Oh, the Places You'll Go!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: The kids had an extra spring in their step this morning. They both woke up knowing that it was Dr. Seuss' birthday.

We started the day with a reading - "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" CJ recited it with great gusto.

Before too terribly long, it was time for us to head out toward Seattle Center, where we'd be seeing "The Lorax" in IMAX 3D at noon.

Because I am super cheap (or should that be extra thrifty?), we parked about seven or so blocks away, in a rare swath of spots where there was not only no meter, but also no 2 hour time limit. We wanted to be able to take our time today, because I wanted to do a recon mission on the Polar Science Weekend event at PSC.

The science center was TEEMING with people today. Mostly middle to high school aged kids on field trips. We popped in the Polar event, and stuck mostly to the perimeter. The smidgen we did experience was absolutely fascinating. I mean, how often can a kid get a chance to actually TOUCH a 5,000 year old ice core from an Antarctica glacier? Well, CJ and Annabelle did that today. So cool (in more ways than one!).

The scientist manning (er, 'womaning' the booth) began asking a series of questions about the ice core - things like, "See these bubbles in the ice? What are they?"

Annabelle was quick to answer, "AIR!"

And then the scientist asked what gasses might be in that air. At that, Annabelle rattled off, "Oxygen, nitrogen, helium and carbon dioxide." 

The scientist asked what greenhouse gasses were. After Annabelle rattled off a definition, the scientist made it a point to try to call on other kids around the table. :)

We'll be heading back to the Polar Science event tomorrow. Today, Seuss was our #1 to do list.

THE LORAX: We made our way to the PACCAR Theater for the big show at noon. When we arrived, I was surprised by the number of people in the place. We're used to going to matinees with a handful, at most, of others. Today, there were several dozen people on hand. There were LOTS of toddlers and I wondered how vociferous they might be during the movie, but the movie kept their attention and, certainly, ours.

Was it the Best Movie Ever? No. But it was absolutely entertaining from start to finish. Visually engaging, with good dialogue and a compelling storyline. Seeing "The Lorax" was a great way to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday, and my red and white striped hat is off to Theodore Geisel for being so progressive regarding the importance of protecting the environment.

GIRLS ON FILM: We'd had longstanding plans to meet CJ's BFF from kindergarten at Full Tilt in Ballard this afternoon, after school hours. As always, it was great to see his friend and her mother. We spent 90 minutes or so visiting and watching the kids feed the machines. As we were readying to leave, we saw a group of women loading in equipment. We figured they were a band setting up to play, but before we left a woman approached our table. She said she and her friends were filmmakers making a movie about girls who play pinball for the Toronto International Film Festival and they were hoping to film our daughters playing the machines and could we stick around. We consented, and I happily signed a model release and they plied Annabelle and friend with quarters for a half hour or so. :)

Bee was rather appropriately dressed for today, in a gamer geek sort of way, wearing her Kennedy Space Center sweatshirt and her 8-bit bow.  Hopefully, Bee didn't drop too many *&%^@ words while she was being filmed while playing. ;) The woman who asked me to sign the release said her group has "done well" at the TIFF in years past. The movie they were making today is apparently part of some contest where filmmakers have 5 days to complete a movie from start to finish. She said they've spent a couple of days filming and will spend the next couple of days editing, animating and narrating. We'll see if anything comes of it all.

WHO WE ARE, WHAT WE DO: A couple of days ago, NASA uploaded a new promotional video called "We Are the Explorers." I screened it for the kids today. It's an important message, powerfully delivered.

Still Seussing It

SEUSSY: While the kids were in music class this morning, I was raiding the school library for Dr. Seuss titles.Fortuitously, I found lots. I then spent the next 45 minutes having fun with edible ink markers and marshmallows, using the books for inspiration. (The idea for Seuss-themed marshmallows came from The Decorated Cookie.)

Represented from left to right are "How The Grinch Stole Christmas," "Yertle the Turtle," "The Cat in the Hat," "Green Eggs and Ham," "Oh the Places You'll Go," "The Lorax," "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish," "If I Ran the Zoo," and "Horton Hears a Who."

The kids were pretty surprised when they got out of class. :)

On the way home from music, they started reading down the Seuss stack.

We had to stop at Lowe's on the way home to return an item and the kids each brought a Seuss book in the store with them. It was amazing - those books were like blinking beacons. Of the three people we encountered from the front door to the return desk, all three stopped to remark on the books - and the fact they were happy to see the kids reading them. Dr. Seuss certainly left a legacy.

OPEN WIDE: The kids had to miss LEGO class this afternoon. They had a date with the dentist.

Unlike certain other people who shall remain nameless (me) who hate going to the dentist, CJ and Annabelle think it's Big Fun!

