Pretty Projects

A.M. ART: It had been a couple of days since we've taken on a seasonal art project, so today we decided to avail ourselves of an Activity TV cartooning lesson. The project: draw an American Indian girl holding a couple of ears of corn.

As cartoonist Bruce Blitz explained during the lesson, if not for the American Indians' sharing their corn growing knowledge with the pilgrims, there might not be a Thanksgiving.
As usual, the kids approached their cartoon step-by-careful step. Once they had the figure drawn, they added color. Annabelle used colored pencils. CJ nused watercolor markers.
Annabelle really went to town adding some custom touches to her drawing, including some words on the girl's dress and a corn stalk growing next to her.

STILL SWEET: This morning we revisited the book we read yesterday, "Saving Sweetness." We used an activity guide from the Web site of the book's publisher. I used their reading comprehension questions and was impressed that the kids nailed them all. One of the questions I asked them was, "What's an orphan?" I laughed when CJ actually quoted from the book (in a drawl), "That means she ain't got no ma and she ain't got no pa." Honestly, they both seemed to have total recall of the story.

There was a vocabulary exercise where the kids had to match words from the story (varmint, canteen, dilemma, desperado, trifle, ambled, commenced) with a defining word. They aced that, too.

IN A SLURRY: When we arrived at science this afternoon in Shorline, I could tell today's task was going to be complex. There were bowls and containers and bowls and containers and more bowls and containers around the room. Right off the bat the kids were instructed to take a few sheets of TP, separate the plies, shove 'em into a plastic bottle. I helped add water to the kids' bottles and then they let them sit for a bit before giving them a good shake. What they were doing was separating the fibers and making slurry - a mixture to be strained with a screen and then drained and pressed flat to make a small disc of paper.Once they had that done that, they were ready for a bit more complicated paper making project.

This time they had a bowl full of slurry (a watery pulpy mixture) and they got to chose some string, yarn, fabric and paper pieces to add to it. Next, they took they prettified slurry over to the sink area, where the science teacher and I were manning screens and frames in tubs of water. They poured their slurry into the frame and spread it out to the frame borders. We took the screen out of the water bath, sopped up some excess water with a sponge.Next, we flipped the pulpy rectangle out onto a piece of interfacing and used a sponge to extract more water. That, and the kids each stood on their paper in the making, which was sandwiched between some Sham-wow-like sopper-upper.
The photo below is of Annabelle's paper. It's between two sheets of interfacing, so the colors aren't as vibrant as they will be when it's dry and the interfacing is removed. I can't wait to see it when it's all dry next week.
FINALLY!: I had a feeling that today was going to be the day, and sure 'nuff, it was.

After we got home from Shoreline, we set out for a run/bike ride. We headed to Lawton Elementary. For months and months now they've been renovating a playground in a park adjacent to the school. It was supposed to be done in September, but it wasn't. And October came and went and it was still fenced off with 8-foot high chainlink. There were still areas fenced off where they're trying to get grass established, but otherwise, finally today the park was open. In fact, apparently it was its grand opening. There were dozens of excited kids there playing. Annabelle quickly fell in with a group of girls playing "family." She was the third sister.

CJ had a great play session with a couple of boys who looked to be exactly his age. They were playing dinosaurs and trying to protect their dinosaur eggs from one another. They were getting a little bit physical but were good about not crossing the line into too-rough play.

FLY, FLY AWAY: We got some sad news tonight. Dave Niehaus, the FOREVER voice of the Mariners, died today.
Niehaus was at the mic for the Ms first game back in 1977, and he's been there ever since. Little did we know when we were at Safeco Field for the last game of the 2010 season, we were there when Niehaus called his final game.

In their relatively short lives, CJ and Annabelle have heard hundreds of hours of Niehaus bringing baseball to life. Their big brothers Rick and Kennedy have likely heard into the thousands of hours of Hall of Famer Niehaus' magnificent work.

I know the game will go on, but right now, I can't imagine a Mariners season without him.