Bouncing Back

ON THE MEND: While yesterday from 3 p.m. to 6 a.m. today was no tiptoe through the tulips, I do believe I'm on the uptick.

At one point last evening, during the peak of my nauseated stupor, I awoke to find a card (hybrid of front and inside above) on the pillow next to my head. I could still smell the fresh scent of the Mr. Sketch markers on them. :)

You can be sure my first order of business today was going around the house and disinfecting every surface, throwing open windows and doing laundry. I so hope no one else comes down with what I had. It was horrific.

GOING GREEN: Not too late this morning, I realized it was St. Patrick's Day.

I told the kids they were lucky their pajamas had green on them, or they might get pinched. Naturally, CJ wanted to know where this pinching tradition came from. (I've always just accepted it, unquestioningly.) We found an article by the Christian Science Monitor online that explained several St. Patrick's Day traditions, including the fact that the pinching is "an entirely American tradition that probably started in the early 1700s." Supposedly St. Patrick’s partiers thought wearing green made one invisible to leprechauns, who would pinch anyone they could see. So, people began pinching those not wearing green as a reminder that leprechauns were lurking.

I hopped online looking for resources for the kids. I found a few reading and writing exercises on EdHelper.com.

The kids read and answered questions about rainbows and several stories about leprechauns. I also had a couple of drawing worksheets for them to complete. It kept them busy while I was still feeling rather green around the gills.

I played some Irish music on YouTube while they worked. Annabelle couldn't help herself - she just had to dance. Little did she know my camera's video function was rolling ...

Together we read the book "Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato," an Irish folk tale retold by Tomie dePaola. Afterward, the kids took an Accelerated Reader quiz for that book, as well as two books we finished yesterday, Ruby Bridges' "Through My Eyes" and "She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain."

YESTERDAY ONCE MORE:For posterity, I'll go ahead and post a few of the things we did yesterday.

Having finally finished "Through My Eyes" by Ruby Bridges, the kids each took a couple of minutes to write her a letter. The address for the Ruby Bridges Foundation is in the book, so we'll mail them there, along with a couple of dollars.

DRIVIN' SIX WHITE HORSES: We got in some Americana learnin' by reading "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain," a picture book based on the old song.

Naturally, after reading the story, we had to cue it up on YouTube. I found a great old version by
Ramblin' Tommy Scott. Then my eyes fell upon another video. Made in 1949, it features the "Catfields" and the "McHounds" in the most absurdly violent cartoon I think I've ever seen. It makes Tom & Jerry look like the Teletubbies.

And then somehow we wound up finding another old gem from the same era, by the same animators - "Shortnin' Bread." That's a song that's on the kids' current Musikgarten CD of African American tunes.

The cartoon was complete with a follow the bouncing ball sing-a-long. CJ wanted to know why there were so many typos in the text. I explained to him they weren't typos, they were trying to be authentic sounding to the roots of the song.

UP YONDER: We made it to Shoreline for science class, and as soon as we walked in, we saw our glass art tiles made weeks before were back from the kiln!

I was assuming we'd be able to take them home when they were done, but they were hanging in the front window along with everyone else's tiles in what looks like a semi permanent art installation. Hmm. Guess we won't be getting them for awhile...

The kids were happy with their finished products. Here's CJ's Mega Man ...

and here's Annabelle's self portrait ...
We started a new unit in science class. It's all about rocks. For our first foray into the subject matter, each student had six rocks they had to sort by similarity. We used magnifying glasses to study the rocks and listed their characteristics (smooth, rough, speckled and so on). And we conducted one fun experiment - rubbing rocks together to see what would happen. We did it over both black and white paper, and were amazed by the rock dust we created!