Making Our Own Soap

I often contemplate whether or not our homeschooling approach is good.  We do a mix of online curriculum, reading classic books, and hands-on activities, not to mention the outside classes they have in art, science, martial arts and dancing.  I recently tried to decide which hands-on activities are most valuable.  It struck me that we should try to make as many of the things we use as possible - if not on an ongoing basis, at least once or twice to get a sense of what's involved.

Soap is something that I hadn't though about too much except I was pretty sure that what we were buying in the store wasn't all that healthy.  Once I researched it, however, I found out that so many academic subjects could be covered in making soap so there is value across age groups.  There's safety, chemistry, math, social studies, art, reading, and research skills.

Safety is very important since you are handling lye.  Glasses and gloves must be used.  I suit up the kids in sunglasses that wrap around with good coverage and gloves.  I also don't have them directly handle the lye.

Chemistry is obviously covered, but the real nuts and bolts of the reactions are probably better for older age groups though.  Still, my kids get a sense of it by measuring the temperature of lye and water mixture (with a non-touching thermometer) and seeing how much heat is given of when the two combine.

Math is well covered.  I have them add up the oil amounts so we know what number we are weighing to on the scale.  They weigh the oils and take temperatures.  They help me use an online calculator to determine how much lye and water is needed for the type of oil.  There is also cutting the soap trying to get as even measurements as possible and weighing the bars once they are cut.

Social studies is loosely covered since I have explained that mixing oils and lye is the traditional way of making soap back into history.  There is also the economics of selling some of the soap online and to friends and acquaintances. 

Art is somewhat involved because one can get creative with coloring and design.  Although we prefer natural soaps we stay away from too much in the way of color.  However, it is interesting to see how appearance is affected by the ingredients.  We may experiment with color at some point providing it is from natural sources.

Reading is obvious since we need to read recipes.  Although many recipes we learn by watching videos.

This brings me to one of the best thing - research skills.  We learned a great deal from youtube and doing internet searches so the kids got a sense of how to take charge and learn something independently without only relying on formal education.  It also strikes me that youtube, on some respects, is like John Holt's vision for education where there are no schools, but people finding each other and teaching what they know.  This happens when an expert puts up a good video and people like us find them and can replicate what they are doing with no classroom required.  The information is free and available.

On a related note, we did make our own dry laundry detergent.  I am not sure what we will do next in the way of things we use.  What items have you made as a homeschool project that you were able to use?

Worm Farming Adventures

We have had a worm farm in our kitchen since before June 1st.  It has been a great learning experience for T and C.  My main reason for getting it is that I couldn't stand the idea that we put food scraps in the garbage.  Having the scraps be preserved, sort of, in plastic bags in a landfill bothered me.  Since we are in the city and close to large apartment buildings and businesses with dumpsters, a regular outdoor compost pile seemed out of the question since it could attract rats.  Most people compost to have a garden.  Hopefully, we will transform our front yard slowly starting next spring, but we are far from being gardening people.  It wasn't our main reason for getting one anyway, it was the landfill thing.

I waited until now to do a big post on it even though I have mentioned it on my other blog with our homeschool days itemized.  Now seems like an appropriate time since we recently rotated the last tray and found our mostly finished compost.

I say mostly finished because some of the paper wasn't eaten either because we didn't make the pieces small enough or because we had so much in the first tray as bedding.  However, the food was completely gone and we found no worms or cocoons as they had all hatched and migrated to the upper trays for new food.  We decided to put the paper back through one more time.  It was a great experience for the kids to see that the food was gone.  Here is a picture from June from that tray:

The journey was especially fun too.  We got to see the worms mate and we found cocoons.  Now that the population is much bigger, likely doubled, we catch them mating about half of all times we open the bin now. 

In this picture, there is both interlocked clittela between the worms and if you look closely, a nice cocoon near them.  Worms, in this case red wigglers, spend their days eating, crawling, and mating.  They mate weekly, when mature, and don't need to sleep.  They are hermaphrodites, but can't fertilize themselves.  Knowing their activities and optimum conditions is important for trouble shooting problems.  One example of a problem was escaping worms, not loads but too many.  In that case, we had stirred in food too soon that was still too hot and they had no cool place to find refuge.  We discussed chemistry a bit observing heat from the composting food.  It is important to note that microorganisms take care of the food and the worms eat them. 

Observation of worms in a habitat isn't the only positive.  It is also a good experience for the kids to take care of the farm draining the farm and adding food and paper.

It was a great all around project for biology, chemistry, environmentalism, responsibility, and sustainability, never mind the complete circle when we use the compost in our front yard.  The only part we bi-passed was making the farm.  I hit a sale on a tray set up and bought it when I had the chance to do it, but a more complete way to do this is to build your own using some of the videos on you tube as instructions.  In my case, I was concerned about my energy level and didn't want that to hold us back from the rest of the project.

If you have a worm farm, are you enjoying it?