Double Dipping

LAVENDER BLUE DAFFODIL-Y: The first thing I did this morning (we're talking 5:30 a.m.) was to head for the daffodils to see if they'd picked up any color from yesterday's experiment. And sure 'nuff, the daffodil CJ had placed in blue water was showing bluish tinges around the perimeter of its outer petals. Exciting stuff!

Sadly, the flower Bee had placed in red water wasn't showing and sign of change this a.m. - and I was not looking forward to telling Sleeping Beauty the bad news once she rolled out of the rack. ...

At 7:30 a.m., CJ, who had been up for over an hour, suddenly recalled yesterday's flower experiment and asked to see his daffodil. By then, it had picked up even more color, with some in evidence of veining on the petals and a few blue tinges on the cupped/interior part of the daffodil (I'll bet there's a name for this part ...) AND Annabelle's flower was now displaying the tiniest twinge of pink on one of its petals (phew!) and as the day wore on, it picked up a few more flecks, but it didn't take on color the way the one in the blue water did. By tonight, CJ's flower was even blue in the stigma/top of the pistil. [BTW, Undiné , I'm counting on you to tell me if I'm mis-IDing plant parts! :-) ]

Naturally, I'm wondering why the daffodil in blue morphed faster and more. My *theory* is because its stem is bigger, perhaps giving a superior avenue for the blue to travel? Any other ideas out there?

SECOND SET: Based on the results of this morning's spelling bee, the kids seem to have mastered the second spelling list thrown at them (in, pin, win, thin, on, pond, fun, run, spin). While that's great news, of course, it occurs to me that these words are not among those they use most frequently when they're writing. I'd much prefer that they mastered words like you, they, what, when, where, because, went, villain, underpants ... you know, words that pop up in almost every bit of writing they do. : )

My friend Linda is a longtime primary teacher and she shared with me that in teaching spelling she has, in fact, concentrated on frequently-used words first, which makes good sense. So I started poking around the Internet and on a Rochester Community School page I found this claim: "Of all the words we read and write, it is estimated that approximately 50% are accounted by 100 highly frequent words." Fortunately, the article includes a table called First Grade Wall Words (for display in a classroom) with 124 commonly-used words. It looks good and I'm going to switch to using it for our next few spelling lists and tests. I gave CeeJ and Bee their first list of 24 today.

STAR SPANGLED SONG: On March 3, 1931, the United States officially adopted "The Star-Spangled Banner" as its national anthem. That's worth talkin' about.

I started our campus conversation about the song by playing a 19th century instrumental version (MP3) of the Star-Spangled Banner, performed on vintage instruments in the National Museum of American History's collection. The anthem was arranged and played as it would have been heard in 1854. I asked the kids if they knew the song and/or its title.

"I recognize it. ... It's the song from Muzzy!" Annabelle guessed, incorrectly. But I had to give her credit. Tonally, it had a very similar sound. As the music progressed, reaching the "and the rockets' red glare ..." part, Annabelle said, "Wait isn't this the song they hold up flags and march?" Getting closer ...

When I played a more contemporary version of the song (Whitney Houston's rousing rendition from Super Bowl XXV, long before she became such a hot mess), the anthem definitely rang a bell - at least with Annabelle. "Don't we hear this at the Mariners' games?" she asked immediately following "Oh say can you see?" "And don't we put our hands over our hearts when we hear this?" Bee continued. Bingo!

"It's the Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem," I told them, before launching into the history of the song. As the Smithsonian's wonderful Web site dedicated to the anthem explains, "On September 14, 1814, U.S. soldiers at Baltimore’s Fort McHenry raised a huge American flag to celebrate a crucial victory over British forces during the War of 1812. The sight of those 'broad stripes and bright stars' inspired Francis Scott Key to write a song* (see below) that eventually became the United States' national anthem."

Fortunately, I found a series of Star Spangled lesson plans and links on the National Endowment for the Humanities Web site. According to the NEH, the original flag inspiring Francis Scott Key to write the Star-Spangled Banner was made by Mary Pickersgill for Fort McHenry. It measured 30 x 42 feet (about one-quarter the size of a basketball court!). Each star was about two feet across. Pickersgill's design became the official U.S. flag on May 1, 1795. With the addition of two stars for Vermont (admitted as the 14th state on March 4, 1791) and Kentucky (admitted as the 15th state on June 1, 1792), this version of the flag lasted 23 years - from presidents George Washington (1789-1797) through James Monroe (1817-1825). Today, the inspirational flag (pictured above) from Fort McHenry hangs in the Smithsonian's American History Museum.

I printed out the first stanza of the anthem (the only one sung at almost all occasions), a copy of Key's original manuscript (photo to the right) as well as a copy of the first printed edition combining words and music (Baltimore: Thomas Carr, 1814, and pictured below). I thought it might be fun for the kids to see the sheet music reproduction because, thanks to Musikgarten, they are becoming familiar with musical notation.

* While we're talking about musical notes and such, I can't help but wonder why so many know Francis Scott Key's name, but virtually no one knows who John Stafford Smith is. Smith (ironically, an Englishman) composed "The Anacreontic Song," which is the tune Keys' poem (originally titled "In Defense of Fort McHenry") was eventually married to, thereby creating the anthem. I couldn't help but notice that even the SMITHSONIAN'S Web site credits Key with writing a song, when in actuality, he wrote a poem, which turned into lyrics. Key did NOT write the music. But I digress ...

