Slow Mo

THE ONE THAT STARTED IT ALL: On this day in 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, which launched humanity into the Space Age. To commemorate that event, we watched a couple of cool videos about Sputnik, and read some about NASA's take on the historic day.

I thought it would be fun for the kids to make their own satellites, so I gave 'em each a potato, some tinfoil, some stickers and glue and they got busy making Spudniks!

Sticking a toothipick deep into a potato is harder than you might think. Fortunately, no blood was shed, in CJ's case.

Annabelle chose to leave most of her toothpicks protruding, producing a rather lethal looking satellite. She said its design is "to poke away alien attackers."

And there you have it, two Spudniks.

EIGHT DAYS A WEEK: An email from the kids' yoga teacher today mentioned she wished there were eight days a week so that she could get more things done. That made me think of The Beatles' song, which I couldn't get out of my head. IT also prompted me to ask CJ and Annabelle for their thoughts on the topic.

CJ wrote: "The Eighth Day: The eighth day is Funday. Funday is after Friday. I like Funday because I wish there were 8 days in a week."

Annabelle wrote: "The Eighth Day. The eighth day will be Moonday, the opposite of Sunday. so it will be at the end of the week. And everything will be opposite."

What would your eighth day be? :)

THESPIAN: This afternoon CJ attended his first Theather of Possibility class. It's held at the University Heights Center which is housed in the century-plus old Seattle Public Schools University Heights School in the U District. Nice that the old building wasn't sold off to condo developers, as was the case with the old Queen Anne High School. Or that it wasn't handed over to well connected special interests/the lowest bidder, as was the case with other SPS property. We admired the old woodwork and architecture before class time.For the first class, one parent was asked to stay with the student. Christian stayed with CJ today. They both had lots of positive things to say about the experience when they got home. Interestingly, it sounds like several of CJ's classmates are homeschooled. We'll see how things develop here, but so far, so good.

SLOWING DOWN: The kids did lots of reading today, we did a math lesson and some grammar, but mostly I was trying to get over a cold. I should have been trying to do that yesterday, but for some crazy reason, yesterday, on 2.5 hours' sleep, I thought we should go to the Seattle Center and the Space Needle. While that was fun, it wiped me out for sure. Thankfully, I'm a little bit better today, as is CJ. Christian is still sounding pretty bad though;.