Leeches Suck

This sign, spotted on our street en route to our first park of the day, could sum up our approach here at MPA! That's right, we've got work to do! A funny aside - when I was taking this picture, CJ was glancing down at a neighbor's yard or something. "Look up!" I barked at him. Mr. Literal, CJ immediately shot his chin skyward, cast his eyes upon the clouds and sun and began sneezing. : )

I'VE GOT RHYTHM: First thing this morning (well, actually, after lounging around from 7 to 9 a.m.), we made that long, one block trek to Musikgarten. While there, the kids got to have a "campout" (the lights in the studio were turned off and music was used to create the camping environment). We parents got to join in for the last 10 minutes of the one hour class. During that time, we all got to play triangles and xylophones, and accompany a pretty song said to have originated with the Yuma tribe. Great stuff!

SMOOTH OPERATOR: After music, we had to run out to the office of a dentist CJ had seen the day before to pick up some x-rays. As we entered the office CJ (unprompted) strode confidently up to the counter and said, "Hey, remember me?" And they did remember him (Christian reported that they had been charmed by him the day before). I realize this might not sound newsworthy, but for a kid who had significant speech (and correlating social) delays, it's a Really Big Deal. Go CJ!

BLOOD SUCKERS: Early this afternoon CJ asked me about leeches. "Are they like baby vampires?" he asked. I told him that they did suck blood, but that was about the limit of their vampire analogy.

So, I hopped online and found a lesson plan about leeches on the PBS Nature Web site. I told the kids I was going to read them some info about leeches. CJ asked if there was going to be a quiz. I said "no," to which he replied, "But I want to have a quiz, Mommy." Well if you insist. ...

So we read up on leeches, and learned that when leeches bite a victim, their unique saliva causes blood flow to increase AND prevents clotting. So, if you're having microsurgery and trying to have a finger or ear attached, leeches can be a very good thing. We learned that leeches are segmented worms (like the earthworms we were studying yesterday). "I want to see the inside of a leech," CJ implored. I found a cool drawing and a new resource (Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse).We also found a really informative video on YouTube about how some leeches stalk their prey by somersaulting toward them! Not much later, CJ yelled through the bathroom door to me, "When I grow up, I''ll be a bug scientist. Then can I look on their insides?" I told him he could. "I mean not on a computer, " he clarified. Yes, CJ. Their real live dead insides, I assured him.

BRINGING HOME THE HARDWARE: Last week, CJ had a gloriously successful day playing Cruis'n World in a closet sized arcade in a La Quinta in Tacoma. He kept winning free plays and at the end of every triumphant round a very happy looking animated woman in a very small bathing suit would come out with a trophy, indicating to him that he won first place. Quite naturally, CJ took this to mean that a trophy would soon be on its way to him from Cruis'n World Headquarters. And so today, a package arrived (with a little help, in the same vein as Santa, Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny have help ...).

CJ was ecstatic. Annabelle was jazzed too. "I'm so PROUD of you CJ! Good job, Buddy," she gushed, giving him a high five.

DOUBLE PARKED: Recess/PE was two parks today - the lovely Bay View park by our house at lunchtime and then Lawton late afternoon.

BLANK STARE: Truth be told, I'm still wrestling with explaining/quantifying/qualifying what we do (or, more pointedly, what we don't do, which is go to school in the manner most families do). This morning after music, the nanny of two classmates of CeeJ & Bee asked me if my kids have Fridays off from school. I said, 'no,' then she asked Annabelle where she goes to school. I tried to jump in and help Annabelle answer but it's complicated. For instance, Annabelle goes to yoga and ballet and music, but she doesn't go to a school, per se. I just told the nanny that Annabelle wasn't quite old enough for kindergarten this year, and that CJ went to kindergarten last year but it was a disaster, so we chose not to do that this year. At that she immediately said, "Oh, so you homeschool." Yes. Well. I guess. (Have I mentioned I have a really hard time with that label?)
Then, later today when I was filling out another dentist's forms, right at the top it asked for the name of the school CJ goes to. I just left it blank. I'm thinking I should have written Magnolia Preparatory Academy. Really, what's it to them? ... And what's it to me? ...

