Map and Mats

THEY DID THE MAP (THEY DID THE MONSTER MAP): It's been awhile since we've done a straight-up geography lesson, so I thought this morning would be a good time to break out the map-of-the-50 states jigsaw puzzle.

It's actually not the easiest puzzle to put together as the individual states' pieces don't have any tabs on 'em, they're just state shaped and slide all over the place. That being the case, I told the kids the HAD to do the border first, and once they'd done that, then work on finding the states that are on the Canadian and Mexican borders, and then fill in the middle.

Once they had our entire nation assembled, I suggested we play a game. We'd take turns choosing a state and then we'd give one clue about that state. For instance, I picked Florida and I said, "Oranges grow there," and the kids each took a guess. If there was no correct answer after the first round another clue was given until the correct state was guessed. This activity was made possible in large part by the fact that the map had icons on on them representing things each state was famous for (apples and salmon on Washington, for instance).

After the structured fun, CJ and Annabelle morphed into map-eating monsters and they set about deconstructing the nation one state at a time. It was a pretty protracted, involved game, and their reasons for eliminating states was interesting. (Texas was the first to go, in case you're wondering.)

EGBDF: When I went to the tail end of Musikgarten for parent participation time, I was happy to see that the kids were working with the musical staff. Teacher Nancy had a big one on poster board on the wall, and told us that earlier she'd had an even bigger one on the floor, made out of black straps and the kids got to be the "notes" hopping around from line to line.

She then brought out yet another version - this time a felt rectangle the size of a placemat with five horizontal black lines on it (of course). The kids were given felt circles and then their task was to match the pattern of dots (notes) she put on the big board. CJ and Annabelle handled the exercise with precision and confidence. They're getting such a good foundation in music through Musikgarten.

Later today, while waiting in an entirely too long and slow line at Safeway, the kids started singing and doing rhythmic hand clapping to a song they learned at lessons. I love it when they spontaneously do things like that.

Oh, and it should be noted, that while we did NOT see a dead fish in the alley as we have the last 3 or so Fridays, this afternoon, when we went on a ride/run to Lawton, CJ did spy one - a lunker this time. A couple of birds were enjoying the find (a mostly intact fish, the same type of fish, but 3-4x bigger than ones we'd seen in the alley on Fridays before). I honestly don't know what to make of the Friday-fish phenomenon.

THE ROOT OF THE MATTER: This afternoon we were back out in the yard, fighting the good fight. Yesterday the kids spent about an hour out there while I mowed the weeds and mud. Today, weeding and pruning were on the 'menu.' In what I consider to be a stroke of GENIUS on my part, I reminded the kids that when we were studying dandelions, we learned they sometimes have massive taproots. And wouldn't it be interesting to see if they could find some really big dandelion roots of their own?

And that was all it took. For the next 45 minutes or so they were weed pulling madmen - even fighting over use the one weed-digger-outer we had handy. They saved a few of their specimens and we compared and contrasted them (root size, shape and structure - that sort of thing).
Do you suppose I'll be able to get them to fall for that more than once?

STEEL TRAP: One of CJ's first requests this morning was to go to "iTunes-dot-com-slash-adventure-time" on the Internet. I was impressed that he remembered the entire URL which he heard, no doubt, when watching the new "Adventure Time" show last night.

TO THE MAT: Tonight at dinnertime, I FINALLY remembered to break out the wonderfully nerdy placemats I scored during our April Fool's Day trip to Archie McPhee. I placed the Periodic Table of Elements under Annabelle's dinner. CJ got an anatomy mat.

Annabelle was absolutely entranced by her mat. "Look, here's nitrogen! And here's aluminum!" she exclaimed. Soon, she was noting the elements' weights and other info. In fact, within a couple of minutes, she'd shoved her dinner and water all the way off the mat, so as not to obscure it in any way.

CJ wasn't as gun-ho about his. When Annabelle tried to coaxed him to move his plate off his mat, he said in a serious tone, "Not while I'm eating!" (Let this be a lesson - nothing comes between CJ and his bacon.) He did, however, eventually at least shove his plate to one side, so he could see most of his mat.