The Morning After

OH SO COLORFUL: This afternoon in science class there was an activity that all of the kids loved - constructing kaleidoscopes.

For a couple weeks now, their science classwork and homework has involved mirrors. So building kaleidoscopes was a great tie-in for the unit.

The kids worked in pairs. Each pair had three small, rectangular mirrors, which they taped to a piece of standard paper folded lengthwise into thirds. Once the mirrors were affixed (with tape), the  paper was folded so that the mirrors formed a triangle abutting each other. The colors and shapes were produced by taking a square of clear film and drawing designs on it with magic markers. That colored film was then taped over a small plastic petri dish filled with colorful beads. Combine the dish, film and a trio of mirrors and you have something beautiful!

And here's the kaleidoscope Annabelle and a friend came up with. ...

All of the kids' kaleidoscopes were beautiful - and very different. 

D IS FOR DEMOCRACY: With all of the election excitement yesterday, I forgot to report that the kids read a really great book, "D is for Democracy: A Citizen's Alphabet."

Truth be told, a couple weeks ago I hastily pulled it off the shelf, thinking, "I need something for Election Day." When I saw the title, I assumed it to be a very primary ABCs type book. Boy was I wrong.  Instead, it's a pretty darn in-depth primer on American politics, from A is for Amendments to Z is for Zeitgeist.

As a bonus, the book's publisher, Sleeping Bear Press, has a fantastic teacher's guide on their Web site. The 27-page PDF has puzzles, writing prompts, comprehension questions and more. View or download it here: http://www.sleepingbearpress.com/teachingguides/DemocracyTeachersGuide.pdf. We'll definitely be using it in the days to come.

Speaking of democracy, as the kids settled into their seats in science class today, out of nowhere Annabelle pipes up with, "Barack Obama was elected president again last night."  The little "uh oh" alarm immediately went off in my head, as I know talking politics can get touchy, and based on other people's bumperstickers I see outside that school, I figured the crowd there would be none too happy about the election results. 

However, her statement was just that, a statement, so no biggie, right?

Then, across the room, CJ pipes in with, "So how does everybody feel about that?"

Doh! 

As I expected, a chorus of grumbling erupted. CJ was genuinely surprised. He politely engaged a couple of kids with questions about why they felt the way they did and some sort of Détente was reached. Nice. 

FESTIVAL FLASHBACK: Kennedy needed to borrow our video camera today, which forced me to purge the files from it to make room for his recording. That enabled me to upload a couple of gems for you. 

First, it's a super short video of CeeJ and Bee dancing to some live Indian music at the Diwali festival we attended Saturday night.

And here is a video of Annabelle and friends Bollywood dancing. I don't usually publish photos or videos of other people's kids on my blog, but this was held at a public place and I noticed that a number of people in the crowd (the majority of them not even parents of the dancers) were taking videos with their cameras or phones. Those videos could all be on YouTube, Facebook and who knows where else now, so I figured this was fair game.

I gotta warn you, the song (Deewangi Deewangi) in the video is catchy. If you watch it. later on you're likely to find yourself walking (or dancing) around singing, "Om, Shanty om!"