Cut and Paste

BUILDING BOWSER: CJ's birthday is next Tuesday, and preparations are already underway. Specifically, this morning we started Step 1 of building Bowser, a pinata. Kind of a cross between a dragon and a turtle, Bowser is the arch rival and nemesis of Mario of Nintendo game fame.

The first step was cobbling together balloons, bags and newspaper to form Bowser's body. Once we were OK with our form, I had the kids tear strips of newspaper, and we mixed water, glue and flour to dip the strips in. It took about an hour to give Bowser his first shell.

It's worth noting that earlier in the day, I asked CJ and Annabelle to find me a good 3-D picture of Bowser and, frankly, none of the ones they came up with were very good. So I told them that as a result, I would be making Barney the Dinosaur. That gave them fits. They asked all day long and into the night if I was just kidding. I have them worried. :)

WHEN PIGS FLY: CJ asked to use FunBrain for their math practice today. I was OK with that, and so they logged in to its Math Arcade. There's a nice variety of fun games there, including "Hillbilly Pig Toss," in which the player can adjust the height and distance of a throw to try to get a pig from one Hillbilly's arms to another. It's pretty entertaining, especially when a catch is made and one of the guys yells, "Yee haw!!!!" That always sends CeeJ and Bee into fits of laughter. They also played a number of games that didn't involve hicks or hogs. ;)

More than once I've wondered who the people behind FunBrain are. There are all these great learning games, but today I was especially curious after reading one of the math questions CJ encountered today. It was something about if so and so had 5 Doritos and so and so had 6, how many Doritos did they have altogether?" The "product placement" made me suspicious that Big Food was behind the game. And then a few times today, CJ kept accidentally finding himself being redirected to Poptropica a game site that's plenty fun, but not academically oriented like FunBrain.

I poked around FunBrain a bit and it says it's part of "Family Education Network" and they do have a pretty sweet Teacher Resource center. But when I clicked on their Homework Relief Center, then the ads became a lot more apparent. Oh, and the link that says "Get help with tonight's homework" has a price tag attached - $3.99. They also sell "Homework Relief Packs," promising "Relief in a few easy steps." Hmm. Well, there's nothing wrong with making some dough, and they're very upfront about the price. And there's lots to learn from and enjoy that's free.

DIG IT: Well, our bean and pea starts are now earthbound. This afternoon we worked some organic enrichment into the soil, first with the electric tiller (the kids took turns at the helm) and then we raked it by hand.

The dirt's a little wetter than I'd like it to be. And it's pretty clay-laden. And I wish it were in a sunnier spot. But as you can see from a photo below, our poor lil plants were rootbound (and had already been transplanted once)! So, their time had come. We'll see what, if anything, is produced in the patch.

We still have tomatoes, peppers and sunflowers to plant.

ANTICIPATING EARTH DAY: Earth Day is April 22, which will be here before we know it. In anticipation of it, I went Internet combing for some resources today and found that Discovery Education has a great site, ThinkGreen.com/Classroom. There, "it's always Earth Day. And whatever your grade level, you'll find a wealth of free multimedia resources to bring Earth Day into your classroom today and every day. Featuring nearly 100 lesson plans, videos, worksheets, puzzles, interactives, virtual labs, writing prompts, case studies, and more, it's your one-stop Earth Day shop." Excellent! That will definitely fill our bill come April 22.

NEWS FROM NASA: It may look like the astronaut's just foolin' around, but he's hard at work. According to a NASA press release accompanying the photo, "During the STS-131 mission's first spacewalk, astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Clayton Anderson (out of frame) moved a new 1,700-pound ammonia tank from space shuttle Discovery's cargo bay to a temporary parking place on the station, retrieved an experiment from the Japanese Kibo Laboratory exposed facility and replaced a Rate Gyro Assembly on one of the truss segments."

Just another day at work for those guys.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, President Obama visited the Kennedy Space Center today. The kids and I watched a podcast of his speech, during which Obama said, "As president, I believe space exploration is not a luxury, not an afterthought, an essential part of the quest." The entire speech can be viewed or read here.