If You Buy a Kid a Ticket

THEY WILL GO TO THE THEATER: CJ & Annabelle have had today duly noted on their calendar for weeks now. They had tickets to attend the play "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" at the Seattle Children's Theatre. The play is based on a book of the same title, which was based on another book, "If You Give a Moose a Cookie," which spawned a whole if you give a ... a ... series of books by author Laura Numeroff.

In preparation for tonight, we reviewed a number of titles in the series today. We read along as Robbie Benson narrated "If You Give a Moose a Muffin." We watched Michelle Obama and her mother read "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," As well as "If You Take a Mouse to School," "If You Give a Pig a Pancake."

We also found footage from a rehearsal of the Seattle Children's Theatre Mouse/Cookie production. The kids watched it and laughed uproariously.

Tonight, Christian took them to the show and said they laughed right through it, too. After they show, they got to meet the cast and even got their programs autographed by the star of the show (the mouse)!

They each got to ask him a question. CJ asked him how he got the gum stuck behind his ear (A: It isn't real gum - it was made of sponges) and Annabelle asked him why did he pile boxes on top of each other to make steps (A: to get on top of the refrigerator).

TIME AFTER TIME: I was researching some math sites this morning and CJ spied one over my shoulder and basically begged to play it right away. I was happy to oblige. ;)

In the "Stop the Clock" game, five analog clock faces are shown, and below them are five digital clock faces. The player tries to match the times as quickly as possible. The kids did pretty well. In fact, they got them all right and kept getting faster at it. They had no trouble counting by 5s for the minute hand.

OUT AND ABOUT: P.E. today was on the playground at Catherine Blaine Elementary in Magnolia Village. It's where, under the new school assignment plan, CJ and Annabelle would be placed if/when they ever enroll in Seattle Public Schools again. We attended an Open House there last year just out of curiosity. We'll likely go to their open house again this winter, just out of curiosity. ... Even if our kids aren't going there, it certainly doesn't hurt to know what's going on at the neighborhood school.

TOUCHDOWN!: The kids actually slept past 7 a.m. this morning, so we watched a replay of space shuttle Atlantis land and post mission interview with the astronauts. It's the first time the kids have followed a mission from launch to landing.

Image above: Space shuttle Atlantis lands on runway 33 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:44 a.m. EST. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Thanksgiving

WE LOVE A PARADE: The kids watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade this morning, spotting lots of favorite characters, including Spider Man, Shrek, Kermit, and even M&Ms!. Of course, now CJ wants to go to New York more than ever. I do too.

MEASURING UP: We finally extracted the now water-logged amazing expanding dinosaur and giraffe that we've been watching and measuring since last Friday night. The packaging said they'd grow 600 percent in 72 hours. Let's just say they were a little off. ... ;)

The dino started at 2 inches wide by 2 inches high. The giraffe was 2 inches wide by 2.5 inches high. At 72 hours they were 3x3 for the dino, 3x4.5 for the giraffe. We wondered if they were done growing and found out they weren't. They continued to swell, and so we left them in the water for a total of 144 hours. Their size seems to have peaked at 4x4.5 inches for the dino and 3.5 x5 inches for the giraffe, so we ended our experiment tonight.

Speaking of the giraffe, our specimen had a bit of a birth defect. His left rear leg hardly grew at all. Really, it just made the experiment more interesting! (For instance, we wondered, "Why didn't that part grow?")

All in all, it was a fun exercise that held the kids interest. Thanks go to Ruthie for providing the materials. :)

DISCOVERY OF THE DAY: So, I was doing some Black Friday (gray Thursday?) browsing on Amazon and happened to spot an Amazon customers' chat thread complaining about teachers showing movies during class time. I read some of the discussion/accusations/name calling, and one teacher said that he shows movies in his class regularly - from the Discovery Education Web site. Curious, I hopped there and discovered a goldmine. There are engaging videos covering math, science, social studies, arts, tech, games, languages.

Heck, their list of other Internet resources is a treasure trove all by itself. Seriously with Internet access, a person who doesn't mind doing a little research would never need to buy any curriculum or workbooks for that matter.

FRESH AIR: Around midday we went for a jog. We headed to the grocery store (I know, not too bright given it was Thanksgiving and all), but hey, we needed mozzarella cheese for our pizza (I know, pizza on Thanksgiving?! Sacrilege!) Along the way we stopped on the bridge over the Interbay rail yard. We've never seen the yard so full - it was train cars on nearly every track for as far as you could see. I guess no one but Amtrak was working on the railroad all the livelong Thanksgiving day.

