Actually, Muzzy Wuz

OVER THE RAINBOW: To be honest, I'm not sure which computer program or Web site Annabelle used to create her "mastrpese" (pictured above), but in my book Annabelle gets bonus points for two reasons. One: She put the rainbow's color's in the proper Roy G. Biv order (she even told me that in order to make that happen she had to create the violet - that it wasn't a default choice in the software she was using). And second, I love that she used an apostrophe on "Bee's," as just the day before we'd talked about using an apostrophe-S when the word's a possessive. Go Bee!

IT WAS OLD MAN CARRUTHERS!: This morning before "school" was in session, CJ and Annabelle were watching a special Cartoon Network showing of "Aloha! Scooby Doo" (2005, with what I will admit was a lovely theme song sung by Don Ho, if you can believe that). The cartoon dragged on and on and on, and I was ready to get this party started. At the one hour mark I walked into their bedroom (where they were watching it) and asked CJ if it was almost over. He said, "No! We don't know who did it yet!" I told him to please let me know when it was over, so we could get started with our brain work. He nodded and shut the door when I left the room. When I heard that the program had finally ended, I headed for their bedroom - and discovered the door was locked. Ruh roh. ...

That's right, I'd been locked out of their room for fear of breaking up the viewing party before the gang solved the mystery. I told CJ (and Bee, since she was there), not to ever lock me out again. Not even for Scooby Doo. (Geez, if they're already doing that now, what do I have to look forward to once they're teenagers? :/ )

NO COMPRENDÉ: As he was working on a reading comprehension exercise this morning, CJ proclaimed, "I'm clever. That's why I finish so much homework. ... Once I have a super brain, I'll decide I'm enough smart," and not have to do any more school work.

Unfortunately for CJ, today was not that day. The last part of his comprehension activity asked him to use a pronoun in place of the underlined word (a person or object). He came up with some words (I really should have asked his reasoning for choosing the ones he did, darn it!). However, since he didn't know what a pronoun was, his answers were wrong. So, we talked about pronouns. He seemed to get the concept right away. So we'll work on them again in the days to come, to cement the idea.

Annabelle's reading comprehension exercise centered on a passage about soup. Technically, she got every single answer wrong. Her answers weren't taken straight from the passage, which was the point of the exercise. Read passage. Glean info. Answer questions about passage.

It was a good example of how standardized tests are problematic when judging a student's capabilities. Annabelle's answers had merit, but they weren't by the book, so to speak. ...

There was one free-form question at the end of the exercise: "What kind of soup do you like best?"

Annabelle (who doesn't like ANY kind of soup) thought about this long and hard. Finally she struck upon an answer: "How about brownie dough? That's kind of like soup ..." she reasoned. I gave her credit for that one.

Today's background music was Yo-Yo Ma playing the prelude from Bach´s Cello Suite No. 1, a track oft featured in commercials. In fact, when I hear it, I can't get the image of a BMW ripping along a curvy country road out of my head. We also listened to Bach - Violin Concerto in E Major BWV1042 - Mov. 1/3. Complicated, complex and not one of his most famous compositions, for whatever reason.

EL STUPIDO: OK, so for those who are following along at home, you know that a couple of days ago I finally opened up the big Muzzy instructional language kit I checked out from the library, roarin' to finally get the kids into a little Español. And you'll remember I was horrified to find a DVD and books that were in English only.

Yeah, well, while putting that English stuff back in the box today, I opened up the kit and I'll be damned if I don't find an entire additional layer beneath - full of the Spanish CDs and DVDs. Doh! So today, we watched Muzzy in Español - to CJ's chagrin. He asked for the English version instead. I reminded him he already knows how to speak English and so we don't need to dwell on that one!

Fortunately, he came around and was singing along in Spanish before too long. Annabelle was downright rapt, and drew a picture of Muzzy while watching/singing/repeating.

FAIL: I had a coupon for Chef Boyardee products for just .79 a can, so yesterday we bought a couple. CJ loves spaghetti and I thought it might be a quick meal in a pinch. So, at lunchtime today, I opened a can and split the football shaped pasta in tomato sauce between two bowls. The kids were equally disdainful of it. So, I put it in the fridge and went to Plan B - a corn dog. But not just any corn dog - a meatless one from Trader Joe's.

Ironically, CJ, who as of late has started declaring his desire to be a vegetarian, was the one who balked at the tofu dog. He said, "This isn't like the corn dogs you usually make." I explained it is a corn dog for people who want to be vegetarians, thinking that will hook him. He responds by saying he'll "eat vegetables and stuff," but he won't be eating vegetarian corn dogs. Fine. Lunch fail #2. I suggested he at least eat the corn meal part, which he did.

While we're talking lunch, it's worth noting that Annabelle asked me today, "Why is it called a sandwich?" It was one of my why-oh-why moments (as in, "Why have I never wondered that?"). My answer came from an interesting Web site I discovered while searching for an answer: WordSources.info. According to it:

The word sandwich that we use today was born in London during the very late
hours one night in 1762 when an English nobleman, John Montagu, the Fourth Earl
of Sandwich (1718-1792), was too busy gambling to stop for a meal even though he
was hungry for some food. The legend goes that he ordered a waiter to bring him
roast-beef between two slices of bread. The Earl was able to continue his
gambling while eating his snack; and from that incident, we have inherited that
quick-food product that we now know as the sandwich.

CRAMMING: It was a library due date, so we had a number of books to read before returning them. The list included "Here Comes T. Rex Cottontail," "Last One in is a Rotten Egg," and "Earth Day, Hooray!"

My favorite of the group was the last one. I was expecting an ecology lesson and/or info about the April 22 holiday (founded in 1970, BTW). There was a little of both, but the book, by visual learning specialist Stuart J. Murphy was really a terrific math lesson. The kids in the story were hoping to collect 5000 cans which they'd recycle and use the $ generated to beautify a park for Earth Day. They collected the cans in small bags of 10, and then 10 of the small bags were placed into a larger bag, making 100 cans. The bags of 100 cans were then put into gigantic bags - 10 bags of 100-can bags - for a total of 1,000. It was great reinforcement of place value - which we talked about yesterday during our inaugural attempt to add double digit numbers. And it really demonstrated how grouping in multiples of 10 can make counting large numbers quite manageable.

We finished our read-a-thon with the book "A Perfect Day." It was short on words, just a beautifully illustrated story of a parent and child's perfect day - sharing meals, a walk, cloud watching, singing and dancing , painting, reading. (Hey, that kind of sounds like what we do 'round here on a daily basis!)

I asked CJ what his perfect day would be. He said eating pizza, eating Cheez-Its and going to Disneyland. Bee said hers would be "reading three books about spring and snuggling with my mom." Aw gee, Bee.

Of course, after reading the book, I had to play one of my all time favorite songs for them, Lou Reed's Perfect Day.