Dreary, Drippy Friday

MAKING MUSIC: The kids had a fine time in Musikgarten this morning. One of the concepts they explored today was high notes and low notes, which can get a bit tricky because it can be relative. They also had an opportunity to play part of one of the songs on their "Woodlands" CD on the xylophone. CJ and Annabelle seemed confident, and their timing and tones were spot on.

BACK TO THE 'BOOK: Yesterday was a workbook free affair, so this a.m. it was time to dig back in. We went for math. CJ was introduced to a new concept today - the Venn diagram. There was a picture of farm animals, they were encompassed within a circle, a square or both. So he had to carefully read the question and provide the answer (how many pigs are in the circle AND the square? How many sheep are in the square but NOT the circle). To be honest, I expected him to struggle with it a bit, but he got it immediately.

WILY COYOTE?: Around midday, during a break in the rain, we walked to the park for some vitamin D and P.E. It was pretty nasty out, so I was surprised to find anyone there, but there was a toddler and his father, who had a camera. After a couple of minutes, the guy (who definitely sounded like Spanish was his first language) came over to me and showed me the display screen of his camera and, with a heavy accent, asked, "What animal is this? A fox?" I told him it was definitely a coyote, could tell he took the photo not far from where we were standing and then he told me he'd taken it right before we arrived. Yikes. (I couldn't help but think about 19 year old Canadian folk singer Taylor Mitchell. Just a couple of days ago I read about her being attacked - and killed - by coyotes while walking in a park.) So we'll be keeping our eyes open a little wider at our park. ...

BALLOON MAN: On our lunch break we went to Home Depot in West Seattle. It's not the one closest to our house, but it is by far the nicest one within a half hour of home. We had the place pretty much to ourselves and lots of people in orange aprons asking us if we needed help (we didn't). However, as we were checking out, another orange aproned man approached, this time offering to create a balloon animal for the kids. I was wondering, "What's the catch?" but there was none - just a bored small tool sales manager (and former professional clown, so I'm told). He fashioned a unicorn for Bee and a helicopter for CeeJ. They were thrilled - that's probably the happiest trip they've ever had to a Home Depot, and believe you me, they've had LOTS of trips to a Home Depot.

The clown/manager also told us to come check out one of their kids' workshops. Held on the first Saturday of each month, there's a hands on craft and Home Depot supplies all the ingredients, no charge. Our Saturdays are usually pretty hardcore work around the house time, but I do think it's worth checking out some day.

SILLY SIGN: Posted by the curb on the west side of Chief Sealth High School in West Seattle is a sign that reads: PARENT DROP OFF. Somehow, I'm guessing that not many parents actually get dropped off there.

WHITE LIGHTNING: Around 5 p.m. tonight, thunder and lightning made a showy return. It started over Queen Anne Hill and moved to the north with some pretty impressive bolts seeming to stretch across the entire sky. I turned the lights off in the house and had the kids sit and be weather watchers, looking for lightning and listening for thunder. CJ found it excruciatingly boring and had quite a knack for looking away about a second before a huge flash.

After the real-live show, I found a short film by NASA made for kids, explaining how and why lightning strikes.

NUMBER CRUNCHING: I read some stats in a recent Seattle's Child Magazine that made me choke on my Cheez-Its. According to the Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Association of Independent Schools (PNAIS), the average annual tuition at independent schools ranges from around $13,000 in kindergarten (O!M!G!) to $15,600 in sixth grade and $20,500 in 12th grade.

Parochial schools' tuition average range is reported as $4,000 to $7,000 for grades K-8 and roughly $9,000 in grades nine through 12.

Ironically, the title of the article was "Don't Think You Can Afford Private School?" as if the article would prove otherwise. I'd say it does anything BUT that.

I'm all for investing in education (heck, I can't even count the number of school fundraisers I've chaired and bond or levy campaigns I've worked on), but $13,000 for a kindergartener? That amount of money, earning interest over 12-13 years, would buy a whole lotta college. ...

