Midweek

TO DYE FOR: Science class was lots of fun today. Continuing the textiles unit, last week the kids stained a swatch of fabric with dirt, paint, oil, mustard and other splotches. Today, they stained fabric again, but this time with a much more pleasing result.

First, they folded their fabric square and dipped it in three different colors (yellow, red and blue). They did that with three different squares, and each result was different, of course.

After that, they each got a cup and had different colored Sharpies they used to draw dots in a circle pattern. They used an eyedropper to apply alcohol to that and voila! It produced the colorful pattern you saw in the first picture above.

The kids in the class were all really pleased with how their experimenting turned out.

LISTENING IN: Before science class, we watched an ISS update. There are now six onboard there, three more joined the three already up there last night. Today, we got to see a live video conference call. It kind of felt like eavesdropping, because the astronauts and cosmonauts were talking to family members on Earth.

The kids loved it when one of the Russian children asked his dad about the Angry Bird stuffed animal he'd sent up in the Soyuz capsule with him. The cosmonaut assured his child that he was taking good care of it. :)

We also listened and watched a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony held this morning held in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C. Honorees were Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Here, Armstrong addresses the crowd.

Image Credit: NASA/Paul Alers

CJ and Annabelle were pretty impressed that these guys were getting medals. Usually, that's the type of stuff they read about in books, or see at the end of "Star Wars."

SLICE-SHAPED HIGHLIGHT: Today was the kids' favorite Wednesday of the month. It was "Pizza Wednesday" - the one day a month there is a pizza party in the library before their science class. While they dug in, I grabbed a book off the shelves for them to read. My eyes fell on "The Greedy Triangle." It was a cute (and educational) story about a shape who perpetually wanted "just" one more side and one more angle. He morphed from a triangle to a quadrilateral to a pentagon and up through a hexagon and beyond, never satisfied.

Eventually, however, he had a change of heart and decided that three sides and three corners was a perfect fit for him.

Right after they finished eating, the kids took an Accelerated Reader test on that book, as well as one we listened to on the way to class, "The Big Balloon Race." I was surprised at the end of the story when the author's notes informed us that it was based on one of America's most popular balloonists of the late 1800s, Mary Myers, who was better known as Carlotta the Lady Aeronaut. Apparently Mary/Carlotta made more ascensions in hydrogen balloons than any other aeronaut of her time. We'll definitely be checking into Carlotta's history a bit more, with non fiction sources this time!

TWEET! I get dozens of email from various branches of NASA a day about all sorts of interesting stuff. I got a BIG smile when one of them had the subject line that referenced me (and 149 other people). The subject said: "NASA Invites 150 Lucky Twitter Followers To Launch Of Mars Rover." A week from now, I will have finished my first day of the Tweetup, and will be looking forward to the rocket launch on the Friday a.m. after Thanksgiving.

Here's a link to the press release: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/nov/HQ_11-387_Curiosity_Tweetup.html

Today, Annabelle helped on some of the cookies I am working on to take with me. After four failures, I FINALLY came up with a couple of designs I'm OK with.

GOING DOWN: I forgot to post these pics earlier in the week, on our way to the Museum of Flight. They show some of the demo of the Viaduct, which is a pretty Big Deal in these parts.

As we drove through, you could actually smell the concrete dust in the air.