Gobble Gobble

KITCHEN CAPERS: Though we didn't host a Thanksgiving dinner, we still cooked up a storm. We made a cheesecake, some Chex Mix, deviled eggs, assembled a couple of relish trays, made rolls and corn muffins and a really awesome green bean casserole and last, but not least, made some ridiculous turkey cupcakes.

The process involved making a dozen regular sized and mini sized cupcakes from scratch. Those were frosted with homemade chocolate frosting, The turkey's face was a candy corn stuck in the middle of the mini cupcake for its beak. A small strip of red fruit leather was its wattle, and I cut mini marshmallows in half for its eyes.

The tail feathers were candy corn "glued" (with royal icing) on a thing ginger cookie. Then it all had to be gingerly stacked on the big, base cupcake.
DINNER TIME: We loaded the turkeys and other stuff into the car and headed over to Columbia City, to the home of the kids' yoga buddy.

There was lots of free play time for the kids, and there were several "formal" games played, too (Apples to Apples, a couple of varieties of 'go fish,' Jenga, Round Up, and Toss Your Cookies to name a few). They also read a number of books.
The hosts had posted a paper tree on their dining room wall and guests got to write things they were thankful for on leaves and fruit that were hung on the tree. CJ's one and only contribution was "water." :) Essential to life, that's a good thing to be thankful for, I'd say!
Annabelle probably filled out a dozen leaves. Two of her "thankful for" things were 'ponys' and 'fireys' (fairys). :)

ANOTHER TRADITION: When we got back home the kids (and Kirby) settled onto the couch with pillows and blankets and watched "Charlie Brown Thanksgiving."

CJ just looooves the part where Lucy pulls the football out when Charlie Brown is trying to kick it. High comedy, indeed!

When the gang of Peanuts was gathered 'round the ping pong table 'feasting' on toast, popcorn, pretzels and jelly beans, CJ remarked, "That guy invited himself!"

Christian and I both laughed and explained to CJ "that guy" is a girl, Peppermint Patty.

Turkey Eve

I'M TOO SEXY FOR THIS SHIRT: Ceej and Bee had a protracted, wide ranging free-play session this morning. I just love listening to their dialogue and negotiations of the storyline.

At one point CJ came over to me and held up an Iron Man action figure sans removable armor and said, "Look, it's sexy Iron Man."

ROFL!

From his pre-dawn uppance to tuck-in-bed at night, CJ asks us for the definition of countless words. (One of these days I need to make a list of his inquiries.) A couple of days ago he asked us what 'sexy' means. We tried to explain. I guess some portion/version of that stuck, based on his declaration about Iron Man.

A few minutes later, Annabelle had to show me that one of the Pokemon characters had inherited Iron Man's shirt. ...

THANKSGIVING DYNAMICS: I found a great logic game online related to Thanksgiving.
The challenge is to seat everyone in the proper place at the table based on their like or dislike of certain foods and specific people. I scored 9,750 the first time I tried it. CJ had about half that his first time through, but beat my score by a bit on his second try.

I was in the shower when Annabelle came up to tell me she scored 1,500. I told her that wasn't very good and I knew she could do better and that I'd help her when I came downstairs.

Yeah, well when I came down, the score read 10,500! She'd told me the wrong number! I told her that was a terrific score and that I was proud of her. :)

CANDLE CRAFT: I had a couple of pint sized boxes sitting atop the recycling, some cranberries on the counter and freezing weather outside. Together, they were the perfect ingredients for a Thanksgiving table decoration.

We cleaned the carton and filled it with water. Then we dropped a couple of handfuls of cranberries in. Next, we wrapped a votive candle's bottom in foil and set it carefully amidst the cranberries. Then, we put it outside to let it freeze. On Thanksgiving we'll remove the carton and hopefully have a pretty (though temporary) candle holder.EVOLUTION OF KONG: This evening CJ and I read a story online about Donkey Kong's evolution. DK's had an interesting number of incarnations. He's been the good guy and the bad guy. CJ is looking forward to his newest title - Donkey Kong Country Returns.

MEASURING UP: We continued our new chapter dealing with units of measurement. Today's focus was estimating using meters and centimeters. Questions were like, 'Is a flagpole 5 meters high or 5 centimeters high?' CJ was really struggling with that. He just doesn't quite have his head wrapped around it yet. We started the session by measuring the kids, who are each a bit over 1 meter tall. But CJ wasn't using that knowledge to make inferences about other objects. I'm sure the switch will flip for him soon.

