Crystal Castle

CRYSTAL VISION: Yesterday the postal 'service' delivered (threw on the ground underneath our mailbox, in the rain) a present for CJ's birthday. It's a cool crystal growing kit from Auntie Renee and Uncle Jim! Neat-o! The photos on the box were intriguing and both kids wanted to get into it right away. I made them wait a tortuous day.

The directions were, well, thorough. It took two pages to tell us that we needed a rock, a clear bowl, and 2 cups of boiling water. Check. ;)

CeeJ poured the crystals in the bowl, I handled the boiling water and they both stirred it up. It looked (and even smelled) a bit like cherry Kool-Aid.And now, the wait is on. Stay tuned. ...PENCIL, PAPER: The kids also did some paperwork this morning. They had science homework to do. Part of that involved drawing a picture of a rock gleaned from our yard and then writing a couple of sentences about how that rock got to be its current size and shape.

After that, they worked on a language arts - correcting grammar, capitalization and punctuation in a really poorly written sentences in a handy little book I got at their Shoreline school. Speaking of which ...

TO THE TEST: We went to school a bit early this afternoon, so the kids could take some Accelerated Reader quizzes on book they've read. Until recently, we used to be able to do this at home, and boy, was that a nicer set up. Now, often it's been days since they read the book(s) and the details aren't as fresh and they aren't scoring the 100 percents as was consistently the case before. However, CJ did take a quiz on the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" book he finished last night and got 100 percent on that.

I hate to think I need to schedule their free reading toward Wednesdays, so they can score better on the tests. (Of course, this begs the question, "Do we really even need these tests?" The answer is, of course, "No." But I do like the idea. I do like to know that they're retaining at least some of what they're reading, and I do like our school days to have at least some of the hallmarks of a standard education, and Lord knows a standardized test is the epitome of a standard education. ...)

LIKE A ROLLING STONE: In science class, we're still studying rocks. Today one of the main themes was how rocks are used. To help wrap the kids' head around this, the class took a very short field trip (half a block) and found rocks used in sidewalks, asphalt, a sign, siding and so on.

The wind was whipping and the skies were threatening. Annabelle and I didn't even have coats with us, so it was a frigid field trip. We soldiered on, though. When we got back to the classroom, the kids recorded some data and then we shifted our focus to sandpaper - which has tiny rocks embedded in it.
CJ was exceptional in science class today. He paid attention 100 percent of the time, raised his hand to offer answers and ask questions. He was utterly engaged and lived up to his potential. Perhaps that's because he knew there was a reward if he stayed on task. ...

ANOTHER CASTLE: I'd promised the kids if they were great at science we could check out a new to us video game store in Edmonds, just a couple/few miles north of their school. I think we've found their new favorite place. ;)

It's called Another Castle, named, no doubt, for the scene in Super Mario Bros. where Mario makes it to the end of the level and the castle, where the newbie game player assumes the kidnapped Princess will be, only to be told, "Thank you Mario! But our Princess is in another castle."

They have a large, well organized inventory of games (everything from Atari to XBox PS3 and beyond). CJ found a Mega Man GameBoy and a sorta hard-ish to come by Nintendo DS Game & Watch Collection. The guy running the store got a kick out of CJ and his knowledge and love of the old school games.

The store also has a pretty rad arcade set up, so we burned through $7 worth of quarters. The kids played everything from Donkey Kong Jr. to Street Fighter to Dungeons & Dragons to Ms. Pacman and more. Good times!

CJ could hardly wait to get home to try out his new GameBoy game in a device - the Super GameBoy - he'd gotten as a birthday present. The device lets you plug regular GameBoy games into a converter which, in turn, gets plugged into a Super Nintendo console. We wired it up and plugged the things in and then fired it up and MAGIC! It worked beautifully the very first time. CJ was SO pleased. :) BTW, don't you just love CJ's shirt? In case you can't read it, it says "You have died of dysentery" and it's from the great old Oregon Trail game.