FLASHBACK: Two years ago today, we were in London, checking out Buckingham Palace, riding the Eye, and gazing upon Big Ben. That was such a wonderful trip!
A couple of days ago I saw a photo of Big Ben used in an Internet meme in association with that ridiculous case of the 14-year-old in Texas being arrested for building a clock and taking it to school. Inexplicably, Ahmed Mohamed's knowledge and creativity resulted in him being hauled away from the school in handcuffs (wearing his NASA t-shirt, by the way). What a fantastic way to encourage a young man to build and invent ... not!
BOOK IT!: Imagine the kids' delight a couple of days ago when an envelope showed up in our mailbox containing coupons for free Personal Pan Pizzas (R) from Pizza Hut for them! There's a catch, though: They have to read books. Talk about a painless 'catch'!
The coupons are compliments of the BOOK IT! program. The program started in 1984, and I first heard about it when Rick and Ken (now nearly 30 and 28) got the coupons from their kindergarten teachers way back when.
On the BOOK IT! web site (www.bookitprogram.com), you can set reading goals, track reading, monitor progress, and more. Currently, there are 14 million students in 630,000 classrooms in 6,300 locations enrolled in the program.
The materials we received from BOOK IT! even included a link to download some free books on Kindle! (www.amazon.com/PIZZAHUTBOOKIT). Sweet!
BEATLES BABY: We started our morning by listening to a live in-studio performance by Caspar Babypants (rocker Chris Ballew of the Presidents of the United States of America). He's just released a second album of Beatles' covers, and though Caspar is supposedly music for kids, I suspect people of all ages would love his poppy tunes!
We absolutely love his original songs, and have seen him in concert multiple times. Annabelle was singing this Caspar song yesterday, when we went for a walk.
WE'VE GOT ISSUES: The kids started back to school this week, albeit a super duper alternative school. They'll be there for two hours on two days a week (a total of four hours). Annabelle has two art classes, CJ has drama, and they both are enrolled in a social issues class (examining world problems).
For the first trimester, the social issues class will be focused on the topic of hunger, both locally and around the globe. I was a big fan of these three goals, listed on the white board during the first day of class. ...
For homework, they had to choose a quote (from a list provided) and write a couple of sentences about it. CJ chose a quote by Mother Teresa, "I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples." In response, CJ wrote, "Although it is difficult for one person to change the world, they could certainly inspire others to do so. Inspiring others to do great things for the world is a very good thing to do. I hope to be able to inspire others in the future."
Annabelle chose: "The future depends on what we do in the present," a quote from Mahatma Gandhi. In response, she wrote, "The future won't write itself, so we need to do everything we can to shape it. Children like us today are the best to do this, because we will live to see what has come of our efforts. I would like to try and make an effort to stop hunger, starting here in Seattle."
RANDOM: Annabelle spends hours every day drawing. I post a tiny fraction of her work in the blog. Here's one from a couple days ago - Cthulhu apparently plotting to blow up the Earth. How nice. :)
In case you're wondering, Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft and first introduced in the short story "The Call of Cthulhu" first published in a pulp magazine back in 1928.
and just how does one pronounce "Cthulhu"? I've seen it in many times in sci-fi/fantasy stories but never known how it is to be pronounced.
ReplyDelete