Kid Baltimore | Family Activities with Children in Baltimore, Maryland

Treehouse - Part 1

 

Every kid wants a tree house. It's one of those rites of childhood -- a place to house pirates, or witches, or woodland creatures; a place to perfect secret handshakes and clubhouse rules. We've been wanting to add a tree house for a while, and this year, big projects seem a little more manageable. The twins are old enough to be interested, and maybe even help a little.

Dave's plan (above) was developed after reading Kid's Places to Play, by Jeanne Huber. Dave's idea: keep it simple and base everything on 4' x 8' measurements, so cutting is minimized. The first task was to find the right location. We happened to have a little stand of locust trees that we thought might work well.

Our three trees meant that he needed to plant a post for the fourth leg. The kids helped dig a hole, and Dave used quick setting concrete to stabilize the post.

 

The tree house will rest on cross supports. We have two main concerns about the supports. The first, we want to allow for a little bit of movement from the trees. The second, we don't want to damage the trees and realistically, we know that may happen. To minimize the risk, Dave decided to drill through the trees and install lag bolts, instead of lashing the structure onto the trees. The more the bark remains intact, the better the trees will do.

Then, the deck was built.

 

The next step will be framing the basic structure. We will post an update on that soon, so check back!

[Gentle nagging here, if you haven't voted yet today, please vote for Kid Baltimore here.]

Natural Weed Killer

The poison ivy crop sure is healthy around here. When we moved in to our little house by the edge of the woods, poison ivy was growing up the trees in thick, hairy vines. Dave donned his Tyvec suit (very fashionable), chopped through it with an ax and threw it deep into the woods. Knight in shining armor stuff here, as far as I'm concerned, because I am pretty darn allergic to the stuff.

I have followed up with more chemical weed killer than I would like to admit, but make no apologies. When your kid starts to blister from the stuff, you do what you need to do. I have, however, been experimenting with a more natural weed killer. So far, the results have been really good and I will keep a bottle of my concoction with me in my gardening bag from now on. It seems to kill most anything you spray it on, so spray carefully. But the good news is that I don't worry to much about my "helpers" helping me.

4 c. white vinegar

1/2 c. salt

16 drops liquid dish washing soap

Spray on plants liberally. Repeat every couple of days if needed, or after a rain.

And on an unrelated note, the voting for best local blog is coming to an end soon. If you haven't voted today, please vote here.

His Quilt

Quilt © 2009 Judy Hesselberth and Jacob, photos © 2009 John Hesselberth

Know how sometimes you blink and realize your kid had one of the monumental, brain leaps? Like those little neurons just fused somehow and a whole new world opened up?

My son went from drawing basically nothing a few weeks ago, to drawing whole towns filled with buildings and crazy, happy people, and smiling suns. Just like that. It wasn't that he couldn't draw, he just wouldn't. Stubborn. Part of it may have been that he preferred working three-dimensionally. He routinely leaves "sculptures" all around the house, carefully balanced towers of household clutter. I document all of them, thinking that when he is declared the next Frank Lloyd Wright I will be able to point and say, "See, I knew it all along." So I guess it only made sense that when he figured out that he could plan his 3-D world on 2-D paper, it was one of those aha moments.

His first rows of buildings were drawn with black permanent marker (yep, I'm a risk taker) on white paper and something about the bold simple shapes made me think these drawings needed documenting too. But not by me. It was time to drop a few not-so-subtle hints.

Lucky for me, my mom is an amazing quilter. By the time we showed up in her driveway for our most recent visit, she had a stack of fabric squares and a supply of fabric markers ready to go. She kept the instructions short and sweet. "Leave a little bit of room around the edge, so I can sew it together," and she got out of the way. As she says, kids don't need any art direction. Grown-ups just mess things up. 25 squares of fabric later, Jacob was done and Mom took over.

The best drawings were assembled into a town, with roads between the squares made from scraps of his grandpa's old pants (quilters waste nothing). I love it and I know he will too.

Homemade Play Dough

The first time I made my own play dough, it was not by choice. It was my daughter's preschool's idea of parent involvement. Each family was handed a recipe and required to bring in a batch of fresh play dough to share with the class. We rotated through the list of families, and finally my turn came. I still don't quite understand what the point was, but I did learn one thing. Gooey, fresh, warm, play dough is really fun to play with. And for that very reason, I still have the original recipe they handed me, eight years later. That's saying something.

