Typical Tuesday

SPROUTS: This morning we checked out the seeds the kids planted last week. The egg carton contains three kinds of seeds - chard, cilantro and squash. Most of the egg cups have sprouted by now, but there were three that hadn't. I asked the kids to check out the plantings, look at the corresponding chart they'd made regarding what's planted where, and come up with some observations. Together, they discovered that all of the spots where a squash seed had been planted haven't yet sprouted. Hmm. "What does that mean?" I asked them. They decided it means one of two things. Either there's something wrong with the squash seeds and they're not going to grow or the squash seeds take longer to germinate and we'll be seeing their sprouts soon. Here's hoping it's the latter. BRAIN PAIN: The new math book is challenging the kids more, which is great. Right off the bat it's asking them to add and subtract hundreds without putting pen to paper, by counting the tens and ones mentally. As he brought me his finished assignment to check, CJ said, earnestly, "You don't know how much work it took to get me this far." :)

MORE FUN WITH MAGNETS: Annabelle practically begged to do some magnet experiments today, so I dug the magnet science kit out and we did just that. First, the kids used a magnet to drag a little steel ball through a maze. They had no trouble. Next, the kids each dropped a paperclip into a glass of water. I asked them to guess whether or not they'd be able to drag the magnet through the water using a magnet on the outside of the glass. They didn't think they would. Initially, CJ was using a thick pint glass, and while the paperclip reacted slightly to the magnet, the glass was too thick to actually move it around. Annabelle had a much thinner glass, and she was able to drag her paperclip to and fro. Next, we taped a magnet to the top of a plastic car and the kids held another magnet in their hands. I challenged the kids to push the car forward with the magnet - without touching the magnet, of course. They quickly figured out they needed to use the same pole (say north to north) to push the car forward, and the opposite pole (north to south) to pull the car around. Last but not least, we did a fun experiment using doughnut shape magnets. I told the kids their job was to see if they could make the magnets float by stacking them in the proper orientation. They took turns putting the 'doughnuts' on the pencil pole, and sure 'nough, they levitated the magnets. Pretty darn cool! EVERYBODY POLKA!: The new unit in Musikgarten is about German music. No shortage of material to work with there. Their new unit CD started off with a cuckoo clock song but worked its way up through Strauss, Mozart, Haydn, Bach and more. Good stuff. When I dropped the kids off at music today, I noticed this plaque on the wall for the first time. I think I want to try to make one of these. It would be so easy, with some wire and sheet music and plaques recycled from Goodwill or Value Village. COLUMBIA CITY: We finally made it back to yoga today after missing a couple of weeks due to that darn flu.

We arrived a bit early, so we spent about 15 minutes in the used book store next door to the yoga studio. There, CJ scored something he's been looking for for months - a "Where's Waldo" book. It seems like every household had three of those in the '90s, but try as we might, we couldn't find a single copy in a Goodwill or Value Village for anything.

Naturally, we also picked up a few more books. Four hours after the fact, I think Annabelle's already read them all.