TGIF

Bonus shot: Bee and Kirby catching some winter sunshine on the couch

PERCUSSION DISCUSSION: After a Friday off due to the Thanksgiving holiday, the kids were back at Kindermusik this morning. The topic of discussion today was percussion. The kids got to play piano and teacher Nancy explained the harsichord was the predecessor to the piano. Since a harpsicord's strings are plucked rather than hammered, it can only be played at one level of volume. A piano, with its hammered strings, allows the player to affect how soft or loud the music is. We learned that a piano's full name is pianoforte, which is a shortened version of the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo col piano e forte, which meant harpsichord with soft and loud.

We also learned that by definition a xylophone has wooden bars. A 'xylophone' with metal bars is really a metalphone. Who knew? I'm learning as much as the kids!

The kids got to play drums and a glockenspeil today. At the end of class, the instructor put in a plug for percussion instruments and percussionists. She told the kids that percussion instruments are not just something you beat on - they're every bit as much instruments as brass, strings and such. She also stressed that it takes lots of practice and skill to be a good percussionist. I was happy to hear that - and couldn't help but think of Ken and the amazing assortment of percussion instruments he played in high school.

THINK PINK: During lunch, I let the kids watch TV (a rare treat). They chose to watch a decades old Pink Panther cartoon. I found myself watching it too, of course. I must say, it was a welcome relief compared to all the other oh-so-loud cartoons on. There's no dialogue in the Pink Panther, just that great, distinctive orchestra jazz music. We talked a bit about the different instruments we heard - including a lot of saxophone.

EARLY DISMISSAL: CJ had a dentist appointment this afternoon, so MPA adjourned early. However, this evening CJ actually asked if we could do another drawing lesson from the OnDemand feature. Why of course we can! He wanted to learn to draw Perry the Platypus, whose alter ego is Agent P on "Phineas and Ferb." This was a much more challenging character than the acorn chipmunk they took on yesterday. They did pretty well, but CJ, especially, was hoping for a more spot-on rendition. I reminded the kids that even the offical cartoonist's first drawing of Agent P probably wasn't perfect, either. That seemed to buoy their spirits a bit.

Bee's is on the left, CJ's is on the right

Civil War

US VS. THEM: Straight out of the gate this morning I told the kids there was going to be a war today - a "civil war," and explained that it meant that it was the day that the Oregon State Beavers and the Oregon Ducks played to see who's going to the Rose Bowl.

I asked the kids if the UO/OSU civil war is like a real war, and they were both quick to say, "No!" that it was just a game. Then we spent some time talking about what a rivalry is, and had great fun with that. For their writing/spelling today, I had them make a good long list of rivalries they could think of. They were pretty diverse - listing everything from Dora the Explorer v. Swiper the Fox to Tom v. Jerry.

THEM'S FIGHTING SONGS!: After our rivalry exercise, it was time for music. On the menu today? Fight songs, of course! First we listened to the OSU fight song, then it was Oregon's (which is also the same tune as the Texas Longhorns' fight song, BTW). Then, in the interest of harmony and balance and because I just couldn't take it any more, I cued up Bow Down to Washington. The fight songs got the kids totally fired up - which is exactly what they're designed to do. I'm sure Bee was a ball of fire at ballet today....

BY THE BOOK: Of course we had to read a book about football today, so "Kick, Pass and Run" by Leonard Kessler it was. CJ was enthused for the first couple of pages, when the book was about football terms and formations. But then, it suddenly shifted to a frog, owl, cat, turtle et al messing around with a football they found in a field. "They're not going to play are they?!" asked CJ, the anti-anthromorph. Unfortunately, the book did turn into a story about animals playing football. Sorry, CJ. :(

THE WAY THE BALL BOUNCES: For PE, we walked up to the park and played football. Well, played with a football is a more apt description. That funny shaped ball is hard to throw. And catch. And pick up - unless you're Kirby!!!!

TAILGATING: In preparation for tonight's game, we did a little more math, reading and art - in the form of making chili, cookies and decorating.

