Out and About

SEASHELLS BY THE SEASHORE: Although schools were closed across the U.S. for President's Day, MPA was still in session. But we haven't been sitting at our desks - the past two days have included a lot of outdoor schoolin'.

On Sunday, the kids rode their bikes and we jogged along side down the path to Terminal 91, a couple miles from our house. We lucked out and arrived at low tide, so there was some good beach combing. We found all kinds of shells and talked about differences and similarities between them (for instance, a clam and an oyster). We found quite a few shells with live limpets attached. Christian explained to the kids that a limpet is related to a snail, and showed them what its powerful suction cup looks like.

It's a four-ish mile round trip, and the last leg is a long stretch of uphill. They did a little victory dance (think Rocky celebrating at the top of the stairs) when they reached the top.

SOMEONE'S GOT A CASE OF THE MONDAYS: We took to the table to work on some math this morning. CJ's assignment was reading some charts that had recorded data using tally marks - a concept he's familiar with and never had trouble with in the past. But right out of the gate this morning, he was struggling. Instead of looking at group (four uprights and the fifth tally across them) and instantly knowing it was 5, he repeatedly started counting the individual marks (which kinda defeats the purpose of the tally mark system, now doesn't it?).

After much coaxing and coaching, he did finish his assignment, but it was clear he wasn't anywhere near the top of his game. As I review similar sessions we've had like this, I think it has almost always been on a Monday, when he's typically had a couple of days "off." It's not like our learning stops on the weekends, but we don't do worksheets. I'm thinking we'll be doing a worksheet or two this coming weekend and see if that has any affect on CJ's case of the Mondays.

IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: It was a really nice morning weather wise, and a great day to get out and get some exercise. So once again the kids hopped onto their bikes and we jogged along beside. This time, instead of heading to Terminal 91, we took the left fork, which is the waterfront trail to downtown. We didn't go all the way downtown, however. We just ran a couple miles to the south, a ways past the Magnolia bridge.

This map shows most of our Sunday route pink to red, then red back to pink (home). Monday's route was pink to blue (the top of the blue loop is cut off).On our way back north, we stopped at Whole Foods where the kids got a free cookie thanks to their kids club membership. That gave them the strength for the rest of the ride home.

Along the way we checked out a Washington National Guard armory, and a local P Patch (community garden) where all sorts of things are growing like crazy already.

And believe it or not, we even saw David Bowie on our way home!

BOGUS BOOK: I snagged a book called "Presidents' Day" (published in 2008) from the library a couple weeks back and have been saving it for today. CJ and Annabelle took turns reading pages while I was making dinner.

At the dinner table Christian was flipping through the book and he said, "This isn't right." He'd just read that, "Grown-ups vote every four years to choose the president of the United States.

Each person votes for the person he or she believes will make the best leaders. They don't all agree, so whoever gets the most votes becomes president."

Hmm, well, they might want to ask Al Gore before making that claim. You can see right on the Federal Elections Web site, in the 2000 election, Gore had 50,999,897 votes, compared to G.W. Bush's 50,456,002. So who moved into the White House? It wasn't Gore, because we don't have one person = one vote, we have an electoral college. I don't expect a primary grade picture book to necessarily explain all the nuances surrounding the electoral college, but they also shouldn't make it sound like the way we elect presidents is by straight up popular vote, because that's simply not true. I have no idea how such a big mistake could make it into print in a Harper-Collins publication. I think a note to the publisher is in order ...

RESOURCEFUL: My find of the day regarding things we're sure to use in the future is the ThinkQuest library. It's a collection of over 7,000 Web sites created by students around the world who have participated in a ThinkQuest Competition. I like the by kids, for kids nature of the site.

The library is searchable and extensive. As an experiment, I used "civil rights" as a search term. It produced more than 600 links. Wow.