Worldy Wednesday

LET THERE BE LIFE!: First thing on our To Do list today was to continue the Sea-Monkeys project. Yesterday we'd set up their tank and conditioned the water. Today, the magic Sea-Monkey powder was added to the mix.

Bee did the pouring, CJ did the stirring. At first - in large part due to turbidity - it was hard to tell what might be a Sea-Monkey as opposed to what was just an air bubble or other debris in the water. But after several minutes, when things had settled down, we did spy tiny specks that appeared to have movement on their own.

I thought to rustle up a magnifying glass. It helped us get a better look. We'll see if the Sea-Monkeys grow. We're not supposed to feed them for five days. Hopefully they'll still be alive by then to enjoy a meal. ...

HISTORY LESSON: Before Annabelle was even up this a.m., CJ asked me when YouTube started.

Naturally, I had no clue, but I told him I knew we could find out on the Internet. So we hopped onto Wikipedia and found out the YouTube was founded in February of 2005 by three men, all former PayPal co-workers. They are Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karin.

The very first video ever uploaded to YouTube was "Me at the zoo." It was uploaded by YouTube co-founder Karim and it's of him at the San Diego Zoo. The (very unremarkable) video was uploaded on April 23, 2005, and can still be viewed on the site.

THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE: Our thank you card project continued today, with stuffing and addressing envelopes and getting them in the mail our goal.

It was good practice for the kids. They were reminded of the proper stamp, return address, address format on envelopes.
While they worked, I played some mail-inspired tunes via YouTube. They included Elvis' "Return to Sender" (what a catchy song!), "Mr. Postman" by the Marvelettes, Leonard Cohen's "The Letters" and even the suite from "The Postman." While its theme was forgettable, I rather liked that movie.

Once the letters were all ready, we walked three blocks to a mailbox. The kids were very excited to drop their letters in. I think it gave them a real "mission accomplished" feeling. No doubt they also like thinking about the people by whom those posts will be opened. :)

FUNION: I saw a headline on a story from The Onion today and couldn't help but think of CJ. The headline read, "Half Of 26-Year-Old's Memories Nintendo-Related."

A HOUSE DIVIDED: The kids were downright excited about math today for two reasons. First, they have reached page 100 in their books - a milestone they discovered. Second, we started working on division today.

Before we delved into the lesson, I got out our white board and drew a circle to represent a pizza. (Honestly, how many division lessons do you think have started this same way over the years?) We talked about ways to divide it among people so that each person got the same amount of slices. From there, we got into the Singapore Math pages.

The kids had no trouble with the introductory concepts. In fact, they finished their three pages of exercises in record time.

MAMMOTH MAP: We spent a good chunk of this afternoon on geography and puzzle solving thanks to a great Christmas gift from Auntie Renee and Uncle Jim - a 4 by 6 foot world map puzzle. Its 252 pieces were fashioned from a dense foam mat, which make them easy to handle (and fun to roll around on, as the kids found out later).

We worked it methodically, doing the top (world clocks) border and bottom (world flags) borders first, and then the east and west edges next (which showed the equator and some lines of latitude). We talked about how the world isn't really flat, but it was made that way for the map's purposes (so Russia and Alaska were at opposite sides of the map rather than right next to each other, as is the case in real life - just ask Sarah Palin).

Working the puzzle was great because the kids got a good sense for the continents and their relative locations, the countries that make up each continent, and the names and locations of oceans.

It took us darn near two hours to finish the puzzle. CJ wanted to take a break several times, but I made his soldier on. I told him we wouldn't be quitting until we were done, and thanks to good teamwork and sticktoitiveness, we did complete the awesome puzzle.

To celebrate their achievement, the kids did "snow angels" on the map.