Actually, if I could be a patient at Lakeview Kids Dentistry, I'd probably feel like they do. The facility is cool  (so many nifty high tech things!), the staff is awesome and the patients get prizes when they're done. What's not to like?

Traffic was on our side and we were a few minutes early, so we stopped at funtabulous Powell Barnett Park on the way to the dentist.

They have the greatest climbing structure there. CJ climbed it to the top last year, but today he got about 3/4 of the way up and he just wasn't feelin' it. I told him not to sweat it, he'd get it next time.

THERE IS ANOTHER: On Monday, we took delivery of a 'new' laptop computer. It's actually a refurbished Dell that we rather spontaneously purchased (for $199) as a deal of the day special on one of those deal of the day Web sites. So now, CJ and Annabelle can sit side by side and cooperatively work and play instead of yelling back and forth between rooms. And, when we travel, they don't have to jockey for dibs on "just" one laptop.

Funny story: The name of the company whom we purchased it from is Blair Technology Group. When Christian was ordering it online, there was a box for "special instructions" along with the order. He whimsically wrote, "Draw a dinosaur on the box, please."

Well guess what? When the box arrived, it had this on the side ...

Nice touch, BTG. Of course box loving Annabelle was especially thrilled and she instantly set about embellishing it, creating a habitat for the dino. I'm guessing it's of the laptoposaurus species.

One Giant Leap

MIGHT AS WELL JUMP: As soon as the kids were lucid his morning, I asked them if they knew what day it was. CJ promptly guessed, "Wednesday?" which was correct, but not what I was fishing for.

Annabelle piped up with, "Leap Day!"

Bingo!

I suggested they start their Leap Day off by catching some air on the mini trampoline, which they did.

We started our Leap Year discussion by reviewing the '30 days has September ...' saying. I pointed out to the kids that as if poor February wasn't already the oddball being left out of not only the months with 30 days, but the "all the rest have 31," too, AND February doesn't even get to stick to its odd 28 days every year. Poor, poor, pitiful February - the kids found that hysterical for some reason.  

Next up, we turned to BrainPOP, where the featured movie of the day was about Leap Year. It did a nice job of explaining the genesis of the day due to the fact that the Earth actually takes about 365.24 days to circle the sun rather than 365 exactly. And while that .24 days might not seem like much, over the course of hundreds of years it really adds up, which messes with other dates of significance, like the equinox, when seasons start and such. Leap year/day is necessary to keep in synch with the astronomical or seasonal year.

We learned about Julius Caesar's calendar, which was an improvement over the previous widely-used time-keeping model, but still flawed. Eventually, the Julian calendar was replaced by the Gregorian calendar, which we still use today. Under its rules, most years that are evenly divisible by 4 are leap years. Unfortunately, the math to remember doesn't stop there, since years that are evenly divisible by 100 aren't leap years UNLESS they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which case they ARE leap years. Follow all that?  :o

We also learned that the Hebrew and Chinese calendars have methods other than leap day/year to make up for the time difference. Interesting stuff!

LEAPIN' LIZARDS!: In addition to catching air on the trampoline, we got a little more Leap Day exercise (and math!) in by seeing how far the kids could leap. First, I had them do a standing jump - without even letting them crouch or bend their arms or anything.

CJ actually had a NEGATIVE result that round, winding up behind where he started.

Next round, they were allowed to crouch and swing their arms all they wanted.

And in the final round, they were allowed a running start.

Kirby was basically freaking out during the entire process, trying to figure out how she fit in.

UP NORTH: After a week's absence due to the school district's mid-winter break, we were back to classes at Shoreline today. In art, Annabelle said she and her fellow students started working on a class project. In science, the kids worked on graphing the weather from January and March and were told they'll have a weather unit test next week. Time to study up!

SEUSSVILLE: As part of our working up to Dr. Seuss' birthday and the theatrical release of "The Lorax,"  the kids spent some time exploring Seussville, the official Web site of Dr. Seuss, this morning. They both started on the create your own Who page.  Here's CJ's Who. ...

Nifty avatars complete, they began playing games. Annabelle reports she played all three Horton-themed games, a "Hop on Pop" themed game and her favorite was the A-Maze-ing Green Eggs and Ham game. In it, "You use physics to get the green eggs to the green ham," she explains.

FOCUSED: A couple of weeks ago I received an email inviting me to participate in a focus group at the Pacific Science Center. Since we're regular visitors there, I thought it might be well worth my time to learn about some of the ideas on their horizon.

It was an interesting 90 minutes to be sure. Not sure how many they were expecting but there were only three of us there forming the focus group. We were outnumbered by the PSC people.

We were shown several potential future display/exhibit concepts and asked for feedback. I hope I provided some useful ideas and perspective. My parting recommendation to them was to make sure to stay focused on science. That might sound obvious, but I think it was worth saying.