Frigid

ICE, ICE BABY: Today brought clear blue skies and c-c-c-old temperatures. The high today was 25° F.

The combination of snow and super cold has resulted in hardcore ice on many/most area roads. The news today was full of commuter horror stories from last night, including accounts of it taking 10 hours or more to get from south Seattle to Tacoma via I-5. Normally, that would be a 30-minute endeavor.

Fortunately, there was nowhere we HAD to be (music was canceled this week for Thanksgiving holiday and yoga was canceled due to the weather). We spent the majority of the morning indoors. One of the things we did to pass time was making some pine cone turkeys.

We'd collected the pine cones a couple of weeks ago at the kids' school in Shoreline. We collected some leaves a couple of weeks ago on a jaunt near Discovery Park. Finally, we combined them (along with some googly eyes, pipe cleaners and a little construction paper) to craft cute little turkeys.
CJ's is the one with the bigger eyes.

After turkey time, we headed upstairs (where it's a bit warmer). We've been doing our math upstairs for a couple of weeks now. This morning we started a new chapter in math - it's about units of measurement. It's a welcome break from the straight up addition and subtraction.

DORA DETRACTORS I've mentioned on these pages how the kids (now 6 and 7) seem to think they're sooo beyond Dora the Explorer (their BFF from the not too distant past). Last night out of nowhere, I recalled a Saturday Night Live cartoon where they made fun of Dora. I showed it to the kids. They think it's HYSTERICAL. It was the first thing CJ asked about today, before he was even vertical. "Can I watch 'Maraka'?!"

POWDER: Around noonish I thought it time to venture to the great outdoors. The kids had a rather tame snowball fight and then Rick joined us for some tame runs on slight slopes at Bayview Park.

Once Christian got home from work, he took the kids for a much longer, more adventurous sledding session. Here's some live action footage!

There's more rough footage here, on YouTube.

Snow Globe

UP ON THE ROOFTOP: Upon upping this morning, we saw that we had become part of a winter wonderland overnight. Except that, um, well it's not winter yet. It's not even Thanksgiving yet. ...There was just a dusting at 6 this a.m., but by midday, there were a couple of inches on the grounds.

THE CRANBERRIES: Still in PJs and wrapped in blankets, this morning the kids took a trip to a cranberry bog in Wisconsin thanks to "Wisconsin Cranberries: Not So Wild Anymore," a video from the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers.

It was chock full o' facts about the history of cranberries in what's now the United States and made for school-aged kids, so it was really spot on in content and tone. We learned about how cranberries grow (in bogs, not on bushes), about their blossoms (they look like pink popcorn!), that they used to be called crane berries (after the bird), that they're a good source of vitamin C, about how their harvested (wooden hand rakes in days gone bye, and by machines now), and how you can tell fresh cranberries from not-so-fresh (a berry bounce test).

I took a few notes during the film and gave the kids a written quiz afterward . Annabelle had paid very close attention to the film. CJ, well let's just say apparently he wasn't quite as into it. ;)

From Wisconsin, we hopped to the Ocean Spray Web site's kids' pages, where we found a fun pair of animated cartoons, "Wade and Wonderberry." Wade was a speechless pair of hip waders; Wonderberry was a chatty cranberry who wears a cape and has political aspirations. Interesting. Not a lot of educational content in this video, but the kids enjoyed watching it.

THE WHITE STUFF: We spent about an hour outside today. We took Kirby for a walk in the ever-increasing snow, and the kids helped me knock snow off our tropical plants (which really don't like the white stuff).

Annabelle and CJ both spent some time trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues, and they had a very low key snowball 'fight'.

SAVE THE TURKEYS: We ended up enjoying two books today that were definitely in the pro-turkey-life camp.

One was "Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving," by Dav Pilkey of "Captain Underpants" fame. It was a cute story about schoolkids taking a field trip to a turkey farm. Once the host/farmer shows them an ax and explains what's soon going down, the kids figure out a way to appropriate the turkeys off the farm.

The second book we read was "Gracias the Thanksgiving Turkey" is about a Puerto Rican boy living in New York who is given a live turkey for the upcoming Thanksgiving feast. However, the turkey becomes a pet whom he raises with the help of his family and neighbors.
I liked the book because there was a lot of beginning Spanish vocabulary woven into the text (and I couldn't help but notice that CJ and Annabelle knew all of those words thanks to their old friend Dora the Explorer).