Wet & Wild

GOOD MORNING, ELMO: For reasons I don't know, straight out of the gate (we're talking 6 a.m.) CJ was asking to play "Elmo's Preschool." (Perhaps CJ spent some time on Sesame Street during his slumber.) When a nightmare woke Annabelle at 6:20, sweet furry Elmo sounded pretty good to her, too. Without a doubt, the game is a bit "beneath" them academically, but at least it's not a bomb dropper and it's better for them than being parked in front of the Cartoon Network for an hour. The game offers practice with number, letter, sound, shape and color recognition, as well as some easy spelling and critical thinking skills.

DEWEY DECIMALED: Thursday is library day and that's no simple task, let me tell you. It's database management. At any given time, we probably have a dozen fiction titles checked out, maybe 20 or so non fiction, probably 20 or so DVDs (both entertainment and educational). These checkouts are spread out over three library cards (mine and the kids') and I have to totally keep on track of who checked out what when because Seattle Public Library has limits on the number of items you can have checked out and they have rather steep per day fines that start the second the clock strikes midnight at the end of the due date - and when you have 60 things checked out, fines can accrue quickly if you don't stay on top of it.

So this morning we spent a good 30 minutes stacking sorting and accounting for everything. I think today we'll just return some items and not get any more. We have at least a week's worth of resources - no need to be greedy!

CANDY QUESTIONS: Out of the blue this morning, CJ asked me, "Were M&Ms around before I was born?" I knew, of course, they were, but I told him I didn't know exactly how old M&Ms are. So, thanks to the Internet, we set out getting some answers. (I love being able to answer questions, no matter how obscure, on-the-spot. That's definitely one of the advantages of our little "charter school.")

Anyway, we learned that M&Ms were introduced in 1941 and were made for troops in WWII. In 1954, peanut M&Ms were introduced, along with the tagline "Melts in your mouth, not in your hands." In 1982, M&Ms were on the Space Shuttle for the first time and have been on every flight since.

TACOMA BOUND: This afternoon we took a field trip to Tacoma, to visit Grandma and Grandpa who were there on business. Before leaving, I researched Tacoma a little bit so I could tell the kids a little something about the city. As it turns out, Tacoma adopted its name after the nearby Mt. Rainier, originally called Mt. Tacoma or Mt. Tahoma. It is known as the "City of Destiny" because the area was chosen to be the western terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad in the late 1800s.

I brought the Magnadoodles along with the idea of doing some brainwork in the car. I decided it would be fun to play a modified version of BrainSurge - a new game show on Nickelodeon that CJ is wild about. On the actual show the challenges are mostly testing contestants' observation and listening skills. So I did the best I could for our car version, asking questions like, "Steve walks into an ice cream store and orders a three-scoop cone. He chose chocolate chip, marshmallow, and bananarama. Which flavor did Steve NOT choose: marshmallow, chocolate chip or strawberry-licious?" Questions involving numbers went along the lines of, "Jim, George and Jeff were jumping on a trampoline. Jim jumped 8 feet high, George jumped 12 feet high and Jeff jumped 3 feet high. Who jumped the highest?"

I also told a couple of stories, and quizzed them about certain who-what-where-when-why elements of it. The BrainSurge game kept us busy the entire way to Tacoma. The kids did pretty well (using their Magnadoodles to record their answers, kinda like a Jeopardy! screen), and we all had lots of fun doing it, so it's definitely something we'll do in the future.

CRUIS'N TO A CHAMPIONSHIP: On our way up to the grandparents' room, we spied an arcade, much to the delight of CJ. So we went back down to the lobby. There were just three games - two shoot em up and one driving one, Cruis'n World. So we settled on the driving game and hilarity ensued. Annabelle was racing 'round the world in what looked like a Corvette and CJ tearing it up behind the wheel of a Hummer like vehicle. They raced through Italy, Japan, Hawaii, Africa, Australia, China, Egypt and Russia. It was actually a lot of entertainment for just $3.50 - CJ kept winning free plays for winning the levels. And, of course, the educational value was huge ; ) - they ran over animals and into monuments and landmarks all around the globe!

