On the Move

HE'S BA-ACK: As I'm clearing the dishes out of the kitchen sink this morning, I had an eight legged surprise. I swear the thing popped up out of the drain. Which, of course, immediately made me think it was THE FACE EATING MONSTER SPIDER that I flushed down the bathtub drain day before yesterday.

Though it's clear this was the same type of spider, this one was about half the size of that first one. Needless to say, it went to a watery grave, too.

BOOK LOVERS: We started the day with a pair of great picture books. "Older Than the Stars" by Karen C. Fox, illustrations by Nancy Davis, does a nice job of explaining the Big Bang in a way people of any age could understand. The book explains that the iron in our blood may have once been part of a volcano, calcium in our bones may have been part of an ancient oyster shell, the oxygen we breathe may have also passed through a dinosaur's lungs and every particle in our bodies was once part of a star. Super cool stuff. The book has a nice Web site: www.olderthanthestars.com

At the end of the book there's a timeline of the universe from 0 seconds (the instant of the Big Bang) through the first three minutes to 13.75 billion years later (now-ish). (A PDF version of the timeline can be viewed here: http://www.charlesbridge.com/client/client_pdfs/downloadables/Older_than_Stars_Timeline_large.pdf)/. The book also has a glossary, with vocab like atom, carbon, electron, minerals, neutron particle, proton, solar system and such. We spent several minutes going over (and over!) what each term meant, and then I had the kids stand up and I quizzed them about the words. Below, they discuss carbon ...To follow up on the talk of atoms, we went to BrainPOP and watched a video about atoms. They also took a review quiz and did respectably.

We also read the charming "Wheedle on the Needle." First published in 1974 (I remember it well!), it's a cute story about a creature named Wheedle who had lived in the Pacific Northwest since before the Westward expansion. When a lot of people came, Wheedle got annoyed by all the noise and was driven out of his stomping grounds. He chose to live atop Mt. Rainier. It worked for awhile, but before too long, the noise became bothersome there, as well. He decided to travel to where all the noise was coming from - Seattle - and wound up trying to get some sleep atop the Space Needle. He had brought clouds along with him, and Seattle-ites grew tired of all the rain. Finally a deal was struck and the Wheedle was able to sleep atop the Space Needle. His nose glows when he's asleep, which explains the red light atop the Needle. The kids liked the story and the character. Wheedle went on to fame outside of the book's pages, serving as the Seattle Supersonics' mascot from 1978 through 1985.

In reading the Wikipedia article , I learned that a bit of a war was waged over the Wheedle, and that a second edition published in 2002 scarcely resembled the original book. Fortunately, author Stephen Cosgrove won the right to his book back from the publisher in 2009, and the third edition (2010, which is the one we read), retains the essence of the original.

MOVING DAY: We spent a significant amount of time today helping Kennedy move. We met him at his new apartment (about two blocks away, at the bottom of our hill!) We also went to his old place once to help him load some larger items. There, Annabelle amused herself with some Pee-Wee Herman Colorforms. Meanwhile, CJ actually helped pack some of Ken's clothes. DO UNTO OTHERS: From the backseat of the car today I hear CJ proclaim, "If I ran a church I would tell everyone that they should be nice to everyone, because you never know, god could look like anyone. He could be in disguise, so you should be nice to everyone because they might be god." No idea where he got that idea or what made him think of it at that moment.

Shortly thereafter, Annabelle started talking about Noah's ark. She had the "facts" down. Not sure where she gleaned them, as we haven't discussed the ark at all, either.