Home Girl Blog

A Fun List of Black History Biographies For Kids Including the One American History Book Everyone Household Should Own

The best part about this list is that, in many cases, you and your child will get to experience learning about these interesting stories for the first time together! My son finds it funny and fascinating each time I tell him we are learning together. The little ones in your life will too. Hopefully it will spark their interest in reading biographies for life and they will be the foundation of a more informed, more tolerant future.

After I finished this list, I realized it features a lot of males. I review books based heavily on the reading life of the kid in my life. I'm a boy mom, so pretty-please forgive the slant. This list contains 17 biographies, 5 books that are biography-ish and 1 book that everyone should have. 

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. Please CLICK HERE to read my Full Disclosure statement.

Now to it...

I'm Moving!

I'm blogging at http://theunmommyblog.com now. 

Thank you a million times to everyone who has followed Home Girl Blog over the years! I will still post book lists and reviews here as well as any major life-changing news, but will tone it all the way down and just journal my way through life over at The Unmommy Blog when I feel like it and where I'm 87% sure I'll create a digital record of my whole entire mid-life crisis, which will likely be upon us soon. It'll be fun. 

About that time I didn't have my iPhone

I ran across this Washington Post article yesterday on Facebook: Parents, can we put down our cameras?  In it, a parent writes about watching her child's big moment though a camera preview screen. Saturday, my iPhone conspired with the universe to force me to be present and experience a pretty epic day with my son in person, with no digital proof of the experience on social media. Just memories and stories to share with others. And we survived. 

We won tickets to a SuperLeague Minecraft event from LiveMom. Understatement: My son loves Minecraft. He only gets to play during his Saturday screen time, and when his behavior at school goes left, he loses the privilege and has to earn it back. Last week, he needed a stellar weekly progress report in order to play Minecraft and he got one. When I revealed to him on Saturday morning that I was taking him someplace to play Minecraft (he screamed)...with about fifty other kids (he ran and screamed)...on his laptop inside a movie theater on the movie screen, his gleeful screaming and running in circles came to a abrupt stop right in front of where I was sitting. He looked at me stone-faced and said, "Catch me." Then he turned around and pretended to faint on me. I was so happy for him. The night before, I made sure to charge my iPhone, because I was going to get some great pictures for Facebook and Instagram. 

After I saw the email that we had won the tickets, I checked my calendar and realized that Zack's first piano recital was scheduled at the same time as the Minecraft event. Fortunately, the piano teacher was cool with penciling Zack in on the already printed program for a later afternoon spot. It was going to make us late for one of his favorite friends' birthday party. Worth it. 

Enter The Universe and her conspiracy with my iPhone to force me backwards twenty technology years.

Listen: Sons of Kemet, "In The Castle Of My Skin"

You could just listen, but you'd be way better off watching this. Their style of jazz and this video are transcendent.

 

 

Get into them. Click here to visit the official Sons of Kemet website.

You're welcome.

DIY Thriller Werewolf Costume

Call this one a Thriller Werewolf or Pretween Wolf costume. Either way, isn't it terrifyingly adorable? I did it with duct tape and under $20! 

When you look at the video, clearly, you'll see most of this costume is self explanatory. It is super easy. Because the video shows the process, I didn't want to repost a bunch of pictures here. However, I will share a few tips to help anyone who might want to flex their crafty bones and give this costume a try. I freehand everything, so no stencils or measuring! I like to live my craft life on the edge! Keep reading for tips...

Decorate a Pumpkin Like A Storybook Character

One awesome thing that has occurred to me about being an ex homeschooler/current afterschooler, during this Halloween season, is all the crafting. So far this fall, thanks to my son's school, I have had not one, but two opportunities to make costumes for him to wear-- one for Superhero Day honoring neighborhood heroes, and one for an annual Halloween event. I shared the DIY Ben 10 Superhero costume I made with mostly duct tape already and will be sharing  my DIY Thriller Werewolf or Pre-tween Wolf costume tutorial(ish) and pics tomorrow. Anyway, I thought all the fun making was over, then Zack brought home an assignment to decorate a pumpkin as a character from a book he has read and bring the pumpkin and book to school to display all week long. I become drunk with crafty power whenever I have a reason to create things that my son will explode with excitement over, and that my friends and internet peeps will be at least marginally impressed by. 

Zack chose to decorate his pumpkin like one of the pandas from the cutest book we've run across in a while, Mr. Chas and Lisa Sue Meet The Pandas, by Fran Lebowitz. I decided I would not take over his project, much as I wanted to, but that I would be a proper parent and simply exist to be his gentle guide. Happy to say, I succeeded in that. His pumpkin was perfect panda imperfection. And I wanted to do one SO bad! Then I remembered the book a friend of mine wrote, Curilocks and the Three Pink Pandas, which features a panda family...that is pink...and the little panda's name IS PUMPKIN! This project was clearly meant to be. I planned to make it just to share on the blog, but then I asked Zack's teacher if I could send in my own creation to display alongside the kids' (and promote my friend's awesome book). I wasn't surprised when she was happy to let me play.  

