Carrot Tops

THE GARDEN GROWS: I was making a pot of chili for tonight and needed some carrots. Fortunately, I had to look no further than the top of our lot. There, carrots sown from seed last spring are still growing away. There are still dozens of carrot tops above the dirt, with orange surprises underneath.

Based on the circumference of the top of one we could see, we were intrigued.

CJ tried to pull it out by hand, but it wasn't going to give up that easily. The greens just ripped off.

So, we broke out a weeding tool and he dug the bugger out. It was a lunker, weighing in at 6+ ounces!

Annabelle had amassed a number of smaller carrots. At first we surmised that CJ's lunker might outweigh Bee's combined. But the scale tells the truth, and we were wrong. Way wrong. ...

The collection of smaller carrots pretty much doubled the lunker in weight.

And as we laid the carrots out on the countertop and compared the big one vs. the rest, it was clear that the collection surpassed the Big One.

I let the kids have their picks of the produce litter, and then the rest went into a marvelous chili (recipe from Rachel Ray - I've used every type of ground meat you can think of, from turkey to buffalo, and it's all good).

And can I just say, I love how we were able to turn harvesting carrots into a math lesson? :)

THE BLUES: Guess what? I'm still working on the *&%@ing My Little Pony mural.

The good news is, I can (just barely) see the (dim) light at the end of the tunnel. I've got the vast majority of the details painted, and we're about ready to tackle the sky. Which means we need the Perfect Pony Sky Blue. Off to Miller Paint we go - again. Yes, they know us by name now. ...

Actually, we'd already looked at two paint places for the right blue, and struck out at both. I should have known just to go to Miller first, really.

So many blues to choose from - but it took us a dozen plus paint samples we thought were close to find one that seemed to truly be close enough. "Ariel," it was.

Hopefully we'll start laying down some sky tomorrow. Stay tuned. ... 

LIFE AND TIMES: The kids pored over an oldish (from last October) but-new-to-them edition of "Time for Kids" at lunchtime today. The cover story was about soda pop. It spoke specifically about New York City's recent ban of soft drinks larger than 16 ounces at certain businesses, including restaurants, theaters and sports arenas.

After the kids read the story, I asked CJ what it was about. He replied, "If you drink too much of this (soda), you're going to become obese within a short time. I think that can happen if you drink too much."The story had a photo of a 32-ounce cup of soda, along with the facts that the typical fourth grader would have to jog 1.5 hours just to work off the 360 calories and 100 grams of sugar in the drink. Yikes!

At the end of the article, there was a link to the Scholastic Web site to watch a video on the topic. Unfortunately  the link wasn't right, but after some poking around, we were able to find the video here: http://sni.scholastic.com/SN3/10_22_12_SN3 and then clicked on the "Watch a Video" option and it popped up.

We also checked out the "Word to Know" feature, which defined 'migrate,' 'obesity,' 'options,' 'proposed,' and 'portion,' and we also used the "Play a Game" feature.

Another article in the same issue was titled "Car Trouble in China." After reading it, Annabelle explained, "Now it say you can't drive a new car in China without a license plate ..." and then CJ interrupted her and finished, "and you can only earn a licences plate winning a lottery or an auction."

This past summer in Shanghai, the average bid for a license plate was $10,000 US $. Yowza!

I asked the kids what they thought the repercussions were for having too many cars in China. Before they answered the question, we first had to talk about what "repercussions" means, so that was a good vocab exercise.

Once they knew that repercussions an unwanted by-product or unintended consequence occurring after an event or action, they quickly chimed in with "too much traffic" and "air pollution."

I was super happy that I was able to show a very recent news item to the kids that really drove that point home. Just a couple of days ago, the NASA image of the day was a scary, stunning photo of China's recent air quality crisis.

NASA's Earth Observatory Web site has a stunning comparison photo of China's recent air quality crisis . Below, are the then and now photos .... First, the one taken on Jan. 14. ...

Ladies and gentlemen, that's not just cloud coverage, that's hardcore air pollution.

Here's a photo of the same area taken on Jan. 3, before the critical air pollution alert. ...

Looks like Beijing is pretty much Ground Zero, with the pollution from its cars and factories flowing to the south. ugh.

In the first photo, you can see the heavy haze, clouds and fog over the region. When the photo was taken (Jan. 14), the air quality index in Beijing was 341. Anything above 300 is deemed hazardous to all humans - not just vulnerable populations with heart or lung ailments. And the photo doesn't even show the crisis at its worst - on Jan. 12, when the AQI measured 775!! That is Super Not Good.

During the crisis, the Chinese government ordered factories to scale back emissions, and people were warned to stay indoors. Still, hospitals saw spikes of 20+ percent more patients complaining of respiratory issues.

I'd really encourage you to go to the NASA site to get a MUCH better contrast of the photos above and a better explanation of what's going on using their interactive feature.