Homeschooling Chemistry and Physics
This year at Atrium (my kiddo’s co-op), I’ve been teaching science with a bit more purpose than I did last year. Last year consisted of a lot of impromptu science articles and activities… when we were studying the bubonic plague in history, I covered fleas on rats, the plague, what modern day scientists said about it, and played a song from YouTube about it set to the tune of Hollaback Girl. In the spring we covered lots of random pollinator things, talked about bees and butterflies and the anatomy of a flower. We did black out poetry over articles I had printed. At some point in the year, I brought roly polies and we talked about crustaceans and literally played with bugs in the driveway. We made terrariums. It was a hodge-podge of whetting the group’s appetite for the idea of studying science seriously, but was mostly exactly what you’d expect homeschool science to be: nature studies, crafts, songs, and critters.
The 2020-21 school year I was determined to do different—to do better.
Naturally, I started teaching what I consider the most difficult science of all the sciences: Chemistry & Physics. To a group of children that range between 5 and 13.
If you’re going to get serious about science, the studies of matter and energy are the way to go, right? Every time I prep for class I’m two parts terrified and one part giddy.
But today, I realized, I’m not failing them. And more than that, they seem to be enjoying themselves.
In our first two lessons, we covered matter. We talked about properties and how scientists use properties to describe matter. I started by describing that matter is anything that has volume and mass, but to say that then I had to describe what volume and mass are. I sent them home with a white bread recipe. One of the fourth graders actually baked it over the weekend and was able to tell me all about how cool it was that the same ingredients can create something with a different amount of volume. I was so pleased. If only this one child understood volume because of a white bread recipe, then I felt I was already winning.
During that same first lesson I taught them about displacement and was delighted when my classically educated group of kids were able to participate in a retelling of Archimedes and the Goldsmith. Several kids shouted “Eureka!” along with me. If I wasn’t already sold on the trivium, that moment would have done it.
Density was when it got really fun. In Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics I found a lab with salt, water, two eggs, and two cups. Fill both cups with water about halfway. Dissolve a quarter cup of salt into one of the glasses. Have the kids announce their hypothesis on what might happen, then drop the eggs in their own glass. The egg in the salt water will float because the water is more dense than the egg when there is salt there, but the egg in the regular water will sink because the egg has more density. One of the kids was convinced it was because one of the eggs was bad and one of them was good, so another mom swapped them. The experiment won out!
After that we talked about buoyancy and made aluminum boats. (This lab was also found in Fulbright’s textbook.) Everyone had brought a casserole pan where we had blue dyed salt water and pennies sprinkled at the bottom of each. The goal was to make a boat that could float the most pennies without sinking. The kids loved playing pirates and stole each other’s pennies a lot in a spirit of imagination and fun. Our best ship held 176 pennies. Runner up had 173 before the ship started taking water. The take away: surface area helps.
On day two, the following week, we talked a lot about gold versus pyrite, how luster and hardness helps you identify matter.
The kiddo and I made playdough the day before and at the start of the lesson I put pieces of tree limbs, various garden and river rocks, aluminum foil, and the play dough out on the table. There were plenty of sensory aids for everyone to have their hands on something. Nearly everyone squished play dough in their hands for the duration of the lesson, which I thought was perfect as it helped explain the concept of malleability to the littlest ones and kept hands busy so their brains could focus.
My new, very involved husband sent me to class with a giant magnet and we also discussed how magnetism can help you identify different materials. Everyone got a turn choosing a piece of junk I’d collected from around the house to try against the magnet.
Finally we wrapped up the day with a Mel Science Lab. I’m obsessed with our subscription and it was pretty cool seeing the kids get to do a more intense lab. I had the oldest kids in the group do work, two boiled water and we talked about the “rapid vaporization of a liquid using heat” because I love defining things while two others mixed up the chemicals and dropped in the pyrite samples. Fifteen minutes later, we had a small sample of Prussian Blue!
All in all, I’m pretty pleased how our class is going and I can’t wait to map out next week’s adventure. Because of the broad age range of kids and the desire to keep them all engaged and learning, I’m trying to maintain at least one craft oriented activity, some sensory aids, and a Mel Science Lab per gathering. If you have any ideas or advice, please leave a comment, I’d love to hear from the more experienced.
The Best of Foodie Memoirs
Title: Lunch in Paris
Author: Elizabeth Bard
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Genre: Travel/Memoir/Cooking
If you are looking for Eat, Pray, Love or Julie & Julia at the bookstore – STOP. Pick this up instead. It’s friendlier, wittier, and far more relaxing.
