Dinos and Turkeys

ALIVE!!!: Last night before retiring, the kids left their newly acquired dinos on the kitchen island, convinced they wouldn't move overnight, despite what they'd heard about Dinovember, the month toy dinosaurs come to live in the wee small hours of the morning.

Upon upping, the first thing they each did was make a beeline for the island, to check on the dinos, which had disappeared.

CJ did a cursory look around and found nothing. A bit later, when Annabelle got up, she went to the pantry for something and found the scene above.

The kids were quite tickled, and our first day of Dinovember was a success.

TURKEY TIME: It's been too long since we've done a formal art session, and waaay too long since we've enjoyed a Bruce Blitz cartooning tutorial.

We used to follow Blitz's tutelage fairly often, when it was "On Demand" on our cable provider, Comcast. However, it disappeared  months back. At the time I discovered its disappearance, I searched for it online, but to no avail.  I decided to give it another go today, and had better results, happily.

I found a Comcast page where the old Activity TV videos are listed - in a rather unorganized 'order' - but we'll take what we can get!
http://xfinitytv.comcast.net/watch/Activity-TV%3A-Cartooning-%26-Art/6483543376148648112/full-episodes#episode=6483543376148648112
I read through the list hoping to find a Thanksgiving-themed tutorial. I spied one for a Native American girl, but the kids completed that drawing a couple years ago. Later down the list was a a turkey tutorial, with the letter T as the basis for the drawing. Perfect!

And good news for non-Comcast people. At no point did it ask me to sign in, so it looks like it's available to everyone - at least as of this writing. (I should warn people, though, that it took two browsers and two computers to get it going. It didn't like my Chrome [saying something about an 'Incognito window, which was a setting I didn't have on] and it didn't like my IE, saying my Flash was out of date [it isn't]. Mercifully, it worked on CJ's laptop on the first try.)

The kids had no trouble following the steps, and used acrylic chalks to color their drawings after the video was over. Annabelle gave CJ some pointers in the fine art of blending.

 Here's his finished product. Pretty cute!

 And here's Annabelle's turkey. I like its eyelashes. :)

MORNING WALK: It wasn't particularly nice this a.m. - oppressive gray. But we needed to get some motion in to our morning, and the doggies were overdue for a walk.

We headed for one of our favorite destinations, Fishermen's Terminal. It's always interesting to check out the working boats there.

SHUNTING: We had more fun today working out a bear of a challenge in "The Amazing Mathematical Amusement Arcade." It involved a train engine, a having to swap the places of two cars on a round about, with a stipulation being the engine could fit under a foot bridge over the round about, but the cars couldn't.

You know me, Ms. Hands on Learner, I immediately set about finding props to use. We settled on Disney Pixar "Cars" characters for our train cars, Annabelle drew the track on the white board, and I made us a pseudo-footbridge (which all of our cars fit under, but it served as a reminder during our attempts at solving it).

It was a toughie, and we helped ourselves by repeating the phrase "no one ever said you can't ..." while trying new solutions. That's akin to Gpa's comment on last night's post noting, "When a problem stumps you, step back and try to uncover your Unconscious Assumptions."

Eventually, they figured it out. One turning point was realizing that you could haul two cars at a time.

MOM'S OK: Some of you may recall I posted last week about India launching its first ever interplanetary mission, a spacecraft headed for an eventual Martian orbit. MOM has instruments on board to return color images of Mars' surface, study the Red Planet's composition and survey its atmosphere for methane.

What I've neglected to post, however, is that said spacecraft had a worrisome hiccough a few days back.

MOM was designed to orbit Earth for a spell, picking up speed before its flight to Mars. Once in Earth orbit, there were to be a series of rocket firings to boost it in orbit. The first three went as planned, but last Sunday, on what was the fourth firing, there was an abort when a rocket firing failed.

A number of the space-y pages I frequent were pretty much predicting the mission a failure at that point.
However, according to a report today, corrective measures were a success and MOM is back on track. Let's hope that's the case and that MOM's on her way to Mars in short order.

Thursday Randomness

HAPPY MATH:  As I've documented here, over the summer I took an online course through Stanford featuring professor Jo Boaler and her awesome approach to math education.

As wonderful as it was, the course paralyzed me, in a way. I delayed busting out the predictable, very standard approach Singapore Math book this fall. Don't get me wrong, it's a VERY good standard approach math book. But it is what it is. When we did get it out, the kids and I rather miserably and mindlessly slogged through the first few pages before I declared, "No mas!"

Instead, I resourced Jo Boaler's list, and found a book called "The Amazing Mathematical Amusement Arcade." We ordered it and today we started in on the first page. Such fun!

