Technical Difficulties

I had hoped to post more pictures from our Friday field trip today, but my computer has been attacked and overtaken (for the time being) by a merciless virus. Stay tuned for further developments and we appreciate your patience. :)

Fantastic Friday

TAKE NOTE: More music and merriment this morning at Musikgarten. One of the big developments of the day was that the kids received cards (white, above) that have notes on a staff. (Past cards have just been notes of varying duration - without ascribing a specific tone to them.)

The blue staff/notes above are the back of the kids' notebooks and some black 'buttons' are pieces they placed to copy the notes on the white cards they were given.

So here we go - these are their first steps toward being able to read - and write - music!

BUILD 'EM UP: Project Bowser Pinata continues. The kids are still peppering me with questions, making sure we're making Bowser and NOT Barney, as I had threatened at one point. (I gotta admit, the thought of taking a bat to Barney puts a smile on my face. Does that make me a bad person?)

OOZE and AAHS: Today we started the first in a series of six science classes arranged by a parent in the Seattle Homeschool Group (SHG). They are put on by Pacific Science Center staff, but are offsite - three are in Ballard, and three will be down in Columbia City (about 35 minutes south). I have to admit, I felt a bit like a kid on a first day of school. ...

After winding our way around the facility in Ballard (which houses both a huge ballet school and a huge preschool), we finally found the gym where the one-hour class would be held. I got CJ & Annabelle in their seats and waited for events to unfold.
I wasn't sure what to expect, other than it would involve science. The first 15 minutes consisted of a whole lotta talk about science (matter, atoms, solid liquid gas and such), but mercifully there was also a lot of hands of activity, including an exercise dramatically transforming ice from solid to liquid to gas. And as the grand finale the kids got to transform two liquids (milk and vanilla) into a solid (vanilla ice cream) by taking a bag full of milk and vanilla and embedding it ice cubes and rock salt and shaking it like crazy for a couple of minutes. I didn't taste the fruits of their labor, but I can report they were thrilled!

LITTLE DID WE KNOW: The weather was wonderful today, and the kids were happy to learn their bro' Rick had the afternoon off. Where to go? Hmm - how about a destination Christian, the kids and I have driven by hundreds/thousands of times but have never stopped to look at - the Olympic Sculpture Park . And what a delightful surprise it was.

We've seen a few park highlights from nearby roads too many times to count, but until we parked the car and made this spot our destination - instead of just something we're whizzing by - I had no idea how amazing and interesting the park is.

For instance, so many times we've seen these eyeballs during drives-bys, but little did we know they're benches on the backside! I'm going to post many more photos tomorrow in a bonus blog. :)

SOME SUN SENSE: While looking for freebies on FreeStuffTimes (a Web site worth checking out if you've never heard of it), I saw notice of free educational materials from the EPA regarding sun safety. With the nicer weather (and climate change) upon us, I figured MPA should definitely have a sun safety unity.

So, I checked out the SunWise site. The EPA explains the SunWise program as "an environmental and health education program that aims to teach children and their caregivers how to protect themselves from overexposure to the sun through the use of classroom-, school-, and community-based components."

They had a page where I could order several publications, brochures, worksheets and posters, which I did. (Materials can also be ordered by calling 800-490-9198.

ATLANTIS ON THE MOVE!: "Our" shuttle, Atlantis - the one we'll hopefully see launch in May - is set to move to the launch pad on Monday. According to a NASA press release, "Atop a giant crawler-transporter, Atlantis' first motion on its rollout to the pad is scheduled for Monday at 8 p.m. EDT. The 3.4-mile journey is expected to take approximately six hours." You KNOW we'll be watching.

Cut and Paste

BUILDING BOWSER: CJ's birthday is next Tuesday, and preparations are already underway. Specifically, this morning we started Step 1 of building Bowser, a pinata. Kind of a cross between a dragon and a turtle, Bowser is the arch rival and nemesis of Mario of Nintendo game fame.

The first step was cobbling together balloons, bags and newspaper to form Bowser's body. Once we were OK with our form, I had the kids tear strips of newspaper, and we mixed water, glue and flour to dip the strips in. It took about an hour to give Bowser his first shell.

