The Peoplehood of the Traveling Swirly Pan: Where Education Meets Tasty

Introducing the Fabulous Jenni Field!

I’m here today to rave about my delightful, hilarious, compassionate, and brilliant chef friend Jenni Field, who offers up her chef-ish secrets for free on her website, in blog posts and charming kitchen-based videos. Jenni, who regularly buys items to give away to her readers, recently came up with a super idea to spread her passion for her most beloved swirly cake pan. She couldn’t afford to buy enough of them to just give them away to whoever wanted them, so she decided to send hers on a transcontinental trip, so that it could experience baking love from many hands in many, many states. She announced her plans on facebook and her website, and to date, she has 172 participants from 48 states and Canada (come on New Mexico and South Dakota!). She calls her newly formed community “Peoplehood of the Traveling Swirly Pan.”

The pan will travel from participant to participant, and each person will bake something in the swirly cake pan, photograph it, share it with the swirly pan community, and then send it on to the next person. A beautiful way to connect the world, don’t you think?

As I was signing up to participate, it occurred to me that this was a fantastic learning opportunity as well. Jenni thinks the pan can rotate to approximately 30 people per year, so she estimates its journey will last more than 5 years. How cool for us homeschoolers, parents, teachers, grandparents, and other folks who love learning to jump on board and follow its progress?

One of Jenni’s amazing creations in her swirly pan

There are so many ways to hook this into our educational plans.

1. Geography: Set up a map and chart the progress. Mark the map with sticker stars as the pan travels from state to state.

2. Cooking/Math: Observe and discuss the different cakes being baked in the same pan. Try some new recipes!

3. Culture: On your map, indicate what kind of cake was made at each stop. Are there cultural themes? Do northerners bake different types of cakes than southerners? Westerners vs. easterners? Or are we all homogenized due to readily available ingredients and an integrated population?

4. Creativity: Discuss the variety of approaches to the same pan that are dependent on perspective. Broaden that discussion to embrace other topics – worldviews, art, religion, politics, music, reading, fashion – you name it.

5. Community: This is fabulous opportunity to get to know new folks and invite friends and family you already know from around the country. Jenni has provided ample venues for connection, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. If we had enough kids involved, perhaps they could continue their correspondence throughout the pan’s 5+ year long journey.

What other ways can you think of to use this project to enhance your education? Let me know – or more importantly, let Jenni know when you sign up!

The Search for End-of-Semester Motivation

Fighting late-winter blues by playing music with friends in our newly renovated music studio.

We all get there. Here it is, April, and we can taste summer on our lips. Even in North Dakota where we’re still under about a foot of snow, we feel the promise of 50 degrees and sunshine next week, and we really do believe that sunny days and green grass are in store for us. We need it, ache for it. We are sick of routine and boots and coats and wet and being cooped up. Oh, for a day of summer!

The reality is, of course, that we’re still about six weeks away from the end of the semester. So what can we do to stay on track and not give in to our inner restlessness? (Hint: it has something to do with listening to our restlessness.)

1. Use the changing weather to enhance your learning. As the sun comes out and the ground warms up, look to the outdoors whenever possible! Even last week when we were yanked back into the depths of winter, Eva and I took advantage of the late spring blizzard to construct an honest to goodness igloo. As the snow melts off, we plan to create a map of our yard and garden on graph paper and plan out our new garden bed. Math and science, baby. We may also look to incorporate some wildlife habitats out there. We already have birdfeeders, but are planning a tiny pond too. Perhaps a log pile? Lots of research and experimentation opportunities here. And walks through the neighborhood make for great PE time and allows space for talking and dreaming, architectural observation and friendly neighbor chats.

2. Focus on the kids’ interests. Ian wants to record this summer, and to do that he needs to become versed in the recording software Cubase. I’ve made Cubase mastery an assignment for him over the next few weeks, using the tutorial that comes with the program, youtube videos, and direct experimentation. Eva is interested in filmmaking and preserving the threatened koala, so she’s busy writing a script for a short film that will educate others about the marsupial’s plight and provide opportunities to help.

I also wanted the kids to write an essay this semester, and realized that kind of assignment could be a buzz-kill this time of year. To make it work, I provided time during the day for them to work on their papers, and let them choose their topics. Ian chose (I know you’ll never guess) music. Eva, just as shocking, chose Harry Potter. I don’t really care what their topics are, but the papers have to be argumentative – not just a report. Ian’s still in the research phase, but Eva will be exploring the role of intelligence in the Harry Potter books. Since they both love their topics, the process will feel more joyful.

