Cloudy Day

TURN THE PAGE: In one of my email inboxes I received a cute calendar project from the folks at Scout Creative. It was a monster mash up calendar with options for different head, bodies and arms - perfect for the kids to mix and match.

These things are NOT easy to put together - so many tiny tabs and precision cuts. But they're pretty darn cute when all is said and done.

GREY BLANKET:Dawn brought what looked to be a sunny day. Fortunately, we got outside early and I mowed while the kids and Kirby played in the yard. But by late morning the clouds were rolling in and come noontime, we even had some rain. That reminded me, I'd picked up a book about clouds at the library, so we busted it out and got busy.

It was super short and simple science book - simply titled "Clouds" (by Marion Dane Bauer with illustrations by John Wallace). In this primary book, there were never more than two sentences per page. But sometimes simple translates into easier to remember, and that was the case with this book. In fact, before we read it, I flipped through every page and asked the kids questions about what I saw on each page. Like, on page 8 it asked, "Can you walk in a cloud?" CJ immediately said 'no,' in a tone that let me know he though it was a silly question. Annabelle thought about it for a moment before thinking to say, 'fog.' I also asked them to name types of clouds and though we've studied it before, they both drew a blank. And so, we read the book. Afterward, I asked them the same questions I had before reading, and they got them all right this time. Much better.

While we were reading, the sky had heavy gray blanket of stratus clouds. By late afternoon, we found a mixed bag overhead. CJ and Annabelle had no trouble potting cirrus, cumulous and stratus clouds in the Seattle sky. (And they even remembered that cirrus clouds are made of ice crystals, hence their white, wispy appearance.) At one point, they both spotted a cirrus cloud that they thought looked like a number four.To augment our cloud study, we hopped to BrainPop and watched their video about clouds. It was basically a review of what we'd just read. The kids took a BrainPOP quiz about clouds (they scored 90 percent). Frankly, I thought that was pretty good considering a fair number of questions on the test weren't covered by the video.

While on BrainPOP we discover they've added a "Gameup" section where, as one might presume, there are educational game to be played. We were pretty happy to discover that, of course. As it turns out these games are necessarily native to BrainPOP - we recognized a couple of them from other sites - but it's nice to have them collected at BrainPOP.

We started with a game called "Dig It" from Calculation Nation. It dealt with fractions, which is perfect since that's what their current math assignments are about. And speaking of math ...

MATH = PAIN: Today while completing their assignments, the kids both started complaining about their hands hurting. I thought that was sooooo laaaaaaame and told them so. I finally stopped what I was doing and walked across to the island where they were painstakingly coloring in 2 out of 5 parts, or 7 out of 9 parts and so on. CJ, especially, was doing a painstakingly perfect job of it. I told them to knock that stuff right off. "This isn't a coloring exercise, it's about math!" I reminded them. And then I showed them how to make Xs or cross hatches or anything other than the blackout approach. Much better.

Mixed Bag

BRICK HOUSE: Today was the kids' second day of LEGO building class. CJ had to finish building a house he started last week. Meanwhile, Annabelle got to disassemble her build from last week and start working on a Blue Angels model. She also got to get some time in on the class build project - the shuttle on the launch pad. Neat-o!

SPEAKING OF SHUTTLES: We had some more cookies to make for a rocket launching friend to take to on a visit the mothership (space shuttle Discovery at the Space Coast, cross country). I had some shuttle blanks left over, so of course the kids had fun customizing them. And here's what the the 'official' cookies looked like. As you can see, I also attempted some NASA logos this go round. BY DESIGN: Yesterday, CJ hatched an idea for a new kind of Pokemon character, specifically the Firelord Pokemon.
All by herself, Annabelle found a Pokemon to build off in a YouTube video. She took a screen shot, opened Photoshop, started a new file, pasted the screen shot, cropped it and then used several different tools and techniques to create Firelord Pokemon. She consulted with CJ throughout the process and made changes per his specs. She was even savvy enough to remember to save her work periodically (and even saved different versions of it in files with different names). Not bad for a six year old. :)

FINGERTIPS: While looking for Scotch tape, Annabelle came across some fingernail polish and asked if she could use it. I said of course, and ended up putting the polish on for her. At that she said, "When someone else paints my nails, it feels like a fairy tickling my fingernails." After we were done, Bee went fishing for compliments. She went to CJ and said, "What do you think of my nails?"

He responded with an enthusiastic, "Cool!" which I thought was sweet of him.
Apparently it wasn't sweet enough for Annabelle. "When you're a grown up and a woman asks you about her nails, you should say 'they're pretty' instead of 'they're cool.' Girls prefer that," she informed.

