Friday Fun

GOBBLE GOBBLE: Thanksgiving is less than a week away now and we'd yet to do any kind of turkey-related handcraft. Today would be the day we'd right that wrong, by gum!

A couple of days ago, I found some sweet turkeys on the Fabulessly Frugal blog. I showed them to Annabelle this a.m. and she was all over making one of her own. I had the apples, marshmallows and candy corn in stock, as well as some candy eyes. All I was lacking was the Froot Loops the prototype had used for the tailfeathers.

As I stared into my pantry wondering what we could use as a substitute, my eyes cast upon the the hideous Oops! All Berries cereal by Cap'n Crunch. Though they didn't have holes in the center, I was hoping we could bore through them with toothpicks. Sure 'nuff, with the right amount of force and a spinning motion, we drilled through those sugary little nuggets.

During construction CJ said, "I am one clever guy, right?. Sometimes I find ways to do something else (when the first way doesn't work). One time when I broke the crunchberry today, I noticed I still had a hole that would work (on another part of the crunchberry) and I poked it in and used it so I would get closer, sooner."

Excellent workaround, CJ. :)

The turkey's body is an apple, its head is a marshmallow half, its beak is a candy corn, of course. For feet we halved those candy corn like sugar pumpkin candies, and we had eyes in stock from past cookie making adventures. We''ll let these turkeys hang around a day or so before the kids eat 'em, tailfeathers and all.

CHOCOLATE GERMAN: Other kitchen action this a.m. included whipping up Christian's birthday cake. His favorite is "Chocolate German" (as the kids call it), so we started by making a couple of layers of awesome chocolate cake with a recipe from the "Confetti Cakes" book.


Then, it was time to find a recipe for perfect coconut-pecan filling and topping. I settled on one from Kraft's Web site. We whipped it up and Annabelle helped spread it on.
I gotta say, the cake looks Deeeeelicious. We'll find out how it tastes on Saturday.
MUCH BETTER: In recent weeks, it has become apparent CJ just naturally catching on to the proper use of much vs. many. So today, we spent about an hour talking about when to use each. For example, many = plural, like, "How many dollars do you have?", whereas much goes with singular words, like "How much money do you have?"

We found several exercises online, including several sites for people trying to learn English. One was English Grammar Online 4U, another was a Germany based Web site.

Through doing the exercises, the kids learned you can't always rely on an S to let you know if a word is plural or not (for instance men, women and people are plural without an S on the end).

The kids did well on the written exercises. It will be interesting to see if tht success translates into correct usage in speech.

Of course, after all of the "much" related phrases, I couldn't get "How Much is that Doggie in the Window" out of my head. The kids had never heard the song so I had to find it on YouTube for them.

RESEARCH PROJECT: For a couple of days, CJ has had a nagging question bothering him. It's about the character Reptile in the Mortal Kombat series of games. "Why does his form keeps changing?" from game to game, he wonders. "He has changed from a ninja to this reptile looking human to a real reptile to half ninja half reptile," CJ chronicles.

CJ asked to go to the Web site of Midway, the games' maker, for answers. However, when we tried midway.com, we found it took us to the Warner Bros. Web site. Clearly, Midway is owned by WB. Unfortunately, there was not a lot of detail on their site about games; it was mostly just promos for new games coming out.

CJ and I thought perhaps Mortal Kombat might have its very own site, and we found out it did. When we hopped there, we found there is a forum portion of the site and figured hardcore MK fans would be talking about all things MK there. And sure 'nuff, they are. In fact, there was a forum category called Future Mortal Kombat Game Discussion, and there, we found an interview with on of the MK game designers that had been translated from Portuguese to English. And apparently CJ isn't the only fan wondering about Reptile's incarnations, because one of the questions was about that. And we learned that in
an upcoming MK title (for release in mid 2011, I believe, Reptile would have his ninja outfit from MK2 and MK3. Mystery solved.

BIG NEWS: I guess CJ must have seen an advertisement or something, because he excitedly reported today, "Oh geez, Mom. Microsoft is getting even bigger with Windows 7!" Sounds like a future Microsofty to me. ...