3. Provide Free Choice. In our daily schedule, Eva has one or two blocks of “free choice” during which she selects a topic from a preselected menu. Her choices are all things she’s interested in anyway, but having to make a choice from the list helps her make more intentional decisions about what she does during her day. And having the freedom to make that choice helps her feel more excited about her activities. It also allows her to delve more deeply into what she’s in the mood for instead of having to work on a particular topic just because it’s “time” to do it.

4. Rework the day’s schedule. Why wait until the semester change to rework the daily schedule? By this time of year we feel stale, and the best way to freshen up is to look at how the day moves with fresh eyes. Since Ian goes to public school for math and music, I have to work around their established schedule. However, within those parameters, I try to create a schedule that follows our natural flow. I want it to work for us, not the other way around. And my #1 rule is that a schedule is made to be flexible. This is a guideline to help us. If the day doesn’t want to follow what I’ve laid out, it’s best to listen and change course.

If you’re interested, click here to take a look at our end of semester schedule.

Talking to Kids About Boston: What Kind of House Will You Build?

We had a blizzard last weekend, dropping almost two feet of snow in just one day. It’s everywhere, thick and sticky – a mess, yes, and too late in the season to actually be welcomed – but it’s great for building. Eva and I decided to explore the architecture of igloos this week for our science study. We spent three afternoons packing snow into a plastic container to make ice bricks, stacking, and packing loose material in between to serve as mortar.

I knew I had to tell her and Ian about Boston, just like I had to tell them about Sandy Hook Elementary earlier in the year. You can’t not tell kids things like that these days; even if you wanted to shield them, they live in the Age of Information. They will hear it from their friends, teachers, or social media. When events like Boston happen, it’s never a matter of if I’m going to talk to the kids about it, but when. I want to be the one who shares troubling information with my children first. I don’t want them to learn about it through rumor and conjecture.

Eva and I were in our snowpants, and she had cleared the floor of the igloo. I was making the snow bricks and handing them over to her. Stack, pack, smooth, pack pack pack. First row done, we moved to the second, spacing the bricks so they overlapped for strength. I bided my time. Pat, pat, pat. “I have something sad to tell you, Eva.” The brightness of the day – the sun, the clarity of the snow, the cold on my cheeks, the activity of the igloo – makes this feel safer. “Uh-oh,” she says. “A couple of bombs went off in Boston yesterday,” I tell her. “A lot of people were injured, and three were killed.”

She listened as I filled in the details for her – about the race, about the timing of the bomb, about the identity of the people who had died. We smoothed in the bricks as I talked, focusing our eyes on the snow and the walls of the progressing house. What kind of house will I help her build here? Once I gave her the basic gist, I told her all the amazing stories of heroism that day. How the runners had kept running to the hospital after they crossed the marathon finish line so they could donate their blood to help the victims of the blasts. How people ran towards the bombings to help instead of fleeing in fear and self-preservation. I told her about the 78-year old first-time marathoner who was knocked over by the shock waves of the bomb just a few feet from the finish line, and how he got back up and walked to its end, refusing to be defeated.

In fact, there were so many positive stories, most of our conversation turned around themes of courage and empathy, and though the event is tragic and frightening, it served as an example of the enormous amount of good in the world. We kept building, and talked about the power of human compassion.

The next day, Ian joined us, helping us make more bricks. The walls were coming along steadily now – we were about half-way up. I checked in with him about his knowledge of Boston. Too late – of course he had already heard about it. But interestingly, he was just as aware of the acts of bravery as I had been. He already knew about the blood donors, about how people ran towards the blast to help. The conversation – again – was more about the beauty in the wreckage than the wreckage itself.

What kind of world will we build together? This story should be told – has to be told. But it’s up to us to choose the perspective of how we will engage with it. Instead of feeling traumatized and hopeless, the kids and I all went away feeling saddened, yes, but also reassured by the immense courage of the people who put their concerns of personal safety aside so they could help folks who needed it. I want my kids to be empowered. I do not want to shelter them from the horrors of the world; instead I want them to know they have the strength to deal with what’s out there, and the ability to turn adversity into a thing of beauty.

