Feeling Groovy

 
Photo: Wikimedia Commons via user Nancy http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nancy
FAR OUT: We're still tripping in the '60s in our history of rock class. Today's lectures focused on major players in the psychedelic scene in San Fransisco and London.

First up was the city by the Bay. The Grateful Dead were seemingly everywhere and anywhere that had to do with a psychedelic happenings. It was interesting to ponder that their albums don't necessarily encapsulate their music very well, as they're known for their improvisational, experimental live performances. 

Jefferson Airplane was big on the scene, too. LOVE this video of them from the Smothers Brothers' variety show!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0

We also watched watched Country Joe and the Fish recorded live at Woodstock . There were some bad words, but hey, it's rock n' roll. CJ really liked their anti-war anthem, "I Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag." 

Before I hit the showers this morning, I put on a Janis Joplin/Big Brother & Holding Co. playlist for the kids. By the time I came downstairs 20 minutes later, Annabelle was singing "Mercedes Benz" repeatedly. :)

Another lecture we watched covered London's psychedelic scene, which was emerging parallel to San Fran's. We compared and contrasted Pink Floyd's Interstellar Overdrive with the song that inspired it, "My Little Red Book," by Love, a SF band. Interesting. 

SUPER PSYCHEDELIC: In keeping with this week's theme, I couldn't help but smile when I saw a photo NASA has just released. It's a colorized image of the combination of three wavelengths of light from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. They show multiple gets that led to a series of slow coronal puffs from the sun on January 17 of last year. 

It's gorgeous, really. . 

Image Credit: 

Alzate/SDO

MATH MINDED: Last week, CJ and Annabelle started a great math class through Stanford online. Called "How to Learn Math: For Students," it's led by professor Jo Boaler, an advocate for (good, meaningful!) math education reform. (I took a similar class with her several months ago, "How to Learn Math).

Here's the trailer for the kids' class...
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/qD5QR5R6b8E?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 I really love what the kids are learning. It's not times tables or factoring or geometry, it's learning ABOUT math - how to view success, recognizing that everyone can do math, stressing how math is creative and cool (as opposed to the stereotype of rigid and boring) - all good stuff!

The class is a series of videos with Boaler, other math educators, and students. Between videos, there are chances for students to reflect. Here are a couple of the kids' observations.

CJ:  "n lesson 3 of this course, I learned that speed is not something that you need in math. Often times, the better idea is to go slow or process the idea in your mind, so you can think about it. Then again, if you can think quickly and can do well doing that, then don't be afraid to do so. Just remember that speed isn't everything in math."

Annabelle: "Being fast doesn't mean being smart. You should always take your time and think about why your method works or how it's related to other methods. Never let anyone  say that "You're not fit for this." You can do it, just keep working hard. Mistakes help you learn!"

LOVE IT!

Picture This

 
LEFTOVERS: After yesterday's Big Cookie Project, we had a few leftovers. The kids were happy to do a little decorating this morning. Can you guess who made which cookie? I'll bet you can. :)

STATE OF CONFUSION:  A few days back, I had the kids take a stab at filling in state names on a blank map of America.  They probably got 65-70 percent correct on their first go round.

Today, I handed them another blank map and told them to have at it. They did better, but there are still some rather enormous gaps in the knowledge we need to fill. Yowza. ...

PHOTOGRAPHY 101: For a change of pace, we drove a little today before commencing our walk. We pointed the Honda toward Queen Anne, destination David Rodgers Park.

But before we hit the playground there, we took the pups on a several blocks stroll around the neighborhood.  I was walking both dogs, so I had the kids take turns holding my camera. Annabelle went first, and asked if she could take some photos. I said, "Sure!" of course.

She started snapping shots of pretty flowers, which were plentiful.

CJ took his turn and by the second photo captured he declared, "I have found a new passion!"  :)  He suggested he start saving money for his own camera.

As we reviewed their photos tonight, talking about composition, point of view, depth of field and other aspects, each of them could quickly see that some photos were better than others, and name specifics as to why they were good - or bad.

CJ was underwhelmed by most of the tree shots he took, like the one above. We talked about how and why it can be hard to take a good photo of a tree.

When I saw him trying to capture an enormous evergreen in the park ...

I had a feeling he would be disappointed with the photo because it wouldn't really convey how big the tree was, since there was nothing in the frame to compare it to scale wise.

I told him sometimes the best thing to do when shooting something really big is to go really small - shoot just a small section of it.

And so he zeroed in on the really nubby bark, and took this cool shot.

Annabelle also zeroed in on some interesting bark.

Sometimes a sign is a sign of a good or bad photo. CJ liked the raised beds in this home's front yard ...

But when the picture was on my screen, I asked the kids, "What's the first thing your eye is drawn to?" They both said, "The no parking sign!" immediately.

Conversely, in one of Annabelle's flower photos, I pointed out how in the background you can see the street sign in the background, and how something like that can be a nice touch. We talked about how she could have frame it better.