RANDOM QUOTE: CJ today - "I'll start a babysitting service when I'm a man." He then asked if I'd help him drive to the places he needs to go for the job, so he wouldn't get lost.

Mostly Mozart

You are what you eat? I know, I know, Halloween is long gone, but when I saw this at Value Village a couple of days ago, I HAD to buy it. It's absolutely hysterical in person - trust me on this.

MOZART IN THE MORNING: The day started with some good ol' penmanship exercises. (The kids - Annabelle especially - could both use some work on proper size, shape and spacing of their upper and lowercase letters.) So they each practiced writing some letters and sentences.

Next, we were back to fractions - halves, thirds and quarters. One of CJ's worksheets featured various groups of toys (balls, marbles, jacks, etc.) which he was supposed to evenly divide among children pictured. He started tentatively - not sure how to approach it. I reminded him it's no different than when he and Annabelle are dividing M&Ms or anything. One for me, one for you ... and so on, until they're all evenly distributed. By the time he got to the third problem, he realized he could get done faster if he counted by twos/doled items out two at a time. Smart thinkin'!

While the kids worked, I played "Mozart on the Menu," a fantastic CD with 16 of his works. When "Divertimento No. 17 for 2 horns" came on, Annabelle said, "I recognize that," and CJ chimed in, "Yeah, from 'Little Einsteins.' "

After they finished their math, I showed them the Visualizations feature of Windows Media Player (where you can choose the color, style and motion of graphics accompanying music playing). CJ was enthralled, saying, "Wow, I just can't quit watching." Soon, the kids were taking turns playing orchestra conductor, using a Swiffer duster as their baton. At one point, Annabelle asked, "Is that a piccolo or flute?" She also pretended to be a violin. Later this afternoon they asked me to cue up the music so they could have another go-round.

SASHAY AND STRUGGLE: While Annabelle was in ballet today, I lugged 13 books and 12 DVDs back to the library (it's about a four block walk). CJ was at the dentist with his dad and, therefore, unavailable to help lighten my load. I exercised restraint and only checked out 8 or so items.

PARK TREK: We had PE in "our" park today. CJ climbed boulders and Annabelle coaxed a 2 year old into following her around the playground.

WONDERMENT OF WORMS: We finally got around to another couple of chapters of "All About Sam." In today's misadventures, Sam shoplifted some gum from the grocery store (bad, bad Sam!), and adopted a pet worm. Having a pet worm piqued the kids' curiosity and we started talking about whether or not a worm would be a good pet. We soon realized we didn't know a lot about worms. (Do they have ears? Eyes? A mouth? Where?) So, I hopped online, of course. Within seconds we expanded our knowledge vastly - and got to see photos from a worm dissection - cool!

We learned that earthworms have multiple hearts, that they store food in their "crop" which is kind of like our stomach, before it makes its way through a gizzard before going to the intestine.

And next time we pick up an earthworm, we'll know which is its stomach and which is its back (the stomach is flatter, the back rounder).

As an added bonus, in the course of trying to learn about worms, I discovered the HomeScienceTools Web site. They describe themselves as "a resource for parents, teachers, and kids who want a better experience with hands-on science." It was founded in 1994 by a couple having trouble finding supplies to do science experiments at home. There are so many cool things on the site - I want it all! (The kids would probably like it too. ; ) )

ME AND MY SHADOWS: To touch upon some art today, I thought it would be fun to do silhouettes of the kids. I remember doing them back in my grade school days, and thought they were supercool. So I set up a station (spotlight, stool and butcher paper) and had the kids take turns sitting down for a 'portrait'. Annabelle was enthused by it; CJ, notsomuch.