For the first time, CJ showed a huge interest in fondant (that's usually Annabelle's forté). So I let him roll out and cut all of the fondant to cover the gingerbread jerseys. He took his job seriously and did a fantastic job. He was also really good at eating the cookies. :)

Drawn and Quartered

YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE: Continuing yesterday's exploration of the reasons we have seasons, we busted out the globe and a flashlight today for a little hands-on learning. The kids took turns being the sun, shining their light directly on the earth and then at different angles. It was clear to all of us why in summertime, when the light is more direct, the temperatures are warmer.MIND OVER MUSIC: Kids were practicing their song first thing this morning and were extraordinarily monotone. I asked them both to sit on the couch, close their eyes, and rather than singing, to picture the rise and fall of the notes. (They do have a frame of reference for this type of activity from their Musikgarten classes, as well as from watching the great graphical representations of classical music we found on YouTube.) So they did it, and that seemed to help some.

FRACTION ACTION: Since yesterday was language arts heavy and math "lite," I thought we'd better do some number crunching. I gave them each half a banana to eat while we did some fraction worksheets. They each worked on quarters and thirds and then together, they worked on a couple of exercises, including evenly dividing a platter of 12 cookies among four monsters. They figured out that each got 3. And when I asked CJ how many cookies there were altogether, he started counting the cookies scattered about on the original platter and got confused, as there weren't rows or columns to count. But on his own he shifted gears and looked at the cookies on the individual monsters' plates and (light bulb!) said, "I can count by threes!" Cool! Naturally, that led to us singing "Three is a Magic Number," including a far, far off Broadway live version on YouTube.

TIMBERRRRRRR!: Midday, we had an arborist here, pruning the 50 foot cedar in our yard. I thought it would be educational for CJ and Annabelle to see the three-man crew at work. When the chainsaw fired up and the limbs started crashing to the earth, CJ was jump up and down excited! We watched for a good 45 minutes from the top of the lot. At one point CJ called down, "Excuse me, sir!" The logger took his earplugs out and CJ continued. "Are you here to build me a treehouse?" The man smiled and said, "Sorry, I don't think we're going to get to that today."

CJ took it in stride and enjoyed the rest of the ruckus.

WE'RE TINY, WE'RE TOONY: This afternoon we tried out a feature I found on Comcast On Demand a couple of days ago. On their Kids menu, they have a submenu for Activity TV. From there, we selected 'most popular' and then got a list of artsy activities. We chose a six minute lesson from cartoonist Bruce Blitz. It was an association cartoon - which, we learned, is where you turn one object into something else. In this case, we were going to turn an acorn into a chipmunk. We started by drawing a rounded rectangle and then a U with a point beneath it - instant acorn! From there we added other shapes one by one, and before you knew it, a cute chipmunk was taking shape. I pointed out to the kids that ours didn't have to look like his, or each others' - each was an original work of art. Because it was On Demand, we were able to pause after each step, which was terrific, because then they didn't feel pressured to keep up with the pro. I thought the kids did great, and I think it's an especially wonderful exercise for CJ, who isn't particularly confident in his artistic ability. But today he had absolutely no trouble a) understanding the directions, b) executing them, and c) staying interested in the project. That, and he was very proud of his chipmunk. :) .

KING AND QUEEN FOR A DAY: Today, the Costco run that was supposed to happen didn't, so come dinnertime, it was Old Mother Hubbard 'round here. We had to go pick up the Honda at a repair place in Ballard, so - for the First Time Ever - Burger King, here we come! When I told the kids, you would have thought I said we were going to Disneyland. They were SO excited. All these years they've been pumped full of Burger King commercials and they've never set foot inside the place. They were thrilled with the crowns and the Planet 51 toys. The food was an afterthought. Maybe we'll go there again - in another 5+ years. ;)

Dawn of December

REMEMBER NOVEMBER: We started the day off by going through all of paper goods (workbook sheets, graphs, creative writing and jotting) that the kids generated last month. We reviewed what we learned and spread it all out on the table in front of us. CJ and Annabelle showed a good measure of pride in what they'd created and accomplished in the past month. Way to go, guys!

