Globe Genie

If you you've never heard of Globe Genie, you are missing out.  It's a neat little app using Google Street View first developed at a university and later spun into it's own site.   I don't even recall where I first ran across it, but I loved it immediately.  It can be a lesson in social studies, cultural and/or physical geography or just a really fun pastime.

Road tour of the French countryside

Road tour of the M27 near Southhampton, UK

When you arrive at the landing location, simply click all the continent boxes for the most varied journeys and click "Teleport."   Be sure to encourage "traveling"  in each destination; click down the roads, zoom in on the buildings and scenery.


You can find some ideas for building a lesson plan for this activity here.


I went for the cultural geography angle and made a worksheet with the following:




Travel to four locations. For each answer the following questions:

• Address:
• State/Country

• Describe the following: 
• Type of buildings:
• Plants:
• Animals:
• Rural/Suburban/Urban:
• Vehicles:

• What details stand out for you?
• How does this location differ from where you live?
• How is it similar?
• How far away from you?

After all four trips are taken and the questions answered, evaluate the journey.

• How do these locations differ from each other?
• How are they similar?
• Which location is the most similar to where you live?
• Which location is the most different?
• Which location is the farthest away?
• Which location is nearest?
• Which location would you like to visit most and why?

Happy travels!  How will you use Globe Genie?

Recycled Art

Sometimes  inspiration comes in twos.   As in combining two unlike things into one. I came across this art idea  and immediately thought "Pumpkins!"    Well, not pumpkins specifically, pumpkin templates would be more accurate.    While I love making use of junk mail, making stencils - not so much.   For  Halloween I went on the hunt for some fabulous pumpkin carving stencils and found many that had very little to do with Halloween.  But they would be great for other things.   My favorite finds were at

1. Paper Pumpkins
2. DLTK
3. Pumpkin Glow
4. Better Homes & Gardens

Because I enjoy making things difficult for myself, I opted to go with the Sleeping Cat.

Then I used a hobby knife to cut out the template.

"Sleeping Cat" cut out

Then I cut paper strips from junk mail.   I cut  a lot of paper strips.   Then I cut an empty snack bar box apart keeping one side plus some of the flaps  and arranged the strips on it.   I elected to glue over the printed side so I wouldn't have to see the box printing forever.  (And if you use these for gifts, it would look less recycled.)

recycled cardboard box

glued paper strips

Now here's where your choice of template design becomes important.  Lots of large open spaces?  Lots of loose paper flaps in the center?  Both are not good things.  As you go to glue the template over your cardboard base, all these loose bits of paper will wiggle around and fight you.  (And snicker.  I'm sure I heard snickering.)

Your glue is nothing to me. I laugh at your glue.  Haha!

But eventually I persevered and everything was glued down.

So then I trimmed off all the trailing edges of paper.

Huh, it's so boxy.

Well, at least it's not boxy anymore.

Well, I guess for a first attempt, it went pretty well.  I'd like to try it again with a better template and perhaps planned out colors of paper.  It would look interesting with shades of one or two colors I think.

Link Post: Art

Here are my favorite sites to get a quick idea (or not so quick) for a project:

• Familyfun.go.com
• Instructables.com  a lot random things here (not all kid friendly!) so be sure to use the sidebar categories
• marthastewart.com/
• nickjr.com for the younger set naturally
• dltk-kids.com  mostly for younger kids.  (I mainly use this site for my Sunday school class)
• familycrafts.about.com
• bhg.com (Better Homes and Gardens)
• Amazingmoms.com
• kidscraftweekly.com 
• tlc.howstuffworks.com
• craftingagreenworld.com  not specifically aimed at kids, but has a lot of interesting recycled craft ideas
• planetpals.com recycled crafting
• michaels.com

Other sites:

• This family of bloggers showcases the amazing projects they do with their kids: .filthwizardry and fangletronics.  If you are handy you might be able to use some of their ideas.

Tuna Cat Treats

Last week was cooking class with our homeschool group.  Junior loves it but it's a little bonkers. They always make too much food. They did fruit salad (but then they *always* do fruit salad) Chinese dumplings, and cat and dog treats. And they *really* overdid the cat and dog treats. Even with 19 kids in attendance there were far too many to go around.   The cooking teacher was afraid there would be too little so she doubled the recipes.  Oops.  So we had mounds of dough and only one little convection oven to cook it all in.  I ended up bringing home a big blob of dough to finish the last of it at home.  