The first problem involved a graphic with nine sticks used to make four equilateral triangles. You were supposed to take three away, and with the remaining sticks make four equilateral triangles. How is this possible?!?!

At first, the kids labored to make a modified version of the example in the book, on the flat. There were starts and stops and before long, we were asking ourselves, "What would Captain Kirk do?"

After about 10 minutes of frustration, I told them I'd give them a clue. "Think outside the ..."

"Box!" Annabelle finished my sentence.

"No," I corrected. "Think outside the CUBE."

I could see lightbulbs go off. Suddenly, the challenge became 3-D. But that didn't mean they were right right off the bat. ...

As you can see, Annabelle used too many sticks and definitely does NOT have four equilateral triangles.

But before long, they each solved the puzzle.

After that, it was on to a classic quandary - one I remember solving when I was about their age. A man had to get across the river with his goat, a head of cabbage, and a wolf. He had a boat, but couldn't leave the goat with the cabbage or the wolf with the goat. How did he manage it?

The kids talked about it for a couple of minutes with no solution. I told them I'm a visual learner, and prefer to look at a problem. So, we got out a boat (book mark), a man (a spool of thread), a wolf (a packet of Taco Bell hot sauce), a goat (an eraser) and a head of cabbage (some Play-Doh). Our scenario is pictured atop the blog.

The kids worked through a few scenarios before hitting upon a solution. I think our primitive mock up helped. :)

Afterward, we talked about how these challenges involved sequencing, logic, non-linear thinking and other elements of great value when working math problems. "They're about math SENSE," I told the kids, thinking Professor Jo Boaler would have been proud of me, LOL.

They both practically begged to do more problems from the book. That's a good sign. :)

THE ONE AND ONLY: Last weekend, the kids and I cleaned out our big raised bed at the top of the lot. In the process we harvest the one and only pumpkin our garden produced.

Take a look. It's the orange thing, about the size of a navel orange. It kinda looks like a Walla Walla onion in this photo.

Problem is, the seed packet from whence the pumpkin sprang said something about it being The Biggest Pumpkin in the History of Big Pumpkins, or some such thing.

Grossly false advertising.

MAVEN MINUTE: Today, we watched a new PSA hosted by Reading Rainbow/Star Trek TNG star LeVar Burton all about NASA's MAVEN spacecraft, set to launch next week.

Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission is set to reach the Red Planet in Sept. of 2014, with a mission of helping solve "the mystery of the missing atmosphere," reports Burton. Check out the quick overview of the mission here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijAO0FFExx0


Annabelle reminded me today that our names will be on board that spacecraft, as we participated in NASA's "Going to Mars" program. We even wrote haikus for the occasion. Today, we checked out the 'winning' haikus. I was glad to see my favorite one at the top:

It’s funny, they named
Mars after the God of War
Have a look at Earth

Benedict Smith
United Kingdom

GOLDMINE:  CJ was a non stop source of bemusement today. First up was around 10 this morning. I noticed he was chewing and asked the obvious question: "What are you chewing?"

"Gum," he deadpanned. Anticipating my next question, "Where did you get it?" since I hadn't given him any, CJ went ahead and confessed, "To be honest, it's from yesterday.  It was in my pocket."

All together now: :"Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww"

A bit later I was moaning about my current illness, which CJ is also coming down with. CJ quickly dubbed it "The Rick Virus" and called his oldest brother "Patient Zero," LOL.

This afternoon, we had a car load of things to donate and were headed across the Ballard Bridge to Goodwill. We were also going to stop at Fred Meyer, and I recalled, aloud, that there's a Salvation Army donation truck in their parking lot, and suggested we could kill two birds with one stone.

"Ah, ah, ah," CJ immediately piped up from the backseat. "They are NOT LGBT friendly, and we do not support them."

And so, my backseat conscience shamed me into going that extra mile, literally, to Goodwill.

After Goodwill, back to Fred Meyer we went. I told the kids our first stop was the toy aisle, in search of dinosaurs. I explained to them I had recently read several posting on the Internet about this phenomenon called Dinovember, where toy dinosaurs come to life overnight during November.

Apparently a skeptic, CJ replied, "I think it's more likely that I would get struck by lightning and win the lottery at the exact same nanosecond while reciting the Quran in classical Arabic and reading the complete biography of Kim Il-sung than it is that inanimate objects suddenly popping to life."

Hmph. Just wait until tomorrow, CJ, ye of little faith.

Astronauts and Dinosaurs

   
STATION TO STATION: As mentioned in yesterday's post, we had been looking forward to seeing Col. Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency since last August, when it was announced and I bought tickets. It was worth the wait and the evening exceeded our expectations!