BRAINPOP: Yesterday, thanks to a homeschoolers' email list I'm on, I discovered BrainPop. It's a slick Web site - yet another resource that makes me want to reach for the credit card. But first I need to spend more time kicking around the free portions of their site. I signed up to be able to access (free!) the portion of their site for educators (hey, I teach - albeit just my own children). It has video tutorials, professional development tools, graphic organizers and "best practices." On the student side of things, BrainPop says their content is aligned to state standards and easily searchable with an online State Standards Tool. It has good reviews from people on the list I belong to and it's won lots of awards. ...

I guess having too many resources to draw upon is a good problem, right?

Veterans Day

HONORING AND REMEMBERING: Today was an official school holiday, and we did take 'er easy to a degree, but what better day to learn about Veterans Day than ON Veterans Day?

We talked a bit about what the word "veteran" means, particularly in the military sense. I showed the kids a photo slideshow honoring veterans set to "America the Beautiful (sung by Lee Greenwood).

I thought it would also be a good day to talk about what 'patriotic' means and after we discussed the term, I played some patriotic tunes for the kids, starting with "Stars and Stripes Forever" by John Philip Sousa . That got 'em moving; at one point Annabelle was putting on a human fireworks display!

I followed up with "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." For whatever reason, I loved that tune when I was a kid. Today, I found a fascinating history of the song on the Library of Congress Web site. It was written by Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, who immigrated from Ireland in 1848. He lead several bands in the Boston area and in 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War, Patrick Gilmore's Band enlisted as a group in the Union Army.

We also listened, of course, to the "Star Spangled Banner" (Whitney Houston version, a favorite), and closed it out with "Seventy Six Trombones" from The Music Man (that got 'em marching again!)

OUT OF THE BLUE, TO THE ZOO: In other news, Rick surprised us all by calling today and offering to take the kids to Woodland Park Zoo, so they had a great field trip today, too! Bonus!

Eagle graphic from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkadog/3551616050/

University of Cheez-Its

FRACTION ACTION: Right out of the gates we took on some math. Today's topic - fractions. We did a couple of worksheets about halves and quarters. The kids were all over it. :)

N-O-V-E-M-B-E-R: I wanted the kids to write some words today and use their brains a bit, so I wrote the word November down the side of a sheet of paper and asked them to come up with words about November using the letters in November as the words' first letters. CJ immediately wrote No for the N and On for the O. I told him I was hoping for a bit more thought and creativity. He said, "I'm worried that I don't know how to spell long words." I reminded him that this wasn't a spelling test, it was about being creative and just thinking up words and doing the best you can on spelling. He was still wary, but powered through. In fact, he did really great spelling - for instance for the word "marching" (there are lots of parades in November), he got the m, a and r by himself. While wondering aloud what came next, I asked him which two letters make the "ch" sound and he immediately realized it was c and h. And when he was pondering 'ing' I reminded him that three letters make the 'ing' sound and he said i-n-g. So he spelled marching - a long word - by himself. I reminded the kids that once they learn the tricks, spelling gets a lot easier.

Which brings me to two of Annabelle's words - vacation and night. Silly, silly words spelling wise.
I told the kids they are just going to have to remember that often when they hear a word, what sounds like 'ite' is sometimes 'ight.' Likewise, when they hear what sounds like 'shun' at the end of a word, it's likely 'tion.'

We decided that it is very unfortunate that someone who didn't know how to spell decided for the rest of us how words should be spelled.

MONEY IN THE BANK: Eureka! I found a fantastic book about coins/money. Written by a former teacher, The Coin Counting Book is straightforward, logical and fantastic. It employs a really masterful mix of life-sized photos of coins, text and mathematical symbols to demonstrate the value of cents and such. Six thumbs up - I wish we'd found this book months ago.

DEEP SLEEP: A timely concept we covered today is hibernation.
We read a great bilingual book we got last week at the library, "Hiberar/Hibernation". We learned that only a few animals (for instance bats and some mice) are true hibernators - most animals (squirrels and polar bears) have some periods of wakefulness and some level of activity during their down time. This book had the English and Spanish text side by side, so it was fun (and easy) to figure out exactly what each Spanish word meant.

