Waste Not: Bananas edition

This post is a re-emergence of my old favorite meme, Waste-Not Wednesday!

BANANAS!   Do YOU need 20+ lbs of bananas a week?  Well, I can use that many and more.  Here are my tips for not wasting a single banana.

1. When you bring them home, fill your sink or a dishpan with water, and add 1 Tbsp vinegar (or bleach, or even just dishsoap).  Leave the bananas there as save the rest of your packages. Raise the bananas from the water, give them a shake and set them on a towel to dry.  This should virtually eliminate your risk of fruit fly invasion!
2. You walk into the kitchen and find that the preschooler has opened a banana, taken a few bites, and walked off leaving it half uneaten?  Toss it in the fridge.  It'll keep for 3-5 days.  The part she bit off will "heal" and seal the fruit. Just cut off that 1/4" when you use the banana.  Offer it cut up in some yogurt or with a little granola, so she doesn't recognize it, or put it in a smoothie.
3. Once they have become completely freckled and 'perfect' then just place them in the fridge.  The skin will turn brown, but they'll keep for 3-5 days for eating.  You can actually keep them over a week and still use them for smoothies during that time. After 2-3 weeks, you can still use them in baking.  
4. Ever heard of substituting applesauce for oil in baking to cut out fat?  You could use a ripe mashed banana in place of fat, too, when you are baking muffins or quick breads or even a cake mix.
5. And of course they can be frozen. It's tricky to peel a frozen banana, and it gets very mushy when it thaws- so peel them and place them in freezer bags. I even break them into chunks and put them on a tray to make "individually quick frozen" banana chunks, convenient for smoothies and baking.

Rather than banana bread, lately we've been using this banana coffee cake with chocolate chip streusel topping. It's *fabulous* although messy! 

I'm also linking up this post to Works for Me Wednesday.

Wanna Win Something?

All of us love to win things.  In seventh grade, a friend through childhood started playing clarinet in the band. Not something that had ever been on my radar, but it seemed she was having fun. I asked mom for a clarinet, which I knew very well we couldn't afford. But, mom being mom, she carried me to the music store and started the tedious process of being approved for credit to rent a clarinet.  Some of you young folks may not be impressed, but us older folks remember a world where credit was not so easily had. While we waited for her credit to be approved, we noticed a pad of entry forms for a musical instrument giveaway. And we started filling them out, one after another. Within a month, mother had gotten the phone call- We had won the Vito student clarinet.  I was super proud of that clarinet. Felt we had worked harder to win that clarinet than the one we'd gotten on credit.

Fast forward to a time when I'm juggling 5 or so kids.  The doorbell rings, and it's a Fed Ex man with an envelope.  (You know those envelopes that come USPS that say "you may be a winner"?  Those are junk mail. If you are a winner, the envelope says Fed Ex and you have to sign for it.) I was absolutely flabbergasted-  Seventh Generation company was telling me I had won a washing machine, just call this 800 number to schedule delivery.  And here's a case of laundry cleaner to go with it.  WHAT?  Now truth be told I'd only bought a new washer a few years prior, so I sold that winning washing machine to someone from church who needed a washer.  For a few moments, after it arrived all shiny new, I considered keeping it just so I could do 2 loads at a time.

Yesterday (in the USPS mail) my son got a big old envelope, one side clear, showing a certificate inside printed with his name and $30,000!!!!!!  Yeah, it looked akin to an old Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes mailer.  The thing is, it's not entirely a fake.  Yup, it was from a college who will in fact give him a $30,000 scholarship ($7500 each of 4 years) just because he was an American Legion Boys State delegate.

So, my homeschool and public school friends-  make sure that your kid knows about American Legion Boys and Girls State.  It's only open to kids who have completed their junior year and have at least one more semester left of school.  In most cases, all expenses have been paid by a sponsor of a local American Legion Post. And there are hundreds of scholarships available to kids who complete the week of Boys State/Girls State.  At any rate, your child will leave a changed kid.  He'll say things like "don't say that, it's combative. Express it in a more congenial way to persuade them to your point of view." This benefits younger siblings, too!  My 9th grader is getting more involved in leadership activities earlier on than his brother, and is paying better attention to his GPA, in hopes that *his* resumé will be more competitive for the scholarships than his brothers'.