AFTERNOON INTO EVENING: Mostly the kids just enjoyed hanging out with the gparents, but some 'school' work got squeezed in. They read the Tubby the Tuba book with grandpa and watched the vintage Tubby movie we'd discovered earlier this week.

We all got to experience some wild weather - the wind was blowing so hard, you could actually hear it howling through vents and the doorway in the hotel room. We walked in blustery weather over to a restaurant next door and we hadn't been sitting down for 5 minutes when the power went out. Annabelle thought they should bring out some candles and we could just carry on, but there was the issue of the kitchen not being able to cook anything. So we loaded up into a car and found a restaurant a bit further south that wasn't affected by the outage. The folks were in the dark in their hotel until 12:30 a.m. Upon arriving home to Magnolia, blinking clocks told us that we'd lost power here, too.

Fortunately, our power stayed on the rest of the night but at about 11 o'clock a MAJOR storm hit - howling wind, pounding hail and simultaneous lightning and thunder overhead. It was pretty freaky and kept me awake for hours.

Therefore, Friday is going to be a pretty low key day at MPA. ...

Fall Fun

AUTUMN ARTWORK: I wanted to do something artsy and craftsy, but not delve headlong into Thanksgiving just yet, so I settled on having the kids make a leaf banner. On our midday fresh air outing, I had CeeJ and Bee each pick up some fallen leaves, asking them to try to find different sizes and shapes. We had red, yellow and blue paint on hand, but the kids had to make green and orange paint. We spread the leaf collection out on some butcher paper and they used sponges to outline the leaves.

The artists and their autumnal creation. This photo doesn't do it justice - it really is beautiful

ELECTION REFLECTION: Nov. 4 marks the one year anniversary of the election of the first African American president, Barack Obama. It is, undoubtedly, the first presidential election the kids will remember. We followed last year's election VERY closely in our home, and the kids still talk about election parties we went to. I spent a bit of time this morning explaining the &%*$^$ electoral college to the kids - and how a president doesn't get elected by having the most votes nationwide (just ask Al Gore about that), they get elected based on getting the most votes in individual states, and being awarded winning states' electoral votes. To help illustrate that fact and remind them of how last year went down, I played a really great video that recaps Election 2004 , with networks calling states for McCain or Obama, followed by part of Obama's acceptance speech. What a historic night it was.

We also read the book "Yes We Can." Published by Scholastic, the book features photos of children on the campaign trail, and lines for Obama's speech, including:

Change has come to America.
The road ahead will be long.
Our climb will be steep.
We as a people will get there. Block by block, brick by brick.
We are not enemies, but friends. It cannot happen without you.

When we finished reading the book, CJ, studying the photo of the Obama family on the last page, said, "I wish I had brown skin."

TUBBY TIME: Yesterday we discovered Tubby the Tuba via a library book. Today we explored the world of "the most famous tuba in history" via his Web site.

We learned Tubby was born in 1941, one week after Pearl Harbor. Composers Paul Tripp and George Klinesinger were thanking orchestra musicians who had just played their music. The orchestra's tuba player is said to have responded, 'Tubas can sing too.' The declaration prompted Tripp to go home and write a story about Tubby the Tuba, which he and Klinesinger put to music. It became a hit in 1945, and has been translated into 30 languages since then.

Thanks to Google, I found what appears to be a reeeeeally old 9 minute stop action animated Tubby the Tuba story. The kids really enjoyed the golden oldie. I also found a short segment of a Tubby the Tuba cartoon from 1975. None of us liked it.

I figured we should get some language arts in, so I made a worksheet. It read, "If I were an instrument I'd be a ____ because ___. Annabelle chose a piano, because "it sounds so good." CJ opted for the tuba, "because it's so fun." They also drew themselves as the instruments.