It was the water color that got me first. That and the fact that I love memoirs with recipes, they pretty much dominate my source of kitchen plans. Then, that first page of that first chapter: Coffee, Tea, or Me and her description of herself – I felt so at home, so in league with a kindred spirit.
She says things like “I stood pressed against the wall, like a field anthropologist caught in the middle of a buffalo exorcism,” when describing a French dance party. How can you not fall in love with a writer that expresses herself like that? I literally started laughing out loud, and I hate using that phrase since all the texters in society have begun speaking how they type, so when I use it I really mean it.
Bard is pleasant and loveable. She has dilemmas that I can sympathize with, as opposed to Gilbert’s laments in Eat, Pray, Love which seemed all a little over the top and self inflicted. I did laugh a few times when she chalked something her husband did up to his being French, a lot of times it just seemed very husbandy to me. But for the most part, I think I was only laughing when I was truly meant to, when she utilized some turn of phrase or told a story that should make the corners of your mouth twitch while you read.
My favorite moment was when a friend tells her she can’t just go to the market for the rest of her life. Before Bard got a chance to say it herself, I inwardly pleaded… why not? It doesn’t matter whether you loathe or love the grocery stores here in the states, Bard will make you fall in love with European markets and long desperately to go make purchases at a butcher shop in Paris and linger over vegetables in the streets.
Go. Buy. Enjoy. I know you’ll love it.
A Homemade Christmas
Title: A Homemade Life
Author: Molly Wizenberg
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Length: 313 pages
It was the cover that got me first. I saw a stack of these books and thought, those little white mugs look so lovely against that sage green. Those crystal glasses look so clean. I want my life to look like that; I need my life to look like that.
Of course, my kitchen life looks a little more like someone’s rummage sale: hodge-podge glasses; mugs of all shapes, sizes, and colors; I never have any idea what kind of utensils are in the kitchen as they have all been gifts, hand-me-downs, or left behind by various room mates. (I couldn’t possibly imagine where my waffle iron came from, but it’s ancient, difficult to clean, and I love it.) I say my ‘kitchen life’ as though it is only my kitchen that suffers from this unfashionably eclectic manner of acquiring my belongings, the truth is my whole life is this way. The library is not the gorgeous leather bound, gold embossed on mahogany shelves thing of Beauty and the Beast or the Bodleian… instead it’s got some of those and a lot more ratty hard backs and tired old paperbacks, stacks, piles, a thousand different wood grains and colors, and pretty much a hot mess forgiven merely because it is a hot mess of books. Even my cozy blankets have no continuity: quilts, afghans, fuzzy God-knows what kind; some made by old ladies, some by family, some just picked up at a thrift store, some from my childhood.
But it’s ok. The cover is lovely and it gives us something to aspire to. Even better than that, it isn’t fancy, it’s simple. Molly Wizenberg may have a neat and organized life of homemade goodness, but it’s simple and easily attainable. Her book isn’t about being the next Martha Stewart, and it isn’t about being a project obsessed Julie Powell, it’s just a cozy little recipe driven memoir – more than a memoir, actually. Her book reads like little life essays, not life lessons, just life in the ‘and then I fell in love with coconut’ sort of way. I like knowing these kinds of things about people… I don’t care about your degrees, your successes, your battle for this or for that, tell me how it was you fell in love with coconut. Tell me your thoughts on white chocolate and all the memories those thoughts unleash. Talk to me about rotten bananas and french toast, and what your parents were like in the kitchen. Molly does. And I love her for it.
Of course, if you bother to tell someone how you fell in love with coconut, your memories of the 80’s and white chocolate, your dad’s insights to making the best french toast on the planet, the moment you decided raw cabbage wasn’t half bad if prepared by the love of your life… you end up telling them about more than your food experiences, you basically tell them all the high and low points of your life, the parts that are way more personal than what degree you got in college.