I told CJ I think I'd rather have someone tell me my nails are "cool" and that his feedback was just fine. :)

AND ANOTHER ONE'S GONE: Annabelle was showing me how one of her adult teeth is coming in. When I was poking around, I touched another tooth and out it popped (no kidding, just like that). She promptly set about writing the Tooth Fairy a note, explaining she expects cash but also wants to keep her tooth. ABOUT LAST NIGHT: A few odds and ends left over from last night. First up, the kids with the wonderful new Dave Niehuas statue. I would have liked to hang out with Dave for awhile, but there was a line of people waiting for photo opps. We'll have to catch Dave next season, when the newness of the statue has worn off.

Here's Kennedy, a/k/a Boba Fett, busting a move to the music between innings.
As we were walking out of the stadium (did I mention the Ms lost) a concession worker appeared from a back door with an armload of cotton candy, handing it out free to "lucky" people. Bee was thrilled, because we don't buy that crap for her. Tired and disappointed, we made the longish walk back to our cars talking about next year.

If They Don't Win It's a Shame

LAST DANCE: We had to end the baseball season exactly where we started it - at Safeco Field. Where else would we be tonight?

We had great seats for a $ong ($50 plus apiece seats for $17 each), right down by Ichiro. Turns out we overpaid for our seats. ;)

The Mariners didn't score a damn run all night long. And so, another miserable Mariners season comes to an end. I'm glad we were there for the last game, but am damn tired of seeing them losing.

As Annabelle said tonight, "Can't they EVER win when we go to a game?"

Naturally, we did more today than go to the Mariners game, but I'm spent and for now, I'm just going to let Bernie Williams sing us out for the season.

Already, we're looking forward to 2012. The Ms home opener is on April 13 (inauspicous, to be sure). But you know what they say - there's always next year.

Books and Birds

ALL ABOUT IMAGE: I noticed at one point today CJ was walking around with a pencil perched atop his ear. I'd never seen him do that before, so I asked him what was up. He told me it was part of an attempt to look like the smartest person in the world. LOL. "Another way would be to read a Greek dictionary. With some glasses on," he added. Unfortunately, we don't have any Greek dictionaries laying around the house.

TIDE HAS TURNED: Recently, I noticed a hand puppet Annabelle made out of a paper bag. It was clearly a riff on Dora the Explorer. "Dora's" name tag cracked me up. Guess Annabelle considers herself to have graduated from Dora's fan club.

ALASKAN WAY: Did you know that there's a rocket launch site in Alaska? Neither did we, until a couple of days ago when I read a Minotaur 4 rocket would be launching from the Kodiak Launch Complex this morning.

And so, we tuned in to Spaceflightnow.com at breakfast time, awaiting an 8:49 our time launch. The rocket was (relatively) tiny, but it was still cool to see it go. On board was the TacSat 4 satellite. It will be positioned in an elliptical orbit tailored for communications with mobile military units deployed in war zones.

I found some Naval Research Laboratory/U.S. Air Force images of the 992-pound satellite being encapsulated inside the Minotaur's 92-inch nose cone. Pretty cool!
BOOKISH: We had to take some library books back today, so we did a little "reading down the pile" as I call it. Christian read the kids "Blast off to Earth - A Look at Geography" by Loreen Leedy. It involved aliens visiting Earth and taking note of its geographical features. They also read "There Once was a Sky Full of Stars," written by Bob Crelin with pictures by Amie Ziner. The text was all limericks, which provided an interesting twist on a familiar topic (our solar system).

We took books back to the Ballard branch, and there we found a great display for Banned Book Week. CJ, especially, was fascinated by it. There were books in jars, books with locks on them, a book in a vice, one covered in spray foam, and other visual interpretations of banning books. The kids were surprised to see their beloved Captain Underpants was a poster child for banned books, and when CJ saw that Harry Potter was on the hit list he proclaimed, "That is TERRIBLE!" loudly enough for the whole library to hear. :0 Normally, I'd be embarrassed, but by their smiles I could tell the librarians actually liked the fact that he had such a strong negative reaction to it.

PURTY BIRDS: It has been too long since we did a cartooning session, so today I let the kids pick out a project from the Activity TV Web site. They chose the "Lovey Bird" cartoon. The kids did a good job following directions - and adding their own twists to the formula. Bee's bird is pink (big surprise).CJ opted for purple. I told him I liked how he chose a different color for its eyelid - it really makes the bird's eye pop.