Once Eva finished the last block of her igloo, I gave her some spray bottles filled with food coloring, and invited her to decorate her cozy new home. She painted spring flowers on the outside of her house, covered the floor with green “grass,” added a sun to the cone-shaped ceiling. Winter might be firmly in our midst, but spring will, in the end, win out.

Education Through Gaming: Math and Science Roundup

To wrap up my mini-series on educational video gaming, allow me to share the other online resources that we have particularly enjoyed over the last year or two. Given our tech limitations (we own only laptops – no Ipads or Itouches or anything like that), we generally stick to the resources we can easily access on the web.

As I was writing this post, I realized there is perhaps a discussion to be had as to what constitutes a video game. Is it simply a self-contained app that you play exclusively on a tech device? Or do you take into account resources that provide challenges to accomplish away from the computer or Ipad, rewarding players only upon completion of the task? For this post, I choose the second and broader view.

CellCraft

I’ve spoken about this game before. CellCraft is a game we discovered only this year, and thoroughly enjoyed its fun combination of learning with super fun video-gaming challenges and silly fantasy. Here’s my take, from my previous post:

The other completely addictive activity we dived into is a video game called CellCraft. Holy cow, folks – this was ridiculously fun. Though the creators definitely took some artistic license (you find the organelles you need, and at one point our animal cell is given plant cell chloroplasts to generate more energy), the science behind most of the game is pretty accurate. The player must run the cell, making sure all organelles are doing what they need to do, and are getting the resources they need to thrive.

Viruses periodically attack the cell, which you must biologically defend, and there is an overarching fantasy narrative: an alien platypus race on a threatened planet is sending this cell across the expanse of space to land on a new planet (Earth) where it can grow into new platypusses. Platypi? Whatever. It’s cute and fun. Eva and I played it together for days, and I loved hearing her yell out “we need more lysosomes!!” and the like. It’s free for download, so check it out. Ian played it a little too, but he hasn’t covered cell biology yet. After watching both experiences, I recommend using it after the student has already studied the structure and function of a cell. It’s better as a reinforcement activity than a straight-ahead teaching tool.

Interestingly, now that the semester is over, I’ve been able to compare having a kid use it in tandem with biology study and not. Eva played the whole game through, and even now, months later, she has a firm grasp on the variety and function of a cell’s organelles. Ian, who only dabbled in the game one afternoon, still has to really think to recall the same information. Eva engaged with the material more deeply than her brother because of CellCraft; the game took us many hours to play, and oftentimes she and I had to work together to make sure the cell got what it needed during its more dire moments. It was exciting and fun, and now that information is hers. Ian on the other hand learned the information more traditionally – through lectures and texts – and never became emotionally invested, so the information failed to resonate. I mean, he gets it. He just doesn’t own it.

Alcumus

Alcumus falls under my broader video game definition. This “game” is honestly more of a cool math problem generator that rewards success with XP and challenge badges (pre-algebra and up). Think along the lines of a Khan Academy setup. For a while, Ian loved Alcumus. This was a couple of years ago when he was stagnating in math. I could give him a set of problems on a sheet of paper, and he would absolutely hate it. But when the same problems were presented to him with Alcumus’ digital rewards, math became something to look forward to. Seriously – he went from struggling through this topic for 40 minutes a day to working without interruption for up to 4 hours at a time! This excitement did eventually wear off for him, and Alcumus has never had the same pull for Eva that it did for her brother, but still. It’s free, has quality problems with funny educational instructional videos to help you out if you need it, and it just may be the thing your kid needs to get through a difficult hump in math. To be honest, I think the instructional videos – though still limited in scope – are more engaging than the ones Khan Academy produces. Not to diss Khan. I love me some Khan. But hopefully by now, you’re well-educated about that fabulous resource.

DIY

This is our newest discovery, and hoo-boy, are we instant fans. Their mission is to help kids become makers. Makers of anything – music, art, clubs, science gizmos, computer gizmos… they challenge you to cook, work on open source sites, create forts, make magic, build an engine, study wildlife, and yes you Minecraft-addicts: they even have Minecraft-related challenges. Here’s the very simple way it works: choose a challenge (or create your own), follow the instructions (or make your own), complete the challenge, photograph or film it, and upload it to your free account on the site. The staff reviews and approves your work, and you get an awesomesauce badge (think Girl Scouts) once you’ve completed three tasks in a single topic. If they like your work, they’ll highlight it on their website, making you feel super-cool. Eva and I have decided that science for all of next year will simply be making stuff, using this amazing resource.