Molly grew up in Oklahoma, being from Houston, TX, I don’t exactly consider that the south, but if you were from Montana I guess you probably would. Nevertheless, reading something written by an Oklahoman during an 80 degree December feels a little more weather-mood appropriate than reading something written by, let’s say, a Canadian. For a warm, southern winter, A Homemade Life perfectly fits the bill as it is all about the warmth of family in the kitchen, making a cozy way for yourself, and fabulous but mostly simple recipes… great for the holidays. But only if those holidays are warmish, because there are several summer and spring recipes that would totally throw me off my game if it was snowing outside. I’m a mood reader. For me to enjoy a book to the max, the weather, the house, the book, and the stars all have to align. Not entirely, I’m pretty good at getting completely lost in a book with absolutely no awareness of what is going on around me, but let’s face it, not everyone can write a 5 star book that doesn’t need ambiance guidance, and not every book is supposed to be read void of ambiance.
A Homemade Life is well-written, and thoroughly enjoyable, but it was written with the kitchen in mind. I’ve read much of it at the kitchen table over coffee or soup. Not every book is a coffee and soup at the kitchen table kind of book, but this one is. This book has made me greatly long for a window seat in my kitchen. The window seat would have a little garden box attached on the outside for all my kitchen herbs, I could open the pane and inhale the glorious scents of rosemary and green onions. I don’t have that. Instead, I read this sitting on a 30 year old, uneven chair with a rip in the leather, looking out the nearby window to my deck and tree. It’s a great view, but when I open the pane I get a strong whiff of dog, ancient wood, moss, and whatever smell is coming from the water treatment plant in the back of my neighborhood that day. My good days are in April when my jasmine masks all of that with vengeance.
But in my kitchen, I’m not just in my kitchen, I’m in Molly’s kitchen too. I’m falling in love with her character of a father, lovingly referred to as Burg. I’m living his grand moments, his love for breakfast and dinner, his love for his daughter, and his legacy after death. In Molly’s kitchen I am introduced to her husband, their friends, and their exciting life together. She shares all of this simply, eloquently, and with recipes.
In the spirit of recipe sharing, which in addition to being a lovely writer, is Molly’s forte, I will share a recent one of my own. I used to do this more often, but lately I’ve been hoarding my recipes to myself and a few friends, not intentionally, my blog is just book driven and my facebook page is picture driven. This recipe was birthed from a strong desire for Greek Chicken Orzo Soup and a simultaneous urge to hop in the car and get some Potato Soup from Panera Bread. I can see your eyebrows raised in suspicion as I type, but I assure you, it came out pretty fabulously and I’ve since made about four variations of it. I’m pretty lazy in the kitchen and this was all dumped in a crock pot…
Andi’s Greek/Potato Soup-ness:
1 can of cream style corn
1 can of whole kernal corn (optional, depending on the size of your pot)
1 can of water (I use the corn can and fill it with water)
1 chicken bullion cube
(in a vegetarian version we skipped the can of water and the chicken b. cube and used one can’s worth of vegetable broth)
a bit of milk (anywhere from a quarter cup to a whole can, depending on you and your pot)
mushrooms if you like, I’ve done it with and without
lots of chopped potato, just fill that pot up with as much as you can fit
celery, chopped… include the leafy bits, this is a must
and the part that makes it what it is… wait for it… ALL PURPOSE GREEK SEASONING, just shower it in over all those potatoes floating to the top, stir it up and shower some more. Greek Seasoning is absolutely the most awesome ‘secret’ ingredient to a soup ever. If you have an aversion to peppery flavors hold back, there’s a lot of black pepper in the flavor, but I have a black pepper allergy and it didn’t cause me problems so that made me happy
Because I’m from Texas, I put Tobasco in everything
The first time I made this was shortly after Thanksgiving and I added left over chunks of Thanksgiving ham to it, it was heavenly.
After a few years of sitting on my shelf (this is pretty typical unless the book is sent to me by an author or publisher to review), I picked the book up for the HPB Humble Book Club, we will be discussing it in January. I’m hoping the other members of the group enjoyed it as much as I have and maybe even tried out some of the recipes. I still can’t decide which concoction to bring on the first Monday in January, but I plan to make something of Molly’s to celebrate the joy of a life homemade.
Don’t forget to check out Molly’s blog, the Orangette.
Julie & Julia – & JJ
Some people are appalled at this, and some find it wonderfully convenient, but I have friend categories. With me, people always know where they stand, because that is what I appreciate most about my own interpersonal relationships. I have a ‘best friend’, a ‘best friend since kindergarten’, a ‘roomie’ (my college room-mate), a ‘sister-wife’ (a very bad long running joke with my bestie of a cousin, no we are not actually sister-wives), and a ‘favorite friend.’ I can proudly say that JJ Golightly, of the Tidbits from Miss Golightly, is my favorite friend.