IN OUR ABSENCE: The kids had a sitter last night - a rare occurrence 'round here. Christian and I were supposed to go see Rick play @ the Red Hook, but that gig got canceled due to a bandmate's emergency. Big bummer. So we just went out to dinner instead.

I asked CJ this (Saturday) a.m. what he did when the babysitter was here and he said, "We made some killer brownies. Were you like 'What? Where did these killer brownies come from?' when you got up this morning?" :) CJ reports he even put peanut butter on one of his.

Earlier in the day, in preparation for the babysitter, we read "Benjamin McFadden and the Robot Babysitter." It's a story about a kid who tries to mess with his robot babysitter's programming, and havoc ensues.

Hopefully the takeaway from it is CJ and Annabelle shouldn't try to mess with their babysitter's programming. :)

THE KING AND US: This afternoon we took a field trip to Seattle Center. However, this was no ordinary field trip. Rather, we were on a mission, and we had a special guest along with us - none other than The King himself, Elvis Presley.

We were trying to complete a scavenger hunt of sorts. The challenge was to photograph a cardboard cutout of Elvis at over 20 different locations around the Seattle Center campus. In 2 hours or less. In the rain (the 'in the rain' part wasn't part of the rules, it was just our bad luck).

Kick Off

BOXING DAY: Even though the kids won't have science class in Shoreline again for a couple of weeks, we decided to hop right on the homework that they were given yesterday. It was a continuation of the template-for-a-box exercises they were doing yesterday.

Their teacher had provided a couple of flat patterns for boxes on cardstock. The kids had to figure out how to fold them to make them boxy (or a boxy bag, in one instance).

It wasn't easy. They figured out where the folds should be, but figuring out which order to tuck tabs in was troublesome. CJ was nearly in tears at one point.

Thankfully, with some cues and clues from me, they finally managed to make it work.

TWO Rs: After 'rithmetic, I decided we needed to do some language arts. First, the kids did some 'riting. They used the story starter machine on Scholastic.com to get their writing juices flowing. CJ had to write a short fairytale. He penned: "Once upon a time there was a silly princess who hates spiders. She had a dream about spiders! It was horrible!"

Annabelle had the daunting task of writing about a birthday cake eating a meal. She wrote, "The lumpiest cake's favorite meal might be birthday candles. You know those tall things with fires on top those things. The lumpiest cake loves country music."

While they wrote, I spun some fall/Thanksgiving-related tunes, including Clapton covering "Autumn Leaves," "Colors of the Wind" (from Disney's Pocahontas) and Natalie Merchant's "Thank You."

After they finished writing, we used a new-t0-us Web site for some language arts lessons, Fun4thebrain.com. One of the activities was about syllables. I asked the kids if they remembered what a syllable was. Annabelle responded by saying, "Ann-a-belle," and clapping her hands with each syllable. Excellent. :)

And so, we played Syllable Split. The kids had to read words as they were chopped into syllables by a bear-wielding an axe. They totally got it. Next up was Popcorn Words, which was sight reading practice. It was way too easy for the kids, but the game featured monkeys working at a movie theater, so they enjoyed it. CJ played Base Word Baseball, which is practice using base words with suffix ending. Again, too easy.

BRICK BY BRICK: Last weekend I found a small box of LEGOs. Today, I finally thought to bring them out so the kids could actually do something with them. But first, I wanted to give them a little inspiration. I had noticed that under the kids' category of Comcast's OnDemand, there is now a LEGO category. So, I chose a program to watch from that menu. It was a 6 minute video about a man here in Washington who is a professional LEGO builder. Turns out the dude, Dan Parker, has a great studio inside Freighthouse Square, a 110,000 square foot shopping center in the stadium district in Tacoma.

Parker has about 2 million 'elements' (bricks and detail pieces) on hand in his space in Tacoma, where he creates custom sculptures for corporations, movies and more. They don't sell any LEGOs at the studio, but there is a "free zone" space for kids to play, and they host workshops and parties. I can tell a field trip to Tacoma is in our future!

After the video the kids were hot to get on their own projects. They each built a vehicle with all sorts of bells and whistles.

