meeting with her about every 2 weeks. She really gave us complete flexibility in what we did. There was no pressure to have certain lessons or curriculum completed. She could see that we were doing appropriate work and that the boys were working above grade level, so she pretty much left us alone.

This year that program was cut. For some reason I have felt very insecure about homeschooling independently. To do that in California you file a Private School Affidavit. When you do that you really answer to no one. My fear of going independent lead me to join a charter school and I enrolled the boys in the California Virtual Academy (CAVA) which uses the K12 curriculum. At first I was happy to have the use of all of the curriculum, supplies, books and a new desktop computer. I thought I could do the bare minimum of jumping through their hoops to be able to use the materials. Well, I really tired, but it did not work out. I felt too much pressure to complete THEIR curriculum. This was fine for some areas, like math. When it came to science, I'd find my kids interested in a different subject, and we would not have time to focus on that because we had to do the K12 science. They were interested in writing, but not on the writing assignments they were supposed to be doing. I finally realized that it was keeping us from doing things that we wanted to be doing. We were doing things just to get them done. It was not homeschooling, it was school at home. I wrestled with the idea of taking them out of CAVA for several weeks. Lets face it, I'd have to box up and send back all of that stuff and that is a big pain.

Don't get me wrong, I think K12 is a good curriculum and CAVA is an excellent program. This is especially good if you have no teaching experience and are concerned that your child is meeting all of the state standards. I was just finding more and more that I wanted to take more of an unschooling approach and that was just not possible with that program.

Maybe I CAN be an unschooler, I thought. Maybe I can trust my children and follow their lead. I bought a book on unschooling. I bought The Unschooling Unmanual for some reassurance and inspiration.




So, on Thursday October 7, 2010, we suddenly stopped what we were doing in the middle of the school day and I called the CAVA teacher to let her know that we would be un-enrolling from CAVA. I felt FREE!

I went ahead and bought a subscription to an on-line curriculum, time4learning. The boys like being on the computer and I thought this would be a good resource that we can use as we like. (even though Scootch REALLY hates the little mouse logo)
Yeah, Ed Mouse is kind of lame.

On Friday I sat down with each of the boys and had them choose what they would work on in math and reading for the next few weeks. They decided together on a science topic, and I decided that for social studies we would continue our study of US History. Writing? They had both just started working on books on "How to torture my brother". I told them that they could continue to write about and illustrate ways to torture each other in their little books. I figure it is much better than them actually doing it. Normally trying to get Scootch to write is like pulling teeth, so if he has something that he is motivated to write about, we go for it!

On Tuesday I made the leap. I filed as a private school in the state of California. Now we are doing what WE want to do. I had to give our school a name so I named it Tadpoles, Trails and Trees Academy.

They are doing an awesome job so far of working through some on-line lessons at their own pace. (In fact they are doing more than I expected!)

I still set up workboxes for them every day, but I put in things that I want them to do. I don't feel the pressure to get certain things done and I'm able to put things in the workboxes like lego building tasks, like some of the ideas at LEGO Quest Kids, or ideas from Think! I am feeling so much more relaxed abut letting them get creative and explore and do their own thing.

Scootch was inspired by a 3-D model of Jamestown we made (we're currently learning about colonial America) to build a fort of his own. He went onto Owl & Mouse: Make a Town and downloaded some patterns which he adjusted and cut out to build this fort:



Curly spent a lot of time engineering this sled for Baby. He made sure to make the bottom so that it wouldn't scratch the wood floors. When it turned out that it tipped over too easily, he re-engineered it for safety:



Heck, who needs a curriculum? I think we can just use old cardboard boxes!

(F)unschooling: Boxing up some learning fun!

I'm a firm believer that kids learn through play, and that this doesn't end after preschool. Maybe some day I will unschool. I think about unschooling a lot. I really like the philosophy, but I just haven't been able to fully embrace the concept. I find my kids (and myself) do better with a bit more structure. As a former classroom teacher I have a hard time letting go of a formal curriculum. We are using K12 this year which is a bit too structured and traditional-school-like for my taste, but I'm tweaking it to make it work. (EDIT: We left CAVA/K12 after 6 weeks)

I do however try to "funschool" as much as possible. While I often find myself in a rut, and only giving kids assignments that they "have to" do, I try hard to keep some fun in the mix. What is the point of homeschooling if you are just doing "school at home"? One of my main reasons for taking my kids out of school was because they were not having fun. It was really turning in to "learn this for the test". My kids love to learn and I'd like to keep it that way!

Switching over to using Workboxes really helped me to find time to "assign fun". It is easy to throw something fun into a box. I think when you have a box where you play with blocks, and another that tells you to go ride your bike, it can make that spelling box a little bit more bearable!


My kids are really creative and spend lots of time doing legos and playing outside. They don't really "need" me to "assign fun". However, it is great to include some of these things as part of the "school" day.

Here are some ways I put fun into our boxes and into our school day.

First, I'm most likely to put the fun stuff in if it is right there, ready to go. I have my little set of drawers where I keep a lot of supplies. I have drawers for math and language, science and games. Here is a peek into the drawers:


Language: In this drawer you can see some letter cards and letter rubber stamps. Games like Scrabble Slam is fast paced, fun, and a great phonics practice or review. Lots of great homophones often come up in the game and it is a great time to ltalk about those. Bananagrams is both fun and educational. There are lots of ways you can play, and you can even make up your own games with the little letter tiles. (Bananagrams tiles also work great to practice spelling words).


Math: I have things like Math Dice, and cards to practice math facts by playing games. Very few kids just love to do page after page of math worksheets of multiplication facts. I know my kids don't! Instead we play games with cards and dice to practice those facts that they need to memorize.



Puzzles and Games: The kids really like puzzle type games. I think it is good to just get the brain to change gears and think in a different way.
These are easy to find, often pretty cheap, small enough to put into a Workbox and can often be played alone. A puzzle game that can be played with mom that we really enjoy is Blokus Duo. There is a frog hopper game with a deck of cards that gives different levels of challenges.




Activity cards, telling the kids certain physical activities to do are also great and help to break up the day. There are some you can download here, or you can make up your own.



Up on the shelf are some bigger items that I keep within reach.
They are in clear shoeboxes just like the Workboxes, so I stuck some velcro dots on the end and I can just put them right onto the child's shelf with a tag. I figure the more I can do ahead to make it easy for myself, the better! I have a collection of blocks and math manipulatives such as Cuisenaire Rods and Pattern Blocks.
The kids new favorite was handed down to us from a friend of mine: Wedgits. They love building with these blocks, and when I saw a pack of activity cards for them on clearance at a local toy store I got those to use in the Workboxes.

Here they are, both working hard with the Wedgits (even though only one of them had it as their Workbox). Everyone can join in on the fun!






Go through your closets and hit the yard sales and thrift stores. Before you know it you will have lots of supplies!