Tuesday News

MAY THE TOAST BE WITH YOU: I tested the kids' observation skills late morning when I gave them a snack. Before I put the multi grain bread in the toaster, I used one of my new coolest cookie cutters ever to impress an image in the slices.

Not too surprisingly, they did notice the decorations.

"I never knew Yoda's head was so crunchy," Annabelle said as she snacked on hers.

EPIC YARN: For her birthday, Annabelle got a new Wii game, "Kirby's Epic Yarn." It's a super cool, unique looking game where a well known character (Kirby) is turned into yarn and lives in a fabric-y world. It's visually fascinating.

A reviewer for the New York Daily News said " 'Kirby's Epic Yarn' sports most creative level design of any game this year."

Read more: I also like it because it's a true two-player game. In many of the kids' two player game, there's a leader and a tag along (who basically gets dragged along by the leader, who would be CJ). But in this game, the two HAVE to work together as partners and equals. It makes for some interesting - and sometimes terse - exchanges. Such as:

Annabelle: Hey stop treating me like that!
CJ: Well, I was getting you away from King DeDeDe! ... I can do this myself.
Me: No, you have to work together.
CJ: Annabelle's treating me like a loser, Mom.
Annabelle: I keep forgetting (which the right buttons are). I think 1 is 2 and 2 is 1.
CJ: Well figure it out!

See - doesn't that sound like loads of fun and super educational? :) But seriously, it IS good for them, because when they do work together, they are able to accomplish their goals.

ORB EXPERIMENT: The kids had fun experimenting with one of Annabelle's birthday presents today. Called Orbeez, they're tiny, hard plastic-y pellets that, when immersed in water, swell to several times their original size.
It took about three hours for the transformation to take place. Once they're swollen, the balls take on "super ball" type properties - they're a little squishy and super bouncy.
Naturally, I'm curious what these little orbs are made of (and if they're a health hazard), so I checked out the company's Web site. There, under "The Science of Orbeez" tab, we learn Orbeez are superabsorbent polymers made of several smaller molecules joined together. When they're immersed in water, it is absorbed into spaces between the molecules. Orbeez makers tell us these super polymers were invented in the 1940s to help irrigate crops during times of drought. These days, they're found in everything from food packaging to disposable diapers.

NOTEWORTHY: The kids had music this afternoon, so that meant we had to make sure their music homework was done!

One of the things they had to do was practice (for the first time) writing notes on the lines (before they'd been working between the lines only). The kids had no trouble centering them on the lines, but CJ had to start over because he had a whole bunch of notes piggybacked (one nearly on top of another when you look at the staff from top to bottom). They also practiced playing a couple of songs on their glockenspiels. We practiced the songs right handed only, left handed only, and alternating hands.

At the end of class today, during the parent participation part, we played a game where we would have to rhythmically have to pick up a shell and pass it to the person on our left. It sounds simple enough, but when everyone has a shell and is doing the grabbing and passing at the same time, it can get pretty chaotic.

MONSTER TALES: I like to keep a book in the car for times when we're waiting somewhere or on someone. Today's title was (deep breath): "Frankenstein Makes A Sandwich and Other Stories You're Sure to Like, Because They're All About Monsters and Some of Them are also about Food. You Like Food Don't You? Well, All Right Then."

Written and illustrated by Adam Rex (whose Web site is really interesting) it's a quirky collection of stories about famous monsters.

There's Frankie, of course, and a couple of stories the Phantom of the Opera, who is trying to write music but can't get "It's a Small World" out of his head. There's a story called "Bigfoot Can't Believe You Called Him Yeti Just Now," and we can't forget Annabelle's favorite, "Godzilla Pooped on my Honda."

Clearly highbrow humor here. ;)

The pictures a cool and the words are silly, which means we all loved it.

UPWARD DOGS: The kids started a "new" yoga class today. It's at the same place (Lotus Yoga) with the same wonderful teacher (Nicole), but it's the older kids' class (ages 6 and up).

The class is an hour later, which will make our drive a little dicier (rush hour) I suppose, but an upside is that the class is less than half the size of the other one, and they do more advanced moves.

After the class today, I asked the kids how they liked it. Both give it thumbs up and CJ said he liked it a lot better because it wasn't as noisy. So that's a plus.