Fast Forward

BUSY BUSY BUSY: This is not a normal week.  Saturday, son Kennedy is getting married, which means lots of special projects (movies, slide show, signs, and several dozen cupcakes).

And it means lots of errands to run. And lots of company coming to town. 

So far, we're managing to keep our heads above water. But tomorrow and the next day will be doozies.

We managed to get some schoolin' in today, in the form of math assignments (fun with protractors and angles!), science homework (studying for a skeleton test), and we continued our observation of Earth Sciences Education Week. Today, we put up a poster about Earth's evolution.  

The kids read out the history of life on our planet, and then hopped online to check out a Web site the poster pointed them to: Biointeractive.org/EarthViewer.

EarthViewer is actually an app (available on Google Play, the Apple App Store, and Amazon Apps. The app lets users explore the science of Earth's history, including atmospheric composition, biodiversity, day length and solar luminosity over time.  

While we didn't download the app yet, the kids were able to access a wealth of information via the Web site, as well. For instance, Annabelle watched videos about how newts' limbs can regenerate, and how lionfish can rapidly regrow body parts, including even part of their heart!  It looks like we could spend days/weeks/months using this site - a great discovery!

FACE OFF:  Here are a couple of captures from CJ's playing around with the Photobooth program on a computer in the Shoreline school library on Wednesday.

Hey CJ, why the long face?

And in this one, he looks like I feel ... tense in the middle and like my head's about to explode!

Gem of a Day

THE BENDS:  Last Thursday, the kids started a science experiment as part of a unit we're in the midst of about skeletons/bones. The experiment involved partially submerging two wishbones in vinegar to see what happened. We checked those soaking bones for the first time today.

The kids weren't too surprised to find that the bones had softened, since they were in liquid and they know vinegar is an acid. However, they were surprised by just how flexible they had become.

Obviously, you couldn't normally do this with a wishbone!

PRECIOUS:  We continued our observance of National Earth Science Week by learning about gems today, using (wonderful!) resources the fine folks at NASA mailed us.

The kids read all the info on a big poster from the Gem Institute of America. It included info about gems' durability (the Mohs scale), rarity, beauty, gems' origins, finding gems, how they're processed, and more.

The poster referred readers to a Web site, http://gemkids.gia.edu/ .  Links there included working with gems, a word of the day, classroom activities, gem-related careers, the story of a gem, a gem explorer, a jewelry explorer and time machine, and a glossary. I'll let CJ and Annabelle tell you more about the site, by the Gemological Institute of America Inc. CJ's up first. ...

Today, I learned about many gems on a site called gemkids.gia.edu. On GemKids, they have a feature known as the Jewlery Time Machine, which shows the history of gems from prehistoric seashell neckwear found in the Blombos Cave in South Africa to even some space gems found on Mars by the Spirit rover, which proceed to get made into jewelery by jewelers on Earth.

Another feature the site has is a gallery of many different gems of all different cuts and colors, from the usually-clear diamonds, most of which actually formed over one billion years ago(!), to Alexandrite, which can change color depending on the environment it is in.*

The last feature on the site I will talk about is a section of the site called The Story of a Gem: How Stones Became Rock Stars, which details many interesting facts about gems, like how most rough gems are crystals, and how almost every gem is a mineral, but a very small portion of minerals are gems.

Overall, I learned a lot about gems by reading from GemKids, and I found the site very interesting.

My personal favorite was one labeled the "Fancy Color Diamond", which is a term that refers to a diamond that is not transparent, but is in fact, naturally a certain color, such as white. These, according to GemKids, are the most valuable gems of all.

And here's what Annabelle has to share ...

Today I went to a site called gems.gia.edu, where you can learn a lot about gems, minerals, and their history. The site has a nice, user-friendly interface. I'll tell you some things I learned on the site.

From the Time Portal section I learned things like emerald gems are said to be Cleopatra's favorite gem. In fact, since Egypt had so many emerald mines, they became known as the "Cleopatra mines" during her reign! Another fact: Louis XIV was known as "The Sun King" because he glittered everywhere he went! His clothes had so many diamonds on them he bent over under their weight!

They also have a interactive called "Gem Explorer" where you can look at gems. It includes facts like the colors of gems, such as sapphire being any color except red, history of some gems, like hundreds of thousands of years ago, stone age people made tools out of jade, famous gems (ancient jade burial suits were used for Han Dynasty royalty in China), and gem beliefs and lore. Some people even connected pearls to the moon because of their shape. They also represented modesty, chastity, and purity in Europe, and people thought they protected them from fire and fire-breathing dragons in China!

