So Long, Winter!

THE RUN AROUND: The kids had a blast in Musikgarten this morning. There was plenty of music and merriment, of course, and they got to play a game where they all stood in a circle and one child was the cat. The cat patrolled the perimeter of the circle while everyone sang, "Mouse, mousey in the housey, hurry hurry do. Or the kitty in the housey will be chasing you." At that line, the child who had been designated the mouse popped out of the circle and ran around trying to escape being captured by the cat before sliding back into his spot safe and sound. (If memory serves, doesn't the game "Duck, Duck, Goose" work somewhat the same way?)

After the lesson, the kids asked for a few minutes of swing time on the park bench in Teacher Nancy's front yard. I obliged as it was sunny and warm enough, and plus, a neighbor who is regularly out on the balcony (see him up there in the photo?) playing his guitar was out there doing his usual thing (that thing being singing mostly Jethro Tull).

PATIENCE, GRASSHOPPER: For some visual arts action, I thought I'd have them do some drawing. We had a library book on hand that shows how to draw insects step-by-step. I chose a grasshopper for them, because grasshoppers are featured in a couple of their Musikgarten songs.

We've done exercises like this before, but other times we've used a video "OnDemand" lesson from ActivityTV. For whatever reason, the kids seem to have a lot better luck with the video tutor. Their grasshoppers by-the-book were a struggle to produce.

That said, when they finished their drawings, they had fun coloring them, each choosing to go against the grain and not paint the insect green. CJ opted for a mostly goldenrod g-hopper. Bee's was a rainbow of colors.

STEP CHILDREN: We've had the same spelling list of 25 words for four days running, so it was time for the test. The kids asked to play the work-their-way-up-the-stairs game again. They get to step up with a correct answer, step down for a miss. Annabelle only had one misstep. CJ got stymied by a couple of words and each and every time I told him to close his eyes, pretend he was holding a book and to picture a sentence. For instance, one of the words was "little" and I told him to pretend he was holding a book with a title of "The Three Little Pigs" and to read to me how the word "little" was spelled. That worked like a charm every single time.

BARK PARK: A little after noon, we headed down the block to Bayview Park for some Vitamin D and fresh air. The kids were clambering all over the play equipment, and I was surprised they had the place to themselves. Public schools weren't in session today.

To and from the park, the kids were noticing all of the dandelions (or dente lions as they now call them, happy to have a chance to show off their vast French vocabulary). Annabelle picked a whole bouquet and thought they smelled delightful. She didn't mind the yellow nose afterward, either.


UNDERDOGS: OK, I'll admit it. I turned on some March Madness for a few minutes this afternoon. Just 10 minutes - I swear!!! It was the end of the Clemson v. Missouri game and Annabelle asked me who was the underdog - she knows I often root for the underdog when I don't have a dog in the fight, so to speak. So I showed her how the teams' seed in the tournament were listed before their name, and explained that was their ranking, and that 1 was best and 16 was lowest in each region. After Clemson knocked Mo. off, coverage switched to Wofford and Wisconsin. The Badgers were a 4 seed and Wofford was 13th. Annabelle correctly and immediately concluded that Wofford was the underdog. So there you have it. Our math lesson for the day. :)

DIRTY DOG!: Regular readers know that our indoor grow operation has moved partially upstairs. Our tomato sprouts burst onto the scene there, and the sunflower seeds are stashed upstairs, as well. The pots are on the floor, on trays, and to date there's been no problem. But this morning when I emerged from the shower, I found a guilty looking dog and dirt all over the floor.

Mercifully, Kirby had only torn into one tiny pot by the time I caught her. I gave her holy hell and she slunk off. The good news is, while cleaning up, I discovered that several of the sunflower seeds have sprouted. Yay!
SCENIC ROUTE: When Christian got home, we went for a run/ride. Instead of a route around our immediate 'hood, we ventured west torward Magnolia's bluff. It was a clear, sunny day, so the vistas of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains were awesome. Around a mid point, we stopped in a patch of grass to play "Red Light, Green Light." What a simple, fun game.