Here is the recipe:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup salt

2 tablespoons cream of tarter

1 cup water

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

food coloring as needed

Mix flour, salt, and cream of tartar in a medium pot. Add water, food coloring and oil. Cook and stir over medium heat 3-5 minutes until the mixture forms a messy ball. Turn out and knead on a lightly floured surface. Store in an air-tight container.

Bird Invasion

I love living by the edge of the woods. A few days ago, as we arrived home, over fifty of these feathered friends greeted us. Vultures. They shuffled around in the branches and even hissed a few times. Creepy, right? But my kids embraced the moment and climbed to the top of the jungle gym to try and get a better look. I do hope they will stay. They make a beautiful silhouette.

Homemade Crackers

Why would anyone make crackers from scratch? Well, for one, it's fun. Two, it's quicker than making bread. And three, I can actually pronounce every last item in the ingredient list, unlike some of the store-bought varieties.

Here is my version, but you can experiment with any bread dough. I use a bread machine on the dough setting to mix the ingredients, so I add the dry ingredients first and then the wet. If you are mixing by hand, that's fine too.

2 1/4 tsp. active dry yeast (or 1 package)
1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour (yes, I'm sneaking some whole wheat in there)
2 c. bread flour or more as needed
2 tsp. salt
1 1/3 c. warm water
1 T. honey
2 T. olive oil

Knead for about 10 minutes, and keep the dough a little on the dry side with extra flour. Roll it super thin 1/8" or less. We use a pasta machine for this part. Then cut the rolled dough into roughly 2" or 3" squares. Neatness does not count. Place the squares on an oiled baking sheet and brush them with either an egg or milk wash (but maybe I'll try olive oil next time) and then sprinkle on toppings. My crew likes Kosher salt and oregano, but anything is fair game: parmesan, rosemary, sesame seeds, whatever you like. I think this would work equally well with sweet toppings.

Bake at 450 degrees for 6-8 minutes or until they are lightly browned. Let cool and enjoy!

Garden Time

Spring is finally here. The birds are chirping. The flowers are budding. Even the Kid Baltimore masthead has shed its winter coat. Now it's garden time and the fight begins.

Garden time used to be my time -- time to plan my garden's take over of the world, or at least its small corner of the yard. Quiet time to dig in the dirt and admire the worms.

Now, of course, I have "helpers" and while I love to watch them sneaking basil leaves and cherry tomatoes, I hate, I admit, to share the other parts; the planning, the planting, maybe even the worms. The only solution? Buy more plants. Buy so many plants that they get their fill of earthy goodness and move on to the next obsession. Fortunately, Lowe's always has some great deals. This week it was 6-packs of violas and pansies for a meager $1.78. So dig, little fingers, dig...

Magnetic Cereal

It's science fair time. Every year we mull over the possibilities for weeks, then hone in on one idea. Somehow most years involve soaking/growing item A in liquid B and end with me lugging a giant piece of poster board and several sloshing containers of questionable liquid across the school parking lot, usually in a high wind. But things have taken a turn in fourth grade. The expectations are higher: research, bibliographies, data charts and even judging now. And the sloshing liquid is still there, but staying at home.

My daughter picked out a really interesting project that I thought I would share. Did you know that you can pull the iron out of cereal with a magnet? I know full well that the iron in my food is the same as the iron in my cast iron skillet but the idea that we could isolate it so easily never occurred to me.  We tested 2 cereals: Total and Lucky Charms. I'm one of those people who doesn't let junky cereal like Lucky Charms in the house, but hey, it's for science.

Here's the procedure, in her words:

1. First, crush the Total cereal with a food processor.
2. Measure 2/3 cups of the crushed cereal and put it in a bowl.
3. Pour two cups of water into the bowl and mix it together with a wooden spoon or your fingers.
4. Place a light-colored magnet into the bowl of water and cereal and swirl it around gently for two minutes. The magnet has to be light because otherwise the iron can’t be seen.
5. Next, take the magnet out and rinse it gently in the water, so the cereal comes off and only the iron remains.
6. Capture the image of the magnet with a photograph or observations (I used photographs).
7. Clean all equipment and repeat steps one to six with the Lucky Charms cereal instead of Total. 

The results:

Top magnet, Total - See all those cute little pieces of iron lined up nice and neat? Yum.

Bottom magnet, Lucky Charms - There actually was a tiny bit of iron, but still, I'm re-instituting my ban on junky cereal.