Circling the Earth in my orbital spaceship I marveled at the beauty of our planet. People of the world, let us safeguard and enhance this beauty — not destroy it!" Yuri Gagarin
BORN TO SOAR: We'd be remiss if we didn't mention that today is special for a trio of reasons. First (and I do mean first!), because it's Yuri's Night - the annual worldwide observation of the first flight into space from Earth by any human. That human was, of course, Yuri Garagin, and it was 51 years ago today. That event forever changed mankind's horizon.
Garagin's life was short (just 34 years, ending when his MiG crashed during a routine training run), but his memory will live on forever.
Today also marks the anniversary of the first Shuttle Transportation System (STS-1) launch, in 1981, 31 years ago.
Obviously, April 12 is quite a day in human spaceflight. To that end, we watched BrainPOP's video on the topic: http://www.brainpop.com/technology/scienceandindustry/spaceflight/ The kids got 9 out of 10 right on a quiz afterwards.
UP WITH THE SUN: This morning the sky was a brilliant blue from the get go. SO rare in these parts, especially this time of year. We got up to the kids' north classes early, so we spent some time on the playground. Annabelle decided today would be the day she would scale the old school steel welded dome.
You can tell by the look on her face here (above and below) she was second guessing her ambition. It's hard to see here, given my crappy cell phone camera, but the moon was visible right next to her head/neck in the photo above.
I'm happy to report, she accomplished her goal. No doubt she'll be clambering all over the structure from here on out.
Fortunately, as the saying goes, when one door closes, another opens. I've been doing some research and I found a dance class for Annabelle (Bollywood!) and a game and animation programming class for CJ (Scratch, by MIT) via a co-op of homeschooling parents who hold classes at a Seattle Parks & Rec facility in West Seattle. As super good luck would have it, those classes are offered at the same time on the same day (Friday) when we're not already otherwise obligated (Friday mornings). Of course they're going to cost $, but I guess we gotta do what we gotta do, to use bad grammar. I signed them up tonight and feel better already about abandoning the music class.
CARDBOARD + INGENUITY: We watched a great video today about a 9 year old boy in East L.A. who constructed his own arcade. It's a charming story. You'll be glad you watched it. :)
http://www.wimp.com/ownarcade/
Good for Bee to climb to the top. Atta girl.
ReplyDeleteBe interesting to see what the BrainPop score would be a week from now. I think both of them have very exceptional short term memories.
We visited Yuri Gagarin Park in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia in 1997. I will try to find some of the pictures we took. (it was risky to take pictures anywhere we went in Russia then, people kept trying to "confiscate" our cameras.) The park will not be what you would expect, I'm willing to venture.
ReplyDelete