MORNING MUSIC: Today's hit parade was a hat tip to tonight's World Series match up. First up was "Philadelphia Freedom ", a great version featuring Elton John and an orchestra at the Royal Opera House. The kids asked to see/hear it three times. Together we picked out the various instruments in the orchestra (we finally found a tuba at the 3:16 mark!). Next up just had to be Frank Sinatra singing "New York, New York." Because the song just BEGS for it, I had to teach the kids how to do chorus line kicks. After they picked that up, I tried to introduce the arm lifts that go with. Annabelle caught on, but CJ literally went spinning across the room. Guess we won't be adding hats and canes anytime soon. ...

ROLL OUT THE BARREL: Today's outing involved heading out to Warren G. Magnuson Park to pick up a couple of rain barrels for the homestead. A former Navy facility, the 350 acre park has a huge playground, an off leash dog park, a swimming area, lots of trails and ballfields and features a mile-long stretch of Lake Washington’s shoreline in northeastern Seattle.

Our first stop was to pick up the rain barrels. We parked in a lot that was surrounded by chain link fences and dilapidated government buildings. "This doesn't look like FUN," CJ lamented. He was right, but I told him business before pleasure. So we got our rain barrels loaded and then went looking for the "real" park.

OUTDOOR SCHOOL: With little trouble we found a ginormous playground. The kids ran around for about a half hour. We went and checked out the dozens of dogs romping in the off leash area (and felt guilty that Kirby was home). Next, we strolled the Children's Garden - my favorite part of the park. There we found lots of artwork, including a whale created from a large landscape mound with a mosaic tail, mouth and eyes. A tall grass plant created its spout.

We also discovered a gorgeous outdoor amphitheater. The kids had a great time running up, down and around in it.

See the kids way, way over there?

From there, we headed south toward the shoreline part of the park. There we found kite hill. No wind today (and no kite), but the kids found logs and made a fort, and ran to the pinnacle and rolled all the way down.

We did some bird watching, some boat watching, and the kids played hide and seek amidst the trees with leaves ablaze in fall colors.

Can you see Bee?

More photos from today's outing can be seen here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=120010

Ahead of the Curve

Well lookie here: MPA was (slightly) ahead of the curve. Check out the November cover of Parent Map magazine this month. The cover story is about unschooling, "Homeschooling's upstart younger sibling." Gotta love that description.

MATH, MUSIC: We dived headlong into math this morning and CJ was on today (thank God)! His worksheet was full of equations like W+X+Y=Z, where they'd only give you W, X and Z, and he'd have to come up with Y. I only had to do one sample problem for/with him and he was off to the races. Meanwhile, Annabelle plugged away on an assignment that fused addition, subtraction and artwork, so she was happy. Our music this morning was the epitome of a classic: Beethoven's "Minuet in G," and Mendelssohn's "Spring Song," both of which they recognized from their toddlerhoods thanks to Little Einsteins. Of "Spring Song," Annabelle said, "I think that's violins. That's lovely music."

She was right on both counts.

OCTOBER REWIND, Part II: For our late morning enrichment, the kids read about, well, themselves. Via this here blog, we revisited October day by day. We reinforced concepts learned, but spent most of our time (over an hour) revisiting good times had. And, of course, the beauty of it is that the good times and the learning were one and the same.

SORTING, STACKING, CLEARING: As I wearily eyed a pile (mountain really) of five loads worth of washed and dried clothing, it ocurred to me I've had the kids do countless ordering and sorting worksheets and such over the weeks. I decided it was time for them to engage in some real world work along those lines. That's right kids, we're doing laundry! ... (crickets). Before tackling the pile, we talked about ways we could sort it. Annabelle suggested by color, but we decided that when it came to putting things away in four different places for four different people, color probably wasn't our best bet. ;) So we decided to sort by person, and within person, the subcategory of types of clothing. It went OK, though we all lost focus at times. (Folding laundry = BO-ring.)

