Just Another Thursday

BALLET AND BOOKS: It was ballet day, so our morning started off with a trip to the village for Bee's dance class.

Afterward, we headed to the library, where the kids scored some videos and I picked out some books for them (including several about plants and gardening). While I was perusing shelves, the kids took turns reading large format picture books to one another. CJ's favorite is "I Knew an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly." "It's about a food chain," he proclaimed upon finishing it.

GOING TO POT: Our seed extravaganza continues to produce spectacular results. Peas and bean starts have practically taken over our kitchen and tomatoes are coming along quite nicely upstairs.

Today, I had the kids repot beans to give them more room to grow. CJ's apple 'tree' and Bee's watermelon also moved to bigger digs.

After that dirty work was done, we headed out to the alley to plant a couple of cilantro starts I bought at Fred Meyer a couple of days ago. Lordy, how I love fresh cilantro. ...

MARCH MADNESS: One the cilantro was safely placed in the planter box out back, we turned our attention toward some PE activity. The NCAA tournament got underway this morning and I thought it might do the kids some good to bounce a basketball around a bit. I explained to them what a bounce pass is and had them stand facing one another about 8 feet apart. I told them to push the ball outward, trying to aim it to bounce it on an imaginary X on the ground right between them. Then, of course, the other player is to catch it, and return it via a bounce pass. I demonstrated with each of them a couple of times and then let them have at it. What a disaster. Seriously. It was like they hadn't listened to a word I said. So naturally, I had to go Bobby Knight on their butts. I threw a couple of chairs around and ... Just kidding.

I did kind of read them a minor riot act, though, suggesting to them that this was something they were completely capable of and that it's a good skill for them to learn and that it would be fun if they at least tried to do it the right way. Fortunately, the pep talked worked and they were soon bounce passing back in forth with no further intervention from me.

"WEED" TO SEED: Back inside, we took a few minutes to read one of the library books I scored today: "Dandelion Adventures" by L. Patricia Kite. The first part of the book is fictional - it follows seven dandelion seed parachutes to their landing spots, which range from a garden to a stream, a boat to a forest, a sidewalk and a school yard.

The latter part of the book is non fiction, listing facts about dandelions. We learned their name came from the French, who thought the plant's leaves looked like lions' teeth, or dent de lion. We learned that each yellow topped dandelion is really many tiny yellow flowers or florets, and that the milky fluid that comes from its stem when you pick it is called latex. And we found out that dandelions have taproots, which can be up to three feet long!

TAKING NOTE: This afternoon, we busted out the Musikgarten bags and spent some time on music education. For starters, Annabelle brought CJ up to speed with what she learned this Monday night during the makeup lesson for the Friday they both missed, including four new musical notation cards.

We laid the cards out on the table. One person would play the beats and rests on the glockenspiel and the other two of us would have to guess which card the musician just played. We did a few rounds of that and then it was time for free-form compositions. I would name characters from the kids' cartoons and games and they'd quickly make up theme music to go along with that person. It was interesting how much different the theme music for Princess Peach was as compared to a bad guy like Bowser (Mario's nemesis).

COVER GIRL: I was outside this afternoon picking up dog crap (one of my more glamours jobs around the MPA campus) when a FedEx deliveryman started walking down our stairs. He handed me a small box and I thought, "What the hell did I order online?"

I took the box in the house, opened it up and out slid four copies of a "Trends in Cognitive Sciences" magazine - with Annabelle's photo on the cover. That prompted me to recall an email asking for permission to use the photo of a sleeping baby Bee a few months back. I remember taking the photo and being unhappy with its exposure or something, so I played around with it in Photoshop and gave it fuzzy edges, a swirling background and a soft focus. (The magazine didn't photograph very well. A better view of the photo can be found here, on MorgueFile, where the magazine people found it.)

"I cannot believe that I'm on a magazine," Annabelle marveled.

SCIENCE SITES: I'm still on the email list of Whittier Elementary, the Seattle public school where the kids attended preschool. I like being on the list because it keeps me connected with events going on in area schools and resources that may be of interest to us. The email I received today mentioned a science fair at Whittier and encouraged parents to check out a list on Little-Scientists.com for inspiration. Glad I checked - the list includes several Web sites that are known-and-loved here at MPA, but there were a number of sites we haven't seen before, and more science is a good thing!

One of the gems new to us is Cool Science from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Via their Ask a Scientist feature, kids can ask a scientist questions, read answers to FAQs, get homework help, science fair project ideas, learn about careers in science and more.

Cool Science is also a portal to a resource developed by the University of Washington to teach the scientific method to elementary and middle school students. Cool, indeed!