THANKFUL, THOUGHTFUL: I thought I'd keep the workload super light today. Really the only 'school' work I asked the kids to do was a craft project where they cut out four turkey tail feathers and on each feather they were supposed to write something they were thankful for. Annabelle knocked it out in about two minutes. She listed family members' names and the color pink. :)

CJ, well, let's just say it didn't go as quickly or as smoothly. He did great with the crafty part, and he pretty quickly came up with marshmallows and chocolate chips as things he was thankful for, but when Christian and I suggested he try to think of things, places or people that make him happy, progress ground to a standstill. For whatever reason, he popped off with "pears." "I don't really like them, but I'm thankful we have them," he tried to qualify. When we reminded him we said something other than food, he replied with a feeble "pineapple." And so it went for several minutes until he came up with Transformers (toys that he's really only mildly interested in). So he drew a car (as that's easy to spell, and Transformers sometimes turn into cars). And he drew a star - to signify that he's thankful for Captain America.

CJ's mind works in mysterious ways. (:

HEADING HOME: Like so many others on Thanksgiving, the astronauts on board Atlantis were preparing for a trip home to family and friends. They should land tomorrow morning, about 6:30 our time. It's highly likely CJ will be up to watch it live. Seen over the Mediterranean Sea, near the Algerian coast, the space shuttle Atlantis is featured in this image photographed by the Expedition 21 crew on the International Space Station soon after the shuttle and station began their post-undocking separation. Undocking of the two spacecraft occurred at 4:53 a.m. EST on Nov. 25, 2009. Image Credit: NASA

Thanksgiving Eve

KIRBY KRAFT: Today, we "pilgrimized" Kirby. Pretty darn cute (and completely ridiculous)!

DOJO MOJO: Math was an unorthodox affair this morning. The kids were surprised that I let them play Club Penguin before doing "brain work." Little do they know, they were doing math while playing Club Penguin. There's a new game within the game where they can play against other penguins, er, kids in real time. Each kid has 6 cards dealt to them in one of three elements (fire, water or snow), and each card has a value 1-10. The players take turns choosing the element (or suit if they were traditional cards), and then they lay down their card with the highest value in that suit and hope the other penguins can't best them. Really, what they're doing while playing is (quickly!) discerning which is more or less, as well as making predictions and keeping track of their score.

We also did some math on the move, inspired by a suggestion in the book Midnight Math. The kids took turns hiding and seeking 6 chips. After each chip found, they had to declare a formula. For instance, "I've found one chip, I have 5 more to find, because 6 minus 1 is 5."

Next, the kids each did a worksheet about graphs, and we talked about how graphs are a great way to present data because you can glance at them and quickly glean information.

NOW WE'RE COOKIN': Since food and cooking are central Thanksgiving themes, I thought the book "Bring Me Some Apples and I'll Make You a Pie" would be appropriate to read today. What a treasure the book is. It's based on a real person - Edna Lewis, who grew up in Freetown, Virginia, a farming community of freed slaves, established by her grandfather. The book does a fantastic job of delivering the message about the value of using fresh, local ingredients to feed your family. It made me want to plant a garden and start canning up a storm! FYI, Edna [1916-2006] grew up to be an esteemed chef and a cookbook author.

THEY LOVE TO SING-A: Choir practice continued today and it was interesting to see how much better they did today than yesterday. I'd say they have the song about 40 percent memorized. They were pretty impressed with themselves. :)

CONTEMPLATING CONSTELLATIONS: This afternoon, we broke out The Magic School Bus Secrets of Space kit and used the neat-o constellation gazing box and cards within. First we talked about what constellations are. We then learned there are 88 "official" constellations that were named hundreds of years ago, and we looked at maps of the Northern and Southern region constellations. Then, using their gazing box (a long rectangular box with a peephole on one end and open on the other), the kids looked at constellation cards (card stock with pinholes strategically poked through them). We then located those constellations on the star chart.

CJ KISKY, COME ON DOWN!: CJ is slightly obsessed with the idea of becoming a contestant on The Price is Right. He was talking about his game strategy today and asked, "Will you give me answers from the top of the roof so I can win thousands of dollars?"

"You want me to hide in the ceiling, CJ?" I asked.

"Yes. But you have to be sneaky. Don't let anybody see you," he cautioned.

YOU SAY TOMATO: At lunch today, CJ asked me when ketchup started. Of course I don't know, so I started poking around the Internet. We found a funny video proclaiming Heinz Ketchup a creation of the gods (Zeus et al), but we're pretty sure that's not true. ...

We found an article on essortment reporting its roots reach back to the 1600s, when Dutch and British seamen brought back a salty pickled fish sauce called 'ketsiap' from China. The word 'catchup' supposedly first appeared in print in 1690 in reference to this sauce (which was more like a soy sauce or an oyster sauce), and in 1711 'ketchup' was coined. Recipes for tomato based ketchup started popping up in cookbooks in the early 1800s.

AN INVITATION: In my email today was an invitation from WAVA (Washington Virtual Academy) to an Open House (recruiting event). The virtual school is tuition free, because the $$ your local public school would get if you were enrolled there gets funneled to Steilacoom School District, which operates the program.