VIRTUAL PLAYDATE This afternoon the kids had an online penguin powwow with "Pingazane," their old preschool pal who moved to San Diego. It's fun watching the three of them run around Club Penguin. Granted, it's a poor substitute for hanging out at a park, but it *is* interactive (they can converse in real time and wave at each other and dance together, etc.) to some degree, and it is completely real time, which is great.

APPLES TO APPLES: This evening, Rick came by (in anticipation of watching the Huskies basketball game). Before tipoff he spent some time playing Apples to Apples Jr. with the kids. What a fun game, and great for vocabularly building.

Friday Fun

GOBBLE GOBBLE: Thanksgiving is less than a week away now and we'd yet to do any kind of turkey-related handcraft. Today would be the day we'd right that wrong, by gum!

A couple of days ago, I found some sweet turkeys on the Fabulessly Frugal blog. I showed them to Annabelle this a.m. and she was all over making one of her own. I had the apples, marshmallows and candy corn in stock, as well as some candy eyes. All I was lacking was the Froot Loops the prototype had used for the tailfeathers.

As I stared into my pantry wondering what we could use as a substitute, my eyes cast upon the the hideous Oops! All Berries cereal by Cap'n Crunch. Though they didn't have holes in the center, I was hoping we could bore through them with toothpicks. Sure 'nuff, with the right amount of force and a spinning motion, we drilled through those sugary little nuggets.

During construction CJ said, "I am one clever guy, right?. Sometimes I find ways to do something else (when the first way doesn't work). One time when I broke the crunchberry today, I noticed I still had a hole that would work (on another part of the crunchberry) and I poked it in and used it so I would get closer, sooner."

Excellent workaround, CJ. :)

The turkey's body is an apple, its head is a marshmallow half, its beak is a candy corn, of course. For feet we halved those candy corn like sugar pumpkin candies, and we had eyes in stock from past cookie making adventures. We''ll let these turkeys hang around a day or so before the kids eat 'em, tailfeathers and all.

CHOCOLATE GERMAN: Other kitchen action this a.m. included whipping up Christian's birthday cake. His favorite is "Chocolate German" (as the kids call it), so we started by making a couple of layers of awesome chocolate cake with a recipe from the "Confetti Cakes" book.


Then, it was time to find a recipe for perfect coconut-pecan filling and topping. I settled on one from Kraft's Web site. We whipped it up and Annabelle helped spread it on.
I gotta say, the cake looks Deeeeelicious. We'll find out how it tastes on Saturday.
MUCH BETTER: In recent weeks, it has become apparent CJ just naturally catching on to the proper use of much vs. many. So today, we spent about an hour talking about when to use each. For example, many = plural, like, "How many dollars do you have?", whereas much goes with singular words, like "How much money do you have?"

We found several exercises online, including several sites for people trying to learn English. One was English Grammar Online 4U, another was a Germany based Web site.

Through doing the exercises, the kids learned you can't always rely on an S to let you know if a word is plural or not (for instance men, women and people are plural without an S on the end).

The kids did well on the written exercises. It will be interesting to see if tht success translates into correct usage in speech.

Of course, after all of the "much" related phrases, I couldn't get "How Much is that Doggie in the Window" out of my head. The kids had never heard the song so I had to find it on YouTube for them.

RESEARCH PROJECT: For a couple of days, CJ has had a nagging question bothering him. It's about the character Reptile in the Mortal Kombat series of games. "Why does his form keeps changing?" from game to game, he wonders. "He has changed from a ninja to this reptile looking human to a real reptile to half ninja half reptile," CJ chronicles.

CJ asked to go to the Web site of Midway, the games' maker, for answers. However, when we tried midway.com, we found it took us to the Warner Bros. Web site. Clearly, Midway is owned by WB. Unfortunately, there was not a lot of detail on their site about games; it was mostly just promos for new games coming out.

CJ and I thought perhaps Mortal Kombat might have its very own site, and we found out it did. When we hopped there, we found there is a forum portion of the site and figured hardcore MK fans would be talking about all things MK there. And sure 'nuff, they are. In fact, there was a forum category called Future Mortal Kombat Game Discussion, and there, we found an interview with on of the MK game designers that had been translated from Portuguese to English. And apparently CJ isn't the only fan wondering about Reptile's incarnations, because one of the questions was about that. And we learned that in
an upcoming MK title (for release in mid 2011, I believe, Reptile would have his ninja outfit from MK2 and MK3. Mystery solved.

BIG NEWS: I guess CJ must have seen an advertisement or something, because he excitedly reported today, "Oh geez, Mom. Microsoft is getting even bigger with Windows 7!" Sounds like a future Microsofty to me. ...