And that right there, makes this mom feel like I've won something- kids who go after achievement and do hard things.

My Kid's a High School Senior!

There is drama in the house; the Senior's schedule isn't what he's planned last Spring. He's 18 now, so he made an executive decision last week:  he wasn't going to school. He needed a mental health day. He needed to come to terms with the fall term.  See, he did a lot of add/drop of classes -the THIRD week of school. I'm not sure that his schedule was so bad to make this new problem necessary, but this is his rodeo, not mine. So his day off was supposedly catching up in Chem 2 and Spanish 3 (moved into those from Environmental Science and Spanish 2) and making effort on the Precal that he just isn't "getting." He has to get over this hump- he is depending on scholarships for college, so he must be able to maintain the GPA under any pressures so as not to lose the scholarships.

Every day he gets a stack of mail from colleges.  He even got a Birthday card from one. He's evaluating his choices, already making early applications, and has been writing essays and finding and applying for scholarships since June.

I'd like to think he'll actually read this message from a homeschooler off to her Freshman year at Richmond:

• Go With Your Gut: When writing an admissions essay, many people fall into the trap of telling a college what they think it wants to hear. Essays about ending world hunger and discovering the always elusive solution to all the world’s problems are run of the mill (note use of cliché). Therefore, when one college prompted me to write about “What outrages you” I chose the first thing that came to mind: my least favorite book series, Twilight, and the detrimental effect it has on tween girls. However, I doubted my choice and began an essay on assisting underprivileged children in Indonesia. After severe writer’s block, I returned to my original essay and was accepted by that college! 
• Learn to Laugh at Yourself: By the end of my senior year, I had applied to twelve colleges. That’s right, twelve. This meant that I had written around fifteen different essays and had saved several drafts of each essay in the same folder. By the time I was finishing up my application to college number twelve, all the essays looked the same. As a result, I accidentally submitted the same essay twice. Two completely different prompts, but only one essay… After I realized my error, my mom and I laughed for about a day afterwards because we couldn’t believe we had made such a silly mistake. But the truth is, mistakes happen. Thankfully I was able to get in touch with the admissions department and straighten out the essay confusion. That situation could have been extremely stressful and discouraging, but with a sense of humor, I was able to smooth it out fairly painlessly.
• Take a Break: Twelve applications was a lot of work and got old pretty quickly. To keep myself from going completely insane, I decided to fill out a very different application. Survivor. One of my all time favorite TV shows. I have been watching this show since the first season and amid all of the college applications, I had an epiphany: I’m finally old enough to apply! In between college essays, I grabbed my little sister and we filmed the most ridiculous application video I think Survivor has ever seen because it didn’t get me on the show. But it definitely provided some much needed stress relief for me and for my family as they enjoyed laughing at my “wilderness skills.” 
• Keep An Open Mind: You may think you know exactly where you are going to college next year, and honestly, you may not have it right. I didn’t know anything about Richmond until December of last year. My mom suggested it and my first thought was “What is interesting about Virginia?” However, I did my research online and fell in love with the school and all of the programs it had to offer. It only took a few weeks before Richmond went from number twelve to number one on my list. 
• Evaluate the Pros and Cons: I know this looks like a boring final point, but a pro/con list was probably one of the most helpful things I did during my college application process. This was a skill I learned after watching numerous reruns of Gilmore Girls. After every college visit, I wrote out a detailed pro/con list including every single boring or shallow detail about the school, from the quality of the programs to how the students dressed. Then in late April (a bit too close to that big May 1st deadline) I sat down with all of my lists and just stared at them. Thankfully, I had my little sister to make sense of it all for me. She subtracted the cons from the pros to give each school a score. Richmond scored a twenty-two, while no other school broke ten; one even had a grand total of negative four. After she was done, she looked at me and said “You’re going to be a Spider!” 

My friend Susan posted Tips For Parents of High School Seniors to address other Senior issues. Here are some extras from me:

• Hie thee to College Confidential.  Actually if you are competitively serious about college, start here earlier, like at least 8th grade.
• Use every resource you have available- http://www.hippocampus.org/ and http://www.khanacademy.org/ and all the resources provided by textbook publishers can fill in where an overworked, busy, inexperienced or just plain bad teacher fails.  I've always told my kids, "If you didn't learn anything today, it's your own fault" and "Every day is a school day."
• Submit something to the Art & Writing competition. Who knows where it could take you?

