Getting Nowhere Fast

MULLING MILLIONS: When I announced it was math time this morning, for whatever reason, it went over like a lead balloon. I remembered that we have a couple of math-related DVDs that need to go back to the library soon, so I proposed that we watch one of those as our math lesson today. CeeJ and Bee were thrilled. So, we watched a "Reading Rainbow" episode called "Math is Everywhere." It featured the book "How Much is a Million?" The illustrated children's book uses clever examples to help illustrate just how much those "illion" numbers are.

For example, the kids learned that if they were counting to a billion, it would take 25 years, and that if a billion kids were standing on one anothers' shoulders, they would tower up past the moon. A trillion kids would stack up almost as far as Saturn's rings and it would take 200,000 years to count to a trillion.

Part of the "Reading Rainbow" episode was a visit to Giants Stadium to see how employees and vendors use estimation to prepare for games.

Keeping with the numbers theme, we tuned into "Numberjacks" for the first time in ages. The kids used to watch it daily. It's pretty elementary stuff - well below their age level when it comes to mathematics - but what makes it interesting is that it's in Spanish, so the kids get to listening to that language and pick out as many words as they can.

BEAR IN THE AIR: Since it was raining so hard, we didn't take Kirby on her mid-day walk. Instead, I had the kids throw her toy bear for her to fetch. I asked CJ to throw the bear 13 times. After every couple of throws, I'd ask him how many time he'd thrown it, and how many more he had to go. He was able to come up with the 13 - # = answer almost instantly!

YOGA WOES: The kids had yoga today and the class itself was AOK, as usual. It was the Seattle traffic that made it trying. It took us 45 minutes to get there, the teacher was 10 minutes late (due to traffic) and it took us over an hour to get home. Not sure what the massive gridlock was all about. Yeah, it was a little rainy, but hell-o! This is Seattle, people! Fortunately, before we left home, I had the presence of mind to grab the CD "SpongeBob's Greatest Hits" that I found at the library last week. It kept the kids entertained for the duration.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?: I love reading micro local papers, and a couple of days ago I picked up the Magnolia News. On the front page was a photo of some young, local ballerinas. The lead paragraph reads:

As it does every year, the Pacific Northwest Ballet's Nutcracker
has cast several girls and boys from Seattle. Included in this
year's cast are several girls from Magnolia, including Ashley
Ochsner, 9th grader at Holy Names Academy; Eileen Kelly, 9th grader
Seattle Prep; and Katharine Grimm, 9th Grader Seattle Prep
(pictured). Additional Magnolians include Alexandra Sheldrup, 5th
grader Our Lady of Fatima and Mary Luken Raz, 6th grader at Pacific
Crest School.

At that point, for me, the story became about something other than ballet. Five neighborhood kids listed and NONE of them, not ONE, attends public school. And Magnolia is considered a creme de la creme neighborhood, one with the best Seattle Public Schools has to offer. It really serves to underscore what seems to be the case in this city - way more often than not, if someone can afford to send their kid to private school, they DO send their kid to private school. Sigh. And the more I read about the current climate in SPS, the more disheartened I become about the prospect for things improving measurably anytime soon.

Though a person reading this might think otherwise, I am actually very PRO public schools. I've volunteered thousands of hours in public schools, taken a lead role in bond and levy campaigns, blah blah blah. And I do (almost always agree) with the adage, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." But I'm also not a big fan of beating one's head against a brick wall and in my experiences with SPS, there's a whole lot of brick. Hell, I saw it from Day One, when I went to sign CJ up and the extraordinarily rude woman in the enrollment office basically said "bite me" in response to questions about school assignment from two parents in line ahead of me - and she definitely counseled them to go enroll their kids in a private school.

BONUS SHOTS: Here are a couple of 'leftovers' from yesterday's field trip to the Pacific Science Center. They're of the kids in the Gemini capsule, CJ checking out tides in the greater Seattle area, and the kids with Hong Kong Phooey (a favorite from my childhood!)