IN OUR ABSENCE: The kids had a sitter last night - a rare occurrence 'round here. Christian and I were supposed to go see Rick play @ the Red Hook, but that gig got canceled due to a bandmate's emergency. Big bummer. So we just went out to dinner instead.

I asked CJ this (Saturday) a.m. what he did when the babysitter was here and he said, "We made some killer brownies. Were you like 'What? Where did these killer brownies come from?' when you got up this morning?" :) CJ reports he even put peanut butter on one of his.

Earlier in the day, in preparation for the babysitter, we read "Benjamin McFadden and the Robot Babysitter." It's a story about a kid who tries to mess with his robot babysitter's programming, and havoc ensues.

Hopefully the takeaway from it is CJ and Annabelle shouldn't try to mess with their babysitter's programming. :)

THE KING AND US: This afternoon we took a field trip to Seattle Center. However, this was no ordinary field trip. Rather, we were on a mission, and we had a special guest along with us - none other than The King himself, Elvis Presley.

We were trying to complete a scavenger hunt of sorts. The challenge was to photograph a cardboard cutout of Elvis at over 20 different locations around the Seattle Center campus. In 2 hours or less. In the rain (the 'in the rain' part wasn't part of the rules, it was just our bad luck).

Kick Off

BOXING DAY: Even though the kids won't have science class in Shoreline again for a couple of weeks, we decided to hop right on the homework that they were given yesterday. It was a continuation of the template-for-a-box exercises they were doing yesterday.

Their teacher had provided a couple of flat patterns for boxes on cardstock. The kids had to figure out how to fold them to make them boxy (or a boxy bag, in one instance).

It wasn't easy. They figured out where the folds should be, but figuring out which order to tuck tabs in was troublesome. CJ was nearly in tears at one point.

Thankfully, with some cues and clues from me, they finally managed to make it work.

TWO Rs: After 'rithmetic, I decided we needed to do some language arts. First, the kids did some 'riting. They used the story starter machine on Scholastic.com to get their writing juices flowing. CJ had to write a short fairytale. He penned: "Once upon a time there was a silly princess who hates spiders. She had a dream about spiders! It was horrible!"

Annabelle had the daunting task of writing about a birthday cake eating a meal. She wrote, "The lumpiest cake's favorite meal might be birthday candles. You know those tall things with fires on top those things. The lumpiest cake loves country music."

While they wrote, I spun some fall/Thanksgiving-related tunes, including Clapton covering "Autumn Leaves," "Colors of the Wind" (from Disney's Pocahontas) and Natalie Merchant's "Thank You."

After they finished writing, we used a new-t0-us Web site for some language arts lessons, Fun4thebrain.com. One of the activities was about syllables. I asked the kids if they remembered what a syllable was. Annabelle responded by saying, "Ann-a-belle," and clapping her hands with each syllable. Excellent. :)

And so, we played Syllable Split. The kids had to read words as they were chopped into syllables by a bear-wielding an axe. They totally got it. Next up was Popcorn Words, which was sight reading practice. It was way too easy for the kids, but the game featured monkeys working at a movie theater, so they enjoyed it. CJ played Base Word Baseball, which is practice using base words with suffix ending. Again, too easy.

BRICK BY BRICK: Last weekend I found a small box of LEGOs. Today, I finally thought to bring them out so the kids could actually do something with them. But first, I wanted to give them a little inspiration. I had noticed that under the kids' category of Comcast's OnDemand, there is now a LEGO category. So, I chose a program to watch from that menu. It was a 6 minute video about a man here in Washington who is a professional LEGO builder. Turns out the dude, Dan Parker, has a great studio inside Freighthouse Square, a 110,000 square foot shopping center in the stadium district in Tacoma.

Parker has about 2 million 'elements' (bricks and detail pieces) on hand in his space in Tacoma, where he creates custom sculptures for corporations, movies and more. They don't sell any LEGOs at the studio, but there is a "free zone" space for kids to play, and they host workshops and parties. I can tell a field trip to Tacoma is in our future!

After the video the kids were hot to get on their own projects. They each built a vehicle with all sorts of bells and whistles.

The kids continued to develop their vehicles throughout the evening. In all, they probably spent three hours on them. Tonight CJ told me, "I made my ultimate LEGO creation even stronger. I made the mini shooter bigger so it gets more charged and my LEGO creation cannot be beated! Don't mess with him."
KICK START: And so it begins. ... This afternoon was Annabelle's first day of soccer.

