Colorful Carpet

OOPS: This is NOT a good way to start your day. This, my friends, is a cereal aptly named "Oops."
Its full name is "Oops! All Berries!" as in all Crunchberries of Cap'n Crunch fame. Excited at the new, limited-time-only product, the kids talked me into buying it last week. Today, we opened it. Egad.
The colors are vibrant. I'll give them that. The stuff practically glowed.

I'm trying to think of a good way to use this in an art project. I really don't want to serve it up in a bowl for breakfast again.

BONNIE GOOD: Before Musikgarten today, the kids completed their homework. That involved transcribing a song which they are veterans at now. They also had to draw a picture about the song "The Bonnie Shore of Loch Lithy."

I read CeeJ and Bee the story about a little city that didn't show up on any maps and there were no roads in or out. It was, in effect, a world apart. One day, a mysterious woman showed up and told the villagers of life beyond their hamlet, but they decided to stay put.

CJ immediately said he wanted to draw a picture of animals drinking from the Loch. I thought that interesting since that was such a small, in passing part of the story. I also thought it interesting he chose to draw a panda. I'd bet dollars to donuts he chose that animal because it's black and white and he knew he wouldn't have to color it!

Annabelle drew a detailed picture of the mysterious visitor showing the townspeople a way out to another life. And then she spent 20 minutes coloring it.

During the parent participation part of Musikgarten, we all executed a pretty darn complicated routine with scarves and about 17 different steps to the tune of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean." We did pretty well, but are not quite ready for Broadway.

WINDY CITY: The last couple of days have been really blustery in Seattle. The strong winds have ripped waning, remaining leaves off trees, creating a thick carpet of golden, orange and yellow underfoot. The rains are supposed to be coming the next couple of days and so I wanted to get as many leaves picked up as possible today. So after music, the kids and I spent some time in the alley.

I used a snow shovel to scoop up a 500 square foot area. While I have the pile to prove it, there are still thousands of leaves laying in and around the alley. CJ wasn't too into Operation Leaf Removal, but Bee thought it was fun. She used her Razor scooter to move small piles to the compost/recycling bin. DOWN SOUTH: We went to yoga in Columbia City. Once again it was just CJ, Annabelle, their yoga buddy from their former class and one older girl. On the way down to yoga the kids took turns reading the pages of "Today I Feel Silly." It's a book about moods.

IMHO, some of the verses were a bit forced in their rhyming - they didn't just roll off the tongue. But the book does, I suppose, help kids realize that people have different kinds of days and different kinds of moods for different reasons.

The kids' favorite part of the book was the end, where there were a built in pair of wheels they could spin and change a child's face, reflecting different moods.

AMEN TO THAT: I came across an opinion piece today about what's not right with so many public schools right now. It had a rather incendiary headline: "Time for Schools to Stop Damaging Children."

While the title was a bit over the top, I agreed with the article's message. Written by Ruth Bettelheim, Ph D., one of the contentions was, "Our classrooms are based on outdated ideas, functioning like mid-20th century factories. Each child is offered an identical curriculum, like a car moving along an assembly line. However, children aren't units of production and this approach is failing. Since 1970, the rate of high school graduation has declined, and the United States has fallen from first to twelfth among developed nations in education."

Too true.

The entire (short) piece can be found here, on the Huffington Post.