It's worth noting that earlier in the day, I asked CJ and Annabelle to find me a good 3-D picture of Bowser and, frankly, none of the ones they came up with were very good. So I told them that as a result, I would be making Barney the Dinosaur. That gave them fits. They asked all day long and into the night if I was just kidding. I have them worried. :)

WHEN PIGS FLY: CJ asked to use FunBrain for their math practice today. I was OK with that, and so they logged in to its Math Arcade. There's a nice variety of fun games there, including "Hillbilly Pig Toss," in which the player can adjust the height and distance of a throw to try to get a pig from one Hillbilly's arms to another. It's pretty entertaining, especially when a catch is made and one of the guys yells, "Yee haw!!!!" That always sends CeeJ and Bee into fits of laughter. They also played a number of games that didn't involve hicks or hogs. ;)

More than once I've wondered who the people behind FunBrain are. There are all these great learning games, but today I was especially curious after reading one of the math questions CJ encountered today. It was something about if so and so had 5 Doritos and so and so had 6, how many Doritos did they have altogether?" The "product placement" made me suspicious that Big Food was behind the game. And then a few times today, CJ kept accidentally finding himself being redirected to Poptropica a game site that's plenty fun, but not academically oriented like FunBrain.

I poked around FunBrain a bit and it says it's part of "Family Education Network" and they do have a pretty sweet Teacher Resource center. But when I clicked on their Homework Relief Center, then the ads became a lot more apparent. Oh, and the link that says "Get help with tonight's homework" has a price tag attached - $3.99. They also sell "Homework Relief Packs," promising "Relief in a few easy steps." Hmm. Well, there's nothing wrong with making some dough, and they're very upfront about the price. And there's lots to learn from and enjoy that's free.

DIG IT: Well, our bean and pea starts are now earthbound. This afternoon we worked some organic enrichment into the soil, first with the electric tiller (the kids took turns at the helm) and then we raked it by hand.

The dirt's a little wetter than I'd like it to be. And it's pretty clay-laden. And I wish it were in a sunnier spot. But as you can see from a photo below, our poor lil plants were rootbound (and had already been transplanted once)! So, their time had come. We'll see what, if anything, is produced in the patch.

We still have tomatoes, peppers and sunflowers to plant.

ANTICIPATING EARTH DAY: Earth Day is April 22, which will be here before we know it. In anticipation of it, I went Internet combing for some resources today and found that Discovery Education has a great site, ThinkGreen.com/Classroom. There, "it's always Earth Day. And whatever your grade level, you'll find a wealth of free multimedia resources to bring Earth Day into your classroom today and every day. Featuring nearly 100 lesson plans, videos, worksheets, puzzles, interactives, virtual labs, writing prompts, case studies, and more, it's your one-stop Earth Day shop." Excellent! That will definitely fill our bill come April 22.

NEWS FROM NASA: It may look like the astronaut's just foolin' around, but he's hard at work. According to a NASA press release accompanying the photo, "During the STS-131 mission's first spacewalk, astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Clayton Anderson (out of frame) moved a new 1,700-pound ammonia tank from space shuttle Discovery's cargo bay to a temporary parking place on the station, retrieved an experiment from the Japanese Kibo Laboratory exposed facility and replaced a Rate Gyro Assembly on one of the truss segments."

Just another day at work for those guys.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, President Obama visited the Kennedy Space Center today. The kids and I watched a podcast of his speech, during which Obama said, "As president, I believe space exploration is not a luxury, not an afterthought, an essential part of the quest." The entire speech can be viewed or read here.

In the Garden

MOVING OUT: Today was the day. Our peas and beans had basically taken over the kitchen and outside it's sunny and nearing 60. Time for our little babies to meet the great outdoors.

So, this morning the kids carefully carried the pots one by one out to the yard. Next, we set about getting a spot of ground ready to accept the plants. We pulled dozens (hundreds, perhaps) of weeds from a semi-flat patch in our yard that gets a fair amount of sun. Next, I unearthed the electric tiller that has been gathering webs under our deck for a couple of years. We tilled up a relatively flat, hopefully sunny enough spot.

During tilling, we discovered lots of worms and several flowering bulbs. Annabelle chose to relocate a couple of the bulbs. CJ decided to keep them out, certain that a museum would want them. :)

Before sticking our peas, beans, tomatoes and such in the ground, I decided I wanted to add some enrichment to the soil, so we made a Fred Meyer run. There, we got some organic compost and bought another blueberry bush (we already had one at home).