Tantrums in the 3 year old.

I'm having a lot of issues trying to out live all the tantrums my daughter is going through. I am also having the hardest time having patience and not getting angry when she throws tantrums constantly about little things. She's almost 3. 



Tantrums at 3 huh? Did no one warn you that the "Terrible Twos" don't really exist- it's the Threes that will get you, every time.

Part of me wants to tell you, "I got nothin."  My oldest pitched fits when he was 3, and he's still pitching them now.  Yet-  all of my kids did have some tantrums as toddlers and for the most part have outgrown them.  Here, I suppose, are my Mommy's Rules For Tantrums.

1. Go with your own discretion, of course.  General disclaimer, your kid may be more like my firstborn. I can tell you I tried EVERY parenting book with that kid and the one that finally worked the most was the playful, intuitive parenting that looks very loosey-goosey to most people looking in on us, and they'll all tell me I'm not being firm enough. Trust me, I tried firm. It only made his tantrums turn into a full on deep rooted bitter anger.  Firm is not always a great plan.
2. Assess your child. I used the acronym HALT.  Hungry- Angry- Lonely- Tired.  Does my little one have a need that is not being met?  This helps me in several ways.  I recognize there is a cause behind behavior so I don't take the behavior as a personal affront. I pay attention to my child to prevent these causes/unmet needs. I respond to my child by helping him learn to communicate his needs in a more social manner.
3. While being sensitive to his personhood, also don't coddle.  I'm not raising children. I'm raising adults. Adults who hopefully have empathy for others. So I show empathy. I want them to care, so I show care.  But I want them not to be emotionally manipulative, so I call them on it and tell them to cut it out. 

Things I actually DID during a child's tantrum: 

1. Control corner.  "Oh man, you are having really big feelings and fussing about your problem.  Take your big feelings over to the control corner, cuddle up and feel safe, and get it all out.  Come back when you've found your control and can come up with a solution, even if your solution is to ask me to help."
2. Come get a hug and let's collaborate.  "You are making a huge feeling for [the red cup]. I guess you really want it. That doesn't work for me this time, but you can come sit on my lap while you use the blue cup, and we'll make a plan for when you use the red cup."
3. Cut it out/suck it up.  "Hey, you've been given lots of options and you're just not getting it.  Cut it out/suck it up.  I honestly can't talk to you about it anymore right now. It's hurting my ears."

Since the root of most tantrums is the young one's inability to effectively communicate, the tantrums should pare down as the child's understanding increases.  I can't find a video of any of my kids throwing fits, but I did find a video of 5 of them playing with their 4 cousins for over 5 minutes without a single tantrum. So it must have worked a lot of the time.... right? 

Wordless Wednesday

Puppy Pile

Ed Chat: Core subjects~ Science

So many homeschoolers that I talk to say the same thing- they make sure that they do math and phonics every day, and work everything else into the week.  History, social studies, geography, science, arts. The same thing is happening at our public schools across the nation. The mean number of hours spent teaching core subjects in public schools, per week (ref):

• English/Reading/Language arts 11.0 
• Arithmetic/Mathematics 4.8 
• Social studies/History 2.4 
• Science 2.2

Now the above referenced study does make note that perhaps some teachers are reporting time spent writing a paper for a history class as both history and language arts, so it's possible that the above statistics are inflated for language arts and conflated for history and science-  after all, when a language arts exercise uses sentences that include historical or scientific anecdotes, do the teachers similarly give credit as hours spent in science instruction?

11 hours a week on English instruction, for a population who learned English without any instruction before the age of 3?  And 2.2 hours a week for Science?  That's 26.4 minutes a day, y'all.

