Pedigreed Housewife World

My kiddies have discovered the age old joy of running around in socks and then shocking each other. Fun to the kiddies, less so for the mommy. But I'm a good sport and I can get in on the static electricity fun. I tell my kids as we're driving to school to ask around today and come home with a good definition of static electricity. I meant to ask their teachers and maybe the librarian, or look it up in a book, but they came home telling me that none of their friends knew the definition. Abby, never wanting to not know something says that she knows exactly what it is, "when you have electricity and it is static which means it doesn't move." So I tell them that static electricity means a charge that is created by friction. Who knows what friction means? Briana says, "it is a force that stops you from doing stuff." "Like Mommy can be friction if you want to eat all the Halloween candy," adds Abby. So when you walk around in socks on the rug ...

My kids love the first two Harry Potter books (the only ones they are allowed to read so far). My mother-in-law also loves the Harry Potter books, and this week she was in town and the kids were in Harry Potter heaven. All day long they talked about the things that happened in the books and cast spells. My mother-in-law decided to show the kids how the spells were usually made up of Latin words and the kids were fascinated, so when my inlaws left this morning I decided to keep up the fun and stave off the grandparents-are-gone-cryfest.   T he kids, with my inlaws, had taken spells from Harry Potter and broken them down into their roots.   I ask the kids what spells they wish they could cast. Abby wants to turn someone into a baby. We look up the root of the word baby (I have a dictionary app on my phone and when you search word you can click to get the definition, synonyms, origin, grammar, and “learners” that includes pronunciations, inflections, and common e...

As my kids continue down the path of wanting to be spies, a couple of awesome things have happened. One, the toys are much cooler. I’ll take night vision goggles and walkie talkies over talking Fantastic Gymnastics Dora any day (sorry Dora!). Two, the books are more exciting. Nancy Clancy beats Fancy Nancy any day, I kind of like Young Cam Jansen, and the non-fiction stuff the kids are bringing home is teaching me along with the kids. Not to mention that the kids have their noses in books more and more, which is generally a good thing. But the third great outcome of the recent spy obsession is that the kids are much more observant lately (blame the binoculars). All kinds of little every day things require additional exploration. One of the biggest things that the kids are all about understanding is how the roads work. You see, as spies they might be tapped at any moment, given keys to a fancy car, and sent on a secret mission. As such, they need to really understa...

My girls are budding entrepreneurs. Since she was three years old, Briana has been telling me that she is going to open a boutique and be a designer, and she named her store Boutique Girls. She is now 7, but has not forgotten this dream. We’ve been through at least 5 logo changes, from all of the letters in balloons to the current logo below. And now Abigail wants in on the fun. She wants to be a confectioner. Briana and I regularly have little debates about aspects of her store: Girls clothes only or boys too? Accessories? Online sales or not? Color of décor? Location (she says Paris or New York, I say close to home J )? We even spent a whole night talking about the kind of lighting she wanted once. But lately her favorite thing to talk about is pricing. She is learning about coins and value at school and has come to realize that pricing and making actual money is a part of being a designer. This has led to some awesome conversations and a lot more awareness when...

My kids are really into two things this week. The first is capillary action. Ever since we did our last experiments on capillary action , Abigail has managed to work the phrase in every single day. Even her My Little Pony train tracks were set up in a dumbbell formation so Abby could say the train was showing the movement of water between cups in capillary action. I’m happy that the idea has stuck with her, so I’d love to reinforce it. The second is spies. Ever since we watched Spy Kids on family movie night, and got Briana a book that came with secret spy ears and a few other spy toys, it’s all we talk about. We are even planning a spy birthday party for Abigail, even though her birthday is a significant amount of time from now. So I decided that today, since the kids are off of school for a teacher in service day, I’m going to show the kids how to use chromatography to detect who the bad guy is. You see, the bad guy has left a note, and it threatens all that...