To expand our education, we went online to National Geographic's kids' Web site in search of more on hibernation. There, we read text and viewed photos of polar bears, and watched a neat-o video of a mother polar bear and her two cubs emerging from their ice cave after 5 months.

SNACK FACTS: While enjoying a late morning snack, Annabelle wondered aloud, "How do they get the cheese in Cheez-Its?" Good question - wonder if we can find out. Just a few keystrokes later, BINGO - an actual LESSON PLAN about how Cheez-Its are made (god bless you Internets). It's from a Web site by Virginia-based Agriculture in the Classroom which, they tell us, "is part of a nationwide effort to help teachers and students understand and appreciate agriculture—Virginia and the nation’s largest industry."
But back to Cheez-Its. Thanks to a WebQuest lesson plan, we learned that milk and wheat are the snack's primary ingredients and we learned a bit about how each of those goes from farm to factory. Much to our delight, there was a great investigation worksheet where the kids had to sample Cheez-Its and record their findings about their smell, taste, appearance, etc. The lesson plan even included a link to a funny commercial about how Cheez-Its are made (NOT!).

SOCIAL STORY SESSION: Today I FINALLY introduced a social story session at MPA. I swear I've been meaning to do this since Day 1 and I vow to do more of it in the future. Social stories are a great tool to help kids who are plenty smart IQ-wise, but who could use some improvement in, shall we say, the social graces when it comes to their daily lives.

I instructed the kids to each grab an action figure of their choosing. Annabelle chose an eyeball, CJ chose Shredder (of Ninja Turtle fame) and I found Zog, a golden robot, laying around. In our scenario, Zog and Eyeball were going out to dinner and Shredder was the waiter. As soon as Zog sat down in the restaurant he barked his order at Shredder. RUDE! as the kids pointed out. And so we went through a whole 'dinner service'. Along the way, there were lots of laughs due to Zog's really horrible table manners, and I'd like to think that there was also some social skill enhancement going on as well. That night, when we went out to dinner with my cousin Josie and her bf Chris, CJ and Annabelle were able to put some of their restaurant role playing to good use.

Flu Fighters

WHEN PIGS FLY: Perhaps you've heard by now - the swine-avian-hybrid 2009 H1N1 is bad news. And for months now we've been hearing the "getvaccinatedgetvaccinatedgetvaccinated" message loud and clear on the news, especially regarding the kids. Good advice, but one small problem - it's almost imfrickingpossible to find any vaccine. I've been monitoring the supply - or lack thereof - and last Friday spotted a news story that a few thousand doses were arriving in Seattle (population 602,000 within city limits, around 3 million in the greater metro area, I think). One pharmacy in Ballard had a shot clinic on Saturday and lines stretched for 8 blocks.

That said, you can't get any if you don't try. So Sunday night I packed blankets, bags, books, layers of clothing and food as if we were going camping. We had our list of places to try to get the shot and Monday morning we started our day before sunrise. That's right kids, get up, we gotta run to the doctor's office in hopes we're lucky enough to be able to get them to shoot some of the live H1N1 virus up your nose! Now, who wouldn't want to crawl out of a nice warm bed for that?

Our first stop was Group Health, the HMO we're a part of. Friday evening, after hours, their Web site said they had a very limited supply of FluMist for eligible children. We were at their huge Capitol Hill compound by 7:15 a.m. Monday. Mercifully, the warm building was open (it was cold and raining outside). The injection room didn't open until 8, and we wouldn't know until then if we were going to be able to get the vaccine for the kids or not. So we waited in the lobby, catching more than a couple of 'you're crazy people' glances. Yeah, well stare all ya want, I'm just trying to keep my kids healthy. ... Of course there were no signs anywhere as to the status of supply. Why give people information when you can keep them guessing? ... Anyway, long story long, we DID get the kids immunized this a.m and were at Top Pot Donuts by 9 a.m. It really couldn't have gone any better for us.

