Muddling Through

IT'S A SIGN: "What if bliss didn't exist?" CJ asked me this morning, while mashing buttons on a video game controller. I told him that if there was no bliss, it would be a bummer, since bliss means happiness.

CJ reminded me that someone wrote "Follow your bliss" on a stop sign near our home. "That is not cool," he said of the grafitti, but immediatelly followed that though with, "but it's kind of cool for someone who is really sad." I thought that was pretty thoughtful of him.

A couple seconds later he added, "Mommy I want you to follow your own bliss."

IN REVIEW: Last night, much to CJ and Annabelle's delight, we scored a copy of "Sonic Colors" from a local Redbox. They spent time playing it last night and this morning.

I thought we could exploit their infatuation with it as today's writing exercise. I hopped to Scholastic.com's educators' pages for some ideas. There, I found a good article about "Exploring the Genre of Reviews". I also decided to modify one of their reproducibles, a movie review chart (PDF).

So, the kids and I talked a bit about elements of a review - that they'd need to talk about the characters, the setting and the game's plot. Here's what they came up with in their reviews of "Sonic Colors"

"Sonic, Tails, Dr. Robotnic, Wisps are the characters in Sonic Colors. (There are) five planets with different einvirmints, inclueding Dr. Robotnic's ship to make six. Dr. Robotnik snatched Wisps from their environmet! Sonic zooms through 5 worlds to save them!"

ET PHONE HOME?: I see that NASA has an announcement to make that will impact the search for extraterrestrial life-but they're keeping it under their space helmets until Thursday, at a 11 a.m. PST press conference.

They have said that at the presser they will announce "an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life."

Can't wait to hear what they have to say, and I can't help but wonder if it has to do with recent discoveries by Cassini in the vicinity of Saturn.

PICTURE WIZARDY: Part of the kids' music homework involved drawing a picture representing their favorite part of "Morgan's Greatest Spell," a story Miss Nancy read them a couple of weeks ago.

I'd never heard of the story, and couldn't find a version online. The kids recalled some of the details. Apparently the wizard is 100 years old and so he's very tired and falls asleep all the time. That was about the only detail the kids could remember. Neither could remember what Morgan's greatest spell was.

CJ chose to draw the evil wizard. He was VERY unhappy with the way its hands turned out - specifically the fingers on the wizard's right hand. They were too crookedy for CJ's tastes. I pointed out to CJ that an evil wizard's hands very well could be gnarled and pointy looking. That made him feel much better. :)
CJ pointed out to me that when drawing the three skulls on the magician's cape, he chose to draw "toast" first and then turn the toast into skulls. I thought that was pretty clever of him!

Annabelle drew a picture of the story's hero, Morgan.
HIGH TEA: This afternoon's Musikgarten session was their last day on the British Isles unit. To celebrate, teacher Nancy put on a British tea party for the kids.There were British crackers and shortbread, a couple of kinds of British tea, and fancy British cups and saucers.

CJ stuck to water (of course), but Annabelle tried some Earl Grey. With two cubes of sugar.
Even though it made the cups feel slippery, Annabelle insisted on wearing fancy gloves while drinking her tea.
BOOKWORM: Yesterday while Bee was in ballet, we went to the library and got a bag full of books. Today, she spent a fair amount of time sitting on a couch cushion, making her way through the bag.
Truth be told, as she pulled books out, a couple of times my first inclination was to tell her, "Stop!!" as I had certain times or things in mind for some of the books. But I immediately thought better of putting the kibosh on her reading. After all, books are for reading. And re-reading.