SPRING HAS (ALMOST) SPRUNG: This afternoon, I pointed out to the kids that today is the last day of winter. Tomorrow, spring starts. At that, Annabelle recalled that there is a first day of spring-themed play in the "Small Plays for Special Days" library book we still had around.

So, we checked to see what props we needed (a lion's mane, lamb ears, lilies and strawberries) and set about assembling and/or crafting them.

Unlike last time, however, I didn't have the kids don the costumes right away. I told them that in real world drama productions, actors' first rehearsals are costume free. The basically start with a reading of the play/lines. I had the kids do that sitting at the bar. After that run through, I had them say and act their lines, but still no costumes.

After that run through, it was time for the dress rehearsal. CJ did a good job of staying on point with the script and tried to keep Annabelle on task, too. "Ahem - your line," he said more than once, through gritted teeth. Meanwhile, Annabelle kept giving CJ acting pointers, interrupting the production with cries of, "CJ! CJ! CJ!" followed by some advice about what he should be doing.

I suggested they each concentrate on their own lines and cues and that it's important to stay in character, no matter what.

Tonight after dinner, they staged the production for Christian and they did pretty well.

This photo from dress rehearsal absolutely cracks me up. It looks like a rough Halloween-gone-wrong mugshot of both of them. So, so funny.

Just Another Thursday

BALLET AND BOOKS: It was ballet day, so our morning started off with a trip to the village for Bee's dance class.

Afterward, we headed to the library, where the kids scored some videos and I picked out some books for them (including several about plants and gardening). While I was perusing shelves, the kids took turns reading large format picture books to one another. CJ's favorite is "I Knew an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly." "It's about a food chain," he proclaimed upon finishing it.

GOING TO POT: Our seed extravaganza continues to produce spectacular results. Peas and bean starts have practically taken over our kitchen and tomatoes are coming along quite nicely upstairs.

Today, I had the kids repot beans to give them more room to grow. CJ's apple 'tree' and Bee's watermelon also moved to bigger digs.

After that dirty work was done, we headed out to the alley to plant a couple of cilantro starts I bought at Fred Meyer a couple of days ago. Lordy, how I love fresh cilantro. ...

MARCH MADNESS: One the cilantro was safely placed in the planter box out back, we turned our attention toward some PE activity. The NCAA tournament got underway this morning and I thought it might do the kids some good to bounce a basketball around a bit. I explained to them what a bounce pass is and had them stand facing one another about 8 feet apart. I told them to push the ball outward, trying to aim it to bounce it on an imaginary X on the ground right between them. Then, of course, the other player is to catch it, and return it via a bounce pass. I demonstrated with each of them a couple of times and then let them have at it. What a disaster. Seriously. It was like they hadn't listened to a word I said. So naturally, I had to go Bobby Knight on their butts. I threw a couple of chairs around and ... Just kidding.

I did kind of read them a minor riot act, though, suggesting to them that this was something they were completely capable of and that it's a good skill for them to learn and that it would be fun if they at least tried to do it the right way. Fortunately, the pep talked worked and they were soon bounce passing back in forth with no further intervention from me.

"WEED" TO SEED: Back inside, we took a few minutes to read one of the library books I scored today: "Dandelion Adventures" by L. Patricia Kite. The first part of the book is fictional - it follows seven dandelion seed parachutes to their landing spots, which range from a garden to a stream, a boat to a forest, a sidewalk and a school yard.

The latter part of the book is non fiction, listing facts about dandelions. We learned their name came from the French, who thought the plant's leaves looked like lions' teeth, or dent de lion. We learned that each yellow topped dandelion is really many tiny yellow flowers or florets, and that the milky fluid that comes from its stem when you pick it is called latex. And we found out that dandelions have taproots, which can be up to three feet long!