NAMASTE: It was yoga day, and that's about a 35 minute drive to Columbia City. We went a little early because I wanted to check out the Rainier Valley branch of the Seattle Public Library system. It's a very diverse neighborhood, and the collection reflected that - lots of Chinese, Spanish and Vietnamese books, plus a good number of bilingual titles. Cool! We checked out a small stack of treasures.

OOMPAH-PAH: One of the treasures scored at Rainier Valley was the picture book "Tubby the Tuba." It came with a narrative CD, which really brought the story alive, orchestral sounds and all. Short story shorter, Tubby is sick and tired of playing oompah all day long when all he really wants do to is "dance with the pretty little tune." A wise bullfrog (I know, go figure) convinces Tubby of his uniqueness and the fact that everyone has the right to play his or her own melody. Tonight I discovered Tubby has his own Web site. Wait until I tell the kids in the morning! And - are you sitting down? - I also learned that Tubby the Tuba is based on a 1975 animatied film, which was, in turn, based on a 1945 song of the same name. I can't wait to research this more! Maybe I can find the movie online! Gee, hope I can sleep tonight!

MUSIC AND MAGIC: On the way home from yoga we were listening to more marvelous classical music thanks to our library pitstop. In the CD player was "Little Einsteins Musical Missions" and lo and behold, the first mission was rescuing Annie's birthday balloons which had, gosh darn it, escaped. Thanks to the recent "fall back" timewise. It was dark outside and "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" (a little bit of night music) by Mozart was playing. We were parked at a red light at Elliott and Broad when, on the CD, Annie's balloons were- OH NOZE - floating periously close to the Space Needle. I told the kids to look quickly - out the widow to the right! There loomed the illumated Space Needle! Because it was dark, they couldn't see the birthday balloons ; ) but the moment really brought the music and the story alive. So cool.

CHECK'S IN THE MAIL: Seven months ago, in the midst of CJ's awful terrible kindergarten year, I contacted the Seattle Homeschool Group to get a copy of their newsletter, which is the first step to potentially joining their organization. It has taken me this long to take the next step - send in $25 for a newsletter subscription, and then I/we have to attend one of their functions and, if I understand the rules correctly, ID ourselves as newbies to someone on the inside, and only then can you get into the Secret Society. (I'm wondering if perhaps I'm going to have to learn a secret handshake ...)

Honestly, I'm not much of a joiner, and things have been going along swimmingly at MPA, but I look at the (rather large) group as a potentially good resource for, well, resources as well as social interaction for the kiddos. So, we'll see. ...

November

A view of our neighborhood (Magnolia) from the west bluff of Queen Anne Hill

TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF: The first thing we did this morning at MPA was craft a new calendar. October is in the books and November is stretched out in front of us. The kids started with a blank template, wrote the month, days, and dates. Then we talked about important days this month, such as their dad's bday (20th), Thanksgiving (26th) and Veteran's Day (11th). As background music, I played the only November song I could think of: "November Rain" by Axl Rose/Guns N Roses (featuring Sir Elton John on the version I chose). Man, that Slash sure can shred a guitar, can't he? Wait, what were we talking about? Oh, the kids' November, calendars. Sorry.

OCTOBER REWIND, Part I: Before we power forward through November, I wanted to revisit October with the kids, and recap many of the things we learned, so I pulled out all of the paperwork generated last month and through the pile we went. Highlights included:

• Corn (history, parts, uses)


• Apples (varieties, how they grow and are harvested)


• Salmon (their lifecycle)


• Barracuda


• Capitalization (first word in a sentence and the letter I when it stands alone)


• Periods at the end of sentences


• Nouns and adjectives


• Types of clouds


• Our field trip to the Puyallup Fair (rides we rode, animals seen, Al's Brain exhibit!)


• Our field trip to Foster Farm in Arlington

As we reviewed the papers, it was really gratifying to hear just how much the kids had retained from the list above. Tomorrow, I'm going to sit down with them and review the blog for the month.