When we got back to MPA, we planted the blueberry bushes on the north fence line. CJ and Annabelle's training during the day we volunteered planting shrubs at a local park (o earn our Disney World tickets) came in handy. They knew how to take the bushes out of the pots, break their roots up and set them in the holes I'd prepared.
PONDERING PETALS: This afternoon, after lunch, I redirected CJ away from the computer and toward a book. I handed him "Flowers Bloom!" and told him to read it and then be prepared to tell me what he'd learned.

He slumped on the couch and read the book. A couple of times I glanced over to make sure CJ was on task. "I'm reading inside my head," he assured me. :)

After he finished the book, I asked CJ what he learned about flowers. He said, "It helped me learn that some flowers have some colors and some do not have colors and some are the brightest flowers." Hmm. "And I learned that pollen makes some people sneeze." OK, that's true. "And that flowers have body parts," he said, grabbing the book again. He opened it up to a graphic where a flower's parts were labeled. "There's an antler, stamen, petal, flower stalk, pistil, a flower bud," he listed. OK, good stuff!

BACK OUTSIDE: I felt like we should do more table work today, but eventually the sunshine convinced me otherwise. It was just waaaay too nice outside to be toiling inside. There have been and will be plenty of other dreary days weather wise. Today was a time to take advantage of the weather.

So back out we went. I spent a couple of hours battling weeds and blackberries in a swath along the north property line. CJ and Annabelle helped from time to time, and I always called them over when I discovered something, be it a roly-poly (potato) bug, a centipede, a huge beetle and so on. In all, I'd guess we spent four-plus hours outside today.

BOY KING RETURNS!: Exciting news here today in Seattle! King Tut is coming back!!!!

Over 100 objects from King Tut's tomb will be on display May 24, 2012-January 6, 2013, at the Pacific Science Center. A touring Tut exhibit came to Seattle in the 1970s and seeing it was - and still is - one of the highlights of my life. I can't wait to see these treasures again, and this show is going to be significantly bigger than the last. The event's Web site is here: Though the show's not for a couple of years, tickets will go on sale later this year. You know we'll be getting ours! An event Web site can be found here: http://tut.pacsci.org/. Once there, be sure to check out the "news media" section of the site - there's lot more info than on the regular Web site, including a listing and some photos of some of the specific artifacts that will be there.

One item of note: the king's golden sandals that are engraved in a way to replicate woven reeds. The slippers were created specifically for the afterlife, and still covered the feet of Tutankhamun when Howard Carter unwrapped the mummy.

These golden sandals have engraved decoration that replicates woven reeds.

BY THE BOOK: CJ came home from Tae Kwon Do tonight with a "student handbook." It covers etiquette, rules and regs, tenets, the uniform, Korean phrases and counting, form names and meanings, belt rankings and colors, promotion requirements and more. We'll have to spend some time exploring all this information.

International Flair

STORY STARTERS: Our day started off with a creative writing exercise. The kids each used the story starter machine on Scholastic's Web site to generate a topic. Annabelle was charged with writing a ghost story about a squishy donut who lived next door to her(!). CJ had to write about a pink wizard who traveled the world.

Bee whipped hers out quickly, and I loved her illustration, complete with a screaming donut (look in the lower left corner of the picture above).

CJ took more time as he pained over spelling the words correctly, but he wasn't painstakingly slow to the degree he has been in the past, so that's an improvement. And his handwriting was really good!

PENNY PINCHERS: We turned to ScienceBob for some inspiration this morning. There, I found a chemistry experiment using pennies.

Our instructions told us to gather five dirty pennies and give them a 10-second bath in 1/4 cup of vinegar with 1 teaspoon of salt mixed in. The acid in the vinegar was supposed to react with the salt to remove the copper oxide on the pennies, which is what makes them dull.

Sure enough, when we pulled our pennies out and rinsed them with clean water, they were shiny like new!

Next, we were to take some more dirty pennies, put them in the bath but not rinse them with clean water afterward. We let them air dry and over the course of an hour, they turned greenish-blue, as a result of the chemical malachite forming on them. Pretty cool!
INTERNATIONAL FLAIR: Around the noon hour we struck out for the International District, east of the stadiums. We had a special guest along - CeeJ and Bee's bro Kennedy.