TAKING NOTE: This afternoon, we busted out the Musikgarten bags and spent some time on music education. For starters, Annabelle brought CJ up to speed with what she learned this Monday night during the makeup lesson for the Friday they both missed, including four new musical notation cards.

We laid the cards out on the table. One person would play the beats and rests on the glockenspiel and the other two of us would have to guess which card the musician just played. We did a few rounds of that and then it was time for free-form compositions. I would name characters from the kids' cartoons and games and they'd quickly make up theme music to go along with that person. It was interesting how much different the theme music for Princess Peach was as compared to a bad guy like Bowser (Mario's nemesis).

COVER GIRL: I was outside this afternoon picking up dog crap (one of my more glamours jobs around the MPA campus) when a FedEx deliveryman started walking down our stairs. He handed me a small box and I thought, "What the hell did I order online?"

I took the box in the house, opened it up and out slid four copies of a "Trends in Cognitive Sciences" magazine - with Annabelle's photo on the cover. That prompted me to recall an email asking for permission to use the photo of a sleeping baby Bee a few months back. I remember taking the photo and being unhappy with its exposure or something, so I played around with it in Photoshop and gave it fuzzy edges, a swirling background and a soft focus. (The magazine didn't photograph very well. A better view of the photo can be found here, on MorgueFile, where the magazine people found it.)

"I cannot believe that I'm on a magazine," Annabelle marveled.

SCIENCE SITES: I'm still on the email list of Whittier Elementary, the Seattle public school where the kids attended preschool. I like being on the list because it keeps me connected with events going on in area schools and resources that may be of interest to us. The email I received today mentioned a science fair at Whittier and encouraged parents to check out a list on Little-Scientists.com for inspiration. Glad I checked - the list includes several Web sites that are known-and-loved here at MPA, but there were a number of sites we haven't seen before, and more science is a good thing!

One of the gems new to us is Cool Science from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Via their Ask a Scientist feature, kids can ask a scientist questions, read answers to FAQs, get homework help, science fair project ideas, learn about careers in science and more.

Cool Science is also a portal to a resource developed by the University of Washington to teach the scientific method to elementary and middle school students. Cool, indeed!

Green Scene

ENGLISH (OR SCOTTISH?) EYES ARE SMILING: I don't suppose anyone will be surprised to learn that the topic du jour was St. Patrick's Day. And, thankfully, there was no shortage of resources to help us learn more about this holiday.

We started with a BrainPOP animated video about the holiday. It was really thorough and entertaining. We learned that March 17 is believed to be the day that Patricius Magonus Sucatus (better known as St. Patrick) died, and that the patron saint of Ireland was not Irish. He was English. Or Scottish. But definitely not Irish. ;)

Born to wealthy parents, Maewyn Succat was kidnapped at age 14 or 16 (depending on whom you believe) and taken to Ireland, where he was enslaved. He worked as a shepherd, and during his six years of slavery he spent a whole lot of time praying - and learning about the Irish culture. When he won his freedom, Succat went home to England. However, he returned to the Ireland, preaching his way across the Emerald Isle, converting people to Christianity. During his proselytizing, St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, giving birth to the shamrock's association with St. Patrick's Day.

Interestingly, the jubilant celebration of St. Patrick's day has its roots on the North American continent. Irish soldiers in the English military marched through New York City on March 17, 1762.

We learned that St. Patrick's day is celebrated in different ways around the globe. Here in the USA there's a huge parade in New York, and the Chicago River is tinted green. In Buenos Ares, they party all night long (that appears to be the case in Seattle, too. We live about 2 blocks from an Irish pub and it ain't pretty on March 18, let me tell you.)

In Ireland, March 17 it's a more solemn holiday, and celebrants go to church. Except in Dublin, where it's a 5-day party. (Can you tell there are conflicting reports out there?)