SHOUT IT OUT LOUD!: Due to the Halloween hubbub it had been a "good" four days since the kids hit a math book. Today, I pulled some worksheets out, one featuring a concept new to CJ. It was addition, and the task was not to fill in the sum of 3+1, but to finish the equation on the other side of the = sign. So, for instance, a problem might read 3+1=1+_. The answer, of course, would be 3. Yeah, well, I might as well have been asking CJ the square root of pi. ...

We went over four problems together, but I could tell it wasn't clicking. I read them out loud hoping he'd detect the pattern. I got little manipulatives (monkeys, from a barrel) to use as counters/visual representation. Annabelle offered her insight. I asked CJ to read the problems aloud, hoping he'd detect the pattern. Like a drill sergeant, he shouts, "THREE PLUS TWO EQUALS TWO PLUS BLANK." I ask, "Dude, why are you screaming at me?" And he replies (with a detectable 'duh' in his tone), "Because you told me to read them out LOUD."

At that I decided it was definitely time for a break and fired up some music, "Shout it Out Loud" by KISS, of course. So math time morphed into free dance time at MPA, with the kids rocking out. They know and love KISS music. How and why, you ask? Because say what you will about KISS' music, those made up dudes know how to market. They pop up all over, including on kids' cartoons (for instance Fairly Odd Parents and Scooby Doo). I also cued up "Rock n Roll All Night" and "Detroit Rock City" - for the kids, of course. Anything for the kids.

After that, they returned to the table and lo and behold, CJ immediately understood what was being asked/expected of him on the math worksheet. Ah, the power of rock 'n' roll.

REPORTING LIVE, FROM SEATTLE: Monday is our standard field trip day and today we didn't go too far afield. It was a beautiful sunny day and we hadn't jogged the bluff of Queen Anne for weeks (months?) so we decided to head over there. We ran along the west and south side bluff/wall to picturesque Kerry Point Park. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a satellite truck parked there with some reporter standing, with his or her back to the city/sound/Space Needle, filming or televising live. So, we enjoyed the scenery, the statue, IDed landmarks and the types of ships in Puget Sound, and then the kids-and Kirby-enjoyed the park below the viewpoint.

BUILDING BLOCKS: Today's Zula Patrol was about elements, or "building blocks put together to make all kinds of things." The Zula Patrol explained that "an element can't be separated into any other substance" and that they're "the building blocks of all that you see." Of course all of this is old news to CeeJ and Bee, who are well versed in the elements thanks to They Might Be Giants. ; ) We followed it up with a reading comprehension exercise about what steel is and how it's made.

YOU PUT THAT IN YOUR MOUTH!? When it came time for some language arts this afternoon, I had CJ and Annabelle close their eyes and hold their arms up over their heads. I placed a tube of toothpaste in their hands and asked them what they thought it was. Not surprisingly they both IDed it. However, the real surprise came when we found out what, exactly, is IN a tube of toothpaste by reading "Toothpaste From Start to Finish." The book is basically a full color, multi-page advertisement for Tom's of Maine, but that said, it was undeniably educational. For instance, who knew that CHALK AND SEAWEED are in their toothpaste?! In less shocking news, we learned about how the paste is mixed, flavored and how the tubes are filled and packaged. (We also read the ingredients listed on our tubes of Colgate. No seaweed there, but there was silica. That's right, we're brushing our teeth with glass!)

We also read a chapter of "All About Sam." In this episode Sam was sent to nursery school where, he presumed, he would have to wear a white uniform and learn to be a nurse.


PERFECT FIRST JOB: While checking out classes on their Web site and signed him up. Who knows if anything will come of it, but I just had to at least try. I can just imagine CJ giving them feedback about their games. (It reminds me of when Kennedy came to me at age 7 or so, pointing out mistakes in a chess book authored by Bobby Fischer. ... )

IT'S A WRAP: This afternoon's endeavors included the kids assembling puzzles, playing some PBS kids games online, reading a 3D human anatomy book with their dad and Annabelle crafting while CJ boned up on vintage Nintendo games on YouTube (no doubt in training for his future role as an official Game Tester).