Trees, Please

THE LESSON OF THE LORAX: You can't go into a store or turn on a TV right now without seeing a promotion for a major motion picture version of Dr. Seuss' "The Lorax."

We've read a few Seuss books in our time, but "The Lorax" isn't one of them. A few days ago CJ declared that before we could go see the movie he wanted to read the book and watch an old video of it, in that order. Today, that's just what we did.

First up, we found a (nicely) narrated version of "The Lorax" on YouTube. The text was shown adjacent to the picture pages, so the kids were able to read along - which helps, given Giesel's penchant for nonsensical words.

I asked their kids about their impression of the narrated book. Annabelle blurted out, "We need to speak for the trees, because everybody needs oxygen and trees produce oxygen with what we breathe out, so it's basically like a cycle. Even though we need wood, we still need to leave some trees."

CJ had an opinion about the book/video, but his mind was on another matter entirely. "I bet you that's going to wind up in a copyright claim," he declared. That made me LOL, and I had to admit I was wondering about that, too. No matter how well it's done, somehow, taking someone else's book and narrating it and posting it on YouTube seems like it might be a bit problematic when it comes to that whole copyright infringement thing ... But we digress.

After that, we cued up the 1972 animated version of "The Lorax." The music was retro-riffic - there was no mistaking the era from whence it came. (Trivia: It first aired on CBS on Valentine's Day, 1972). When the video was over, I pointed out to the kids that I was exactly Annabelle's age when the cartoon came out.

The animated version was pretty true to the book. Both the book and video delivered the same message. "The Lorax" is a cautionary tale about the need for conservation. In case you're not familiar with the story, in it an entrepreneur, the greedy Once-ler begins cutting down Truffula trees to make thneeds (something everyone needs). The Lorax, a  objects, saying he speaks for the trees. Before long, the entrepreneur expands his empire, cutting down more trees and let's just say it doesn't end well.

After the book and video, I asked the kids to write about "The Lesson of the Lorax."

Annabelle wrote:

The lesson of the Lorax is to speak for the trees! We do have to cut them down, but at least leave a few! The Lorax spoke for the trees, the animals spoke for the trees, we should all speak for the trees! Every time a tree gets cut down that means less fresh air for us!

Dr. Seuss made his point by having the "villain" change his mind, but it was too late. I was glad he changed his mind, though. And it ended there.

CJ wrote:

The Lorax is a great book/cartoon and it has a lesson in it. That lesson is to speak for the trees (well sort of!)

Throughout the book/cartoon, you learn more to speak for the trees. One example is that the place looks like a dump after the Once-ler cut down all the trees. Another reason is how would be get our oxygen if there were no trees?" It is good to speak for the trees. So you should too!

After they were finished writing, we went outside and planted a tree, of course!

A mokey tail or monkey puzzle tree, it's small and slow growing, but a tiny, tree is better than no tree at all. Just ask the Lorax.

A side note: We learned today the Araucaria araucana tree is native to western Argentina and

central and southern Chile. It is, in fact the national tree of Chile. 

NOT JUST NOTHING: To ease into our math lesson today, We read the book "Zero Is it Something? Is it Nothing" together. Wrttien by Claudia Zaslavsky with pictures by Jeni Bassett, it's part of the Discovering Science Book series (which I'd never heard of until today).
 
Using several easy-to-understand examples, the book did a nice job of showing that sometimes zero is nothing (like there are zero monsters under your bed), but other times, you can't count it out. For instance, with the number 100, if you cross out or disregard the zeros, your 100 turns into 1. Also what would happen if you lived at 204 Washington St. and you disregarded the 0? Trouble!
 
After that, we busted out the text books. The kids got a respite from long division today. The exercise was about number patterns and a review of multiplication or "times tables." Annabelle asked if they could sit on the couch and do their math. I didn't hesitate to say 'yes.' After all, who said math can only be done sitting at a table or desk? I reminded the kids that's one of the freedoms we're lucky to have approaching their schooling the way we do. If you want to learn lounging on the couch in your PJs, so be it!  

SIZING IT UP: Today, CJ was on the Newgrounds Web site - a pretty great video game site. I asked him what he was playing and he told me it was Newgrounds' Best of All Time" game "Scale of the Universe 2."

I was a bit bemused because I had shown him that amazing creation weeks ago (thanks reader Undine for the tip!), but for some reason when he found it today, on a GAMES site, CJ was more interested. In fact, he and Annabelle spent about an hour exploring the amazing creation of 14-year-old twins Cary and Michael Huang. It's an amazing interactive animation allowing users to compare relative sizes of everything from minuscule quarks to the observable universe. It's worth checking out (but takes a few seconds to load, FYI).