The kids continued to develop their vehicles throughout the evening. In all, they probably spent three hours on them. Tonight CJ told me, "I made my ultimate LEGO creation even stronger. I made the mini shooter bigger so it gets more charged and my LEGO creation cannot be beated! Don't mess with him."
KICK START: And so it begins. ... This afternoon was Annabelle's first day of soccer.

This latest addition to our calendar is a bit of a compromise of sorts. She has been asking to join a soccer team for months - over a year. I know it sounds selfish, but truth be told, to date Christian and I have been reluctant because we're not ready to give up 1 or 2 afternoons a week and half of Saturday to watch bunch ball (that's what 5 and 6 year olds do) in the cold weather/rain. Plus, I can't imagine that this bunch ball/soccer wouldn't interfere with some of the stuff that's already on our docket.

Anyway, as an alternative to a full blown league play situation, I found a 6-week soccer skills workshop, 45 minutes, one day a week in the gym at the Magnolia Community Center. Perfect. When I told Annabelle this a.m. that today was (finally!) soccer day, she shot out of bed!

Class wasn't until 3:35 but she had her shinguards on at 2 p.m. Before class I informed Annabelle that the class was co-ed and she said, "I love boys. Especially really silly boys, like Rick and Ken." :)

Imagine our surprise when we got to the community center and found out there was only one other kid in the class - a boy who looked to be a year or so younger than her. I guess there's one other kid signed up, but he was a no show.

So today, Annabelle and The Boy got a private soccer lesson. While it certainly wasn't the Go Team! scenario she no doubt envisioned, Annabelle was thrilled with it. She didn't take her shinguards off until bedtime. :)

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.

Colorful Carpet

OOPS: This is NOT a good way to start your day. This, my friends, is a cereal aptly named "Oops."
Its full name is "Oops! All Berries!" as in all Crunchberries of Cap'n Crunch fame. Excited at the new, limited-time-only product, the kids talked me into buying it last week. Today, we opened it. Egad.
The colors are vibrant. I'll give them that. The stuff practically glowed.

I'm trying to think of a good way to use this in an art project. I really don't want to serve it up in a bowl for breakfast again.

BONNIE GOOD: Before Musikgarten today, the kids completed their homework. That involved transcribing a song which they are veterans at now. They also had to draw a picture about the song "The Bonnie Shore of Loch Lithy."

I read CeeJ and Bee the story about a little city that didn't show up on any maps and there were no roads in or out. It was, in effect, a world apart. One day, a mysterious woman showed up and told the villagers of life beyond their hamlet, but they decided to stay put.

CJ immediately said he wanted to draw a picture of animals drinking from the Loch. I thought that interesting since that was such a small, in passing part of the story. I also thought it interesting he chose to draw a panda. I'd bet dollars to donuts he chose that animal because it's black and white and he knew he wouldn't have to color it!

Annabelle drew a detailed picture of the mysterious visitor showing the townspeople a way out to another life. And then she spent 20 minutes coloring it.

During the parent participation part of Musikgarten, we all executed a pretty darn complicated routine with scarves and about 17 different steps to the tune of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean." We did pretty well, but are not quite ready for Broadway.

WINDY CITY: The last couple of days have been really blustery in Seattle. The strong winds have ripped waning, remaining leaves off trees, creating a thick carpet of golden, orange and yellow underfoot. The rains are supposed to be coming the next couple of days and so I wanted to get as many leaves picked up as possible today. So after music, the kids and I spent some time in the alley.

I used a snow shovel to scoop up a 500 square foot area. While I have the pile to prove it, there are still thousands of leaves laying in and around the alley. CJ wasn't too into Operation Leaf Removal, but Bee thought it was fun. She used her Razor scooter to move small piles to the compost/recycling bin. DOWN SOUTH: We went to yoga in Columbia City. Once again it was just CJ, Annabelle, their yoga buddy from their former class and one older girl. On the way down to yoga the kids took turns reading the pages of "Today I Feel Silly." It's a book about moods.

IMHO, some of the verses were a bit forced in their rhyming - they didn't just roll off the tongue. But the book does, I suppose, help kids realize that people have different kinds of days and different kinds of moods for different reasons.

