Hail Atlantis!

image: NASA

THE COUNTDOWN'S ON:We awoke this morning to find out that all systems were go for today's launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis (Mission STS-129). It was set to blast off at 11:34 a.m. our time. That gave us a good couple of hours to do some brainwork and launch preparation. :)

PILED IT ON: Last Friday, we scored a couple of big thick age appropriate worksheet books at the Goodwill outlet for 29 cents apiece. Excellent. Today we delved into them.. Withouth a question or a hitch, Annabelle completed a sheet where she had to fill in a blank using either "you" or "me" and another one where the options were "is" or "are" (We are going, Pedro is coming over, etc.) She also worked on penmanship, beginning sounds, more than and less than, including the > and <, both new concepts to her.

CJ worked on penmanship, capitalization and punctuation, a little reading comprehension, place value (to the hundreds), counting by fives. Last was a worksheet on more, fewer and equal to; it was a bit of a train wreck. These are not new concepts to him whatsoever, so it was a bit frustrating for both of us that he was struggling. For example, there was a row of 6 feathers and a row of 4 feathers. The directions told him to circle the row that has more feathers. No problem. The next question was "How many more feathers does this row have?" Well, it was like he was being asked to design a rocket to fly to Saturn's rings. He read it and re-read it. He squirmed and he whined and yes, he even wept. I tried to talk him through it. Christian tried to talk him through it. I got him manipulatives to try to demonstrate it. It went on and on for probably 20 plus minutes. He kept trying to answer "6," which was the row with more, not the amount more it had than the row with four. Or he'd try to answer 10, which was way off (but the combination of the two rows). Finally (by using the manipulatives I'd laid out in front of him), he could see that the row with 6 had 2 more items than the row with 4, but he was still pretty shaky with the idea/answer. (For the record, I attribute his struggles to him playing Wii this morning, which is normally verboten before brain work time.)

Tomorrow I'm going to work on this same concept with him until he (hopefully) gets to the point where it's readily apparent to him. Wish us luck. ...

ATLANTIS: While waiting for Atlantis to lift off, we enjoyed several Our World "eClips" on NASA's Web site. They're 5-ish minutes, very engaging and packed full of information. We learned about the importance of exercising in space (to keep astronauts' bones and muscles healthy), about how space suits are designed, made and how they function (the kids were especially interested to learn that astronauts don' t have bathrooms like we do here on earth). We also watched a video about "space grub" and learned that NASA chooses food carefully for its missions. How much the food weighs and how long it will keep are two very important factors (for that reason, astronauts might enjoy raisins on Atlantis, but they're not gonna get grapes). The process of dehydrating and re-hydrating food was discussed.

We watched MSNBC's coverage of the launch. After the spacecraft reached orbit, I thought it would be nice if the kids learned a little bit more about the astronauts circling our globe. So back to the NASA Web site and watched STS-129 Behind The Scenes . By doing so, we learned that Leland Melvin was a former football standout - and even drafted by the Detroit Lions! He's got a football on board the Atlantis with him which (once it's back earthbound) will be on display at the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

At about the 6 minute mark, astronaut Barry Wilmore (who's piloting Atlantis on this mission) tells a fantastic story about being cut from his middle school football team. It was such a great life lesson about the importance of determination. I'm so glad the kids and I watched it - it's highly recommended viewing.

HOST WITH THE MOST: This afternoon, unprompted, CJ decided to host a game show of his creation. It involved the alphabet. He would give the contestants (Annabelle and Mom) clues and we'd have to guess which letter he was talking about. To mix things up, once in awhile he'd throw in a letter pattern, and we'd have to repeat it, or he'd tell a story and we had to recall specific details from the story.

CJ led another round of the game show after dinner tonight.

IN THE VILLAGE: One of the very first things CJ said - blurted really - this morning: "Are we missing 'The Prisoner'?!"

We started watching the miniseries on AMC last night and, obviously, he's hooked.

Be seeing you. ...