This afternoon right before Chris and Bruce came to hang out we we shot this video (during which I talked), and then the separate mp4 file to use as a voice over. We wanted to make sure we could do a voice-over manually, as it could be necessary in a project we are going to…
Category: craft
sacred geometry and tape-and-foil doll clothing
She started last night with just back-to-back tape. I didn’t want to tell her her apron looked like a butcher’s apron but then Tucker told her immediately. GRL is written across Nakia’s new top. “That’s how people write it now,” she told me. “They can’t be bothered to write out the whole word.” She went…
various (incomplete)
I know this kid who suddenly had a passionate desire to see the water bill be lower than it’s ever been. We talked to our neighbors and ours is, and has for years, been ridiculous compared to the friends around us. Béla’s very vested in this and he suggested that the fact that the third…
the sketchbook project
Look what Claudia and Béla got for Christmas (in addition to months’ worth of books, a week of summer camp at “The Business of Doing Good”, requisite toys and candy cigarettes, fidgets and other treats): The Brooklyn Art Library’s Sketchbook Project registry date has come and gone, but the kids got sketchbooks, registered — and…
io, saturnalia!
Like the one-hit wonder band of my early teen years, here’s a little Roman holiday for you. At the root of all midwinter revelry is Saturnalia — an opportunity to learn some Roman culture, a little astronomy, a chance to make a big Saturnian lantern, and to make some delicious — REALLY delicious — honey-sweetened…
philly zine fest 2018!
Our second year at Philly Zine Fest and it was the same frenetic, friendly, not-enough-hands, good time as last November. Except this year, people recognized the kids! This year Claudia had two zines to give out (one which she had planned to have finished last year, honoring Delia Derbyshire), and she also had the first…
it’s all the rage in japan. it’s…
Aluminum foil balls. Perhaps you’ve seen the video tutorials. Well, we’ve got a few balls going, in various stages, so we’re happy to share with you what we’ve learned so far. (Because I have no doubt that we will take this to the next level; being a family who make masks with foil quite…
NIGRUM NOCTUA: THE HONEY OF DEATH
On the very VERY first day of “back to homeschool” in September of 2017, I told the kids that one of our MAJOR goals was to attend PhilaMOCA’s “Tokusatsu Tuesday” program every month, and to begin filming our own episodic toku program. Even if we only got one done! “Even if we only got…
the flail report (box battles and more)
With some other homeschoolers we hang with in South Philly, a bunch of kids had gotten very deep (at least for a few weeks) into the idea of “Box Wars” — very hardcore, everything ONLY cardboard and tape. (The house behind the mail truck is the house Tuck lived in at the time we met…
tokusatsu helmets: a long and winding road to nowhere (for now.)
We made it through all of 2017 without missing a single Tokusatsu Tuesday at PhilaMOCA. And while the kids had continued to talk about filming their episodic tokusatsu-style drama, it was continually waylayed. They wrote origin stories, but then changed their minds about them. There was lots of costume designing on paper, and friends who…
martenitsi 2018
One more thing that, like Parade of Spirits, we’ve been doing since 2011. This year we just made them for each other and for one other family of friends — but we had found three new tutorials we really liked and so it was no chore at all, in fact it was more fun than…
lend me some sugar — i am your neighbor
Surprise, we aren’t a big sports family and don’t watch a lot of games. But it was exciting that the Eagles were in the Super Bowl and Jason Douglass’ Danceadelphia, which has been the kids’ studio since they were preschoolers, ALWAYS goes ALL OUT for EVERYTHING for Philly kids. Jersey-burning? Yep. Greased pole? Yep. I…
Levin Dorko Collins Learning Ltd 