WAVA is a way to be 'legit' school wise (you child is actually enrolled with a real live school district), the district provides all the curriculum, you have lots of tracking and benchmark stuff to do, but you still homeschool in the sense the learning happens at home. I was very interested in WAVA a year or so ago, when CJ was in a traditional public school and we were miserable.

How appealing is WAVA to me right now? Not very. ... I think for the age CJ and Annabelle are, our eclectic approach is just fine thankyouverymuch. They are learning to read, write and perform basic math functions, exploring their world (science), and enjoying and participating in the arts. And they're doing all this by learning about subject matter (important things like worms and ketchup, Cheez-Its and M&M's) that appeals to them.

That said, I can see where something like this would be very attractive come middle or high school. But for now, it's the MPA way for us! :)

Roy G. Biv is a Colorful Man

LESS TALK, MORE MONKEY: Morning math was a chatty affair - so much so that I had to invoke the, "Less Talk, More Monkey" rule. (That phrase is emblazoned on the side of one of MPA's favorite haunts, Archie McPhee.) The kids knew what I meant immediately and while there was still some monkey business, there was a lot more math getting done. And the talk that happened actually had to do with math (imagine that!).

At one point Annabelle said, "If you took 1 away from 0 it would be 0."
"Actually, it would be negative 1," CJ corrected her.
"CJ's getting better at math," Bee acknowledged.

Shortly thereafter CJ declared, "16 minus 9 is 7, right?"
"How did you know that?" Annabelle marveled.
"Just because. I'm getting better," he reminded us.
"Now he's getting better at higher numbers! Wow -he's really good," raved Annabelle.

I love overhearing (and recording for posterity) these exchanges.

PILGRIM-O-RAMA: We were back at the Scholastic Web site with a vengeance today, checking out their many, many wonderful Thanksgiving-related resources. We learned that 102 pilgrims sailed on the Mayflower, which had 6 sails. The voyage took just over 60 days, almost all of which was spent below deck. It was cold, dark, boring and there was no privacy (even when they were using a chamber pot!) and they were thrown around the hold a lot - many were injured enroute to the new land. We learned about the daily life of pilgrim settlers, as well as the daily life of the American Indians (Wampanoag) in the area near Plimouth.

FUNNY FOTOS: For our visual arts, we borrowed an idea from a bulletin board at the Magnolia Community Center, where photos of staff members' heads were affixed to Thanksgiving-themed bodies. We scoured the Internet for clip art that would work, and finally wound up on the Microsoft Office site (which is really where I should have started). We picked a girl getting a piggy back ride from a turkey for Annabelle and a pilgrim with a platter for CJ. We enlarged them and printed them out and then measured the space where the heads would go, so we knew how big to make Annabelle and CJ's mug shots. We photoed them and sized them in Photoshop, printed 'em and then the kids cut out the clip art and their mug shots. Meanwhile, I printed a Thanksgiving background. They glued themselves to the background and we mounted it on poster paper. They were pretty darn pleased with the result and we left it on Christian's keyboard for him to find when he got home today (before us, as the kids had yoga).

TALKING TURKEY: At different points today, each of the kids asked me specifically why we eat turkey on Thanksgiving and when that tradition started. (It's nice to know they're actually processing this holiday info we're poring over.) The answer isn't super short/tidy, but I found an article on Slate that does a nice job covering the bases.

"LIBRARY" VISIT: I recently signed up to receive email updates from the Library of Congress (I know, exciting! she says breathlessly.) But seriously, it's this ginormous resource and now more accessible than ever. For instance, I learned that we can now find LoC on ITunes U, including historical videos from the Library’s moving-image collections, such as original Edison films (we watched a couple - so fascinating), a series of 1904 films from the Westinghouse Works, and original videos (author presentations, lectures from the Kluge Center and the "Journeys and Crossings" series of discussions with curators). We didn't have time to really browse today, but I can't wait to see the treasures that await.

OFF, OFF BROADWAY: Today we began an experiment. I'm curious to see how long it takes the kids to memorize the lyrics to a brand new (to them song) and maybe even include a little choreography (hey, they've watched SYTYCD and Dancing With the Stars!). I introduced a tune to them today and had 'em sing it four or so times. So far, CJ is catching on to the words quicker than Bee, but she's light years ahead of him when it comes to movement. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. ...

GOBBLING UP BOOKS: Today we read a couple of Thanksgiving themed books. The kiddos really enjoyed both of them. One was a book of poems, "It's Thanksgiving!" by Children's Poet Laureate Jack Prelutsky. The other was a farcical tale called "The Know-Nothings Talk Turkey" where four, well, idiots don't understand why the turkey they serve (as in hand it a plate of mashed potatoes and gravy) on Thanksgiving isn't down with the program.

