Spring Break

This image came to me via an email from The Learning Network, a fantastic service for educators from The New York Times. The photo is of students enjoying spring break in Daytona, April 1972. Awesome, isn't it? :)

What do you suppose they're listening to? Could be Neil Young's Harvest, the best selling album of 1972 ("Heart of Gold" was its most famous single). Or maybe they're still listening to Led Zeppelin IV, '71's best selling LP that has gone platinum 20-times over since then. But I digress. ...

The point I was going to make is that while many are enjoying spring break away from all things academic, we here at MPA are taking no such vacation. It's hard enough for CJ to get back into the swing of things when we don't do a single worksheet on Saturday or Sunday. I shudder to think how flummoxed he'd be with a week-plus layoff.

KNOW WHEN TO FOLD 'EM: To help us get into a listening-and-following-directions frame of mind, I thought it would be good for the kids to take on an ActivityTv tutorial. Annabelle lobbied for an origami swan, so that's what we chose. (We viewed the tutorial via Comcast's OnDemand feature, but it's also available on ActivityTV's Web site, here.)

It was a good project for origami rookies and the kids were both pretty pleased with and proud of their swans.

IMAGINE THAT: In my email inbox this morning was a lovely photo of Annabelle that a graphic artist had found on Morguefile (a repository where people park digital photos they're OK with other people using for projects or whatever).

Anyway, the artist had taken a photo I'd shot of Annabelle running through shallow surf at Discovery Park well over a year ago. I love what she did with it - it's gorgeous!NIMBLE FINGERS: Today via the Seattle Homeschool Group email list I'm on, I was made aware of a Web site with a plethora of typing tutors/teachers/games listed. What a goldmine! Annabelle chose to play a game called barracuda. The challenge was to type words as they appeared underwater, before some sea creature came and ate 'em. You can set the game to flow at slow, medium and fast speeds. It was a bit too difficult for her, even on the slow speed and she got a little Nervous. So we'll try another game on another day.

JUST FOR FUN: Annabelle drew a picture today of one of the kids' favorite cartoon/video game characters, Kirby (a round pink thing). What I loved most about her picture is that she (of her own volition) wrote the word NOUNS on the sheet and drew an arrow pointing to the elements (a person, place, or thing) in the picture that are nouns. Go Annabelle!

EARTH HOUR REVISITED: We studied up on Earth Hour on Friday, and come Saturday evening, it was observation time.

At about 8:10 we started our walk up, up, up to Ella Bailey park, at the top of Magnolia. From there, we'd have a great view of the Space Needle, which we knew was going to be participating. We hoped we'd see lights all over downtown go dark. At 8:30, the lights on the Mariners' and Seahawks' stadiums went dark, as did the Needle, and presumably some other homes and businesses.

Here's a "before" Earth Hour photo - you can see the Space Needle at the left and the stadiums (especially the green arches of Qwest) at the right are all lit up.
Imagine our surprise that at the very moment the Space Needle went dark, a fireworks show started over Elliott Bay. As it turns out it was not an Earth Hour celebration, just a happy coincidence (the fireworks were for a construction company's celebrating its 100th anniversary).
In the photo above, you can make out the silhouette of the Space Needle to the left and the fireworks at the right, over the water. The stadiums, now dark, are harder to spot.
We stayed up at the park for nearly the full hour. Christian got some charcoals going in a barbecue and we made s'mores. We started walking home at about 9:25 and on our way back down the hill, we watched the Space Needle and stadium lights come back on.

For some really fantastic photos of Earth Hour around the world, check out this link on Boston.com. In many instances, you can click on the dramatic before photo and it magically changes into a dark, during Earth Hour shot.

Also, I found footage of the fireworks show we saw on the West Seattle Blog. If you listen to the video, partway in you can hear sea lions barking their protest or alarm at the fireworks. Funny!