Wings and Fins

TAKING FLIGHT: On Saturday, we took advantage of the super awesome Smithsonian Magazine free museum pass dealio and went to The Museum of Flight.

It. Was. AWESOME. Seriously, if you live anywhere in or around Seattle, you need to get on down there, and if you don't live close, you need to plan a visit and make sure TMoF is on your To Do list. There's something quite magical about the place. I think I would like to live there.

We saw so many amazing, historic aircraft!

Case in point: Here's the First EVER 747. A pretty big piece of history, I'd say. But doing that even better ...
How about the first Air Force One? Not only could you see the outside, but we got to go inside. It thrilled me to know we were absolutely walking in the footsteps of Kennedy and Khrushchev. Just think, Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and LBJ all sat in this commander in chief's chair in the conference room on the plane. And below is the AF1 cockpit.
Wish we could have sat in the chairs. :) Here's an on board office. The plane had several phones on board, each carefully labeled regarding whether or not it was a secure line.

This first presidential jet plane, a custom Boeing 707-120, is known as SAM (Special Air Missions) 970. It was delivered in 1959 to replace Eisenhower's Super-Constellation.
We also got to go inside the amazing Concorde jet. Man, was it tight inside. There was a central (narrow!) aisle with just two seats on each side, tight squeeze ocean breeze.Capable of altitude of 55,000 feet and a speed of Mach 2, the one on display in Seattle was the very last Concorde to fly a commercial flight.

The Museum of Flight also has some space age vehicles. For instance, there's a mock up of the International Space Stations' Destiny laboratory. It was designed and built by SPACEHAB Corporation in October 2002. There is also a Boeing Lunar Roving Vehicle. Built in 1971 as an engineering mock-up, we marveled at its wheels, which appeared to be made out of chainmail. The museum has so many breathtakingly beautiful airplanes from the WWI and WWI eras. One of our favorites was this lovely Curtiss JN-D4 Jenny! After WWI, thousands of these were sold as surplus. These biplanes were a big part of the barnstorming era that helped awaken America to civil aviation through much of the 1920s.
And then there's the cool Corsair, with wings that fold up so you could pack 'em in tightly on ships. This particular plane has a remarkable history. Its home was the former Naval Air Station at Sand Point, Seattle, in 1950. It was ditched into Lake Washington following a midair collision. Incredibly, the aircraft was recovered from the lake in 1983 and restored to the mint condition it is today. I could go on and on and on. The whole time we were there, basically Christian and I were just talking about how much we need to come back on another day when we had more time to spend. We're going to have to check out their membership options and see what kind of enrichment/education programs they have there.

AMAZING TALE: This afternoon we went to see "Dolphin Tale," the story of Winter, the tail-less dolphin, in 3D, starring Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd and Harry Conick Jr., no less.
A photo of Winter, when we saw her in May of 2010.

We're happy to be able to say we met Winter before she was a Major Motion Picture star. :) When we went to Florida in May of 2010 for the launch of space shuttle Atlantis, driving cross state to see Winter was definitely on our to do list. The kids and I had discovered her via the Scholastic Web site, which held a virtual tour of the Clearwater Aquarium, Winter's home, on Oct. 7, 2009.

We'll never forget our trip to the Clearwater Aquarium, our behind the scenes tour (where our tour guide called Annabelle "the most brilliant 5-year-old I've ever met), and basically having Winter all to ourselves.

Her now very famous prosthetic was on a lawn chair right next to us!

We went back to Winter's Web site this morning and were happy to spot her right away on her Web cam! There's a neat feature on the site that lets you take a snapshot of what you're watching, which is cool. CJ took a few Winter snapshots, including this one:The kids both played Dolphins in Depth, where they learned more about dolphin body part, as well as a couple of other (less educational) games in the Winter Web site's Kid Zone.

Overall, "Dolphin Tale" was a pretty darn good movie. CJ gave it an 8 out of 10 as the credits rolled. I will admit that a tear slipped down my right cheek at the end, when they showed real live (not made for a 3D movie) footage of all of the people missing limbs coming to meet Winter. Another take away from the movie - homeschooling is cool/mainstream. The little girl character in the movie is homeschooled by her Dr. (marine biologist) Dad. That, and the mom of the young boy in the movie comes to realize a conventional education isn't necessarily all that it's cracked up to be.

When we met Winter, as we were standing around her pool, I was looking around for the birds that were making all the noise. I was surprised when the tour guide told us that it was Winter chirping away!