The kids' favorite part of the book was the end, where there were a built in pair of wheels they could spin and change a child's face, reflecting different moods.

AMEN TO THAT: I came across an opinion piece today about what's not right with so many public schools right now. It had a rather incendiary headline: "Time for Schools to Stop Damaging Children."

While the title was a bit over the top, I agreed with the article's message. Written by Ruth Bettelheim, Ph D., one of the contentions was, "Our classrooms are based on outdated ideas, functioning like mid-20th century factories. Each child is offered an identical curriculum, like a car moving along an assembly line. However, children aren't units of production and this approach is failing. Since 1970, the rate of high school graduation has declined, and the United States has fallen from first to twelfth among developed nations in education."

Too true.

The entire (short) piece can be found here, on the Huffington Post.

Splashy Monday

HIT THE GROUND RUNNING: This morning we were up and at 'em before 7 a.m. That's not out of the ordinary (unfortunately), but what was different is that we were in the car heading southbound on I-5 by 7:30 a.m.

Our destination was Grand Mound, Washington, location of the Great Wolf Lodge.

A month or so ago, I scored day passes for the four of us for just $15 per person. That's a great opportunity as GWL doesn't sell day passes - you have to be a guest there to access the water park and it is $pendy. (Their bargain rate for a room right now is $199 a night.) We bought our passes through a Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Clark County fund raiser. I learned about it from one of the many discounts/coupons Web sites I follow.

We arrived at GWL and all its faux forestry/boulder glory at 9:04. It took two minutes to redeem our passes and we made a beeline for the waterpark.We spent four action-packed hours there. There was a little kids' area (pictured above) that was a little tame for CJ and Annabelle. There was a great wave pool (with warmish water, mercifully) that we had a lot of fun in. (Those waves got pretty wild - at one point a series of four or five of 'em knocked me down and kept me down!) CJ and Annabelle bobbed about happily though. (The blurry photo below is of them in the wave pool when it was between its two wave cycles. One cycle was waves in a straight line coming from the deep end. The other cycle was more on the diagonal, with bigger, more unpredictable swells.)
On the edge of the wave pool was a raining mushroom. CJ was drawn to it - no doubt the mushrooms reminded him of his Mario games.
It's funny, for a kid who doesn't like swimming much, CJ was a waterpark maniac! (He was that way during our trip to Orlando, too.) He wanted to go on the biggest, scariest, fastest attractions over and over and over and took more than a couple of snootfuls of water in the process. He declares "the crazy slide" (the Howlin' Tornado, which Annabelle wasn't quite tall enough to ride) his favorite.
Annabelle says River Canyon Run was her favorite. Here's a clip of the action...

The tubes of the slides are largely outside the building - which makes them bright when you're in them, which I appreciated. And now that we've been there, we know what that huge funnel shaped structure is on the lodge's side. It's the part of the Howlin' Tornado ride where you "whoosh back and forth and back and forth" after dropping off a steep ledge, per CJ's description.

There were a couple of smaller (non raft riding) slides inside the park which we did a few runs on. There was also a separate activity pool with multiple basketball hoops. We spent just a few minutes there. At the other end of that pool was a line of lily pads the kids could traverse.
We needed to hit the road by 1 and wanted to make the most of the pool time, so we didn't spend much time checking out the rest of the lodge. We did, however, HAVE to check out its arcade. It had lots of really big, really new, really EXPEN$IVE games (many were 4 tokens, or quarters, per play).

The kids did play air hockey and one driving game. But, frankly, the game that caught my attention was this one!!! Inspired by today's trip, CJ reports that he's going to have a hotel when he's an adult. "And when I have a hotel, I won't deny my guests' requests - even the most ridiculous requests."

We did a couple of educational things in the car today (I swear!), including trying to memorize everyone's new phone numbers. We used pictures and talked about patterns in the numbers to help burn them into the brain.

And we did make it home in plenty of time for Annabelle to attend her beloved ballet class at 3:30 (which is why we made such an early start this a.m.).

Tomorrow we'll be back to the old grind.