CJ liked the looks of a purple UW flag flying over one home and tried to photograph it. While he was doing so, I told him that photographing flags can be tricky - ideally, you snap it right when the flag is unfurled. He only took to photos. It wasn't enough.

During our walk we encountered some TRUE art. ;) We dubbed it "Feline Island."

Zombie Apocalypse

UNDEAD: Apologies to regular readers for no post yesterday. I was temporarily overcome by and overrun with zombies.

More specifically, making zombie and other cookies based on a zombie hunting game, State of Decay. We made them for Kennedy's fiance's birthday. She worked on the popular game, produced by Undead Labs.

Tho the zombies are a little frightening, the game has lots of fun graphics on (fake) businesses within the game, so a number of my cookies had to do with that. ... 

I also made a couple of shark hoodie character cookies. That was fun ... and it kept me up until 12:45! 

My favorite cookie was the mascot for the T-Rexpresso stand found in the game.

Christian packed the cookies to work with him at 5:30 this morning, Kennedy picked them up a bit after 7 and I had a nice text from Abby by 8 a.m. :)

MONDAY, MONDAY: Yesterday was mostly devoted to cookies, but on Monday, we had big fun.  We worked around the campus in the morning, but in the afternoon we drove north to Everett, first stop Thornton A. Sullivan Park at Silver Lake. 

The 35.3 acre park has a sandy beach along the lake with a swimming area.  The afternoon was 75 ish and muggy, warm enough for CJ and Annabelle to be all in the water, but CJ chose to mostly wade. And splash his sister. ;)

  Annabelle spent nearly an hour in the water, and at one point, enjoyed a family of ducks parading by.

Afterward, we met G&G from Vancouver at Mill Creek McMenamins for a very happy hour!

FURTHER BACK: I've been meaning to post this for a couple weeks now. There's a really great mural on the backside of the school the kids attend weekly in Shoreline. Starry Night has always been a favorite.

TRIPPY: We are in the final week of our History of Rock n Roll (Part 1) Coursera class and we've approached the intro to psychedelia. What started off as a sub-sub culture quickly became a prominent part of the music scene. There was music crafted to be part of an (LSD) trip, but there was also music intended to be the trip itself.

One of the things we learned today was that The Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever" was the first song featuring a sample-playback keyboard (the Mellotron, predating the synthesizer). 

Freeloaders

SUMMER FREEBIE FUN:  We started summer off with a bang, for no bucks!

Saturday morning, we hopped a bus to Pacific Science Center.  Before entering, we stopped to admire the sculpture to the east of the science center, "Sonic Bloom." Powered by the sun, these over sized flowers sing!

What prompted our visit to PacSci on Saturday was a free screening of a movie they're considering for a run on one of their IMAX screens. I received a members-only invite a few days back, and jumped at the chance right away.

The movie was called "Watermelon Magic" and the trailer (below) I watched on its Web site looked really cool. The whole film was made by stitching over 200,000 high resolution stop motion images together. It's visually stunning, without a doubt.
"Watermelon Magic" Trailer from Spring Garden Pictures on Vimeo.
However, our party was split on our overall impressions of the film, with Annabelle and Christian liking it more than CJ and I did (we didn't care for the magic wand element to the story).
After the film, we tore outside and toward the open lawn at the Center near the International Fountain. That's where there were a couple of (free!) concerts being staged. The concerts were for Seattle Marathon finishers, but staged in the open air on public ground, there were plenty of interlopers, like us. ;)

First up were The Presidents of the United States of America. I've been a fan of theirs for 20 years now, and the kids know and love their music, too.

 Lead singer Chris Ballew always looks like he's having big fun when performing, and it's infectious.

 We loved drummer Jason Finn's old school Mariners drum kit!

It was a great set, and we had no trouble getting right up to the stage (we were fresher than those poor marathon runners, ha ha).

After the Presidents, we went and splashed around in the International Fountain for about a half hour. While there, we noticed a solar halo. Maybe the sun's way of saying, 'Hello, summer!' (at least for those of us above the equator!).

Before too long, it was time to head back to the stage, because Seattle rap icon Sir Mix-A-Lot was up.

 He was wonderfully entertaining, a storyteller with great rhythm and rhyme.

What a fun start to summer - and today, the freebies just kept coming! For the second time in about a month, we scored a free pizza thanks to Domino's "DomiNoNo" promotion, which involved them giving away 20,000 free pizzas each time a Major League pitcher threw a no hitter for up to two no hitters this season. To win one, you had to log into their (very busy) Web site at the appointed time and hope for the best.

I was lucky and scored a free one when Dodgers pitcher Josh Beckett pitched a no-hitter back at the end of May, and last week another Dodgers' pitcher, Clayton Kershaw, pitched a no-no, and this time Christian scored a free pizza.

Too bad they're only doing the promotion twice this year!

SOME SCHOOLIN': We're not only about fun and games and food, of course.  This weekend we did manage to finish watching the lectures for weeks 5 and 6 our our history of rock class, and took the Week 5/6 exam. We've just got one week left in this session, and will have to take the final by this weekend.