Favorite friends are those people you can go lengthy times without seeing, but once you see them again they are like crack to your system and you want them more and more. Favorite friends are those friends that if you ever chose to be lesbians (which we are not) you’d spend your life with them, because they are the ones you call randomly and say in the most superfluous and hyperbolic way possible: “I have a longing for you!” Favorite friends are the ones that you’ll hold hands with in public and not care if people look at you funny or take it the wrong way, because like a surrogate sister, your favorite friend is someone you would love to have literally attached to your hip, or in your back pocket if you could keep a miniature of them. They are also the person you happen to see the least of, and maybe that’s why the magnetism toward them remains forever in tact.
I recently had a wonderful visit from both my Roomie (Coffee Cups in Trees) and my Favorite Friend (Miss Golightly). What happens on these trips is this:
Roomie drinks coffee at the table, Favorite Friend bakes and cooks all sorts of goodies and photographs the results, I scurry back and forth trying to decide which I’d rather do, help cook or be lazy and drink coffee. The coffee usually wins.
Maybe it was because of one of these visits (in which all three of us gain five pounds over night), or maybe it was because Glen at the HPB Humble Book Club meeting brought up Julie Powell in our discussion of The Old Curiosity Shop, or maybe it was because I’d had the book sitting open to page five on my coffee table for about a year, but I finally got around to reading Julie & Julia
Nothing like reading a memoir about a frazzled maniac with a serious obsession for obsessions and sci-fi shows – in the kitchen – writing a blog and book when you too are nearly 29, frazzled, obsessed (but not dedicated), writing a blog, and most recently lost your entire book (again) to a computer virus. It gives hope. It gives motivation.
I will write a book in the next 30 days. Not the one I intended, I’m too crushed right now, but a different, lighter book that is loitering in a journal in my cabinet just waiting to be properly edited and put into a computer. I have 30 days. If Julie Powell can cook 523 recipes in 365 days, get published, and not be a loser by age 30, damn it, so can I. Except I’m not cooking. I’ll be ‘writing’ a nearly already book (from paper to computer) in 30 days and getting it to Smashwords by my 29th birthday. This I do vow.
In the mean time, I will still be reading, writing this blog, eating if I can afford it, and teaching Kung Fu… because that’s who I am, that’s what I do. Funny, that I had to be reminded of that by a memoir about French cooking.
Which is a delightful, by the way, all the way down to her swearing like a sailor, something I wouldn’t have even noticed had she not pointed it out. She may live in Long Island City, but when it comes down to it she’s from Texas, and as a Texan I can say there are two kinds of Texas women… the kind that swear, and the southern belles who don’t.
I appreciate her kitchen woes, I love to eat but have many cooking woes myself. I appreciate her small and outlandish apartment, I have a once lovely home that has just been utterly broken by this recession and a foundation problem. There’s just so much to relate to, and frankly, Julie Powell is down right endearing. She’ll never be my Favorite Friend in real life, as that spot is forever taken and I doubt I’ll ever even meet her, but she is definitely a favorite on my bookshelf.
Muffins!
Tropical Pina Colada Muffins
1 ¾ cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
1 egg
¾ cup milk
¼ cup veggie oil
1 can (8 oz.) pineapple slices, drain the juice into wet mix, dice slices before adding
1 tblsp. Cocoanut extract
½ cocoanut shavings
Pour into greased muffin pan.
In a bowl mix a lot of butter, sugar, and more cocoanut shavings. Dollop mixture onto top of each muffin.
Immediately put in the preheated oven and bake on 400 for 30 minutes.
George Washington’s Muffins
1 ¾ cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
1 egg
¾ cup milk
¼ cup veggie oil
1 can cherry pie filling
1/3 cup vanilla extract
Mix and pour into greased muffin pan.
Top each muffin with chopped walnuts and immediately place in preheated oven at 400 for 30 minutes.
Cranberry Orange Delight
1 ¾ cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
1 egg
¾ cup milk
¼ cup veggie oil
1 can wholeberry cranberry sauce
1 tblsp. Pure orange extract
Pour into greased muffin pan.
In a bowl mix a lot of butter and sugar. Dollop mixture onto top of each muffin.
Immediately put in the preheated oven and bake on 400 for 30 minutes.
Thanksgiving Apple Muffins
Thanksgiving Apple Muffins by Andi
1 ¾ cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
1 egg
¾ cup milk
¼ cup veggie oil
1 can apple pie filling
1/3 cup vanilla extract
1 tblsp. Cinnamon
Bake on 400 for about 25 minutes.