Hmm. So now you may be asking: what no Angry Birds? Well, actually, no. I’m a reluctant gamer, I suppose, and my preference for the most part is topic-specific resources like CellCraft and Alcumus, and those like DIY that encourage real-life interaction. At the end of the day, I hope to have spent much more time away from screens than in front of them.

But before you techies judge me as a stone-ager, allow me to share this video that came across my feed this week: a message about the importance of moving beyond simply playing games to learning the code that comprises them. (And, you guessed it -  there’s a link at the end to a site where you can learn how to code with a bit of gaming help!) No matter how we feel about them, video games and technology and the code that makes them do what they do are an important part of our existence today. Code is our language now. And we’d best not get left behind.

Eva’s Take on Minecraft as History Class

Eva recently began blogging on her website, and this week talked about her experiences using Minecraft to create her history timeline. To read the post, click here!

Minecraft in the Classroom

Blogging Note: If you don’t know what the video game Minecraft is, check out this link and watch the little demo.

Over the last couple of weeks, Minecraft, gaming, and personal devices have continued to surface as topics related to education. Ian shared the following link with me on facebook. He thought that maybe – just maybe – I would finally see the light and let him have as much Minecraft time as his little heart desires. I had to laugh, and it took me a couple of days to get around to watching it, but then I did. And it was quirky and fun. Give it a watch.

This little video led to other threads of conversation, including this TED talk about making education exclusively a gaming format. Now I simply just can’t get into that. At one point in the presentation, TED talker Zichermann describes the days of his grandfather in which a person might sit down on a Sunday afternoon with a good book and a cup of tea and then says with a laugh, “I don’t think that today’s kids are ever gonna do that.” Oooooh. Bad form. Totally lost me there, Zichermann.

But then, as if the stars were aligning, by friend and fellow blogger The Suburban Matron posted about her kindergartener’s school asking its students to bring in their own personal tech devices for use in the classroom. She was struggling with what it meant to use these types of tools at so young an age. (You should read the post, and others of hers too. She’s ridiculously funny). Lots to think about.

But back to Minecraft, to which both of my children are slightly addicted. Eva, who also watched Ian’s little video find, has also been at me to include Minecraft in school. But I just couldn’t get my mind around it. Until today. She, wise child that she is, finally figured out that she needed to be specific to get me to take her seriously. She suggested that she make a history timeline in Minecraft. This caught my attention. “What do you mean?” I asked. “I would make a huge wall out of wool,” she said, “and then post signs along it to create the timeline.”

I agreed to grant one hour a day to Minecraft for this purpose. Because I am so very stingy with video game time (both kids get only up to 1 and 1/2 hours each week, and only on the weekends), this was like saying tomorrow was going to be Christmas, part 2. She started immediately, and as I watched, she created the wall, divided it up into centuries, color coded different cultures (light blue is China, brown is England, etc.), and pulled up some internet resources to help her plot major world events.

At this point, Ian discovered us. He wasn’t going to have this new delight unshared, especially since it was all started by the video that he found and posted to my wall. So I agreed to additional Minecraft time for him for history timeline purposes (if possible – he’s a bit busier than Eva is right now). He took a different approach, digging down into the recesses of the earth, in which he would plot out early human history. As written history begins and the story gets more complicated, he plans on building up out of the earth and creating branches that stretch upward with different and parallel story lines.

Really? Sometimes school planning is so difficult – coming up with creative things to keep the kids engaged in learning is frankly a challenge. And sometimes, it’s like this. The kids create something new and awesome, and I kick back while they teach me about what they’ve discovered. I can’t see anything bad in this. And though I will always always be an eclectic homeschooler (meaning a wide and varied combination of methods), I am happy to include Minecraft in our repertoire, at least for now.

What do you think? Pros and cons? I’d love to hear of your experiences and opinions about gaming in the classroom.

Mexi-Hexi-Flexigons!!!

Eva looooves Vi Hart, the charming, quirky, and brilliant mathematician who is best known for her verbally quick videos about math and doodling. This week, once again, Eva’s been studying her video on mexi-hexi-flexigons. Take a peek:

Ok. Now you know why we adore Vi. Today, Eva decided was The Day to make these delicious treats, so off we went to the grocery store to buy 12 inch tortillas for the task. We bought a package of 6.

