Zooming Around

HUNTING AND GATHERING: Today, a "good" two hours was spent chasing down supplies for the kids' expo projects (the event is on the eve of Jan. 27, BTW). Our first stop was the always overwhelming Michaels, where we spent an inordinate amount of time in the scrapbooking aisles, looking for little gems and gears and other accessories we might be able to use on CJ's Mecha Yoshi.

We also picked up a couple of tools to use while forming the Sculpey into a skeleton, and bought some plaster casting stuff to fill Annabelle's Yoshi's boots, so now he's more stable.

We had to stand in line for more than 5 minutes, of course. While waiting, we were surrounded by displays hoping to tempt people into a last minute purchase. One of the items hanging at the kids' eye level was a bag of circus peanuts.

CJ and Annabelle have never had circus peanuts, and that's no accident. Honestly, could there be a worse "food"? They're neon orange, and definitely NOT peanuts. To kill time, I picked up the bag and asked the kids what they thought the number one ingredient in the 'peanuts' was. CJ ventured "orange food coloring" as a guess. Wrong - both red and yellow food coloring were named, but they were at the bottom of the list. Annabelle studied the bag for a second and then guessed, "Clowns?"

At that, the lady in line ahead of me busted out laughing. So did, I, of course.

"Well there's a clown on the bag," Annabelle reasoned. "This is one of those things that you really should write down," the woman ahead of me said."

"Don't worry," I told her. "I will."

After Michael's, we were off to Toys R Us to buy another Yoshi (we'd only bought one, for Annabelle, until CJ decided he wanted to make a Mecha Yoshi). We found one, which was a relief. We were in our car and off to school when Annabelle announced, "There's something wrong with Yoshi's face."

Huh what?

Sure 'nuff, on the side of Yoshi's head that was turned toward the back of the box, his ENTIRE CHEEK was caved in. And while that would have been acceptable for Annabelle's model, where we chopped off half his head, no way would it work for CJ's project. Aaaaaaaaargh. That meant we'd get to go to Toys R Us AGAIN after science class. Awesome.

ZOOMERS: Today's science was tons o' fun, as always. Last week the kids learned about how tops spin on their axis.

The class stated with a Doodletops demonstration. They're cool little tops with pens in the middle of them, so they make a design as they spin. While the first one was going 'round CJ turned to me and said, "I want one of those SO BADLY!"

The project of the day was spinning on a horizontal axis. They used a string and discs to make "zoomers." The string was threaded through the disc, and then they had to spin it in circles to wind up the string and then pull it in and out to make it "zoom." (And yes, I know that was a bad explanation and yes, I know I should have taken a video.)

Here's CJ demonstrating his zoomer for Christian this evening.

TAKING FORM: Tonight, some progress was made on semi invisible Yoshi. We got into the Sculpey and Annabelle mooshed it around a bit.
Annabelle started sculpting Yoshi's arm bones. It was a good chance to review some anatomy, talking about the names of the bones in the arms.

Thankfully, I'd found a great game online just yesterday Whack a Bone game on Anatomy Arcade. You have to wait out a 15 second commercial first (and when it's over, be careful not to click PLAY on the ad, but down on the page below it), but worth it's worth the wait. I chose the arm game, since I knew we'd be sculpting Yoshi's arm first.


And tonight, that's just what Annabelle did. Using some gum paste forming tools, she carefully carved a humerus, and ulna and a radius, carpals, metacarpals and phalanges.
We baked the Sculpey and tomorrow we'll stick the arm bones in and get busy on the skull, I suppose.