This latest addition to our calendar is a bit of a compromise of sorts. She has been asking to join a soccer team for months - over a year. I know it sounds selfish, but truth be told, to date Christian and I have been reluctant because we're not ready to give up 1 or 2 afternoons a week and half of Saturday to watch bunch ball (that's what 5 and 6 year olds do) in the cold weather/rain. Plus, I can't imagine that this bunch ball/soccer wouldn't interfere with some of the stuff that's already on our docket.

Anyway, as an alternative to a full blown league play situation, I found a 6-week soccer skills workshop, 45 minutes, one day a week in the gym at the Magnolia Community Center. Perfect. When I told Annabelle this a.m. that today was (finally!) soccer day, she shot out of bed!

Class wasn't until 3:35 but she had her shinguards on at 2 p.m. Before class I informed Annabelle that the class was co-ed and she said, "I love boys. Especially really silly boys, like Rick and Ken." :)

Imagine our surprise when we got to the community center and found out there was only one other kid in the class - a boy who looked to be a year or so younger than her. I guess there's one other kid signed up, but he was a no show.

So today, Annabelle and The Boy got a private soccer lesson. While it certainly wasn't the Go Team! scenario she no doubt envisioned, Annabelle was thrilled with it. She didn't take her shinguards off until bedtime. :)

Weaving a Wednesday

BOB AND WEAVE: Even before Annabelle was up, CJ was at work on his science homework. Our Shoreline class is still in the midst of its paper unit, and the homework was to weave a mat. CJ likes weaving and made short work of it. Bee finished hers upon her waking, about a half hour later.
MORNING MATH: As has become our usual pattern, around 10 we headed upstairs for math. The kids are powering through it - they've had no trouble with subtraction involving borrowing from a column or two or more away.

I appreciate the fact that often CJ will ask "How can I make sure my answer is right?" So, I've shown him how, with a subtraction problem, you can add your answer back to the number you were subtracting and see if it adds up to the whole or the number you were subtracting from.

UP NORTH: Though we left home 45 minutes before class, we only got to Shoreline with one minute to spare thanks to terrible traffic.

We used that one minute to admire the kids' custom paper projects from last week. They're beautiful!
In class, today's project involved deconstructing small cardboard boxes, tracing a template from them, and reconstructing them. It was a good exercise as they learned about making patterns and gained a better understanding of how something two dimensional can become three-dimensional.
ENTER THE iMAC: Since we arrived to class late, we didn't get to the library until after class. It turned out to be a good thing.

Usually when we're in there before 1, it's been just us and a high school aged kid or two. Today, many of the kids from the science class were in there. That gave CJ and Annabelle a chance out side of class to mingle with them.

Case in point: there was a ruckus in front of a computer across the library. The kids went to investigate and found a classmate was having tons of fun using Photo Booth, a program that uses the built-in-the-monitor camera to shoot video and stills of the computer user(s). So CJ, Annabelle and a couple of other kids monkeyed around together for awhile - until they got too loud for the library and I pulled CJ and Annabelle aside to their own computers to mess around with Photo Booth. They caught on to it quickly.

They messed around with the thermal imaging effect ...
Bee went Warhol-esque for a bit ...

And CJ played around with a video effect that put him on a moving rollercoaster.
After the computer session, the kids each picked out a couple of library books. We were walking to leave the library when one of the girls from science asked Annabelle if she wanted to be in their club - which apparently has a HQ under one of the library tables. ;)

I, of course, realized Annabelle joining 'the club' was more important than us hustling to the car, so CJ and I killed 15 minutes or so while she did the club thing, which involved her getting a secret password (written on a wood chip necklace from science) and a map. She was most pleased.

WHEN HOLIDAYS COLLIDE: Tonight CJ & Annabelle read "Fried Feathers for Thanksgiving." It's layout is in comic strip style panels. The story is about two witches bemoaning the fact Halloween is over. However, they quickly realize Thanksgiving's coming. They love the holiday, but don't want to do any of the work associated with enjoying it, so it doesn't turn out well for them. There's a good lesson there.

DRIFT BY MY WINDOW: Leaves are still swirling everywhere 'round here, so I thought we were due to do a little more learnin' bout trees and leaves. For support, I turned to Pierre. Don't ask me why the University of Illinois Extension chose an acorn named Pierre to narrate their interactive educational Web site about trees, but they did. So we journeyed along with Pierre as he told us all about trees, their lifecycle and their functions. There were some comprehension questions at the end, which the kids had no trouble with. There was also a feature pointing out that many city streets are named after trees. We couldn't help but notice one of the examples was magnolia - our neighborhood's namesake.