MEDIA BLITZ, PART DEUX: This morning I awoke to an email letting me know that a gentleman (who is currently living 'in exile in France' [?!]) considers a photo of CJ flying a kite the picture of success (interesting ...) and a request from a mental health agency in The Netherlands who would like to use an image of mine on their holiday card (of course, have at it). Go mental health!!!

MEANWHILE, UP IN SPACE: We checked in on the astronauts of Atlantis today. The kids can't believe they're still up there - it seems like forever to them. We're looking forward to their safe return the day after Thanksgiving. The bright sun greets the International Space Station in this Nov. 22 image, taken from the Russian section of the orbital outpost and photographed by the STS-129 crew. The 11-day STS-129 mission installed a number of station upgrades and prepared the station for the Installation of Node 3, which is slated for another mission.Image Credit: NASA

DINNER MUSIC: After dinner we watched a few music videos on YouTube, including "Roy G. Biv," a favorite from "Here Comes Science" by They Might Be Giants. It's a catchy tune infused with valuable real world knowledge.

Back in the Saddle

BACK AT IT: Nothing like a math workbook to make you love a Monday morning! ;) After a weekend away from table work, the kids were a little slow to get their mojo back. The work (simple addition and subtraction) was so easy but oh-so-hard. I finally had to set the kitchen timer for 5 minutes. That always gets their attention.

Meanwhile, I wanted to play music (per our tradition) but didn't want to distract them too much. I figured "easy listening" would fill the bill and who better to embody for that than Kenny G?! Of course, the kids did listen to the tunes. During "Going Home" Annabelle asked, "How does he play such beautiful music?" and CJ said, "That's sad music isn't it, Mommy?" Hmm. I suppose that tune is a bit mournful or longing.

Switching gears, I played "Air and Simple Gifts," arranged by John Williams based on Aaron Copeland's arrangement of "Simple Gifts" and "Variations on a Shaker Melody." It was performed by an all star orchestra at Barack Obama's inauguration. A few measures in, Annabelle said, "There must be cello in there." So that the kids could hear the lyric to Simple Gifts, I played a version by Marilyn Horne .

A PILGRIM-AGE: Since Thanksgiving is just a couple of days away, I thought we'd better get to talking about the holiday's origin.

We watched a narrated slideshow about the voyage on the Mayflower by Bookflix (which we can access using our Seattle Public Library card). Afterward, the kids played a related vocabulary game with Thanksgiving related words.

Fortunately, our friends at Scholastic have a whole lesson plan about Thanksgiving - and for that, I am thankful! The parts we used today were a virtual voyage on the Mayflower and an informative tour of the ship.

Of course, if the American Indians hadn't been so kind in helping the pilgrims learn how to survive at Plimouth (that's how they're spelling it in the resources we viewed - it was Plymouth when I was a kid), there wouldn't have been any Thanksgiving. And so, we enjoyed a video/read along book "Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message" by Chief Jake Swamp, Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation, Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy. Known as the Thanksgiving Address, it is based on a American Indian good morning message based on the belief that the natural world is a precious and rare gift—from the stars overhead to the tiniest blade of grass underfoot. Chief Swamp narrated it in both English and the Mohawk language.

We also viewed a short video about Thanksgiving produced by the History Channel. We learned about the pilgrims' three-day feast in 1621, celebrating the fact that they had enough provisions to winter over (half of the pilgrims had died in the winter before). The kids learned the pilgrims' thanksgiving was likely turkey-free, but lobster, cod and roast goose may have been on the menu. We also learned that Thanksgiving was made a national holiday by Abraham Lincoln, not long after the battle at Gettysburg.

CRAFTING A CRAFT: For fun, I had the kids make a Mayflower. First, they folded and cut the ship, then they cut three sails apiece (two squares and a rectangle) and then they used tape to affix the masts (bamboo skewers) to the ship and the sails to the mast. They were pretty proud of their small fleet and sailed them around the house for a good while.

ON THE WATERFRONT: The monsoons have subsided for awhile, so we took full advantage with a visit to Puget Sound. The kids rode their bikes and Christian, Kirby and I alternately jogged and walked. Instead of stopping at Terminal 91, we continued on, to the sea wall on the west side of Elliott Bay. Along the way, we found a big compass rose and talked about directions. After checking out the waves and sights, it was time to head home. Along the way CJ said, "I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to make us exercise too much!" On the way home, CJ told me he's ready to try riding his bike without training wheels. Can't wait!

MEDIA BLITZ: I found out this morning that CJ (as pictured below) will be the face of a toy and food drive in south Florida for an organization called Daily Bread. The organization is a big one - with over 800 affiliated agencies, and distributes over one and a half million pounds of food to hungry people each month. We also learned that photos I took of the coyote hanging out in our yard yesterday will be on KING 5 news.