I like making things, but they never turn out perfect. I'm not Martha Stewart, nowhere close, but I am an artsy mom and I freehand most things because I'm too impatient for stencils, and measuring tapes and things of that nature. I like the handmade look and feel of handmade things, so I become one with the paint strokes and asymmetry. 

Following are a bunch of pictures of my pumpkin creation coming together. Super easy and super cute! 

Listen: Raury's All Of The Things

Last week, while my husband was out of town for work, I FINALLY got to watch what I wanted to on TV, which meant catch-up time on DVR, which meant alternating between Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I started with the Donald Trump episode of Colbert's show first, because Donald Trump is a train wreck of an entertainer, and I must not miss a random thing that comes out of his mouth. I'm fascinated that he is a major player in the current political arena of the United States and shuddered a bit when Colbert japed that he would fondly look back on the evening as that time he got to interview the last POTUS. It's kinda funny right now, a year out from actual elections, but it's scary to think how quickly him being elected into office would send our nation tailspinning into political chaos. I digress.

Raury was the musical guest on that show and my first introduction was him belting, "You better run from the devil!" At first, I was sure I was watching a skinny black kid sing epic country music, but the longer I watched, I was sure I was watching the debut (network debut at least) of a strange, beautiful new talent. His music in Devil's Whisper alone is indie rock, country, tribal, hip-hop...so many things, all culminating in a lyrically and musically powerful song and a visually mesmerizing performance.

DIY Ben 10 Halloween Costume

My son needed a costume for superhero day at his school. I required it to be something he could wear all day and not melt at recess, and he required a cool accessory excluding a mask. I suspect he chose Ben 10 because he has been asking me to buy the Omnitrix (alien transforming wrist gadget) forever, and thought this was a good opportunity to ask again. What he didn't know was that he was getting a homemade knock-off. And he loves it! I was so happy when he kept saying how cool it was after my dramatic reveal. 

Making the shirt was so easy. I had to cut the collar after lining it with squares of duct tape and cutting the bottom edge, so my son's head could fit through the opening. I cut the number ten out freehand from white duct tape. 

For the Omnitrix, I just cut the tube part off a basketball sock, cut two slits to thread black duct tape to to secure the pumpkin light to the band. I taped triangles on top of the light for effect. The pumpkin light flashes different colors, which is perfect for trick or treating. 

I'm a brand new fan of duct tape. It's seriously the best thing ever. 

39 Things To Do By 40

So I'm thirty-eight years old now. My thirties are almost over, and so far, have been pretty sweet. So far in my thirties, I've gotten some nice passport stamps, gone to Broadway shows, made a baby human, gotten tattoos, gone camping, made some fun mistakes--some awesome, some that I'm not proud of. As of today, I have two solid years to round out my third decade. 

I had so much fun making this list and am optimistic about making my way through it. I have been a mom the my entire thirties and am excited to focus my list entirely on ME. Not that I don’t love my son, but now that he’s in school after homeschooling I’m like — Oy! How to get to ME?!…and how to get to another baby. I’m grateful for the personal time pause, but I have family hopes and dreams so whatayagonnado.

Each time I check something off my list, I will document it, strike it off the list, blog about it and link it back to this list. A few years ago, I vowed to stop announcing lists of things I planned to do because I rarely made it through the lists. But I'm thirty-eight now. That looks like a grown-up age to me when I see it in print like that. Part of growing up is getting better at the things you suck at, and I am an expert at making lists and revising lists, but truly suck at checking things off lists. I should make a bonus thing on my list-- Be better. 

Following is my list of thirty-nine things I plan to do will do before I turn 40.

The Homeschool to Private School Honeymoon is Over

Remember how awesome the first day of school was for me and my son? Welp. The school honeymoon is over.

I dated my husband for five years. W would fight (usually because I was complaining about him studying all the time--smh) and makeup like any normal young couple, but it was all cute and romantic and we kept at it because we were so in love. Then we got married and went on our honeymoon and came home and it was all so sweet--brushing our teeth together and grocery shopping together and cooking together and doing laundry together--doing all the things that, 15 years later, are no longer cute and that I do almost exclusively alone (and I'm fine with that because clearly I do everything the right way and one can only re-fold an improperly folded tee shirt so many times). Then we had our first fight. It wasn't much different from our fights while dating, but we were married then and our first real fight made both of us question our decision to marry each other. We both thought we had made the biggest mistake of our lives. I threatened to go back home to my momma and he offered to help me pack. I went so far as to dump my wedding planner scrapbook in the actual outside city trash, because that chapter of my life was over. I was going back to Memphis. Then we made up and decided that we would stick together, fully expecting more fights, because we I was young, and we are human and as long as we had love and respect we could make it through anything because we got married to get old and grumpy together and knew that we were meant to be together and that neither one of us is perfect (well, one of us is a helluva lot closer to perfect than the other one), but we're perfect for each other.  

Yeah. Well preschool and Homeschool are my exes. Elementary school is my new-boo. The honeymoon was awesome, but two weeks in we were already on the rocks, but I don't wanna leave.