I failed to get the dumpling and dog treat recipes but I helped with the cat treats so I have that.

Tuna Cat Treats (Giant Batch)

•  1 1/2 cups of flour
•  2 cans of tuna.  

I'd use less flour than that.  It ended up being a little too dry and we needed to add water.  Then I'd half the recipe.  Twice.  ;-)

The worst part was making the little tiny dough blobs, argh.  You will need gloves or lots of flour because the dough is very sticky.  

Photo evidence:

(Wow that pizza pan looks ugly on film)

I baked them around 400F until they were little slightly golden and sorta cookie-ish.  Soft is better because they still came out too big for a cat and needed to be cut up.  They also need to be in the fridge because they will spoil.

Home Made Knitting Needles

It's amazingly easy for your children to make their own knitting needles.


What you need:

• 2  12"US (or approx)  1/4"US/ 5MM diameter wooden dowel.  They generally come in 24"US lengths from the hobby/hardware store or you can get these* which are already cut to the 12" length you want. 
• 2 large wooden beads with a hole large enough to fit over the dowel or one chenille stem*.
• A sturdy pencil sharpener.

Steps:

1.  If using a 24" dowel measure and mark the center point.  Adults only: using a sharp utility blade score the line and carefully cut or break in half.   Sand the cut ends until smooth.
2. Lightly sand the length your two 12" dowels with medium and light grade sandpaper until they feel smooth in your hands.   You don't want it to snag the yarn.
3. Using the pencil sharpener carefully sharpen one end of the dowel.  You want a pencil-like shape but take care not to over sharpen.  You do not want a sharp point.  If you do find the point is too sharp, sand it until safely blunt.
4. Glue wooden bead to end the of each dowel.  If using chenille stem cut a small length for each dowel, enough to wind it around three or four times tucking sharp wire ends underneath.  Glue in place.

When the glue is dry, your new needles are ready to use!


According to this chart, your finished needle size will be:

Contemporary U.S. Size	Contemporary U.K./U.S. Metric Range	European Metric Range	"Old" U.S.(Taken from a Boye Needle gauge reprinted in a 1942 publication)	U.K.
8	5 mm	5 mm	8 (standard needles)	6

Well, now that you have your needles are you left wondering what to do?  In case you are new to knitting or just rusty, this site and this site  have some good videos to get you started.



*Amazon Affiliate Link

Strawberry Pizza

Was a very long day. 


Junior had an all day migraine so we drove everywhere today.  Today was Math class and cooking class. 


Today's menu, pizza and cheesecake. The pizza was great, the cheesecake took way too long. Too many things to bake as usual. I let Junior bring home two cupcake sized cheesecakes even though we are now certain he's lactose intolerant. His stomach has had a lot to say about him having milkshakes and cheese. He even made his pizza without cheese. Though he did put a few of the sliced strawberries for the cheesecakes on the pizza. Wasn't as bad it sounds. No worse than pineapple. Ha. And the baked berries have a really interesting taste.  I would try it again.

More Cooking Tales

Inspired by another blogger, I'm posting about Junior making breakfast today. He really likes cooking and he's made eggs before so, when I half jokingly asked when he was making us scrambled eggs this morning, he jumped up to do that. I was sitting in the office adjacent the kitchen so he was able to ask "pot or skillet?" (And thankfully I was able to jump up and light the burner when he'd let gas just pour out, forgetting to turn it to the "light" setting. Eek.) 

Then he grabbed two eggs and held them in his hand as he tried to open the fridge to put the carton away and crushed one of them in his hand. Hee. This setback was fine with him: he just grabbed another egg and cracked them right in the pan. No beating and no oil or anything. Ummm. We decided at that point he was making "modified scrambled eggs." ;) But he prevailed and something like scrambled eggs was made and eaten (and a pan is still soaking in the sink).

Clearly, he just needs more practice. I'm just glad he still likes cooking and maybe he won't be as useless at cooking as I am. He does like to watch the Food Channel.