Caterpillars, Clouds & a Confused Chameleon

PLAY TIME: The biggest event on today's docket was attending a production of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar & Other Eric Carle Favorites" at the Seattle Children's Theatre. Their big brother Kennedy took them. I figure if he's going to be an elementary school teacher, the more stuff he does like this now, the better.

In preparation for the play, I reminded the kids about the plot of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by cuing up an animation of the story someone had posted to YouTube.
 
I dropped them at the theater early, so they could get good seats. Good plan, but apparently when they entered the theater, they found that the first three or so rows were cordoned off, reserved for a school group. Bummer. So, they got the best seats they could and while they waited for the show to start, they whiled away the time by filling out some Mad Libs sheets for fun.

In case you're not familiar with them, Mad Libs pages are stories with blanks, where the reader/writer gets to fill in nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs to complete a story. For instance, Annabelle filled in a story titled "Chat Emoticons" that started,  "When writing an email to your best friend _______ (person in room female) or your favorite aunt _______ (first name female) in _____ (foreign country), you can use the most ______ (adjective) symbols instead of words!" Annabelle's fill ins, in case you were wondering were, 
"When writing an email to your best friend Annabelle or your favorite aunt Patty in France, you can use the most silly symbols instead of words!  

Mad Libs are great, because the kids have so much fun filling them out, little do they realize they're actually learning about the parts of speech in the process. :)

The play itself was pretty short - about 60 minutes, but that's probably not a terrible thing, given that its audience is largely preschoolers. There was a Q&A portion afterward, and Annabelle got to ask a question. (I have to think the fact she was wearing an Eric Carle shirt had to help her chances of getting called on!)

After the play, I met the three of them at the International Fountain. It wasn't quite warm enough for any splashing action today, but those times can't be too far off!

When we got home, I asked the kids to write a review of the production. Here's what they came up with.

CJ:

"Annabelle and I went to see a play. That play we went to see was called The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Instead of going with mom, we went with our older brother, Ken.

Actually, it wasn't just the Very Hungry Caterpillar. There was also Little Cloud and The Mixed-Up Chameleon. It was very unusual to see a 3-in-1 play.

At the end, we go tto ask our questions. Annabelle's question was how the clouds moved in the Little Cloud part. The Answer(er) said that there were people dressed in complete black moving the clouds."

Annabelle:

"I went to see the The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Little Cloud and the Mixed-Up Chameleon. They were all really good. I will now tell you more about the stories.

Little Cloud was first. It was about a Little Cloud who likes to turn into different shapes and is left behind by other clouds. In the end, the clouds come back, join together and make it rain.

Next was The Mixed-Up Chameleon. This was about a chameleon who wants to be like every animal in the zoo, but ends up wanting to be himself again. I think the moral might be "be careful what you wish for."

Last but not least is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Most should be farmilier with this one. It is about a caterpillar who eats and eats until it turns pupa, then it turns into a butterfly."

After that, I let them explore the official Eric Carle Web site: www.eric-carle.com . There, they found Carle's blog and biographical information, photos and videos, printables, product info, and more.

We also found and watched a charming animated version of The Mixed Up Chameleon on YouTube.

As I was writing this post, I recalled many moons ago that either Rick or Kennedy or both of them got to meet Carle once at a young author's conference.

CLASS ACT: CJ's eyes still look droopy to me and I would have liked to have him skip his acting class this afternoon, but they only have a couple practices left before their performance, so we went anyway. I figured he'd just have to tough it out for the 75 minute session.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER ROCKET: Yesterday, we watched a rocket blast off from Russia. Today, our attention was on the Guina Space Center in Kourou French Guiana, where a European Ariane 5 rocket blasted off at about 3:13 this afternoon, our time.

The 16-story tall rocket had two payloads had been mounted atop the vehicle - a pair of mirror-like "sister" satellites built in the U.S. by Lockheed Martin for telecommunications operators in Japan and Vietnam.
Per Spaceflight Now, Tuesday's liftoff involved "unleashing 2.6 million pounds of thrust from its hydrogen-fueled main stage and twin solid rocket boosters." How I do love rocket fire. :)

As we watched, we saw the pair of solid rocket boosters jettison, and then the faring fell away. Amazing that within three minutes of launch, the craft had already left our atmosphere and reached space.

Since the technicians were speaking French, we couldn't understand hardly anything they were saying, but I told the kids when I heard one of them repeatedly saying "nominal" that it was a good thing. You definitely want to hear "nominal" during and post-launch.

After the launch, we checked out the Arianspace Web site for the first time. From the site we learned the company was founded in 1980 as the world’s first satellite launch company and that since then, it has launched around 300 payloads, "accounting for more than half of the commercial satellites now in service worldwide." Impressive.



BTW, yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of us watching shuttle Atlantis blast off from Kennedy Space Center. That's a day I'll remember forever.