I admit that I could be considered a hypocrite- I don't have "science class" for even 26 minutes most weeks.  However, I feel science is important, and I always have.  To that end, I have an entire bookshelf dedicated to science books at all reading levels, from Tale of a Tadpole (DK READERS) to The Amazing Brain. I keep organizers filled with minerals, fossils, crystals, shells, petrified wood, coral, and even found objects such as animal bones, pieces of tree limbs with hole nests bored into them, and carefully and intricately twig-woven nests from fallen limbs. My kids have had a balance scale and gram cubes available since toddlerhood.  Tessaract sets.  Magnifying glasses, magnets of all shapes, and a microscope.  Electronics components, chemistry guides, body models. National Geographic for Kids, trips to natural science museums, and lots and lots of time outside to explore and observe.  We take observation notebooks with us to the zoo; we have taken nature walks; we have visited the children's science museums. And technology- my kids spend hours a day using computers. They make and upload videos to YouTube, play skill games, watch informative videos, read blogs, write blogs, and take it to the kitchen or outdoors to try out experiments. They learn how to use 3D animation design software and dip into programming.

I encourage my children to spend most of their time in science related activities- it may resemble a free-for-all.   However, since "they" like to use tests to determine which students receive the best education- let's go to the NAEP Questions tool to determine how this is working for us.  The results nationwide show that about a third of MO children are at an advanced level, and my 4th grader is among them- I self-administered the questions linked here, and he got all but 1 correct.

Here are just a few resources I read, some of them I also have the children read.

• A Yewnique Life
• Beatrice the Biologist
• The Kids Should See This
• The Happy Scientist
• Science Education. gov
• Science Blogs

Do you use a science curriculum?  Link to it in your comments.  Do you "free-style" science? Share any other resources you use in the comments!  

Felt really smug

Our Back to School art project

About my schedule which included writing, and cleaning and all.  Then school started.  To be truthfully honest, all the August posts were written in a few days' time, and then prescheduled to appear throughout the month.  And in the 6 weeks since I did that, I haven't had a moment to write since.

The other day I posted to Facebook that I actually was sitting in a quiet house, and I was turning on my writing music and was going to WRITE!  And before I could press "send" or "enter" or whatever it is on FB, my phone rang - someone who had tried to call me twice previously to set up a meeting time to discuss the community garden. And before I could finish setting up our appointment and hang up, the door chimed as it opened and my teenagers flooded in from their day at school. Le sigh.

On the bright side, homeschooling is zipping along.  I have done hours of yardwork, filling 8 lawn bags (and guess what, yes I get blisters all over my skin from working with Wisteria, even on skin that was completely covered by clothing). I have done hours of community garden work. I have become football team mom since my son is a Senior, so I have organized meals for every Friday to feed the team and I have personally been at the school every Friday since game 1, to serve the boys.  I have worked concession stand at one game and managed to photograph that and one other game, tag-teaming with my 10yo. All that, and I've also team-taught a new parents class at the community center on behalf of the Women's Clinic in Independence, and my man and I have convened a parenting class at the Parish Center of our local church every Sunday afternoon.

#58, my oldest, telling the other team to Bring It On

Transitioning to 3 teens in high school has been mind-numbing sometimes: the angst of making schedule changes during the add/drop period, the barrage of college mail and the attempt to narrow down choices to plan visits.....  My two oldest also have birthdays this month, too.  I had to juggle doing concessions for the first home game AND a 16th birthday party happening at my house on the same night. Thank god for my kids' dad. My man is such a trooper, staying home to roll out pizzas and celebrate a 16th birthday, so that I could be entombed in a west-facing concrete tomb on a 100 degree afternoon gallavant at the football stadium. The rest of this week I am hosting a cross-country-moving family friend, doing a football game, and having an 18th birthday party for my oldest.

Baby's Massage Chair

And to really stretch and challenge me, my baby is hanging off me, begging for kindergarten every day, begging me to give her dreadlocs one day and a pixie cut the next, asking me to read to her and give her computer games to play and to tag along with me every errand I need to go.  This has been the most ironic joke of my parenting life-- that my firstborn and lastborn are each high-needs kids.  The middle kids are all happy to run as a pack, quietly plotting their escapades. So here it is a couple days later, I still haven't had time to write.  I have several "story starters" in my files as new posts. But I can't really write when I'm surrounded by chattering monkeys, but I will figure out something because I miss writing.

How has your back-to-school transition gone?  Is there anything with which you struggle?