Sea Songs

MUSIC IN MAGNOLIA: Our love affair with Seattle Public Library's Summer Reading Program continued this afternoon. Today, we were lucky to have the entertainment right in our lil ol' 'hood - at the Magnolia library.

The program was "She Sings Sea Songs" and the performer was Nancy Stewart.

Most of Nancy's songs today were about the sea or sea creatures, including a catchy ditties about cephalopods (there's a good vocabulary word for the kids!) and sea stars.
During her song "Shells," the free/featured song on her Web site this month, she accompanied herself on an African tambourine made from a gourd and shells. She pointed us in the direction of her Web site, where there are instructions how to make a facsimile of one from paper mache. The kids - Annabelle especially - are hot to make one. I think that would be a great project for us, after all, I know a thing or two about papier mache projects. We're gonna do it! (Hopefully the dollar store will have some shell necklaces ...)

Nancy also sang a "disappearing" song - "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." You sing the first go through from start to finish (row, row, row ... life is but a dream), but the second go through you leave off a word (row, row, row ... life is but a), and with each subsequent pass through, one more word gets dropped. It was a good musical exercise.

She closed the show with a song that always brings the house down. In her intro she explained that it was written by a couple of guys from Whidbey Island, just north of Seattle and now it's known round the globe - "it" being "The Hokey Pokey." (This reminds me - one of my favorite bumper stickers is 'What if the Hokey Pokey IS what it's all about?')

Me being me, tonight I researched Hokey Pokey and can't find that local tie-in. ... Idaho was about as close as I could get.

TABLE TIME: We did something crazy this morning - math worksheets! (It's been awhile ...)

Fortunately, it was like riding a bike for the kids. CJ's math was a two-page spread mixing two-column (tens) addition and subtraction. He didn't confuse a single operator (+ or - sign), and all his math was good. In listening to him do the work, I though it interesting that when he was adding or subtracting the 10s column, he'd say 70 minus 30 instead of 7 minus 3.

SOLAR POWERED: I had the washing machine lugging away before 7 this morning, but rather than transfer the wet clothes over to the dryer, I deposited a huge bag at the kids' feet. I asked them why they though I was choosing not to use the dryer today.

After about 4 or 5 wrong guesses (the dryer's broken, etc.), Annabelle conjectured it was because we were going to dry them with the sun and save electricity. Bingo!

I showed the kids the right way to hang/drape the clothes so that they dried the quickest. (Life skills lesson for the day.)

STORY TIME: We revisited an old favorite today - Scholastic's Story Starter Web page.

The kids each took a spin and wrote about what the 'machine' spit out for them. CJ was instructed to draw a picture and write a caption about a quick pig that climbs tall trees. And that's what he did.

Annabelle was tasked with writing about a skunk who loves broccoli.

I love her picture. :)

STICKY SITUATION: While using one's hands and head is often how to get things done, this evening, Annabelle learned that using your feet is sometimes in order too. Here, she's helping Christian stick down some super groovy retro boomerang laminate. It has been in our basement for over a year - way too long.