Building, Breaking, Bruising

LET JIMI TAKE OVER: This evening we had to track down a grease pen or China marker. Sounds simple enough in a big city like this, right? 

Wrong. 

And so, we ended up at the city's biggest artists' supply store, Blick, on Capitol  Hill, right on Broadway (of Sir Mix-A-Lot and Macklemore fame). 

Fortunately, they had the pen. Plus, the kids got to visit the iconic Jimi Hendrix statue!

ENGINEERING:  This afternoon, we headed down to West Seattle so that the kids could take part in a Seattle Public Libraries summer reading program event. The challenge - design and build a crate that could keep an egg safe from a 4-foot (or more!) fall.

The kids (about 30 in the room, I'd guess) worked in small teams. Pity the poor girl who got stuck with the rather opinionated and older siblings. ;)

The kids had a total time of about 30 minutes to discuss their design and build it. The class leader informed them that real engineers have a budget they have to work with, and that the egg contraptions were no exception. They were allowed 10 items for construction. The raw materials included balloons, cotton balls, a foot of string, a foot of masking tape, small paper plates, plastic cutlery, plastic cups, Styrofoam balls, cardboard egg holders (cut from the containers you buy eggs in in the store), pipe cleaners, plastic bags, etc. 

CJ, Annabelle and friend discussed what to build and buy. And they discussed it some more. And some more. And then more. (Not all the other children gathering their materials in the photo above.)  So when push came to shove, they had about 5 minutes to actually build their egg capsule. Uh oh. :/

They put the egg inside cardboard, put some masking tape around it, put a balloon inside a plastic shopping bag, and then taped the bag to the egg carrier. I think the hope/prayer was that the plastic 'parachute' would create enough drag to slow the egg down some. 

All the kids lined up and marched outside the library to put their engineering to the test. 

I'm not gonna lie, I thought it was going to be Humpty Dumpty on the first drop for the MPA kids and friend. But lo and behold, after an inspection, their egg remained intact. Hooray!

Alas, their egg did not survive the drop from about 9 feet. 

All in all, lessons were learned. Perhaps the paramount one being you also have a TIME budget. Often you need less talk, more monkey, as we like to say around here. 

BTW, today marked our first-ever visit to the West Seattle Library. It's up on the north end of the peninsula, not too far from Admiral. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places.

photo: City of Seattle

Turns out it's a Carnegie library. In 1908, philanthropist Andrew Carnegie donated $35,000 toward its construction. Local families donated the land, at 42nd Avenue SW and SW College Street. The library opened on July 23, 1910, and it was the first permanent library branch building to open in Seattle. 

CURSED: This morning, our math education consisted of watching a wonderful Reading Rainbow episode from 1998. The program featured an animated version of "Math Curse" by author Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith.

Host LeVar Burton helped explain how math is important in organizing, art, and many other aspects of everyday life. There was also a segment about how FedEx relies on math to track every single package from collection to delivery. 

You can watch the whole episode online, thanks to Virginia's Public Television, which has posted it to Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/6367933. 

BIG BUMMER: We started today with a walk, just up to the closest neighborhood park, about a block away. While the kids played on the playground, the dogs and I walked in circles.

Whilst playing, a couple of times Annabelle climbed to the top of the tallest 'rock' on the playground and contemplated jumping off. She debated the pros and cons for about a half hour. At one point she called out to me, "I am using myself as a unit of measurement to show myself that this rock isn't as tall as it looks from up there."

Excellent strategy, Annabelle. In fact, that gave her the steely reserve to go ahead and slide/jump off it. I stood by, and told her to grab my hand, at least for the first jump, so she could gauge it all.

Well, she jumped alright. And she didn't grab my hand. And while for a microsecond she was on her feet, her weight was too far back, they immediately shot out from underneath her and WHAMMO, the dreaded bruised tailbone.  Poor Bee rolled around groaning and moaning for quite some time. Laika was alarmed, and was trying to think of something to do to help, but it turns out licking Annabelle in the face didn't make it better. 

Annabelle eventually composed herself enough to limp home. Naturally, she stepped off the sidewalk on the way downhill, and turned her ankle over.  When it rains, it pours.

A couple of hours later she was extolling the virtues of ibuprofen.