Next, we hopped to the History Channel's Web site for more St Paddy's day factoids. The History Channel had a looong list of facts about the holiday, as well as multiple videos. We watched "The History of St. Patrick's Day," a biopic about St. Patrick, a short video about leprechauns, and a video about how green came to symbolize the holiday (originally St. Patrick was associated with blue, as he wore blue robes).

On Biography.com we found a cool interactive map of Ireland. It show the country and when you click on a specific city's name, facts and gorgeous photos pop up.

COLOR WHEEL CONTINUED: For our special St. Patrick's Day dessert, we decided to make rainbow cupcakes topped by clouds and surrounded by gold coins. The first thing we had to do was transform a standard box of white cake mix into several vibrant colors to layer into cupcake tins. We decided to use red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet (no indigo, which means it wasn't an official Roy G. Biv rainbow). The kids helped crack the eggs, add the oil and mix the batter. They also applied gold dust to some mini Nilla wafers to transform them into gold coins.
I divided it between six small bowls and then they added the food coloring and whipped up the colors.
Next, it was time to painstaking layer six strata of batter into each little cup. That = not much fun, but the result sure is purty. (And actually, they're even prettier on the inside - the colors actually arc, just like a real rainbow.)

LOST & FOUND: Wednesday = swimming lessons for the kids. CJ's lesson was midday. The good news is, this week we remembered to take his goggles. The bad news is, once we got home post CJ's lesson, we discovered that somewhere between the pool in Ballard and our home in Magnolia, the bag holding his street clothes (pants, socks, goggles and unmentionables) had emptied. And, of course, today was the one day we couldn't park in the pool lot. We'd parked 3 plus blocks away. Crap.

The good news is, Annabelle's lesson was at 5 p.m. We went about five minutes early and set off in search of items lost. Across the street from Ballard High School I spied one sock of CJ's. That was a start. We walked a block, turned the corner and up the block I saw his pants. And goggles. And sock #2, and yes, even his underpants. Score!

The kids both had a good lesson - Annabelle was in tadpole mode, per usual, and CJ even got his entire head wet today!

HEAVY ON THE HOME EC: Tonight's menu: Shepherd's pie (in honor of the enslaved Maewyn Succat, forced into shepherdry), with Guinness beer batter bread. While CJ and Christian were at Tae Kwon Do, Annabelle helped prep. She helped measure exactly 12 ounces of Guinness for the beer bread (not as easy as it sounds, given the foam involved).

Annabelle also grated cheese and helped spread the mashed potatoes atop the lamb. And she was super thrilled to accompany me to the alley, where she harvested chives to top the shepherd's pie. During dinner, she told Christian no less than three times that she had "made" the chives. : )

I knew the kids weren't going to be interested in the shepherd's pie, so I made rice for them and added green dye, of course. Annabelle and I also made some shamrock-shaped cheese treats, which were a big hit with Mr. CeeJ.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: From Biography.com - "Did you know that at 198 calories a pint, Guinness has fewer calories than 1% milk or orange juice."

In Living Technicolor

COLORFUL: You'd be surprised how often the color wheel comes up in conversations around this place. However, until today, it's been all talk. I thought it would be good to walk the walk and make our own color wheels. So, I hopped online and found a couple of good references, including the one pictured (left).

We talked a bit about the triangles on the wheel - and how the primary colors form the corners of one triangle, while the secondary colors form the points of the upside down triangle. We also talked about how complementary colors are opposite one another on the color wheel.

Next, I had the kids round up a couple dozen crayons. We first picked out the primary colors and put them in a triangle. Next, we found crayons close to the secondary colors on the wheel. With those in place, we filled in the blanks according to specifications, sometimes scribbling on paper to see exactly what color they were when used (you can't just judge a color by its label!).

With the proper crayons picked out it was time to color our wheels. The kids cut out the inner circle of a paper plate and we divided it into halves, then quarters and then twelfths. Then it was time to color each slice of the pie, using the color wheels we'd found online as a guide.

What a worthwhile exercise - now the kids have a concrete visual of concepts we'd only talked about before.