More Chickeny Goodness from Andi’s Kitchen
Lemon-Honey Chicken:
Layer into small casserole pan – lemon juice (from lemon), butter, sage, dill, chicken wrapped in onion slices, more lemon juice, honey, more butter.
Bake slowly until cooked and serve with rice and corn.
Italian Dressing Chicken:
In a small casserole pan – Pour Creamy Italian Dressing over chicken until the chicken is good and buried. Slice some onion and one small tomatoe over it. (Stir that into the dressing good so the onion slices don’t blacken in the oven, we want them to stay good and juicy as they bake!) Bake until cooked! Serve with buttered spaghetti noodles and garlic toast. I poured the excess juice from the pan over my pasta as well once it was in my bowl and sprinkled some parmesean cheese on top.
Family Recipes
I am due to have a kid in October. No, I don’t know the gender yet. Yes, I am going to find out – we just couldn’t tell at the last ultra sound.
With a new person coming into the house, my husband and I are committed to cooking more meals at home. I already have some staple recipes of my own, and I have some my Grandmother and Mother-in-law have promised me, but I want to have a vast collection. I could get cookbooks (which I have plenty of) and I could seek some out with google searches, but I wanted to at least feign some personal attachment to our home cooked meals.
So please, post your most famous, your most beloved, or just plain easiest recipes here – from dinner menues to baked goods. I want my kid to grow up with good eatin’!
What I have so far is listed below. This is just a list of meal ideas that are staples around our house or other family members, if something sounds good and you want a recipe let me know. I want to have at least 30 good recipes, preferably more, so that each thing would only be eaten once a month…
1) Venetian Pasta Rolls
2) My Crab and Spinach Pasta Rolls
3) Spaghetti (who doesn’t have an awesome spaghetti recipe?)
4) Chicken Alfredo (I make my Alfredo sauce from scratch, so easy)
5) Chicken Parmesean
6) My Mother-in-law’s Lasagna recipe
7) I have a badass Cayenne Chicken recipe if anyone wants it
8) Lemon Baked Pork with Carmelized Onions (courtesy of Rachel Ray)
9) Does anyone have a homemade pizza recipe? How do I make dough from scratch?
10) Grandmom Betty Rogers’ Stuffed Bell Pepper Recipe
11) Grandmom Betty Rogers’ Stuffed Cabbage Recipe
12) Chicken and Green Bean Casserole
13) Mother-in-Law’s Chicken and Dumpling Recipe
14) Grilled Cheese Sandwiches with tomatoe soup
15) I have an awesome Pork Orange Marmalade Recipe courtesy of Wally World
16) Peach Glaze Pork (great for holidays served with lots of sliced peaches on the side – I like fruity meat)
17) Mother-in-law’s Sloppy Joe recipe
18) Husband’s steak with my mashed potatoe/cheese casserole
19) Chili Cheese Dogs
20) Taco Salad/ Frito Pie
21) Chicken on Rice with Brocoli Cheese on the side (does anyone have a good brocoli cheese soup recipe? preferably one with jalepenos?)
22) Sherry’s Awesome Baked Chicken with French cut green beans
23) Mac and Cheese (add hot dog chunks)
24) Cheese Enchiladas
25) Chicken Enchiladas with green peppers
26) Grandmom’s meat loaf
27) Larry’s Corn Chowder
I Can Do Brilliant Things With a Chicken!
Just one of my very many chicken recipes…
oven 350
in a pan:
skinless, boneless chicken
fresh garlic cloves
LOTS of honey
2 spoonfuls of butter
dill weed (of course, you can’t do a thing without it!)
cayenne pepper (another guilty pleasure)
chives
bake for 30 minutes and enjoy!
Cooking With Andi
So it looks absolutely disgusting, but I promise, it tastes oh so good!
In a crock pot mix:
Some diced up red potatoes
1 can of spinach
1 can of corn
some slices of bacon
some chicken bullion cubes (I think I used 4-5, I just kept adding them until it smelled right)
a bit of season all
ground red pepper (however much you can handle)
some tarragon
lots of dill weed
lots of chives
garlic cloves
melt in some grated cheddar cheese
cook on high until the potatoes are soft enough
it comes out a funky green color, but it is delicious
Have some honey-buttered toast for dessert.
Anakalian Whims 