Exploring Missouri Through Little Passports

Our next virtual trip through Little Passports took us to another state neither Trevor nor I have visited: Missouri. We'll make it there sometime between now and June 2024, of course! In the meantime, it was a lot of fun learning about the Show-Me State through science, puzzles, art, and cooking.

Trevor started by building the model of the Gateway Arch. 

He figured out a number maze using math to learn that the Arch, which stands 630 feet tall, is made of steel and concrete. Then he solved a challenging dot-to-dot of the state insect, the honeybee. Trevor used the Morse code alphabet to decode a message about Missouri's state song, the Missouri Waltz. 

Next, Trevor did a science experiment to learn how natural caves are created by water. Did you know that Missouri has more than 6000 caves, the most of any state? I had no idea. To begin, Trevor moulded white clay around sugar cubes to form a rough, rocky cone shape. 

He put his cave in a tray and covered it with dirt. 

He simulated rain using a watering can. 

After 30 minutes, we returned to look at the cave. Just like water dissolves layers of sedimentary rock to form caves, water dissolved the sugar cubes and left a cave made of clay. Neat! (Unfortunately, the cave reminds me of a monkfish. Anyone else see it?)

While waiting for his cave, Trevor worked on a jigsaw-puzzle activity about the Missouri River, aka The Big Muddy. As he worked, we reminisced about the sightseeing cruise we did along the Missouri during our Nebraska trip last summer. That was a really good trip.

We competed against each other, as we often do, to see who could find the most tornado-related words in the Missouri Word Twister. I won, but barely! We read about famous events in Missouri history, then Trevor completed a fill-in and unscrambling activity to learn about Missouri's state tree. It is the eastern black walnut, but in Trevor's messy handwriting it looks like he wrote 'eastern blue walrus' which totally cracked us up. I'm constantly on him not to be lazy when it comes to writing neatly, so it was a nice change to laugh about his bad writing!

We did a challenging hidden picture puzzle that had us finding animal species that live in the Ozarks. Then we learned more about the physical features of Missouri. We read about Kansas City's many fountains and solved a Venn diagram puzzle to find out the name of the only city in the entire world with more fountains than Kansas City (spoiler: Rome, Italy). I never would have guessed that Kansas City would have so many fountains!

Finally, we did a cooking project inspired by Missouri. The recipe in the State Journal is for fairy floss, served at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. But we were more interested in another food that became famous after the 1904 World's Fair. Here's Trevor, adding vanilla to eggs, sugar, and salt. Can you guess what we made?

Did you say ice cream cones? If so, you're right! Well, sort of. It turns out that rolling searing hot wafer cookies into cones and pinching the ends is too difficult for both Trevor and me, so we pushed our hot cookies into muffin tins and made ice cream cone bowls instead. Much easier and much kinder on our fingers! And just as tasty.  

Trevor and I had a wonderful time together learning all about Missouri. Thanks, Little Passports!

Allison at Easter - NSD 5-Hour Sketch Challenge

Here's another sketch challenge from National Scrapbook Day. I used two photos of my niece, Allison, in her purple Easter dress.

Allison at Easter (affiliate link)

Here's the sketch that I followed:

In addition to following the sketch, we had to use at least two different patterned papers AND use buttons and brads. As you can see, I kept the major elements of the sketch and made little tweaks. I used three patterned papers, added a button center to the flower, and added brads to the horizontal border strips that anchor my title and journaling.

It's not my usual style, which is part of what I love about NSD. It's fun to jump outside my comfort zone and to see what I can create.

Chief Laundry Inspector - NSD Sketch Challenge and Punch Challenge

As always, I had a very fun and extremely productive National Scrapbook Day! I got up at 4:30 am to get a jump on the early East Coast challenges and kept going until around 8:30 pm, with a short break for dinner. I completed 16 layouts based on challenges from three different sites. I finished two more layouts that just need journaling. I'll be sharing the pages I made over the next few weeks, interspersed with other projects.  

This was the first layout I made. 

Chief Laundry Inspector (affiliate link)

The primary inspiration was the Scrapbook Boss Sketch Challenge at Victoria Marie's iNSD 2018 Online Crop. I'd been wanting to scrap this picture of Trouble gooing on our clean laundry for awhile, and this challenge was the perfect occasion. Here is the sketch:

As you can see, I stayed fairly true to the sketch with just a few minor changes. I really like this sketch. It's versatile and appeals to my clean and simple aesthetic.

Happy National Scrapbook Day!

Happy (Inter)National Scrapbook Day to all my papercrafting friends around the world! I hope you have a wonderful and productive day. I look forward to seeing your creations and hearing how you're celebrating!

I'm not exaggerating when I say NSD is my favorite day of the year. I'm celebrating at home, as always. Not only is it easiest to scrap at home, but it is the best way for me to check in and catch up with as many of my scrapbook friends as possible. When I was scrapbooking in the 90's, I didn't know anyone else who made scrapbooks. Photo albums, sure, but not scrapbooks. Finding online communities of people who share my love of paper products and memory keeping was huge for me. Years later, some of my closest friends are people I met online through forums and message boards and I am forever grateful.

Happy National Scrapbook Day!

Exploring Massachusetts Through Little Passports

Our family has spent exactly one day in Massachusetts, which is clearly not enough time to even get a taste of all that it has to offer. Fortunately, we were able to learn a lot more about the Bay State by taking a virtual trip through Little Passports. We started with a word search of Wampanoag words and their English translations. Then we played a game that was played by the Wampanoag at the time the pilgrims arrived in Plymouth. It's basically the same as this game that we've enjoyed before. 

Trevor was eager to do the science experiment, inspired by the many universities in the greater Boston area. In it, he learned how MIT alumni Herbert Kalmus and Daniel Frost Comstock developed Technicolor and changed motion pictures forever. To begin, Trevor cut out wedges of color from construction paper.

He glued them to a CD.

When the wheel spins, the colors blur to create new colors, much like Technicolor on rapidly-moving film strips. Neat!

Our next activity was a dot-to-dot inspired by Massachusetts sports teams- the Celtics, Revolution, Red Sox, Patriots, and Bruins. Then we worked on a logic puzzle featuring Cape Cod and the surrounding islands. Cape Cod is a great place for seeing humpback, minke, and fin whales. After identifying each, we used the letters to name the top predator in the Atlantic Ocean, the great white shark.

We read all about famous events that happened in Massachusetts and looked at the state's timeline. Then Trevor solved a puzzle about the Tanglewood Music Festival. He matched 4 famous Massachusetts authors to passages they wrote to decode the name of a fifth author's pseudonym. He did a crossword puzzle and solved a maze, both inspired by spots along the Freedom Trail.

Our final activity was to make Boston Cream Pie, the state dessert of Massachusetts. Rather than making one large cake, we tweaked the recipe to make cupcakes instead. Here's Trevor making the custard filling...

... and the chocolate glaze.

He split each cupcake, then filled it with custard, and topped it with glaze. 

They were delicious! This recipe is a keeper. 

As always, Trevor and I had lots of fun learning together using Little Passports!