Art, Park, Mars & More

SIGHTSEEING: Every once in awhile we like to play tourists in our own city. The sun made a valiant effort to come out today, and when it did, we made a beeline for one of the city's number one tourist destinations - Kerry Park. Atop Queen Anne Hill, with great vistas to the south, it's a great place to be on a sunny day. Above, the kids play around on "Changing Form" by Doris Chase. It was added to the park in 1971, a gift from the three children of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Sperry Kerry, Sr., who donated the park to the city in 1927.

We got a good look at the Space Needle's relatively new green paint job. Interesting. ... I liked the Galaxy Gold much better, I have to admit. 

MORNING ON MARS: At 10 a.m. we tuned in to a live press conference about the latest Mars Science Laboratory activities and what's up next for Curiosity. Much of today's talk walk about the drilling that the rover will be doing in the days to come. 

    Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS 

The photo above shows a patch of veined, flat-lying rock. It will serve as the first drilling site for MSL. It's been named John Klein, after a former deputy project manager for Curiosity who died in 2011.

Per a JPL/NASA press release, this is what you're looking at: "Enlargement A shows a high concentration of ridge-like veins protruding above the surface. Some of the veins have two walls and an eroded interior. Enlargement B shows that in some portions of this feature, there is a horizontal discontinuity a few centimeters or inches beneath the surface. The discontinuity may be a bed, a fracture, or potentially a horizontal vein. Enlargement C shows a hole developed in the sand that overlies a fracture, implying infiltration of sand down into the fracture system."

The image has been white-balanced to show what the rocks would look like if they were on Earth.

TABLE TIME: We spent a lot of time with pencils and paper today. First up was a rather tricky math assignment involving figuring out areas, then the kids had some worksheet from their weekly Math Detectives class to complete. That was followed by science homework, reading a story about the Grand Canyon and answering some comprehension questions afterward. 

We also had some quiet reading time today - an activity. The kids each read tons all day long, but most of it's articles of their own choosing on the Internet. I want them to get more literature under their belts, especially the classic kids' books. To that end, I picked up E.B. White's "Charlotte's Web" and "Stuart Little" at the library last week.

Annabelle completed "Charlotte's Web" in a couple of sittings. Here's what she had to say about the book's title character.

Charlotte is a grey spider that saves Wilbur's life in Charlotte's Web by writing messages in her web that express the pig as being "some pig" "fantastic" and "radiant". Charlotte is a half main half side character, as she is not talked about throughout the whole book, yet when she appears she becomes a main character. Charlotte is described at first "sight" as bloodthirsty and clever but later becomes Wilbur's friend, and as quoted by Wilbur himself: "Charlotte, when I met you, I thought you were bloodthirsty and sneaky!" (not exact words, as I've read the whole book and can't remember some parts that well). Charlotte helped the main character, Wilbur, throughout almost half the book, when she appeared at almost the half-way point. Charlotte loves weaving her web, so she is happy to help Wilbur by writing on her web. Since she helps Wilbur so much, her name is part of the title. Overall Charlotte is a nice character though depicted mean during her appearance.

CJ read Stuart Little quickly. I asked him to write about any character in the book. Here's what he came up with. ...

Margolo was a female bird in the 1949 book Stuart Little. In the book, she was depicted as liking to whistle. During the later events of Stuart Little, (*WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!*) it is told that two cats, Snowball and one anonymous cat, are planning to kill and eat Margolo.

However, in the book, it is said that one other bird was listening to Snowball and the anonymous cat, and he sent a note to Margolo reading this: “BEWARE OF THE MYSTERIOUS EVIL CAT THAT WANTS TO EAT YOU AT MIDNIGHT.” Of course, this frightens Margolo, so, she hid under the refrigerator that night in the book.

(*WARNING! Spoilers end here.*) However, for the rest of the book, Stewart can not find Margolo.

Interesting, and kind of obscure, character for CJ to single out. 


ART ONLINE: Annabelle spent a fair amount of time online today, creating art. She drew a flying dragon in Paint, and posted it to deviantART.

She also used General Zoi's Pony Creator to make a pony with Sponge Bob as its inspiration. Very clever. 

MAS MURAL: The painting of Ponyville continues in Annabelle's room. I've made some good progress over the last few days. Today, we even started putting finishing touches on some of the elements. Like here, Annabelle adds berries to a bush.