First of Fall

THE AUTUMN LEAVES: It may say Fall on our calendars now, but the trees in our neighborhood aren't ready to say goodbye to summer. Most of them are still leafed out in green.

We had a fall-related art project to complete and we needed some leaves that were turning. We ended up walking up to Bay View park to find some (which made the kids happy, of course).

While we were there, we happened upon a 7 year old girl on the playground and CJ and Annabelle played with her for at least 20 minutes. I was especially happy to see CJ completely involved for that amount of time. He plays with other kids frequently, but often he's kind of in and out of the action. Today not only did he stay engaged, he was going along with her story line (instead of trying to dictate it). Yay for CJ!

When we came home, the kids picked pairs of leaves to glue together to form butterfly wings and antennae and then rolled up a single leaf to make the butterflies' bodies.

HIGHLINE FIRST TIME: This morning was the first session of K-3 hands on science at the Highligh Homeschool Center in the Highline School District (in the south Burien/Seatac area).

We got there a good 20 minutes early, so we read and listened to a book/CD in the car: "The Dinosaur Who Lived in My Backyard." It was a more realistic take on humans living with dinosaurs than the book we read yesterday ("If the Dinosaurs Came Back). For instance, the author B.G. Hennessy) says the dino "would have made my whole neighborhood shake like pudding" but it also had some silliness (like dinos playing hide and seek). Overall, for whatever reason, it was a yawner. The kids didn't care much for it and neither did I.

While waiting, we also looked around the grounds a bit and noticed a couple of portables with signs on them that said "CBS." I asked the kids what they thought those letters stood for.

Annabelle popped off with 'Cubs Bearian Society," which I thought was pretty clever and cute. CJ took a couple of minutes and came up with "Cold Baseball Solution." Interesting. :)

Once inside we found our classroom and were the first to arrive. We chatted with the teacher for a few minutes and were soon joined by two other boys and two other girls. Annabelle was the youngest by a couple of years. As the kids were sharing their names and ages with one another, the teacher interjected that Annabelle was "5 going on 35."

Today was all about class rules and expectations. Mrs. Powers told the class that respect, honesty, integrity and compassion were guiding principles on campus. Everyone talked about what those words meant. We also talked about what we will be covering in the weeks to come and what the kids would like to learn more about. At that Annabelle immediately declared, "Dissecting animals. I want to dissect animals!"

For the past two days she's going on and on about animal innards, so I shouldn't have been surprised at her request. I will admit I did cringe, however, wondering if there were any card-carrying PETA members in our midst. ...

I would definitely deem our first session a success and we're looking forward to next week, when the kids get to dive into some science.

LONG WAY HOME: I purposely didn't hop right back on the freeway toward home when class was over. I figure, if we're going to be south of town once a week, we might as well explore some new territory.

Today, we passed several signs saying they pointed toward parks, but the first two we followed wound up leading us nowhere (I probably didn't stay the course long enough). However, the third time was the charm - we found ourselves in a neighborhood I'd never seen or even heard of - Redondo Beach. It's in west Federal Way, along Puget Sound. It's mostly residential, but there's a Salty's restaurant and a few small storefronts. There were several fishermen at the end of a pier (you can see the pier beyond the boat launch in the photo below). It's a gorgeous spot.

At the entrance to the pier, there was a large map showing Puget Sound. I had the kids find our location at Redondo Beach, and our home in Magnolia on it. The poster also had a list of ways we could all work to help keep Puget Sound clean, which I had the kids read aloud.

We walked on the floating boat dock and on the boardwalk, and the kids ran up and down the beach for a bit. And as luck would have it, there was a play park across the street from the beach. Bonus!When we were back in familiar territory (the viaduct through Seattle) ...

the kids read and listened to another book (with an accompanying CD), "George Washington's Cows."

A clever concept with charming pictures, it tells about George Washington's cows, (who are dressed in lavender gowns and sleep on cushions of silk), his hogs (who are delighted to help with household chores), and his sheep (scholars with advanced degrees). It's such an odd scene Washington decided to leave the farm and take up politics.

ON THE INSIDE: When we got home, I made good on a promise to Annabelle, and found a few Web sites where she could do some virtual dissecting.

The first I found was by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It was just a colored line drawing where the user could check and uncheck boxes to see different frog parts. I saw that it dated back to 1995, and while I'm sure it was hot stuff in its day, it was showing its age in 2010.

Fortunately, I found a much newer, more sophisticated one from McGraw Hill Higher Education. There was actual video of a real live dead frog. The dissection was broken down into several sections, and after each segment it switched to an interactive format where Annabelle got to "use" a scalpel, scissors and tweezers.

After the frogs, she was wanting to see the inner workings of a worm. We found Virtual Worm from the folks at Worm Watch Canada. In case you were wondering, "WormWatch is a science based education program that makes learning about the soil ecosystem fun. It is also part of a national volunteer monitoring program used to identify ecological changes that may be affecting our environment."

SAY CHEESEBURGER: This evening the History Channel had a great hour-long show all about how cheeseburgers and fries are made. Food Tech took us on a virtual field trip to a barn and slaughterhouse for the ground beef; to a bread factory in California for the buns; to Wisconsin to see how American cheese is made and to a plant that process cucumbers into pickles. We also saw a lettuce processing plant in Salinas, California and onion seeds being grown and harvested in Parma, Idaho. We learned that potatoes grow year round in Florida and California and saw a plant that pumps out 36 million fries A DAY. We even got to see how tomatoes are turned into ketchup. One billion pounds of tomatoes are processed a year at a DelMonte plant in California. We even got to see a ketchup sample going down a viscosity test ramp, where they test its flow (distance covered in a certain amount of time).

We saw so many cool robots and conveyor belts at the farms and factories. It was a great show.

Slightly nauseating factoid: Americans ate over 7 billion cheeseburgers last year.