According to the Chinatown International District Web site, Seattle's International District is "the only neighborhood in America where Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Vietnamese and Southeast Asians live and work together, side-by-side." At the west entrance of the neighborhood (South King Street at Fifth Avenue South), there is a large pai-lau or traditional Chinese gate. Just a block or so away from the gate is one of the kids' favorite stores, Pink Gorilla (formerly Pink Godzilla). They have all sorts of Nintendo games and toys there that you just don't see elsewhere.

Our next stop was Gossip - a trendy little restaurant where Kennedy ordered a mango bubble tea (with tapioca, of course). From there, we walked to Hing Hay Park, at the intersection of Maynard Ave & King St. According to the city's Web site, the park is the "heart of the district that serves as the center for cultural events, musical performances, community meetings, and entertainment programs. During regular days, it is a gathering place for families, chess players and morning Tai-Chi."

Today, none of that was going on. It was just us and a couple of homeless people, who were taking shelter in the park's grand pavilion. The structure, shipped from Taiwan, is a memorial that honors local Chinese-American veterans killed in World War II.

The photo here is of Bee enjoying a mango bubble tea in Hing Hay Park, holding her new pink Yoshi from Pink Gorilla. It was a good day to be Bee.

Now that I think about it, I suspect that almost every day is a good day to be Bee. :)

Take Us Out to the Ball Game!

BASEBALL ON THE BRAIN: Today is the Seattle Mariners home opener and of course we're going to the game this afternoon.

That being the case, our morning work was all about baseball, as well. We started with FunBrain's Math Baseball. The kids took turns 'pitching' math problems at each other. It's a good game, because you can mix up the types of problems (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) and select your level of difficulty (easy to hard).

Next, we were off to the Exploratorium's awesome "Science of Baseball" site.

It featured the cool Fastball Reaction Time "exhibit" in which you get a real idea of just how frigging hard it is to 'pull the trigger' in time to hit a major league speed pitch.

Its "Scientific Slugger" activity lets players adjust the angle the ball leaves the bat, the strength of the swing (from bunt to home run) and the motion of the ball (from knuckleball to curveball to fastball). It's interesting to see how different combinations of those factors affected the hit.

"Throw for a Curve" showed the kids how the pitcher's changing grip affects the ball's flight toward home plate. They learned the different grips for a fastball, curveball, and slider and then did a little bit of experimenting pitching (using a wadded up pair of socks as a ball). Of course, if someone's pitching, there needs to be a batter, so they took turns taking swings (with their arms) at the sock ball. There was some difference of opinion as to the quality of the pitches. After one toss CJ declared, "Strike two!" at which Annabelle shot back, "I didn't even swing because that was a crappy pitch!" Just callin' em like she sees 'em. ;)

The "Science of Baseball" site also has an interesting explanation about the bat's sweet spot and center of percussion. We'll have to try that experiment (and a bunch of other things on that site) on another day, and believe you me, there will be plenty of other days we're going to Ms games this season. :)

PIONEERING: Our literature today was reading the biographical "Jackie Robinson - A Man of Determination." The book did a nice job of introducing Jackie to the kids and explaining how he broke the color barrier in baseball and just how hard that was. It's interesting to think that the first president that CJ and Annabelle will remember is Barack Obama - an African American. It's amazing to think about how far we've come as a nation. That said, I'm well aware how far we still have to go.

GAME TIME: We headed for Safeco Field a little after 2. Since it was a sellout the area around the stadium was cRaZy, including parking. We struck out in our usual spots, and the pay to park lots wanted $40, so we took our chances in a regular, metered 2-hours-max spot - which would run out loooong before we were back to the car. Oh well. We were just hoping the parking ticket would be less than $40!

Oh, how wonderful it was to be back at Safeco! On our way in, the ticket taker said to the kids, "You must be really smart if they let you out of school today to come to the game."

To that I replied, "This IS their school today." :)

Once inside we found our seats and then I took the kids to the centerfield playpark to burn off some energy before game time. I thought it was funny that instead of climbing and sliding, CJ was more interested in solving puzzles and doing math!

We certainly enjoyed the pre-game pomp, circumstance - and lots of pyrotechnics! Annabelle did a nice job singing along with the national anthem (the flag was presented by local law enforcement officers). The biggest cheers of the day went to Mariner legend Randy Johnson. The lanky lefty was there to throw out the first pitch and the crowd was crazy for him. Former Mariner greats Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner and Dan Wilson were on hand for the love fest. So many fond memories with that bunch. Too bad today's starting crew had to go and wreck it by not scoring a single run! ;)