MADNESS: The day started normally enough. By about 5:45 a.m., I was up turning gingerbread men into Elvis. Or Elviii. Or Elvises. Painstaking but pleasant work. The day took a turn for the worse when my dad read aloud a news headline about a shooting at a school in Connecticut. And then came the news that it was an elementary school. The headline changed rapidly, the death toll climbing with each update. Question. What kind of sick *&%^ walks into a classroom full of 5- and 6-year olds and starts shooting and killing kids? (After shooting and killing his own mother, the teacher.) Insanity. The worst kind of 'humanity.' What's eerie is long before dawn, as I'm sitting at the counter decorating cookies and we're the only two up, with no TV on, CJ started talking about the Columbine school shooting and, much more recently, the mass shooting at the movie theater in Colorado. And just a couple hours later, another horrific incident joined the list of tragic days in U.S. history. We watched the news coverage for a lot of this afternoon. The kids - CJ especially - had LOTS of questions. So, we talked and talked and talked some more. There are certainly no 'good' answers for anything like this, but knowledge and information helps, I hope. I did tell CJ that this case immediately brings to mind Kip Kinkel, another school shooter, who first killed his parents before gunning down students (in this case, his high school classmates in Springfield, Ore.) back in 1982. What a horrible thing it is that there have been so many school shootings that we can compare and contrast them. Ugh.
And now, on to the normal stuff. ... REWIND: On Wednesday evening, we attended a fun 12-12-12 birthday party held at the Harbor Heritage Museum. What a neat place! The kids each got to row, row, row a boat, and Annabelle loved an accordion that she could play.
Right now, the museum is featuring a special exhibit, NW x SE ... A Collaborative Small Tapestry Project of Northwest and Southeast Weavers. It features more than 40 amazing tapestries. (If you like, you can take a virtual walk through the exhibit with a curator in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5kAum_CvDM&feature=youtu.be The museum also had a couple of hands on weaving interactives, which the kids checked out. We had to cross the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to get to the museum, and the museum is a repository for history regarding the bridge, most notably its collapse on Nov. 7, 1940, just four months after it opened! We've seen it before online, but we paused to watch the famous video of the disaster on the big movie screen at the museum. It's wild watching the bridge undulate up to nearly 30 feet in the 35-46 mile per hour winds. Here's a colorized version of it going down. ...
You can learn more about "Galloping Gertie" via the museum's online exhibition: http://www.harborhistorymuseum.org/exhibits/online-exhibitions/tale-two-gerties/ Out back of the main museum is the tiny 1893 Midway school. It gives visitors a glimpse of what a one room schoolhouse on the Peninsula looked like long ago. We also stepped outside to the Maritime Gallery to check out the 65-foot fishing vessel Shenandoah and the Thunderbird Hull #1 sailboat on display.
The kids also dug a map magnifying glass they could move around.
THE END: Today's mailbox held a bittersweet delivery. It was a beloved Nintendo Power magazine, the arrival of which always made the kids' day/week. However, today's delivery was The Last Issue Ever. Guess with the magical Internet, there's just no real demand for an old fashioned print mag with articles about upcoming games and hacker codes and cheats.
And so we say "so long" to Nintendo Power. It will be missed.
NASA STYLE: And now for something silly. Anyone who reads the MPA blog knows CJ has a 'thing' for the "Gangnam Style" song/dance craze and we've all got a "thing" for NASA, so no surprise we smiled when we saw this. ...
ALL APOLOGIES: Sorry 'bout the radio silence here. It's been a busy couple of days. Yesterday afternoon we left town to head down to Gig Harbor for a fun 12-12-12 birthday party for our Uncle Bob. I had the pleasure of doing the cake and some cookies for the event, and so I was elbow deep in shortening and sugar yesterday (and the day before).
We didn't get home until late, and then today I was up early to get elbow deep into shortening and sugar again, making a few dozen fun cookies for and with my mom. (Including some Elvis Aloha from Hawaii ones - great fun!)
Bottom line is, the baking projects have gotten the better of me, but tomorrow we'll be back on track. Whatever that means. ;)
ART IN THE A.M. The schedule at the kids' Shoreline school is different for the next couple of weeks. No 'normal' science or math classes. Instead, there are several workshops to choose from. This morning, the kids had a chance to admire some lovely layered collages from Panama, and then try their hand at creating their own work of art.
There were dozens of pre-cut fabric shapes in bright colors for students to choose from. They were already backed by fusible interfacing, so after they stacked them to their satisfaction, then it was just a matter of melding it together with a hot iron.
It was a fun project, and what a great way to use up scraps of fabric!
MATH QUEST: CJ and Annabelle recently signed up for a Math Quest. During the Quest, they'll get math problems to answer, and if they solve them correctly, they progress to the next challenge.
They knocked out their first set of challenges in no time this morning, and are looking forward to moving their avatars up the game board on the bulletin board next week.
GAME TIME: Annabelle spent a bit of time on the programming site Scratch today. She came up with a game that involves the Scratch Cat jumping over logs rolling toward it.
After she posted her first version (game), someone made a comment suggesting she add a scoring feature to it.
PARTY TIME: On Saturday, we had the pleasure of attending the 10th birthday party of CJ's BFF from kindergarten. Weird to think they've know each other half their lives now.
