7/11

FANCY PANTS: Today we finally got around to transforming some super cute fabric Annabelle picked out weeks ago into some new pants. 

It was a super easy pattern - just two pattern pieces involved. First, Annabelle sewed the front and back legs together at the inside seam. 

Then she joined the front and back along the middle/crotch seam. Then it was time to sew the outside leg seam. Up next was creating the waistband casing, then inserting the elastic. 

Once that was done, it was time to hem the legs, and sew on the super cute buttons she picked out as accents. She's getting really good at threading needles! 

She was very specific about which buttons went where.  I told her I thought it took longer to sew the eight buttons on (four apiece on the cuff of each leg) than it did to sew the pants.

Of course, the work was worth it. Bee is very happy with her new pants.

SPECIAL DELIVERY: Imagine our delight when included among a stack of mail we received recently was a letter from Professor Lou (Bloomfield) of the University of Virginia. He was our "How Things Work" Coursera class we took that introduced the kids to physics.

In the last video lecture we watched, the professor encouraged students to drop him a postcard, so we did. 
I'm not going to post his whole letter here, but it was long, thoughtful, and encouraging. I'd sent a few pages of the kids' notes along with their postcards, because I thought he'd get a kick out of seeing how an 8- and 10-year old process the info he's sharing compared to the traditional college aged student. He definitely enjoyed  copies of the notes and said, "a person's age seems to be less important to learning or understanding science than their willingness to think." Amen. :)

On their postcards, the kids each told Professor Lou they hoped there would be a Part 2 to his class, and he said it's a possibility. We'll keep our fingers crossed. In the meantime, we (and you!) can check out his Web site Howe Everything Works - Explaining the physics of everyday life (http://www.howeverythingworks.org/).

SCIENCE SITE: We test drove a new-to-us science site today, Planet-Science.com. The site has articles, games, and experiments for students, divided into over and under 11 year old categories. 

Annabelle loved their jokes section. I think she read them all to me. My favorite: The optimist sees the glass as half full. The pessimist sees the glass as half empty. The engineer sees the glass as twice as big as it needs to be.

The site's "About" page tells us it was originally launched as a Millennium project nurtured by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts and previously funded by the Department of Education and Skills. In 2010, it was re-launched under the ownership and guidance of Tinopolis Interactive, a South West Wales and London-based company which designs and builds eLearning and new media solutions. 

The kids enjoyed playing the games there. Annabelle and CJ both played "Mission Adaptation," a game where you have to take photos of creatures and plants native to a certain environment. Along the way, you learn factoids about how the things have adapted to their environment. 

And, they played "Fashionable Labs," a game that helps players raise awareness of what they need to know to be safe in a laboratory setting.

Annabelle spent a fair amount of time reading (and sharing) all sorts of facts about animals from the site's "Our World" articles. The site is content-rich. We can (and will) spend days combing through it.

FREEBIE: Twitter and Facebook feeds made it abundantly clear that today was free Slurpee day in honor of the date 7/11. This is typically the only day of the year the kids have a Slurpee, so it's a Big Deal for them. 

We headed to a 7-11 on Queen Anne hill a little after 11 a.m. and the kids were dazzled by their choices, including a Mt. Dew flavor. Oh happy day. 

Thank you, 7-11, and we'll see you next year. :) 

MARTIAN MOON: We've all spotted Earth's moon overhead, making its way across our sky countless times. Imagine being on the surface of Mars and watching the Red Planet's moon cross the sky. That's just what the Mars Science Laboratory did recently, and fortunately, it snapped a series of shots of it so that we can see, too.

The clip below is a combination of 86 frames MSL took on June 28. It shows Phobos, the larger of the two moons of Mars, passing overhead, shortly after a Martian sunset. Phobos enters the frame in the bottom at the center and moves toward the top of the view. It's shown at an accelerated speed - the real time for the transit was 27 minutes.