I have to admit, later that afternoon, as I passed a pharmacy in Ballard that was giving while-supplies-last shots today only, I felt a little guilty. The line stretched around not just THE block, but for blocks, with people out in the elements, including many with babies in strollers. :(

HEADLONG: After a weekend away from formal (pencil to paper) learning, we were back at it with a vengeance today. We did a hybrid coin/probability/math worksheet, and then some math, math and more math. The kids were troopers, for the most part.

TURKEY TIME: After the math activity, it was time for some fun and fine motor skills work. I had the kids trace one of their hands five times on different colored paper and they cut those out. Then I traced each of their feet and they cut those out. The feet were glued together to form a turkey body, and the hands were used for its tailfeathers. They added eyes, a beak and legs, of course. While they worked, I hunted down some turkey-inspired songs on YouTube.

The first one was a quirky but sweet Albuquerque Turkey. The kids especially dug the parts of the song where the singer yodeled and they attempted to join her. I found another song called Albuquerque Turkey, this one was a completely different song, an instrumental, and very bluegrassy. The kids were bopping in their seats almost instantly. That's right, we love us some bluegrass at MPA! I told the kids when it's bluegrass, "You don't call it a violin, you call it a fiddle!" And Annabelle said, "Do you hear them stompin' and clappin'?" I told her I did and that "every once in awhile you have to let out a 'YEE HAW!' That set them off into fits of laughter and cries of "YEE HAW!"

Soon, they'd finished their turkeys and they took them on a turkey trot around the house. Kirby joined in, of course.
READIN' DOWN THE PILE: In an attempt to whittle down the mountain of library books we have, we read three books today. One, "The Thanksgiving Door," was about an elderly couple who, after burning their holiday meal at home, enjoys dinner out with immigrant restaurant owners. The moral of the story was that sometimes bad things turn into good things. A sweet story, but I couldn't help but notice obvious similarities to "The Christmas Story."

Next up was "Henry and the Crazed Chicken Pirates." Henry lives amongst a band of pirate rabbits. The group finds a note on the beach from an invading army. The rabbit pirates disregard the warning, but Henry, a worrier, begins planning their defense, which turns out to be a very prudent thing to do. Henry single-handedly saves the day. The book has colorful illustrations, but about a month ago, CJ let me know he isn't a fan of anthropomorphic animals. (No, he didn't use those words - he said he didn't like books where animals wear clothes and talk.)

While we were waiting at Group Health this a.m., Christian read a nonfiction book about lizards with Annabelle, who has been begging to hear it for three days. (CJ was unavailable at the time of the reading, as he was playing Club Penguin on his Nintendo DS.)

PENCIL US IN: At one point during math time this morning Annabelle was idle, staring off into space. But contrary to what I was thinking, she wasn't just spacing out. I know this because she popped off with, "How are pencils made?" I told her I wasn't sure, but I thought it was by trolls gnawing on trees. She discounted my theory, instead suggesting that they were made by cavemen. CJ had a silly theory, too, but we were all wrong.

I found an episode of "How It's Made" featuring pencil production. We learned that pencil 'lead' is really a mixture of graphite and clay. Pencils start out as a rectangular plank of cedar. Channels are cut into it and glue is poured into the channels, followed by the graphite. Another cedar plank is smooshed on top and then the 'sandwich' is cut into sticks and then shaped into a writing instrument.
PEDAL PUSHERS: While the skies cried all morning and into the early afternoon, by 3 p.m. there were a few breakthrough rays so we decided to get out into it. We mopped off the kids' bikes and headed for Terminal 91/Puget Sound. It was windy (whitecaps on the water) but not too cold. The kids biked about 3 miles round trip, I'd guess.

POP TARTISTS: Over the weekend the kids received the t-shirts they created on the Pop Tarts Web site. Needless to say, they were pretty excited when opening the envelopes and proud to put them on (though you would NEVER know it based on this photo. It looks a bit like a DUI mug shot - and this was the best of 4 pix I took of them in 'em!) ...