Eva is working with the tortilla strip

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First step is to cut a strip from the center of the tortilla. Proportion is key. Too thin and it won’t hold any food, too thick, and you won’t be able to make enough triangles to complete the shape. Also, fresh tortillas are essential!! Most tortillas will break if you bend them around too much. Even with the package we just opened, we still had some tearing problems. Tortillas #1 – #4 met terrible fates, either from being too small or too big, or tearing when the flexing moment arrived.

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Oh my. We only had two tortillas left! This time, Eva paid close attention to the strip width, and we decided not to do any pre-eating flexing. This one was going to count.

Testing out the triangle strip

Building the triangle stack

This one’s going to work, we just know!

Pulling together the ingredients….

Drum Roll Please! …

 

Om nom nom.

New Year Family Goal-Setting Time: Creativity

Creative outlets are what makes this family function properly. When out of balance, we all four get grumpy and unsettled. This has been especially challenging for us this year as we’ve moved into a very small, charming, and old bungalow with some fabulous unfinished spaces. We naively believed that we could have these spaces (one an attic that will become an art studio, and the second a basement that will outfit a music rehearsal and recording space) finished by early last fall. Ha! North Dakota’s oil boom related growth has kept every contractor and sub-contractor so busy it’s unbelievable. As a result, we’ve had to wait and wait and wait. We’ve been on top of each other, and the space we naturally take up for creating has been pretty much confined to the kitchen table.

The attic in process. The temporary pink foam sheets mark planned vertically placed skylights.

With all our art boxes still packed away in the garage, we (especially Eva and I) have felt unsettled this year. We have had some progress, and we see an end in sight: the attic by the end of the month, the basement by… dare I hope for the end of March? This makes us incredibly happy, and in the meantime, we keep our dining table nice and cluttered and full.

Oh, but the lure of these spaces! Eva and I are already dreaming of our separate writing areas up there, hers a window seat that I’ll build for her, mine a simple table and chair. A spacious Lego area, and of course lots of space for canvasses and paper, paint and pastels. Just the idea of all that gets our creative juices flowing.

in the meantime, Eva is working steadily on her newest novel, a science fiction piece that takes place in an animal cell. She’s had to take out a character, which has proven to be the biggest editing challenge she’s ever faced. But she’s determined. We cleaned off her bedroom desk yesterday so that she could feel more authorly. She’s been making writing-related posts on her Facebook author page that are so cheerful it feels like summer.

Eva is also continuing to explore music, enjoying playing trumpet in band, and teaching herself how to play piano. Bass clef is still sketchy, and she never commits enough to sit down at the piano, but she’ll stand there picking away every time she passes by the instrument (which is often). Spotify and her iPod have helped introduce Eva to new music, and right now she’s really into powerful women with a harder musical edge like Paramore and Joan Jett.

Ian has big goals too, which I’ve talked about before. Now that he’s done with his lengthy application process for the Downbeat Magazine Student Music Awards competition, he’s focusing on an orchestral composition that will begin as a 18th century classical work and transform into a modern heavy metal sound. A collaboration with fashion designer Isabella Taylor, they are working together to create a multi-media piece that moves from stately, refined conservatism to a freedom of expression and thought. She will design the fashions, and the music will help express the message in a runway-show-type presentation. It’s challenging work, and Ian has gotten his music theory teacher on board with the project so that he can receive regular expert feedback along the way.

Another big goal for Ian has to do with the pending space. Once the basement is finished, he hopes to turn it into a community hotspot, welcoming musicians of all ages to come and create music together. He wants to create official performing groups, but also to simply have opportunities to play with new folks just for the sheer delight of making music.

As an extension of this, Ian hopes to produce his first album this summer. We’ve been in steady conversation about this. It’s a challenging thing to take on, mainly because of the wide variety of genres Ian enjoys. How does one place a rock ballad next to a composition for orchestra? Do we make it a hodge-podge collection of his work as a type of demo? Do we release individual songs instead, using his Bandcamp page? Lots of things to consider here, and we haven’t figured it all out yet. There’s also the fundraising to think about. Recording of course isn’t cheap, and we feel it is important for Ian to be involved with this aspect of the business as well. We’ve discussed a possible Kickstarter campaign, which opens up all sorts of new things to research and explore, like what all needs to be in place before the campaign begins, how to make a convincing Kickstarter video, what benefits to offer supporters, and how to promote the campaign to ensure success.