UNDER A SPELL: We introduced a new list of words today, including the ridiculously spelled "school" and "very." They wrote their words a couple of times and then we did a verbal pretest, which went pretty darn well, with a couple of prompts from Mom.

OLD SCHOOL MATH: I actually busted out a workbook today for math time. We concentrated on ordinals and patterns. It was a second grade book, so I thought/hoped the sheets might be a bit of a challenge for the kids, but I was wrong.

I was pleased with how CJ completed part of one of his sheets. The question was: "These patterns have numbers that repeat. Can you figure out what comes next?" The first line was 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 __, which CJ finished with a 2 of course. The second line read 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 ____ and he wrote "3&4." I thought it was great that he actually finished the pattern (writing two numbers) instead of just writing the 3.

TINY BUBBLES: We were long overdue a science experiment here at MPA, so today we took on "Blobs in a Bottle" from the supercool Science BOB site that Christian found last week. The experiment is billed as "the world's easiest lava lamp." All we needed to make the magic was a plastic bottle, water, oil, food coloring and Alka Seltzer (I had to go buy the latter as, mercifully, it's not an MPA medicine chest staple).

We poured the water in a bottle and then I added the oil. I asked the kids what they thought would happen - if the two liquids would mix. CJ said, "Yo Gabba Gabba!" (a kids' show) says that oil and water don't mix." We came to find out "Yo Gabba Gabba!" was correct. ;) Next, we dropped in some color (pictured above, left) and then it was time for the magic. The kids added tablets of Alka Seltzer, a half at a time. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz and bubbles aplenty.

It was fun, but frankly the action was a tad bit less than what I was hoping for. ... Fortunately, when Christian got home, he quickly diagnosed the deficit - not enough oil. So we conducted a smaller-in-volume scale experiment, but the results wowed the kids - and us. The green globules were hopping, popping and boppin. Pretty cool!

DAFFY-DILS PART DEUX: On our run/ride Sunday we happened upon a couple of daffodils on public/Port property. Annabelle asked to pick 'em so we could repeat our flower-color-infusion experiment. I gave her the go ahead, and as soon as we got home, we trimmed their stems and stuck them into green water (for St. Patrick's Day). This go 'round, within minutes you could see tinges of green appear. By Monday morning, they were dramatically green laced - particularly the pale daffodil.
SEETHING: I was one photo upload and one click away from publishing this post. Over an hour ago. Right before my computer spontaneously rebooted AND, for whatever reason, that lightning strike ALSO reached through the Internet and wiped out the draft blog on Blogger. I'm blaming the leprechauns.

Green Tinged

STEP IT UP: We hit the spelling list first thing this morning. I had the kids write a list of 26 words twice and then it was time for a test. I had them stand at the bottom of the staircase with MagnaDoodles and gave them a spelling word. If they spelled it correctly, they got to take a step up. If they missed a word, they had to take a step back down. Yeah, well poor CJ took 20 minutes to get "lift off". The first word I give him was 'said.' It might as well have been euonym.

"Said" is a word CJ has written dozens of times and read thousands. But today it was the Unknown Enemy. He had the s, a, and d, but couldn't come up with the 'i'. He tried 'u' and when that was wrong, he became paralyzed (a pretty typical Monday morning phenomenon for him).

I sent him to his room to regroup and he emerged about 5 minutes later with it written correctly. After that, he made his way up the stairs with relative ease. When he'd get stuck, I'd tell him to close his eyes, picture a book, picture a page, and picture a sentence on that page and then picture a certain word in that sentence. For instance, when I used that technique on "Come with me" he was able to spell 'come' immediately, although he struggled with the word initially. Mr. CJ is definitely has a preference for visual learning.

YOU SAY TOMATO: After much worry and some speculation that perhaps they were a bust, our heirloom tomato plants finally popped up through the potting soil. Hooray! We aspire to be "those people" who have so many tomatoes, they're pawning them off onto neighbors and strangers. Bring it on!!!

