Scratching the Surface

SOWING THE SEEDS: We're hoping that fall temperatures stay moderate here at MPA, as today we planted a huge patch of grass seed. We're hoping it germinates and grows, filling in around the new paver path we installed this past weekend.

The kids helped me find and select the seed at Lowe's today, and Annabelle helped spread it all and work it into the earth.

Don't know what's going on in your neck of the woods, but here in the Emerald City, plants are confused. Roses, begonias and flowering shrubs are sporting new blossoms due to the wet but mild September. Meanwhile, pumpkins and tomatoes are green, suffering from a long, relatively cold summer.

COUNT THEM IN: I'm going to try to get the kids to make a Halloween-y craft every day this month. Today's undertaking was a cartoon, with the kids' favorite cartooning teacher Bruce Blitz leading the lesson. We usually use Comcast OnDemand for his drawing lessons, but today we used the Activity TV Web site. It actually worked better - I was able to freeze frame more precisely on the PC.

Today, they were drawing a Dracula.
They were both really happy with their finished products, which is why I like these tutorials. They boost the kids' self confidence about their drawing ability, and that's a good thing.

WRITE ON: The kids both wrote another short installment of their "Haunted Mansion" stories today.

SPRINGTIME: The last couple of weeks, the kids (and CJ most especially) have rediscovered the joy of jumping on their mini trampoline. It's funny, CJ will even roll it from room to room, so he can jump where and when he feels like it.

Today, Annabelle was providing an inspiring jumping soundtrack for him, playing the "Star Wars" theme as CJ sprung himself into space.

BRAIN STEM: This morning via a Facebook post, I learned that BrainPOP has launched a new (free!) "Spotlight on STEM" site.

BrainPOP is "an official founding outreach partner" in the National STEM Video Game Challenge, which President Obama announced not too long ago. The Challenge is designed to build and strengthen interest in STEM skills (science, technology, engineering and math).

Why a video game design competition to promote STEM education? Because game-based learning has emerged as one of the most promising areas of innovation in making STEM topics more engaging for America’s youth, according to the Web site STEMChallenge.org. They report the Federation of American Scientists concluded: "The success of complex video games demonstrates that games can teach higher-order thinking skills such as strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, and adaptation to rapid change. These are the skills U.S. employers increasingly seek in workers and new workforce entrants. These are the skills more Americans must have to compete with lower cost knowledge workers in other nations."

They also note that research shows game creation "fosters the development of critical 21st Century and STEM skills including systems thinking, problem solving, iterative design and digital media literacies. A well-designed game is a well-designed system with a delicate balance of goals, constraints, challenges and rewards." Good stuff.

The kids were quite happy to see one of BrainPOP's STEM videos was about video games and how they're made. They watched it twice, then took a quiz and then we did a related vocabulary sheet together.

Some highlights ...
Software: "That's the graphics and animation and stuff in the game," said Annabelle.
"It's how the game is made," said CJ.
Polygon: "It's a flat shape, like triangle square or rectangle." (Bee)
Illusion: "Something that's not real." (CJ)
Texture: "It's how so smooth something is." (Bee)
"Or something that's custom." CJ - which was the point of the video - that unique textures are added to make objects in the game appear more realistic.
Interactive - "You can go along with what you're doing. It's not like a movie. You don't just watch it, you actually play it." (Bee)
Glitch: "We see lots of YouTube videos about glitches. Glitches are mistakes in a game."
Immerse: "This is a tricky one. I'm not very good at adjectives." (Bee, who is pretty darn good at adjectives)

FORTY FOUR: One of the math exercises the kids had today was also a spelling exercise (bonus!). They were given values and had to write them out (for instance 382 = three hundred eighty two).
It was good practice - and it underscored the fact that in many instances, the people who invented our language didn't know what the hell they were doing. Seriously, why is 4 spelled four, but 40 is forty (no u)?. "Whoever it was, I would be mad at them," CJ said of the spelling Powers That Be.

CANDY CONTINUED: Dovetailing on our (virtual) field trip to a candy corn factory Monday, today we checked out a lollipop maker in San Francisco. It was fascinating watching the workers handle huge, heavy logs of colored sugar.

We found this adventure thanks to the amazing Exploratorium Web site (HIGHLY recommended). Since we've been doing so much kitchen work lately, I followed their "Science of Cooking" link, and their their "Candy" link. There, we got "up close and personal" with a sucrose molecule, learning that sugar is sucrose, a molecule composed of 12 atoms of carbon, 22 atoms of hydrogen, and 11 atoms of oxygen, and we got to see what the molecules look like when magnified (kind of rectangular but oblong, with slants at their ends). We used the interactive Candy-o-matic machine to see what happens to sugar at different temperatures. Interesting stuff!

TO THE RESCUE!: This evening we were riveted to the rescue effort underway to extract the 33 Chilean miners from their cave 2040 feet beneath the earth.

We held our breath as the first rescuer descended and were amazed by the live footage as he emerged from the rescue capsule and greeted the trapped miners. We watched the first miner don his pressurized suit, climb into the capsule and make his trip to the earth's surface - somewhere he hasn't been for 69 days.

It felt a bit like watching a moon landing. In fact, NASA was integral in the rescue operation, coaching the Chileans on everything from diet to mental and physical healthcare for the miners.

While we watched the events unfold, Annabelle and Christian constructed a rescue pod for Pikachu (a Pokemon character).