NEGLECTED: I forgot to include in last night's post a note about our starry skies. On our way home from dinner last night, we pulled over to the side of the road and hopped out of the car at 6:51, when the ISS was supposed to be flying over.  There was a significant amount of light pollution in our area, and a little bit of haze, but by 6:52 Christian spotted it approaching from the west. It was wild, within one tiny slice of the sky, we saw the moon, Venus and Jupiter shining brightly, the ISS AND a satellite (traveling north to south) overhead. Amazing!

Out and About

 

WEEKEND WANDERING: This weekend, in our quest to find The Perfect Light for above the dining room table we did a fair amount of sight seeing. One of our stops took us near the famous Fremont Rocket.

Its precise history is unknown, but from what the sign near its base says, it's a cold war relic, gleaned from a military surplus store in the Belltown area of Seattle. It took years for it to finally get mounted on a business front in Fremont.

You have to appreciate the sentiment painted on its side, in Latin: De Libertas Quirkas, which means "freedom to be peculiar."

Another stop took us to Pioneer Square. And while we didn't find The Perfect Light there, we did find a parking spot near the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park. The kids and I had been there before, but Christian had never seen it, so we popped in.

There, CJ would out that if he was worth his weight in gold, he would be the $1.8 Million Dollar Boy at today's rates.  

In 1897, he would have weighed in at $17,000. Talk about inflation! ;)

Though the place is a national park, it's housed in the historic Cadillac Hotel. In the basement of the park (isn't that an odd phrase?), CJ and Annabelle tried their hand at a wheel of fortune, which was, in effect, what the gold rush prospectors were doing. They spun the wheel, hoping to land on the tiny wedge where they'd hit the jackpot. It took many, many spins to finally find "the glory hole" ("Gold Rush" viewers will know what I'm talking 'bout).

COME MONDAY: We are in month seven-ish (UGH) of trying to get a permit to build an addition on the house. To that end we had to go to the permit center again (UGH) this morning. The kids and I deposited Christian at the door and then circled the block a few times, taking in the view.

Christian was in the Seattle Municipal Tower, which is to the right in this picture. At 62 stories, it's the second tallest building in Seattle. In the foreground is the reeeally big skyscraper - Columbia Center. At 968 feet (285 meters), it has 76 floors and is reportedly the 84th tallest building in the world, and the 20th tallest in the U.S. According to Wikipedia, it's the second tallest building on the West Coast and it has more floors than any other building west of the Mississippi. We just found out tonight that for just $5 (a LOT cheaper than going up on the Space Needle), you can ride an elevator to the 73rd floor where there's an observation deck (that's higher than the Space Needle). Add that to our 'to do' list.

Christian had to go to work for awhile, so the kids and I killed time at a sprawling antique mall nearby. What a history lesson that was! We spent nearly an hour there browsing and talking about what we saw - all sorts of interesting artifacts from the late 1800s up through the 1970s.

At one booth I spied something instantly recognizable to me, but it also dawned on me the kids probably had no idea what they were. So, I asked them if they knew. They didn't. So, I asked them to guess what the objects were. 

They each guessed something wheel-related. I told them it rhymed with wheel, but they were actually reels. Then, I got to explain what FILM is to them. ;)

After the antique mall we had to go to IKEA. Along the way we helped CJ complete a crossword puzzle about the Mexican-American War. We made a 10-minute trip through IKEA (a new personal best) and then it was back to the freeway, destination The Museum of Flight. We were all itching to see the Soyuz capsule that recently arrived there. Here are the kids running on the bridge leading to the museum's space gallery.

The Star Wars theme was playing as they bounded across, making the trip rather epic. ;)

Once across the street, we found the space-traveled capsule. It looked worse for the wear, that's for sure! You could totally see the burn marks on it from its journeys.

Walking around it and peering it, it's just so hard to imagine three grown men inside it, hurtling to and fro  Earth. Click on the photo below to enlarge it and learn more about the spacecraft's history.

So you have some size/scale reference, here's a photo of the kids and the capsule. The kids are holding a poster with some of our space-friends names on it.

In an interesting contrast, after our space gallery visit, Annabelle asked to go to the Red Barn. It's literally the birthplace of Boeing - the old wood framed, floored, sided and paneled structure where the airplane giant got off the ground (pun intended).

We checked out some of Boeing's earliest models. Look at the cockpit of this beauty. That slatted portion is the seat. In the foreground is the steering wheel.

After touring the main floor, the kids bounded upstairs.

Upstairs it was a serene oasis. The kids immediately sat down, pulled a book off the table and started reading about the history of Boeing.

In the foreground are replicas of drafting tables from days gone by.

EXCHANGE: This weekend during a car commute to who knows where, out of the blue CJ asked, "What's better for you, milk or water?"

My first thought, and immediate comment, was, "Water - because some people are allergic to milk."

"Allergic to milk?" CJ marveled.

"Yeah, lactose intolerant," Annabelle chimed in.

"Black toast intolerant?" CJ asked, bewildered.

LOL.