I'll let CJ tell you a bit more about it.

Last night, on 11/12/13, we went to Seattle's Town Hall to see Chris Hadfield, who is a retired Canadian astronaut. At the speech, Chris explained how being in space was different from being on earth, and how awesome it was to be in space.

Before the speech, there were many images of space-themed drawings that people drew, and also some poems. Many of these pictures & poems were very interesting and almost made me forget that Chris Hadfield was going to appear here in the first place. (Editor's note - the images were from the Humans in Space competition -http://www.lpi.usra.edu/humansinspaceart/)

One of the many things that Chris Hadfield did during the show is let the audience ask questions. One person asked if it was harder, or easier to play the guitar in space. Chris said it was VERY hard to play a guitar in space, as even the slightest touch could send the guitar flying around the ISS, and not only that, but the guitar could get detuned VERY easily. Due to how hard it is to play a guitar in space, his producer on Earth asked him why his guitar playing sounded so awful, though it wasn't Chris' fault, it was space's.

Another question (asked by me) is if the Space Needle is visible from space. Chris said the Space Needle was not visible from space, as it is too small of an object to see from space. However, he did say that the shadow of the CN tower (a similar tower in Canada) was visible from space, and he said he would presume that the shadow of the Space Needle is visible from space, as well.

Another part of the speech explained how it feels to be on a space launch. He said that before & during the launch, one half of your body would be like "Check this, check that, make sure that works." while the other part would be like "WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Some video from his appearance popped up online today. Here, The Museum of Flight shares Hadfield talking about what it's like to lift off.

Here's Annabelle's recap of the evening:

On 11/12/13 (November 12, 2013) Iwent to see Chris Hadfield at Seattle Town Hall.

I must say that it was amazing! He had a very good sense of humor, and one of the examples is when he was describing how it is to launch. He said: "When you're launching, part of you is like
'check this, check that, check that again..' while the other half is going 'Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!'."

Chris Hadfield is one of 4 Canadian Space Agency astronauts from a field of 5,330 applicants, who flew on STS-74 and 100, installing the Canadarm2 on STS-100, and being the first Canadian to spacewalk. He has grown popular over social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Back to the talk with Chris Hadfield, some questions he answered were "How is guitar different in space?" to which he replied, "Well, your fretwork is horrible, because there's no gravity, and whenever you press down on the guitar it flies away." 

Overall I LOVED going to see Hadfield, and I hope if you ever see him you feel the same.

And a YouTube user shared Hadfield talking about what he thinks is next for the manned spaceflight program.

Post by The Museum of Flight.

One audience member asked if he thought NASA ended the space shuttle program too soon. Hadfield didn't mince words. He talked about the Columbia disaster and matter-of-factly said, "We killed those people." Ouch. :0

He went on to explain how NASA had known for years about the foam flying off the external tank, and nothing was done to remedy or mitigate the problem - until AFTER the Columbia crew burned up upon re-entry during STS-107.

That was the beginning of the end of the shuttle program, Hadfield explained. It was decided that only enough missions would be flown to finish work on the ISS.

Another audience member asked an interesting question. After noting that Hadfield had survived being an astronaut, she asked (paraphrasing), "Now what do you think is going to kill you."

He said that he'd actually researched what most astronauts die of, and the answer is aviation accidents. He said it was a grim reminder to him not to jump in a plane when he was rusty/hadn't piloted in awhile. He said the second leading cause of death was cancer, but while that sounded bad, astronauts, on average, live longer than most folks, and "we're all going to die eventually" (paraphrasing), and that if you're lucky to live long enough, you'll eventually die of prostate cancer as a very elderly man.  At that point he reminded the crowd that it's "Movember."

And here's a snippet some event attendee posted to YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLPwo4fKOeo. He's talking about the future of spaceflight for NASA. Hadfield thinks we're going back to the Moon before Mars or elsewhere on a manned spaceflight.

Hadfield's on stage appearance lasted about 60 minutes, with the first 15 being him talking about prepping for his very first launch and sharing a minute by minute account of launchpad to zero gravity.

For the next 45 minutes, he took questions from the audience. He offered great thought and detail on each question, so there was only time for about 5 of them. Questions asked included.

Happily, CJ was one of the lucky audience members who got to ask a question!!

CJ asked him "Can you see the Space Needle from space?" Of course, the audience full of Seattleites laughed. Hadfield gave a thoughtful and interesting reply. He said he didn't see the Space Needle from the ISS specifically, but he took a lot of photos of Seattle, and it's no doubt in one or some of them. He also noted that while the Space Needle isn't very big/wide from above, what a person could probably spot from space would be it casting a shadow on a nearby building. He said he's seen photos like that of the CN tower in Toronto.

