Weaving a Wednesday

BOB AND WEAVE: Even before Annabelle was up, CJ was at work on his science homework. Our Shoreline class is still in the midst of its paper unit, and the homework was to weave a mat. CJ likes weaving and made short work of it. Bee finished hers upon her waking, about a half hour later.
MORNING MATH: As has become our usual pattern, around 10 we headed upstairs for math. The kids are powering through it - they've had no trouble with subtraction involving borrowing from a column or two or more away.

I appreciate the fact that often CJ will ask "How can I make sure my answer is right?" So, I've shown him how, with a subtraction problem, you can add your answer back to the number you were subtracting and see if it adds up to the whole or the number you were subtracting from.

UP NORTH: Though we left home 45 minutes before class, we only got to Shoreline with one minute to spare thanks to terrible traffic.

We used that one minute to admire the kids' custom paper projects from last week. They're beautiful!
In class, today's project involved deconstructing small cardboard boxes, tracing a template from them, and reconstructing them. It was a good exercise as they learned about making patterns and gained a better understanding of how something two dimensional can become three-dimensional.
ENTER THE iMAC: Since we arrived to class late, we didn't get to the library until after class. It turned out to be a good thing.

Usually when we're in there before 1, it's been just us and a high school aged kid or two. Today, many of the kids from the science class were in there. That gave CJ and Annabelle a chance out side of class to mingle with them.

Case in point: there was a ruckus in front of a computer across the library. The kids went to investigate and found a classmate was having tons of fun using Photo Booth, a program that uses the built-in-the-monitor camera to shoot video and stills of the computer user(s). So CJ, Annabelle and a couple of other kids monkeyed around together for awhile - until they got too loud for the library and I pulled CJ and Annabelle aside to their own computers to mess around with Photo Booth. They caught on to it quickly.

They messed around with the thermal imaging effect ...
Bee went Warhol-esque for a bit ...

And CJ played around with a video effect that put him on a moving rollercoaster.
After the computer session, the kids each picked out a couple of library books. We were walking to leave the library when one of the girls from science asked Annabelle if she wanted to be in their club - which apparently has a HQ under one of the library tables. ;)

I, of course, realized Annabelle joining 'the club' was more important than us hustling to the car, so CJ and I killed 15 minutes or so while she did the club thing, which involved her getting a secret password (written on a wood chip necklace from science) and a map. She was most pleased.

WHEN HOLIDAYS COLLIDE: Tonight CJ & Annabelle read "Fried Feathers for Thanksgiving." It's layout is in comic strip style panels. The story is about two witches bemoaning the fact Halloween is over. However, they quickly realize Thanksgiving's coming. They love the holiday, but don't want to do any of the work associated with enjoying it, so it doesn't turn out well for them. There's a good lesson there.

DRIFT BY MY WINDOW: Leaves are still swirling everywhere 'round here, so I thought we were due to do a little more learnin' bout trees and leaves. For support, I turned to Pierre. Don't ask me why the University of Illinois Extension chose an acorn named Pierre to narrate their interactive educational Web site about trees, but they did. So we journeyed along with Pierre as he told us all about trees, their lifecycle and their functions. There were some comprehension questions at the end, which the kids had no trouble with. There was also a feature pointing out that many city streets are named after trees. We couldn't help but notice one of the examples was magnolia - our neighborhood's namesake.