During the course of our anthem conversation, we talked about how and why today's flag looks different than the one Francis Scott Key wrote about. And we talked about protocol when singing the national anthem. Then it was time to sing along - we found a karaoke version on YouTube and the kids belted it out (Ideally, I'd insert some screechy outtakes *here.*)

I certainly wish our anthem was as singer friendly as "O Canada."

I think we'll keep practicing the anthem - after all, it's less than 6 weeks to the home opener of the Mariners. It would be cool if they could memorize it before then.

MISSED OUT: Via a Pacific Science Center Facebook post, I learned today is World Maths Day (yes, they use an "s" at the end of Math for some reason). In the worldwide event, students at home and school play against other students from around the globe in live games of mental arithmetic. Each game lasts for 60 seconds and students can play up to 500 games, earning points for each correct answer. The students who answer the most questions appear in the World Maths Hall of Fame.

Apparently more than 2 million students from 37,000 schools in 200 countries registered for today's event. In 2009, participants answered a combined 452,681,681 questions correctly.

Of course, I hopped right to the event Web site from the Facebook post, only to find out that registration was closed. : ( I sure wish I'd known about it sooner (like even yesterday). We would have been all over that. We will definitely have to keep it on the radar for next year!

OFF THE DEEP END: A couple of days ago I got the call that a space had opened up in a "kinder" (ages 4 and 5) swim class, which meant that now Annabelle can get her swim on too! (Regular readers will recall Miss Bee was mighty peeved last week upon learning CJ got to take swim lessons and she didn't because no space was available.)

While stewing on the wait list, Bee had missed the first lesson, where they grouped kids based on swimming ability. So tonight, all the kids made a beeline for their teachers from last week, which left Bee standing alone alongside the pool, not knowing quite where to go. Finally, she talked her way into a group of all boys, and the smallest out of 5 or 6 groups total. It became clear why the group was the smallest. These were the full-on swimming kids. While the two dozen other kinders stayed in 3-foot water, Bee's group migrated to calmer waters - the 5-7 foot deep portion of the pool. Yikes!

I knew that Annabelle had grown quite confident in her abilities when we were at Nonnie & Bops' this past Christmas, but it has been 2.5 months since she'd been in the water, and she's still a rookie when it comes to swimming. That said, she's also stubborn and nearly fearless in the water and so ... it turned out just fine!!! She had a blast. At least three times from all the way across the aquatic center, I could hear her say with confidence, "Oh, I've done that - at my Nonnie and Bops'!" :)

While it's great that Bee's getting in on the action, the bad news is that the opening wasn't for the kinder class held at the same time as CJ's age 6 and up class. So for the next month or so, Wednesdays will mean two trips to and from Ballard. And I'll have to rip dripping wet Bee from the pool at exactly 5:30 so that I can get CJ to Tae Kwon Do on time on Queen Anne at 6. Good times.

On the silver lining side, I realized that this will mean I do get a half hour of one-on-one time with each of them. Today, I chose to use that time working on, well, times, using an idea grampaR suggested in comment on a previous post.

I drew up a table,10 columns wide and 10 rows deep and had them each write the numbers 1-10 across the top margin (X) and 1-10 down the lefthand margin (Y). Then, the task at hand was plugging in the correct answer to X*Y in boxes. CJ saw the potential for patterns emerging all over the place immediately - I mean while he was writing the second number. Bee was really good at recognizing the communitive nature of the table (2x3 = 3x2). And "Schoolhouse Rock" songs sure came in handy for both of them while working on this.

It was a great exercise and we'll reference those tables lots in the days-weeks-months to come.

AMAZING DISCOVERY OF THE DAY: While researching the national anthem, one site listed the Internet Public Library as a resource. My oh MY. Why has no one told me about this before?

On its "about us" page, IPL describes itself as "a public service organization and a learning/teaching environment. To date, thousands of students and volunteer library and information science professionals have been involved in answering reference questions for our 'Ask an IPL2' Librarian service and in designing, building, creating and maintaining the IPL2's collections."

There is an ABUNDANCE of reference information, as well as games, science fair ideas, arts and crafts, cultural information. Fabulous. Really, really fabulous.

THE WHITE STUFF: According to their Facebook profile, it's Oreo's birthday today! (Yes, I'm a Facebook fan of Oreos. It's for the children, I swear.)

You know we here at MPA could not let this momentous occasion go unnoticed. It was of special import to CJ, who has what one might call a passion for Oreos.

It was 1912 when Nabisco introduced their new cookie - two chocolate disks with white stuff in the middle. An Oreo hasn't changed much over the decades, save for a slightly different design on the chocolate disks. (An interesting aside, oddly, even Nabisco isn't sure of the exact genesis of the Oreo's name.)

Naturally, to celebrate this glorious birthday, we had to go buy some gooey Oreo Cakesters and Oreo ice cream. As luck would have it, we had some Golden Oreos and an Oreo-inspired matching shapes game on hand. After dinner, we sang "Happy Birthday" to the Oreo cookie and the kids dug into a sweet treat.

As one might imagine, Weird Al's "The White Stuff" has been running through my head alllll daaaaaaaaay looooooong.