ROLL OF THE DICE: For today's math, I gave each kid a pair of dice and told them to use what they roll to create (and solve) addition and subtraction problems. A simple twist on simple math.

CO-CONSPIRATORS: A bit of news to report in the "life skills" category. There is a game on Club Penguin where online players are pitted against one another. Called Card Jitsu it's a bit like the good old card game war, except in addition to needing to have the highest number value on your card, you need to have the most powerful suit, too. In Card Jitsu, if you win the round, you earn a new belt, jacket, or some other ninja accessory. There can be anywhere from 2 to 4 players. CJ and Annabelle were both online, and CJ was calling the shots. ...

The two of them would create a game and if anyone else would join within the 10 second period the general penguin population has to jump in a new game, CeeJ and Bee would quit the game and go start another. When they did get a game to themselves, CJ would orchestrate who played which card when, so that he automatically won each hand. Annabelle was quite happy to play along, helping CJ earn his stripes, so to speak.

As I listened to the two of them colluding, it occurred to me that what they were doing could be considered, well, um, cheating. But I was also well aware that what they were doing was learning how to work the system - how to manipulate a situation to get the desired outcome. "Outwit, out last, out play" that's the motto on the TV show "Survivor" and there's definitely a need for those skills in the everyday world. So, I let 'em "cheat" and even complimented them on their strategy skills.

ROCKIN' THE SHAMROCKS: With St. Patrick's Day just a couple of days away, we needed to get on the green this morning. I found a fun 3-D shamrock craft project from DLT. First the kids cut out shamrock templates on card stock. Then they had to trace around the shamrocks onto green paper. Then, in an MPA first, we made our own paint by mixing flour, water, salt and food coloring. They drizzled and dabbed the paint onto the green paper.

When it dried, they cut the shamrocks out. They paired them up and then cut half-way up one shamrock and halfway down the other and combined them to form 3-D shamrocks.
HOW LOW CAN IT GO?: Our physical workout of the day was a trip down to Terminal 91 (kids on bikes, parents hoofing it). When we got down there, we were happy to find the tide as low as it's ever been. That made for some good beach combing.

Christian found an oyster attached to a rock and picked it up to show the kids. They were skittish at first (having seen a few too many man eating oysters on cartoons). However, they each eventually took a turn holding the sea creature.

While down there, I also had the kids look for clam shells for a craft project I had in mind for the afternoon.

We lingered on the beach longer than usual today - it was so sunny and warm, it was hard to leave.

CLAMROCKS: Having been successful in our clam shell search, our afternoon craft project was a go. I washed the shells and the kids painted them green. After the paint dried, they arranged the shells in a group of three, to resemble a shamrock. We carefully used a hot glue gun to stick 'em together. Then a couple of Popsicle sticks were colored green and glued to the back of the shells and presto! - custom clamrocks!

SOLO ARTIST: Both of the kids missed music on Friday to accompany Christian to an out of town function (a memorial for a family friend), but today there was an opportunity to make up that missed class. Unfortunately, it was at the same time as CJ's Tae Kwon Do with his day. However, Annabelle was available and excited at the prospect of attending class on a different day and time just to mix things up.

On the one block walk to the studio, I pointed to Annabelle that maybe there'd even be another girl in today's class (on Fridays, it's her and four boys). Sure enough, we discovered there were two other girls in the class. Annabelle and one of the other girls immediately started chatting about pink musical instruments. ;)

COMING SOON TO A THETRE NEAR YOU: MPA faculty and students are sooooo looking forward to seeing Hubble 3-D in the Pacific Science Center Imax theater. A story from CNET about the making of the movie really stoked the fire this morning. Imagine seeing images like this (the Butterfly Nebula) in 3D! The Hubble movie Web site even has lesson plans (under the 'Education' tab). We'll definitely take advantage of those resources before we see the movie.

INTERESTING ASIDE: Sunday was both Pi Day (3/14, or 3.14...) and Albert Einstein's birthday.