Jamie with his newest book, In Darkest London

And that’s just the kids. Husband-Jamie is shopping for agents for a new YA novel, just published his first academic book, and is about to begin a new novel. I want to paint more and write more. I just met the lovely Elizabeth Raum this week, a professional children’s nonfiction author, and she has me inspired. I’m also lucky to have the brilliant and creative Jennifer Woods in my life, the vibrant editor of Typecast Publishing, who will I swear change the world with her vision and commitment to literary social engagement. Her work and enthusiasm is also quite inspiring and contagious. I can’t wait to see what 2013 brings.

If you see value in these exercises and goals, think about it within the language of school. This is our family’s school, our life. This is our education. If we could be so bold in supporting our schools and teachers, in training and then trusting them to be more subjective in their evaluation of student success – to accept portfolio reports instead of standardized test scores, think about it! The things we do here in our homeschool environment could be made accessible to so many other children! That’s an educational paradigm I could get into.

New Year Family Goal-Setting Time: Science

I love fresh starts. A semi-annual house purger, I enjoy clearing out and sharing items that no longer have personal use or meaning. I am a goal-setter and re-evaluator. I constantly question if this or that thing is working, and if the answer is “no,” I have no problem improving it if possible or dumping it altogether if not.

The New Year is of course one of the grander opportunities for this kind of exercise, and for homeschool, it’s a great time to evaluate our year, change things that aren’t working, and make plans for a winter and spring that are going to pop. As in all things – especially in homeschooling – the kids get a say in how things shake out. I ask them what they are enjoying in school, what’s not so great, and then we brainstorm together. This is one of the greatest gifts of homeschooling: you can turn on a dime and make your environment better. It’s this constant evaluation and tweaking process that makes homeschooling work for our family – without it, well, why bother?

For the next few posts, I’m going to share this process for the different elements of our study and our lives. Today I’m going to talk about science.

Ian and Biology

Science was the school subject requiring the most alteration for both kids. Ian had been working with the AP Biology course offered in the online program Thinkwell; he had enjoyed the sample lectures he watched, and we had never really done online education before, so we figured we’d give it a go. But though he started out enthusiastic, things went downhill over the course of the fall. First off, the pace of the class is intense, and Ian found himself pushing through lectures too quickly. There is no opportunity for meaningful discussion about the subject matter, no hands-on exploration or labs, and the quizzes and tests seem to focus on tedium instead of deep understanding. My very bright boy was failing biology; he began to dread it, and felt well, like a failure – like he wasn’t cut out for it.

My dad was able to talk with Ian a lot about biology over the holidays. Here they are together on a Christmas family sleigh-ride.

I know Ian is not a failure – that he has an extreme ability to understand new and complex concepts. I began to wonder if the Thinkwell program was simply not a good fit for him. Over the month of December, I had my dad look at the course and quizzes. My dad, conveniently, is a retired genetics professor, and spent his career teaching college level biology, botany, genetics, etc. After some review of the course and interviews with Ian, we decided that my dad (who lives in NC) would take over Ian’s biology study, connecting through Skype and email a couple of times each week. Ian is extremely happy with this arrangement, and though biology still isn’t something he wakes up jazzed about, he sees a possibility of success.

By the way, leaving the Thinkwell course half-finished is walking away from a sizable chunk of change that I laid down in the fall for the year-long course. But one of the first rules of homeschooling is to be prepared to drop things that aren’t working, even if they were expensive.

Eva and Robotics

Adding the last details for shooter-bot

Eva and I spent the fall studying cell biology and the human body. For spring, we had laid out botany, zoology, and ecology. But though we had super fun resources to work with in the fall (especially for cell biology), I hadn’t come up with anything terribly exciting for the spring studies. Eva’s only 9, so I don’t feel pushed to necessarily give her all this right away. She and I spent several weeks in December brainstorming: I asked her to consider what she might like to study instead. After many conversations, she presented robotics as her favorite choice. A Lego fanatic, Eva had drooled over the Lego Mindstorms kit for years and wondered if, just maybe, she could do Lego for school. She was so excited, that really the only answer I was ever going to give was yes.

