Halfway Through "Hunger" Week

ADDING IT UP: "How much do I owe you?" Annabelle mumbled through her first mouthful of Chocolate Cheerios this morning. Excellent! Clearly the idea that every morsel has its price has caught on.

We're on Day Three of the United Way of King County's "Hunger Challenge," and have volunteered to feed our family of 4 for less than $22 a day, the maximum amount we'd be eligible for under the state's Basic Food Program ("food stamps").

So far, so good! We've been around 30 percent under budget for the first two days and haven't suffered a bit. In fact, we haven't altered our diets hardly at all, the biggest difference is we've been doing a whole lot of math to track our expenses.

Today's "happy" totals:
Breakfast = $2.24
CJ = Pop Tart = .20
Bee = Cheerios (.28), milk (.12) = .40
Me = Cheerios (.28), milk (.12), coffee (.37 ) = .77
Xtian = Cake (.50) & coffee (.37) = .87
Lunch = $3.81
XTian = Chicken (1.50), banana (.25), apple (.29), Bugles (.20) soda (.21) = 2.45
Kids = hot dogs (.50) buns (.36) ketchup (.05) = .91
Me = 1 c. rice(.30 ), 1 egg (.135 ), 1 green onion (.07) = .505
Dinner = $5.23
Bee, CJ, Mom & Dad = Spaghetti noodles & meat sauce = $1+$2.25 = $3.25
M&X = salad = .50 lettuce + .25 tomato = .09 green onion = .84All of us = olives = .89
Bee = banana = .25
Snacks = $4.83
Bee = Orange .19*2 = .38
CJ = Banana = .25
CJ = goldfish = .25
Me = orange, banana = .44
Kids = pretzels = .20
Kids = 4 Kisses = .20
Me = 2 Kisses = .10
Kids = cake dessert .50*2= 1
Sharps "beer" .67*3 = 2.01
GRAND TOTAL: 16.11 - Yahoo! under budget ($22 max) again!

ALL SHOOK UP: The devastation in Haiti has been all over the news - including public service announcements during children's programming that CJ & Annabelle watch. Clearly, an earthquake unit was WAY overdue here at MPA.

Today, I turned to a favorite - BrainPop - to see what they had to offer and sure 'nuff, they have an earthquake unit. We watched the film (which, in the wake of the Haiti disaster, they have made available to even non subscribers). During the video (which we watched twice, and paused many times), the kids took notes. They learned what causes an earthquake, including that pressure and the earth's plates are involved. And they found out that there are three kinds of earthquake-related waves: P waves (the fastest and first, the compress and expand solid and liquid rock); S waves (they cut rock and radiate both horizontally and vertically); and surface waves (the slowest and most dangerous).

CJ & Annabelle demonstrating "horizontal" and "vertical"

I also thought the United States Geological Survey might be a good resource, and boy was I right!

They had a list of dozens of links to explore (certainly more than we could get to in a day, many outside the USGS world). We chose to start with the USGS's own "Earthquakes for Kids" site, and the kids opted to check out "Earthquake ABC."
I'm here to tell you, this was not your typical "A is for apple" ABC story. Written and illustrated by kids, this version was all about keepin' it real. Such as, "A is for aftershock ... an aftershock could kill people." And H? Well H is for "Help" and the drawing shows four people trapped in earthquake damaged buildings, all crying for help. What about K, you ask? "K is for KILL" (yes, all caps by the author). "Earthquakes kill people by smashing them and having heart attacks."

No sugar coating here, no siree. An earthquake is as serious as a heart attack (just ask Sven, author of the K page, eh?).

So, when CJ and Annabelle were done crying (just kidding!) we talked about the safest spot to go in our home in the event of an earthquake (that would definitely be the beefy new entry area, not the 100 year old duct-tape-and-spit construction part.

AN INVITATION: Months in the making (because of my foot dragging), today I am, at last, a "Confirmed Member" of the Seattle Home School Yahoo! Group. I was able join after sending SHG an email yesterday detailing our attendance at the park play date. In response, I got an email invitation to join the group. I'm looking forward to poking learning more about resources other people are utilizing.

OSMOSIS EGGSTRAVAGANZA: In the seemingly never ending egg experiment, today's action involved fishing the egg out of its corn syrup bath and seeing how it had changed since we dropped it in there this weekend. When we immersed it in the syrup, we'd just taken it out of a 3-day vinegar bath, which ate away its hard shell. The egg was now squishy and held intact by a membrane.

Well today, the egg looked downright deflated. Why? That would be osmosis, I explained to the kids. Although the egg's membrane is intact and looks solid, there really are tiny spaces between the membrane's molecules, and water from inside the egg escaped out into the syrup.

Today, when poking and squeezing the egg, we could actually feel the yolk inside - it felt like a little ball. Cool!

But we're not done yet! Now the egg is in a water bath. We're going to see if it plumps back up via osmosis again.

CRASH BANG BOOM!: Today we read a trio of picture books, including "Snow Sounds, An Onomatopoeic Story". Great concept for a book and it presented a perfect opportunity to introduce the kids to the term onomatopoeia, or a 'the reference of a word to a sound resembling the pronunciation of the word itself, e.g. "whizz," "thud," "thump," "hiss," "moo," "quack," "hoot," "howl," "whack" ' per yourdictionary.com. An onomatopoeia is a part of speech we all use all of the time, but so few people know (or remember) what it's called.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?: Here's a photo of Annabelle presenting me with a bouquet of daisies. That she picked. In our park. Today. As in January.

And yesterday when we were at a park in Wallingford, I was walking around, sniffing the air like a bloodhound, going, "What's that smell? What's that smell?! It smells like flowers. ..." Soon, I located the source of the scent - it was a blooming cherry tree and some "springtime" flowering shrubs.