The festivities included wearing pointy hats in odd ways and decorating gingerbread houses.
As usual, CJ's architecture was austere and stately.
As usual, Ananbelle's was over the top (or, in this case, through the lid of the sprinkles bottle. Here's the before the nonpariels invasion ...
and here's hers after she accidentally dumped an ENTIRE bottle of sugar on her house ...
Pretty!
They also enjoyed yummy sugary treats they didn't have a hand in making. ...
SEATTLE TRADITION: From the very first Christmas season we spent in Seattle, we've checked out Swanson's Nursery. It's about 10 minutes north of us, and well worth the drive.
They have hundreds of lovely camellias in bloom, not to mention a couple of Santa's reindeer and even Curly the Christmas camel!
Here's Donner and Blitzen, resting up for their big day.
And Curley, posing for the camera.
Swanson's also has an annual model train display. This year there was a medieval/Hobbit theme. The trains whirled and whizzed and wound about castles. ...
There were so many purties around the nursery. These faux peacock feathers caught my eye.
EXPLORATIONS: For a few nights now, CJ has been reading the book "100 Cool Things About Explorers"at bedtime. So, I thought we'd explore the topic of explorers a bit more.
We turned to Bookflix, which is storybooks online. (We access it via our Seattle Public Library card. Check to see if your local library subscribes!) On the site, we found two books about Christopher Columbus. First up, "Where Do You Think You're Going, Christopher Columbus?" by Jean Fritz.
When I was in elementary school, Columbus was a Top Tier Hero. Heck, he even had his own holiday. Over the years, his reputation has tarnished a bit. (He didn't really discover America, which is what I was taught. In fact, he didn't set foot on North America!) And, as it turns out, within four years of his arrival
on Hispaniola (today's Dominican Republic and Haiti), men in his party had killed or "exported" one-third of its estimated population of 300,000. Um, ouch. I'm guessing there's no Columbus Day there. ...
As I was working on a cake and some cookies, I kept my ears open for history that might need a little moderating. One thing I heard was that Queen Isabelle of Spain was "such an enthusiastic Christian, she insisted everyone in Spain be a Christian."
O Really? What one person calls "enthusiasm" another might call "oppressive" or "dictatorial," I pointed out to the kids.
We also listened in on a Scholastic published book "Christopher Columbus," by Lisa Wade McCormick, which was much shorter and just-by-the facts.
After the pair of Columbus books, I showed the kids "We are the Explorers," a NASA film. This one will give you goosebumps. It explains everyone from Leif Erickson to SpaceX's Elon Musk
Then, I asked the kids to write something about explorers/exploring. I wasn't any more specific than that. Here's what they came up with, CJ first. ... Buckle yourself in. ...
Explorers are people that explore. Exploring can range from a lot of different things, from taking a walk on the street looking at new things, to going up in space to study. Often times, explorers will want to be the first person to go to a place or to be the first person to do something at that place.
Ancient exploring just started with our monkey ancestors before we were alive crawling around places, clueless where to go, to us going to the Moon and even more recently, us sending rovers up to Mars. We can go anywhere with exploring, really.
Exploring can be as safe as sound, like bouncing up and down softly in a pillow world where there is nothing to be afraid of, to as deadly as Hell, like trying to juggle a million flaming chainsaws that explode like a atomic dirty bomb when they collide with the floors, walls, and roof in a impossibly tiny room in hell. Kind of makes you claustrophobic a bit, eh?
Often times, modern exploration will defeat the accomplishment of earlier exploring, such as Apollo 11 beating Christopher Columbus' feat of sailing to the Indies, though, some earlier accomplishments will still be better then future explorations, such as Apollo 11 compared to the Curiosity launch.
Interesting, CJ. Very interesting. ... Times like these I think it's probably a good thing he's not in a traditional public school program, LOL.
Here's Annabelle's essay ... It's a little more sedate, with no atomic dirty bombs. ;)
Why do we explore? So we can find new things. Why find new
things? So we can learn about the world – possibly even other worlds! Exploring
allows us to find things we have never found before. For instance, Christoper
Columbus found out about the land between Asia and Europe, (no maps show what
it's called, neither do the books!) and we've already discovered ice on... no,
not Mars.... Mercury! Yes... It's closest to the Sun.... But really, ICE. Ice
could've used to be water, and could support *drum roll* ... Life! Yes, just because of
exploring, we have found Mercury can support life! Exploring also allowed
Christoper Columbus to discover the Indies! Christoper did this because he wanted to
explore – if you want to learn new things like Columbus... you're destined to
be an explorer – just like Christoper. If you love finding new things – an
astronaut would be perfect! Maybe even go to Mars... and be THE FIRST PERSON
TO STEP ON MARS. It would be awesome, if I do say so myself. So, happy
exploring... And may you find great things!
GOOGLE DOODLE: This morning, Annabelle was remarking on how cool looking the Google Doodle for the day was. I looked at it and told her I thought it had something to do with communications or computers. Not until I read Washington STEM's Facebook post tonight did I figure out that it was a tribute to Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer. The daughter of the poet Lord Byron, today marked the 197th anniversary of her birth.
