A Study in Colors

THE BLUE PLANET: This morning's email included this surprising (at least to me!) image from Mars.

According to NASA, the photo (taken in April by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) shows the west-facing side of an impact crater in the mid-latitudes of Mars' northern hemisphere. The email went on to note that "many of the other features observed in and around this crater are indicative of an ice-rich terrain, which may lend credence to the water formation hypothesis for these gullies. The most notable of these features is scalloped terrain in and around the crater. This type of terrain has been interpreted as a sign of surface caving, perhaps due to sublimation of underlying ice."

Where there's ice, there's water, and where there's water there might be life, eh?

This morning during breakfast Annabelle kept staring at/mulling the Very Official Looking certificate I'd hung on the wall last night after she went to bed. She kept saying, "I'm a part of history!" MARTIN IN THE MORNING: We have a week off between spring ballet session ending and summer starting. What would we do with our Thursday morning? One thing was for certain, we need to swing by a library today. I've got a couple of overdue items :( - including a Scholastic "Storybook Treasures" DVD with four video versions of picture books about civil rights. "March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World," "Martin's Big Words" "Rosa" and "Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad."

When I told CJ we'd be viewing them he asked if it was Martin Luther King's birthday. I told him it wasn't, at which he asked why we were watching it then. I told him I thought every day was a good day to remember MLK and his messages.

The video stories were all closed caption, which I like, because the kids can't help but read along with them.

As the credits for "March On!" rolled, CJ declared, "Black and white people shouldn't judge each other."

Annabelle clarified, "They shouldn't judge them (each other) by color. They should judge by their character."

I guess Martin's message came through loud and clear.

ARTISTS UNITED: Yesterday, I forgot to relate a couple of the "highlights" of our Children's Museum experience. Mostly it involves my mouthy daughter. :) (And where she gets that, I'll never know.)

For instance, at one point we were in the Japanese residence mock up and Annabelle said to a man twice my size, "The sign at the entrance said you're supposed to take your shoes off in here." :0

OK, now Annabelle is absolutely correct. And it wasn't said in a bossy tone, but I think we will all agree that it's rather awkward to have a 5 year old telling a 40 something stranger what to do, don't you think? ... I honestly can't help but cringe when she or CJ does something like that (which, frankly, is semi-regularly) and afterward I almost always agree that they were right, and I appreciate their confidence to speak up, really I do, but I also remind them that it's not necessarily too cool for young children to be telling an adult how to behave.

Later, that same shoe wearing man and his daughter were in our art workshop session. The little girl was painting on the easel next to Annabelle, and Shoe Man came over as the girl was using her brush to apply a giant swath of pitch black paint over about half of her paper. Shoe Man said, "Why don't you try using other colors instead of black?"

At that Annabelle immediately said, "It's her painting. She's the artist. She should be able to do whatever she wants." :0

I'll admit to cringing, but I have to say this time I didn't feel bad for Shoe Man at all. I was with Annabelle and Shoe Man's daughter. As Shoe Dude wordlessly walked away (no doubt thinking unkind thoughts about me and my daughter), I couldn't help but say to the little painter, "You know, black is my favorite color." :)

To the right is Bee's painting of the day. She painted some flowers, a butterfly and a pair of clouds, but what I see is a face (two eyes, a nose, and fuchsia lips).

TWO STOOGES: Yesterday someone on the Seattle Homeschool Group email list posted a notice about a couple of 1.5 hour workshops through Seattle Children's Theatre. One of them - Family Physical Comedy caught my attention immediately. Its description, in part:

We will learn how to trip, fall, do double takes and other comic business, and how to create comic characters and routines. Be sure to come prepared for the grand pie-in-the-face finale!

Since birth, it has been obvious that CJ finds physical comedy hysterical. I asked Christian if he'd be willing to take the class (on June 26) with CeeJ and he happily agreed. Excellent. Can't wait to hear all about it and see what they learn!

And speaking of signing kids up for classes, I put Annabelle down for four special (1.5 hour) ballet dance camps this summer. They're a fun addition to her normal ballet routine.

BOOKIN' IT: I love checking out libraries we've never been to before, so today the Greenwood branch of SPL was on our radar - at least after I called Christian to double check the address I'd written down. It's on the main drag in Greenwood - Greenwood Ave, and I knew it was at about 80th. But I drove the 8000 block twice from the south and didn't see it. Go figure.

The third time (from the north) was the charm. The building doesn't have a big sign (or maybe even any sign) out front. I'm glad we did find it - the architecture and interior decor were (to my eye) modern and very appealing. And as soon as we walked in the kids spied the children's section to the left, so we didn't even make it past the middle of the library!

This library had lots of natural light and in the kids' section were some enormous, stone slabs for the kids to climb and perch on. There was a nice assortment of big books (super sized versions of favorite picture books). CJ read "It Looked Like Spilt Milk" at least twice.

ANOTHER BRAVE SOUL: Today our learning started with Martin Luther King. How perfect that this afternoon, we wound our 'school day' down learning about a Native American who broke color barriers.

At the Greenwood library I spied a picture book with a baseball player on the cover. I was sold at that point. :) But upon closer examination, I found its title was "Louis Sockalexis - Native American Baseball Pioneer." Then I was really intrigued and snatched it up, of course. Once we got home, the kids and I settled on the couch and read Sockalexis' amazing story. I couldn't believe I hadn't heard it before.

The masterfully written book told the tale of a boy who, at the age of 12, fell in love with baseball when he saw some white kids playing the game in 1884. A member of the Penobscot tribe in Maine, Louis became obsessed with the game, using sticks and stones to hone his skills. He ended up attending Holy Cross college on athletic scholarship. A collegiate star in track, football and baseball, he had a .862 slugging percentage and a .441 batting average at Holy Cross.

Sockalexis' talents attracted the attention of Pat Tebeau, manager of the major league Cleveland Spiders. Though Sockalexis faced enormous pressure not to leave the reservation where his family and friends lived, in 1897 he went pro and broke the color barrier in major league baseball.

By July of his rookie year he was batting nearly .400. Unfortunately, Sockalexis broke his ankle (this wasn't in the kids' book, but I read elsewhere it was by drunkenly jumping from a second story window of a brothel) and things were never quite the same afterward. He battled alcoholism and retired in 1899, at the age of 27. He died on Christmas Eve, 1913, at 42.

Sockalexis is long gone, and by the vast majority of baseball fans (myself included, until today), he is unknown. However, his legacy lives on. When Sockalexis played, he was taunted - he was called "chief" and fans used "war cries" whoops and dances to try to intimidate him when he played for the Cleveland Spiders. Today, that team is known as the Cleveland Indians. Not PC by today's standards, but an amazing, enduring tribute to Sockalexis.

OPPOSITIONAL: All. Day. Long. CJ has been asking "opposite" questions. And not your garden variety opposite questions, like "What's the opposite of hot?" or "What's the opposite of hard?" But off the wall stuff like, "What's the opposite of 'G'?" and "What's the opposite of your birthday?"

To the latter I responded, "Um, your death day. The day you die?" with a bit of hesitation. (It's not a very happy answer, but accurate, I'd say.)

The opposite question that that made me laugh out loud came at about 4:30 p.m.. "Mom, what's the opposite of 'opposite'?"

PARTING IMAGE: This has absolutely nothing to do with education, but I couldn't help but use my phone to snap a pic of Pinkerbelle at dinner tonight with her pink lemonade and pink Puffle.