There were hundreds of people at the sold out event. After Hadfield was done speaking, I was sooooo happy I'd scoped out where the autograph table was and had chosen seats right next to it. We were first in line!

It was a little chaotic, but Hadfield was efficient and engaging. He signed our books, talked to the kids and asked without being prompted, "Who's your photographer?"

Without being asked, he took our Very Special Space Friends poster from Annabelle and posed for a perfect photo!

The photo of Hadfield is great. CJ and Annabelle ... not so much. ;) Guess Commander Hadfield has had a few more years of posing-for-photos experience!

Last night I posted Hadfield's take on "Space Oddity." Tonight, in case you haven't yet seen it, I will share his duet with Barenaked Ladies, "I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing?)." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvAnfi8WpVE

DINO DAY: Once a month at the school the kids attend up north once a week, there is a "Spirit Day." Today's theme was dress like an animal. About 10 minutes before we walked out the door, I recalled it was a dress up day, and my mind immediately went to something quick and easy - a couple of dinosaur costumes I've had up in my closet for a couple of years, since we plucked them out of a 'free' box at a garage sale.

They are the kinda-dorky costumes where the wearer's face sticks out from under the costume character's head. I've never really understood those. To me, it looks like the wearer has been swallowed or something. 

The kids pulled on the just-a-tad-too-small costumes and off we went.

Lots of kids had dressed up for the occasion, so it was fun to see the different costumes. The kids' (awesome) science teacher had taken the time to turn the occasion into much more than a dress up day. In the lobby there was a great display about the animal classification system.

And kids who took the time to fill out a kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species card and post it on the board were rewarded with a Hershey's Kiss. CJ and Annabelle were happy to take on that task.

Below, you can see Annabelle's classification form.

Here's what it looks like when dinosaurs do math, in case you were wondering.

In only slightly related news, today a Facebook friend posted a story about parents who stage a Dinovember every year for their kids. So cute! Wish I'd thought of it, and what lucky kids!

https://medium.com/thoughts-on-creativity/6f4cb1886d41

CSA's Chris Hadfield Commands the Stage in Seattle

Photo courtesy: NASA
'AN ASTRONAUT'S GUIDE TO LIFE ON EARTH': We've been sitting on some very special tickets for months now. Tickets to see Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield at Town Hall Seattle for a talk entitled "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth," the same title as his recently-published book.

Without a doubt, every astronaut is exceptional, but something about Hadfield captivated Earthlings like no astronaut since the Apollo program. Via his his musical and photography talents, his accessibility and willingness to share, and his eloquence, he managed to connect with people all around the globe, giving them a front row seat to life in space.

We were so glad when he landed safely after his last mission, and so sorry to see him leave the ISS.

Photo courtesy: NASA
I mean, who can forget THIS?!?!? Space Oddity. From SPACE!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo

Hadfield's talk tonight started at 7:30. Doors were supposedly open at 6:30. That didn't happen until about 6:40 though.

In the meantime, the kids had a seat on the marble out from of Town Hall and read. Little did they know, at one point Hadfield walked the the doors right behind them. :)
                                         
 We were only about 15 deep in the line, so we were able to score seats in the front row AND I sussed out where the autograph afterward table was, so we sat RIGHT next to it. Score!

It's late now, and I'm getting sick, so I need to go to bed and hope for some sort of recovery. I'm going to write about the talk tomorrow, but spoiler alert - CJ was one of just five or so folks who got to ask a question during the Q&A portion. :)

In the meantime, suffice it to say, Hadfield is a marvelous storyteller.

Town Hall says they will be posting a video of the event on their Web site. I'll provide a link when it becomes available.

Quick Update

Image Credit: 

NASA/Carla Cioffi

GROUNDED: Sunday night around dinner time, we were glued to NASA TV, watching the return of three Expedition 37 crew members, dropping back to Earth after 166 days in space.

While on the ISS, Expedition 37 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano circled the globe more than 2,600 times.

The trio touched down at 6:49 p.m. our time.

One piece of precious cargo along with them was the Olympic torch. That torch has logged a lot of miles now, too!
 
CERTIFIED: Yesterday, CJ and Annabelle finished working their way through The Big History Project 9-part curriculum and are now the proud bearers of a Big History Project Historian badge. And they're supposed to get a sticker in the mail. We shall see!


SHORT STUFF: This post is abbreviated. I have a headache I'm going to blame on real estate. Specifically, Realtors, inspectors, mortgage brokers and underwriters. I will be glad when the never ending saga of Rick trying to buy a house resolves itself one way or another.