This site taught me a lot about gems. I really liked the site. It's fun to look at all the history and facts!

The GIA has a school and laboratory in Carlsbad, California. Their library is said to be the largest gem and jewelry library in the world, with over 38,000 books on gems and jewelry. The oldest book in the collection dates back to 1496. The GIA collects and preserves mineral specimens, jewelry, gem art, and gemological equipment. Sounds like it would be a fascinating stop if we ever find ourselves in Carlsbad! 

A rock-loving friend of mine happened to post a link on Facebook to a story "The Cave of Crystals" by the Discovery Channel. We looked at the link and marveled at the photos of mammoth crystals were discovered in in 2000,when explorers checked out a former mining chamber that had been drained of its water in 1975.  Discovery has also produced a documentary about the cavern. You can find Naica: Secrets of the Crystal Cave on YouTube.

STACKED: We stopped by the library today, and came home with some picture books - something we haven't done in a long while. 

We picked up "Help! We Need a Title," a wacky book by Herve Tullet. The plot is that there isn't a plot ... the book's characters are caught off guard that the reader picked up the book and is thumbing through its pages. You can see the author reading it thanks to a YouTube video posted by Walker Books: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN-QEOOdZu4


We also checked out "The Day the Crayons Quit," a super cute (and popular) book by Drew Daywalt, with adorable pictures by Oliver Jeffers. The book's pages are a series of short letters to a child from various colored crayons, most of them expressing displeasure about this or that (being used too much, too little, incorrectly ...). Very clever!  The publisher has a handy educators guide in PDF form here: http://www.penguin.com/static/images/yr/pdf/CrayonsGuide.pdf

A third book we selected was "Young Frank Architect." It's a tale of two Franks, both architects, one young, one old. They live in New York and have very different ideas about what architects do. A trip to the Museum of Modern Art helps them have a meeting of the minds. (MoMA, in fact, is the book's publisher.)

Magnolia Weekend

WILD WALK:  Naturally, we were out and about a fair amount this weekend. A 'nice,' long walk on Saturday included a hike up the hill to a Magnolia resident's home who has an ridiculously amazing pumpkin patch in his front yard every year. 

We've been visiting his place since the '00s, and apparently this year was a banner year for the gourds. Sorry there's nothing in the photo above to really give you scale, but let's just say most of the specimens were MUCH bigger than CJ and Annabelle - combined!

On our way home, our gray day turned into a crazy squall. We got DUMPED on by rain the likes of which we haven't seen in months and months. It was a downright deluge. Imagine my surprise when we got home and I checked the Internet to find the National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning for west central Pierce County on Saturday (just to our south). A waterspout was spotted out over the sound. Fortunately, it never made landfall. 

GEOLOGICAL WEEK: About a month ago a big ol' packet of posters, worksheets, lesson plans, and other educational resources showed up like a present in our mailbox, a gift from NASA, to help us celebrate Earth Sciences Week, Oct. 13-17. Sweet!

We dove into the big pile today, and I pulled out a colorful poster. Once side was a graphic/timeline of the different geologic ages.  

The other side has info about fossils and the Paleontology Society. It even included chords to a song called "Ages of Rock" by a group called Ratfish Wranglers. Naturally, we were compelled to track the song down online. I remembered the University of Washington had a great site called "Sing About Science" and hoped we'd find it there. We did!  That site provided us a link to the Ratfish Wranglers' MySpace (throwback!) presence. There, we found their "Cruisin the Fossil Freeway" CD, including the cut the poster mentioned, "Ages of Rock." https://myspace.com/ratfishbrothers  

After listening to it a couple of times, the kids were ready to play along, and so science class turned into music class today. Nice!

BIRD BRAINED:  We always enjoy trips to our favorite local hardware store, Ace. They have free popcorn for customers, and several cages full of pretty birds in the back (all hardware stores have that, right?). They also have a large assortment of cupcake liners, if you can believe that, so we're there a lot. 

We stopped a couple of days ago and noticed a new cage, separate from the rest. Guess Buddy has been up to no good ... 

Apparently he is sorry ... 

Come Sunday, we went for a nice long walk on the waterfront before the Seahawks' (horrible) game. 

We walked all the way to Belltown, and the haunting statue "Echo", a 46-foot sculpture by internationally acclaimed artist Jaume Plens.

Her nuances stand out better when it's not so sunny out.  Love this art.

Today in our travels, we spotted the Husky football bus. The Huskies had a *much* better weekend than the Seahawks. ...

ON THIS DAY: Apollo 7 launched on Oct. 7, 1968. On this day in history, they transmitted the first live broadcast television from aboard an American crewed spacecraft.