The kit came in the mail on Wednesday, and I swear you’ve never seen someone so excited. Eva tracked the shipping online, and then sat in the front window for hours waiting for the UPS truck on The Day of Arrival. She spun around in a spinny chair all day, alternately reading and drawing pictures of robots and gardens on the front window with dry erase pens. Now that it’s here, it’s all she wants to do, and after just one day Eva is already so competent in the building and programming of her first robot (yes, she’s already completed one), it’s mind-boggling. Every hour or so, I hear a gasp of excitement “I love school SO much!” or “I can’t believe I get to do this for school!” or “thank you so much mom for getting this for me!” Yeah, I think this will work out fine. And don’t worry: Ian gets in on the robotics action too. How can he not?

Of course one of the first tasks for our new shooter-bot was to shoot Kinzy, the family koala that is the subject of many of Eva’s stories and her latest book. Here’s a little peek:

Guest Post from Eva Ridenhour

Hello all, and welcome to the 2012 National Novel Writing Month! In honor of the month, I am reposting Eva’s 2011 interview with the Office of Letter and Light (they’re the organization who runs National Novel Writing Month). So without further adieu, welcome Eva! (yaaaayyyyyyy!)

Oh, and PS: if you want to see all the Very Friendly comments on her original post, just click on the title below, and you’ll be rerouted to the original.

October 29, 2011 10:04 am

An Early Start: A Q&A with Eva Ridenhour

At eight years old, Eva Ridenhour already defies expectations about what it means to be a writer. Eva writes, illustrates, and publishes her own stories, and has already toured the country selling her own work alongside her father, novelist Jamieson Ridenhour. She’s also uploaded a series of short writing lectures about her process, which you can find on her site. Eva was inspired by NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program, and has written her own work in November two years in a row. Via email, OLL got a chance to speak to Eva regarding her work and experience with NaNoWriMo.

Where do you get ideas for your stories?

I get my story ideas by looking around and exaggerating simple things. For instance, if I’m playing with stuffed animals, I make up a whole new story idea. My favorite stuffed animal is named Kinzy (he’s a koala); he has a big imagination. I like to make up stories about the Koala Wars with all sorts of funny things that have to do with Kinzy. It’s very fun to give him a personality. He loves to eat, and has a best friend named Mark. He’s not very smart, but thinks he’s the most Awesome Thing Ever.

I also love reading. My favorite books by far are the Harry Potter series. They give me lots of ideas, because I like that kind of magical story, and it makes me want to write magical books.

I was inspired to write Birds on the Run and Attack of the Reptiles (my first two books) by my love of bird watching. I like watching how birds act, and could imagine them coming into my house, and talking to me. So I made that come to life.

What do you enjoy more: writing or illustrating?

Writing, hands down. I like writing, because I’m able to bring my imagination to life through words, and I love to read.

In one of your videos, you mention touring with your father. What was the book tour experience like?

It was very fun. I had to get up and talk to people. It made me nervous the whole time, but I loved it, because I got to talk with so many people and meet new people. I liked talking about my books. Once I begin, I can hardly stop!

Selling and signing the books was fun too, because it made me feel excited and happy. It feels good to know that people like my stuff.

Can you tell us a little about your next book?

I am working on more than one book, but I’ll tell you about one in particular. This one is about a monster slayer. I don’t know exactly how it’s going to turn out yet, but there will be werewolves and lots of fighting and fun. The monster slayer is a 12-year-old girl named Talen who has an unusual life. She has alien parents and was born in the stars (but she doesn’t know that); she now lives in a tree. She fights monsters, because a pack of werewolves attacked her on her 12th birthday. There’s also a very wimpy boy named Kevin who has never seen adventure before; they eventually become friends and fight together, even though Talen is a much better fighter than Kevin.

Where did you get the idea to start making videos about your writing?

I was on the book tour when I had the idea of the writing videos. I discovered that I had something to say—that I inspired people. The videos help me talk to people without having to go everywhere. I am hoping that teachers will find my videos and show them to their classrooms. I’m trying to get the word out now by going to teachers’ conventions. My parents are also emailing them to teachers and writers.

What has been your coolest experience as an author?

Neil Gaiman watched my videos, and that’s so awesome nobody can imagine it. He even commented on them. He said, “She does an amazing job.” Debbie Dadey, who writes the Baily School Kids, commented on my website itself. She liked my videos too!

What is your favorite part of the writing process?

I like writing the books themselves more than illustrating, revising, or the rest of the writing process. When I’m writing, I feel like I’m inside the story, doing all the stuff my characters are doing. And I’m having fun!