Another Thursday

THERE IS ANOTHER: You can imagine our excitement this morning when Annabelle discovered that there are actually FIVE painted butterfly larvae in our little container. I think they've acclimated to our house after their harrowing journey here via US Mail. They're starting to move around a lot more.

MAGNETISM: This morning before 8, for whatever reason, CJ asked me if the North Pole and South Pole would stick together. I started thinking and talking about plate tectonics and CJ got a puzzled look on his face. At that, it occurred to me that wasn't what he was asking about at ALL. He was thinking about magnets. Duh.

So we talked about the "opposites attract" saying and how that's true for magnets. (South and north would stick together, while south and south or north and north would repel one another.)

BEFORE BALLET: I swear, for whatever reason, it's always this wild and crazy rush trying to get out the door to ballet. Even though the kids had been up for nearly four damn hours already, come 10 a.m. and time to leave, it was craziness. One of the points of contention today was Annabelle had put on a shirt that she'd clearly worn while painting a few days prior. I asked her to change it and she shot back, "Why do I have to take it off just because of paint? You know, Mom, I AM an artist."

Um, yes. That's nice. Now change your shirt. And then I couldn't get CJ, who was perusing a library book, to get off the couch and toward the door. "Wait! I'm reading this in my mind!" he said rather haughtily. CLASS TIME: We did eventually make it out the door and to lessons. While Bee was in her class, CJ and I strolled streets and alleys of "downtown" Magnolia, Kirby along for the jaunt. We reviewed flowers, shrubs and trees we'd IDed yesterday (lots of dogwood, rhododendron and azalea, as well as weary looking tulips). Today, we saw more iris coming to bloom and we even saw a couple of poppy plants. CJ loved their spiky buds and stems.
We made it back to the community center a couple of minutes before Bee was done, so CJ and I took the time to check out the preschooler-produced artwork on the bulletin board. I called CJ's attention to one young man's writing's about Earth Day.

CJ looked at it and immediately said, "I can't read that!!" I told him I knew that he could if he just sounded each word out. And sure enough, he did figure out that the author's message was, "Turn off the lights. Pick up all the garbage and recycle and compost. Sell stuff that you don't need."

The reason I drew CJ's attention to the writing was because I wanted him to see that even if you don't spell every word exactly right, you can still get your message across. [That said, I DO expect him to spell damn near every word right by the time he's middle school age. ;) ]

When Annabelle emerged from ballet, she was wearing her ballet backpack tucked in her tutu, in front of her stomach. She looked like a ballerina kangaroo. (Would that be a balleroona? Or a kangarina?)

BACK TO FLORIDA: For our foray into Florida this a.m., I checked out the great ThinkQuest. We found a few items about about Florida, but none of them were that engaging IMHO.

I poked around some more and we found that the Nationa Parks Service has several Web pages about wildlife in Everglades National Park. CJ and Annabelle spent the most time on the birds page. There, we learned that, like us, Florida has Great Blue Herons, and they also have diminutive counterparts, Little Blue Herons.

NOT SO SLICK: The oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has been dominating the news, so I thought it would be good to teach the kids a little bit about offshore drilling. I was happy (and surprised) to find that NASA had an eClip video on the topic geared for kids CJ & Annabelle's ages. So, I cued it up. "We LOVE 'Our World' videos!' CJ said as its theme music started.

After that video, we then watched one titled "Offshore Oil Drilling," also a NASA eClip in the 'Our World' series. During the video, there was a demonstration of what happened when oil is introduced into water, including how it moves, spreads, creates slicks and affects wildlife. One thing it showed was how bird feathers become coated and heavy when they're covered in oil.

While the video was a great demonstration, I decided it would be even better to replicate it with the kids (we have water, feathers and though I don't have crude oil, we have motor oil). I assembled our ingredients and the kids poured little shot glasses of motor oil into the water, watched it spread and helped it spread (from NASA we learned that current, waves and wind move the oil spill around).
I had the kids dunk their feathers in the oil and it was a really dramatic demonstration of just how awful it must be for those poor birds who get caught in a slick.

CRASH BANG BOOM: This headline grabbed my attention this morning: "Huge NASA science balloon crashes in Australia." It was a horrible accident while launching a huge NASA balloon loaded with a multi million dollar telescope built to scan the sky at wavelengths invisible to the human eye. It was years in the making and in just seconds, it was destroyed. It damn near took a couple people out, too. I sure hope nothing like this happens during "our" launch. ....

On a much lighter note, I was happy to learn today (via an email from NASA) that Space Shuttle program managers wrapped up their Flight Readiness Review on Wednesday afternoon at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Teams preparing space shuttle Atlantis for its STS-132 mission are not working any significant issues, and the May 14 target launch date will be recommended at next week's agency-level review," said the press release. Phew.

Next Wednesday (May 5), NASA managers will hold a news conference after a Flight Readiness Review, which is a meeting to assess preparations for shuttle Atlantis' STS-132 mission to the International Space Station. "Live status updates, including the start time for the news conference, will be provided during the meeting via the NASA News Twitter feed. To access the feed, go to the nasa.gov homepage or visit: http://www.twitter.com/nasa."

You know we'll be tuning in!

KENNY THE SHARK: Yesterday at the library, the kids chose a couple of "Kenny the Shark" videos. It's about an always hungry shark who walks, talks and lives on land. Mercifully, he doesn't eat the family of humans he lives with ...

I forgot that interspersed in and/or for a few minutes at the end of every Kenny cartoon, there's actually some educational content related to sea life. (The cartoon's on the Discovery Channel, so it make sense it has some educational value.) The DVD they watched today had films about several sea creatures, including a squid. Annabelle informed me that she and CJ learned that squids squirt their ink when they're fighting or under attack. I asked her why she thought they did it. She said it was to trick the attackers. "It's like playing hide and seek and cheating!" analogized Annabelle.

TAKE A LICKING: Of course today the kids were eager to try the lemon iced pops they made yesterday. Annabelle dove right in and gobbled hers up. CJ was a bit more tentative. He had to contemplate it for a minute ...

He came around pretty quickly, though (before it melted!) and said he actually enjoyed it. That made me happy, because he's not exactly adventurous when it comes to introducing new foods to his diet.