atwitter: april

A few things that have me worked up these days: eggs! They’re wet and just-hunted for in this photo–you may even spy a tiny slug on one or two of them. (Which is what comes of them spending a few pre-dawn hours hidden in the backyard.) We used natural dyes on all of them but [...]

I’ve never sponsored a giveaway here on the wonder farm. I’m giddy to see how it goes. I first heard of the new, downloadable quarterly magazine Alphabet Glue on my friend Molly’s blog, A Foothill Home Companion. (Molly never fails to inspire.) As soon as I read about the magazine, I wrote to its creator, Annie [...]

ten days of delights

We’d talked about going to China as a family last summer, before H went off to college. Our friend, Mike–buddy since high school, best man at our wedding–and his wife Erin and their kids have been living in Shanghai for five years now, and we’ve played with the idea of visiting them ever since. So [...]

a little adventure

A few members of the family are off on a little adventure. I’m updating photos to my flickr page each day, if you want to come along!

I know I’ve written a few times about the history fair our homeschool group hosts each spring. (Last year I wrote about Lulu’s One Hundred Years Of Food project.) This year I thought I’d describe in more detail how we structure the event, in case any of you might like to try something similar with [...]

…he might not have needed that forge. This is Mr. T’s costume for our homeschool history fair. (More on the fair coming soon.)  Like any good fan of The Iliad, T wanted his own hoplite armor. Like any good bricoleurs, we figured we could make it. We started talking duct tape, and suddenly I remembered [...]

“Jeff’s friend and colleague Linda Fisher likes to joke that we spend the first few years of a child’s life teaching him how to walk and talk, and the rest of his life telling him to shut up and sit down. This strikes us as the way schools also work. We spend tremendous energy helping [...]