GIMME A "D", GIMME AN "E" ...: We worked on a couple of December-related tasks this morning. The first order of business was the creation of December calendars. They're old hands at this now. Without prompting they wrote the days of the week across their calendar's top and labeled them with the month's name. We said the "Thirty days ..." poem to figure out how many days December has, and then they filled in their numbers (through 31, of course). Next, it was labeling this month's regular action items (yoga, music, ballet), as well as holidays and winter's first day.

To help set the mood, we listened to "A Long December" by the Counting Crows (which was in heavy rotation on MTV and VH1 circa 1996, back when they still showed music videos). Annabelle approved of the tune, saying, "That's a nice song." (Of course now it has been stuck in my head all day.) We also listened to Once Upon a December from a Disney movie, Anastasia, that I've never seen or heard of. Lastly, we checked out Matt Costa's Cold December.

ON THE TRAIL: Our midday PE was walking Kirby to the neighborhood park. The kids, of course, played on the playground. Meanwhile, I kept watch for the neighborhood coyote, wondering if it was his lunch time too. ... CJ spent most of his time climbing the faux rocks on the playground. He took them on systematically, starting with the smallest and working his way to the biggest. Once atop the largest rock, he declared himself King of Mountain Climbing and then asked about climbing ... "What's that mountain in Washington?"

"Mt. Rainier?" I guessed.

"Yes! That's it. Mount Rainier!" he confirmed. He then asked if there was an elevator to get to the top. I told him no dice, he was going to have to use his own power to get to the top.

On the way home, CJ and Annabelle looked for signs of the coyote. They found a couple of paw prints and sticks they were just SURE were coyote clues.

SEASONS GREETINGS: This afternoon we hopped back on BrainPOP. We reviewed the video about the reason for the seasons (no, not the birth of baby Jesus - I'm talking about the 23.5 -degree tilt of the earth on its axis). We took a comprehension quiz online and I transcribed while the kids gave me definitions in their own words for terms like "axis of rotation," "vernal equinox," "hemisphere" and such.

DOMO ARIGATO, MR. ROBOTO: This afternoon Annabelle heard some hip hop music and said she wanted to learn how to hip hop dance. So, we hopped to YouTube and found a kid friendly lesson on how to do the robot. Hilarity ensued as she and CJ got down with their bad robotic selves. Afterward, it was off to yoga, where things were a little more serene.

SO MANY STORIES: This afternoon, we scored a DVD at the library that's a collection of five of Eric Carle's classic stories, including "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and "Papa, Please Get The Moon For Me." The kids enjoyed that while I made dinner. After dinner, their dad read them a trio of "If You ..." books to them (Take a Mouse to School, Take a Mouse to the Movies, Give a Pig a Pancake.) Such simple books, so formulatic. They must take 10 minutes to write. What a goldmine for author Laura Numeroff.

November's End

NOVEMBER Xing: We started our day off by breaking out the calendars, and the kids quickly figured out that today marked the end of November. So tomorrow we'll be making December calendars - and the kids get to open their first door on their chocolate advent calendars. Hoo boy!

For whatever reason, Annabelle was a mess this morning (someone has a case of the Mondays comes to mind). I had her working on some letter formation/penmanship worksheets. Because she taught herself how to write, she never went through the standard-formation-of-letters drill and that fact shows in her penmanship, so it's something we need to work on. But man, was she fighting it this morning, taking soooooooo loooong to do every letter and basically whining every step of the way. Good times.

Meanwhile, I had CJ doing worksheets where he had to differentiate between long and short vowel sounds. He had no trouble with the concept that each vowel makes a couple of different sounds, but he was having a real difficult time wrapping his head around the terms "long" and "short" as it pertained to those sounds. I finally thought to explain it that a vowel is long when it says its own name. That he got instantly and it stuck. He breezed through the exercises after that. Hooray!.

POP GOES THE BRAIN: Today we took BrainPOP for a free test drive. We watched a short video about the seasons. I'd guess that it was at about a third or fourth grade level, but CJ and Annabelle were able to keep up alright with some repeating of concepts and vocabulary new to them.

