The Great Potato Cookoff

As we look back on summer, my son has learned a lot of things.  His greatest accomplishments have come in his swimming--he went from refusing to put his head underwater in May to being able to dive in and swim the length of the pool with free style or backstroke, and is working on breast stroke and butterfly.  Granted, his form could still use some work, but still, he has really come so far this summer that it is really impressive.

He's also created his own book of poetry, completed several small books on dividing a fraction by a fraction, tried some calligraphy, and learned the difference between the three major periods of classical music and whose music exemplifies the trend in each.

But then there is one think he learned that may be more useful than all of those.  For this summer, we learned to make....gnocchi.

It all began when we got some potatoes from our friend, Maria Droujkova of Natural Math, and my son decided we should use them in "The Great Potato Cookoff."  The idea of this grand event was to invite some people over and have everyone cook a different potato dish.  The purity of his vision was muddied by his mother, who insisted we include at least a couple of other things, like maybe VEGETABLES and PROTEIN, but the mainstays of the meal was potato, potato, and potato.

We were so lucky, however, because one of our friends had an Italian grandmother who had shown her how to make gnocchi, the Italian potato dumpling.  So she came over and showed us.  The secret, at least according to the Italian grandmother, is that the gnocchi must be formed with a SILVER fork--not stainless steel.  So I pulled out the silver, and we went to town.

It was really fun, and the gnocchi turned out so well!

Meanwhile, my son, who is a soup lover, made some creamy potato soup, not, alas, from an ancient relative's recipe, but from some site he found on the Internet.  However, he did a good job with it, and it tasted really good, even if it it didn't have that personal family connection.

We preceded the meal with an outside fire (a frequent occurrence at our house) made by my husband, over which we brewed some tea:

Here is our final assortment of dishes.  The bowl by the silver water bottle has potatoes from the grill (and we also grilled some vegetables and chicken and pork sausages), plus gnocchi with tomato sauce, gnocchi with pesto sauce, and the potato soup.

Just one of the many happy memories we have of the Summer of 2011!

Discussing the Death of Osama bin Laden with Middle Schoolers

It can be difficult for us as parents and teachers to know how to approach emotional but potentially controversial current events, such as the recent raid and death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, with our middle schoolers and teenagers.  However, at least in the case of the Osama bin Laden case, the White House has some online resources to help us out.

On May 5, 2011, the White House sponsored a webinar on this topic for middle school and high school students.  The person officiating the event was Ben Rhodes, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor.  Rhodes spent 10 minutes of the 30 minute webinar giving the White House perspective on the history and reasons why President Obama felt this course was necessary, and giving some fact about the attack itself.  Rhodes then spent the next 20 minutes answering questions from the 1,700 inquiries sent him by middle and high school students.

I think Rhodes did a good job presenting the Administration's perspective in a pretty straight-forward way, and his responses answer a lot of questions that may be in your children's minds, even if they can't verbalize them.  So I think this can be a useful resource in discussing this issue with them.  While the webinar is obviously over, you can access the recordings at the Discovery Education website under the heading A Discussion on Osama bin Laden.

Easter/Earth Week/Screen-Free Week

Well, there has been a lot going on for the past seven days.  We had a whole variety of activities to celebrate Earth Day, we had our week of Easter and local produce from the Farmers Market, and we foreswore our use of the Internet or computer games for purely entertainment purposes.  I don't remember when, if ever, these events have lined up together as they did this month.

So although it was busy, I have to say that it was a really great week.  And while the Earth Day activities and Easter Egg dying and hunts and fresh strawberries were all great, I really have to admit that I believe our reduced computer time was a big contributor to our appreciation of this week.

Part of it, I will also say, is due to the fact that our academic year is winding down.  Two of our activities ended last week, which is bittersweet--we've really enjoyed them, but we're looking forward to more unstructured free time.  (Let me say that I consider us to be homeschooling year round--however, during the summer, we are more laid back, because we don't have so many scheduled activities and I don't have many classes that I'm leading for groups of children.  This allows us to do our own thing on our own schedule, which is a nice break from all our classes and coops, as much as we do need and enjoy them in their time.)

But I also have to admit that not turning to our computer for entertainment meant that we turned to each other more--which is a good thing.  We spent a lot more time together playing board games or reading together.  And I have to commend my son, who really took this challenge on and didn't try to "cheat" by sneaking in his Wii or computer games.  I know he is looking forward to getting back "online," and I plan to catch up on some of my "time wasters" I've given up this week.  However, I think it has been a valuable lesson, and I think we'll have a discussion about how to keep our electronics more in check.  I already have one day a week when I don't drive as an environmental consciousness thing; perhaps we will add on an "non-essential electronics day."  We'll see.

I hope everyone else has been enjoying this week as well, and that your family life has been enriched by this holiday (at least here in North Carolina, classes have been cancelled all week for Spring Break).