After the video, we took their online quiz, and we also completed a fill-in-the-blank story that basically recapped the story. While we were doing this, I got out their globe because I think a visual aide is really helpful when talking about things like the equator, the tropics, the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.

SO LONG, SAM!: More than once today Annabelle said, "We've got to finish that darn Sam book." She was right. Today would be the day to say goodbye to "All About Sam." I have to admit, I'm glad it's over. The first couple of chapters were cute, but after that, it became a bit old in more ways than one - it was published in 1988, but IMHO, it read more like 1968. So now, it's time to find another chapter book. Perhaps something a bit more fantastic ...

IT COMPUTES: Given Annabelle's meltdown this morning, I decided against doing math worksheets today. Instead, we visited a couple of math-related Web sites, including FunBrain's math arcade and KinderWeb. On KinderWeb, they worked on their time telling skills, simple addition, subtraction and a coin value addition game. We hadn't done any coin work in awhile, so imagine my surprise (and happiness) when they both had total recall of each type of coin and its value. It's a breakthrough!

CHOIR PRACTICE: After a couple of days without singing, the kids did a pretty good job of remembering lyrics to the song they're learning. In fact, I think they could do it without a cheat sheet, but they don't think they can, so we'll work on building their confidence.

CLASSICAL GAS: During dinner, I had some Beethoven playing. "This is delightful dinner music," Annabelle remarked. One of the songs played was his Fifth Symphony. After we'd finished eating, I played "A Fifth of Beethoven" for them and they discoed down. Annabelle said she wanted to be a DJ and do "some scratchin' " so I gave her a slightly ribbed placemat and she rocked the house. (:

AFTERMATH: At noontime, I tuned the news on to see if they'd caught the suspect in the Lakewood police killings. The program showed photos of the officers and some footage of one of them with his young son. That was too much for Annabelle to bear - she started crying and said, "His family must miss him so much." :( I told her she was right and that the families aren't the only ones who miss the fallen officers. Their friends and co-workers all miss them terribly, too.

I suppose it could be argued that I shouldn't have turned the news on at all, but the reality of the situation is, well, this is reality. And, after she read the news on Sunday, Annabelle already knew what had happened, and the story is going to be all over the Internet, television and front pages for days and weeks to come. So we will continue to have a dialogue about it.

She Read the News Today, Oh Boy ...

So I'm upstairs this morning, mudding and taping - a typical Sunday morning for me. I had been watching the Seahawks game, but when I read a two-sentence 'story' on the Internet that multiple police officers had been shot in Lakewood (south of Seattle), I changed over to KING 5 news.

The breaking news flashed across the bottom of the screen just as Annabelle entered the room.

"So, what's the news today?" she asked in a sing-song voice. I knew what was coming next. She turned toward the TV and read the announcement aloud: "Four officers killed."

"Four officers killed?" she repeated, this time a question. I found myself wishing she didn't know how to read. :/

"Today the news is very bad," I said, answering her original question.

"How were they killed? Were they shot?" she asked, filling in some blanks for herself.

Yes, they were shot. Four police officers, gunned down on a Sunday morning inside a coffee shop.

Throughout the day questions popped out of Annabelle. We answered them as best we could - factually, but trying to be reassuring.

It was mildly uplifting to be able to report to her later in the day that the police had a very good lead on who might have committed the crime. The kids were curious about how the "person of interest" was identified and we talked about good detective work and what it entails (asking lots of questions, being very observant, being a good listener, etc.).

CJ said he'd like to be a detective some day.

BIOs of the fallen, from the Lakewood PD
Sgt. Mark Renninger and Officers Ronald Owens, Tina Griswold and Greg Richards were identified as the Lakewood Police officers killed this morning in the coffee shop in Parkland (just outside of Lakewood).

Renninger, 39, with 13 years of law-enforcement experience, is survived by his wife and three children.

Owens, 37, who spent 12 years in law enforcement, is survived by a former wife and a daughter.

Griswold, 40, a 14-year veteran officer, is survived by her husband and two children.

Richards, 42, who had eight years of law-enforcement experience, is survived by his wife and three children.