MADNESS: The day started normally enough. By about 5:45 a.m., I was up turning gingerbread men into Elvis. Or Elviii. Or Elvises. Painstaking but pleasant work. The day took a turn for the worse when my dad read aloud a news headline about a shooting at a school in Connecticut. And then came the news that it was an elementary school. The headline changed rapidly, the death toll climbing with each update. Question. What kind of sick *&%^ walks into a classroom full of 5- and 6-year olds and starts shooting and killing kids? (After shooting and killing his own mother, the teacher.) Insanity. The worst kind of 'humanity.' What's eerie is long before dawn, as I'm sitting at the counter decorating cookies and we're the only two up, with no TV on, CJ started talking about the Columbine school shooting and, much more recently, the mass shooting at the movie theater in Colorado. And just a couple hours later, another horrific incident joined the list of tragic days in U.S. history. We watched the news coverage for a lot of this afternoon. The kids - CJ especially - had LOTS of questions. So, we talked and talked and talked some more. There are certainly no 'good' answers for anything like this, but knowledge and information helps, I hope. I did tell CJ that this case immediately brings to mind Kip Kinkel, another school shooter, who first killed his parents before gunning down students (in this case, his high school classmates in Springfield, Ore.) back in 1982. What a horrible thing it is that there have been so many school shootings that we can compare and contrast them. Ugh.
And now, on to the normal stuff. ... REWIND: On Wednesday evening, we attended a fun 12-12-12 birthday party held at the Harbor Heritage Museum. What a neat place! The kids each got to row, row, row a boat, and Annabelle loved an accordion that she could play.
Right now, the museum is featuring a special exhibit, NW x SE ... A Collaborative Small Tapestry Project of Northwest and Southeast Weavers. It features more than 40 amazing tapestries. (If you like, you can take a virtual walk through the exhibit with a curator in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5kAum_CvDM&feature=youtu.be The museum also had a couple of hands on weaving interactives, which the kids checked out. We had to cross the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to get to the museum, and the museum is a repository for history regarding the bridge, most notably its collapse on Nov. 7, 1940, just four months after it opened! We've seen it before online, but we paused to watch the famous video of the disaster on the big movie screen at the museum. It's wild watching the bridge undulate up to nearly 30 feet in the 35-46 mile per hour winds. Here's a colorized version of it going down. ...
You can learn more about "Galloping Gertie" via the museum's online exhibition: http://www.harborhistorymuseum.org/exhibits/online-exhibitions/tale-two-gerties/ Out back of the main museum is the tiny 1893 Midway school. It gives visitors a glimpse of what a one room schoolhouse on the Peninsula looked like long ago. We also stepped outside to the Maritime Gallery to check out the 65-foot fishing vessel Shenandoah and the Thunderbird Hull #1 sailboat on display.
The kids also dug a map magnifying glass they could move around.
THE END: Today's mailbox held a bittersweet delivery. It was a beloved Nintendo Power magazine, the arrival of which always made the kids' day/week. However, today's delivery was The Last Issue Ever. Guess with the magical Internet, there's just no real demand for an old fashioned print mag with articles about upcoming games and hacker codes and cheats.
And so we say "so long" to Nintendo Power. It will be missed.
NASA STYLE: And now for something silly. Anyone who reads the MPA blog knows CJ has a 'thing' for the "Gangnam Style" song/dance craze and we've all got a "thing" for NASA, so no surprise we smiled when we saw this. ...
ALL APOLOGIES: Sorry 'bout the radio silence here. It's been a busy couple of days. Yesterday afternoon we left town to head down to Gig Harbor for a fun 12-12-12 birthday party for our Uncle Bob. I had the pleasure of doing the cake and some cookies for the event, and so I was elbow deep in shortening and sugar yesterday (and the day before).
We didn't get home until late, and then today I was up early to get elbow deep into shortening and sugar again, making a few dozen fun cookies for and with my mom. (Including some Elvis Aloha from Hawaii ones - great fun!)
Bottom line is, the baking projects have gotten the better of me, but tomorrow we'll be back on track. Whatever that means. ;)
ART IN THE A.M. The schedule at the kids' Shoreline school is different for the next couple of weeks. No 'normal' science or math classes. Instead, there are several workshops to choose from. This morning, the kids had a chance to admire some lovely layered collages from Panama, and then try their hand at creating their own work of art.
There were dozens of pre-cut fabric shapes in bright colors for students to choose from. They were already backed by fusible interfacing, so after they stacked them to their satisfaction, then it was just a matter of melding it together with a hot iron.
It was a fun project, and what a great way to use up scraps of fabric!
MATH QUEST: CJ and Annabelle recently signed up for a Math Quest. During the Quest, they'll get math problems to answer, and if they solve them correctly, they progress to the next challenge.
They knocked out their first set of challenges in no time this morning, and are looking forward to moving their avatars up the game board on the bulletin board next week.
GAME TIME: Annabelle spent a bit of time on the programming site Scratch today. She came up with a game that involves the Scratch Cat jumping over logs rolling toward it.
After she posted her first version (game), someone made a comment suggesting she add a scoring feature to it.
PARTY TIME: On Saturday, we had the pleasure of attending the 10th birthday party of CJ's BFF from kindergarten. Weird to think they've know each other half their lives now.
The festivities included wearing pointy hats in odd ways and decorating gingerbread houses.
As usual, CJ's architecture was austere and stately.
As usual, Ananbelle's was over the top (or, in this case, through the lid of the sprinkles bottle. Here's the before the nonpariels invasion ...
and here's hers after she accidentally dumped an ENTIRE bottle of sugar on her house ...
Pretty!
They also enjoyed yummy sugary treats they didn't have a hand in making. ...
SEATTLE TRADITION: From the very first Christmas season we spent in Seattle, we've checked out Swanson's Nursery. It's about 10 minutes north of us, and well worth the drive.
They have hundreds of lovely camellias in bloom, not to mention a couple of Santa's reindeer and even Curly the Christmas camel!
Here's Donner and Blitzen, resting up for their big day.
And Curley, posing for the camera.
Swanson's also has an annual model train display. This year there was a medieval/Hobbit theme. The trains whirled and whizzed and wound about castles. ...
There were so many purties around the nursery. These faux peacock feathers caught my eye.
EXPLORATIONS: For a few nights now, CJ has been reading the book "100 Cool Things About Explorers"at bedtime. So, I thought we'd explore the topic of explorers a bit more.
We turned to Bookflix, which is storybooks online. (We access it via our Seattle Public Library card. Check to see if your local library subscribes!) On the site, we found two books about Christopher Columbus. First up, "Where Do You Think You're Going, Christopher Columbus?" by Jean Fritz.
When I was in elementary school, Columbus was a Top Tier Hero. Heck, he even had his own holiday. Over the years, his reputation has tarnished a bit. (He didn't really discover America, which is what I was taught. In fact, he didn't set foot on North America!) And, as it turns out, within four years of his arrival
on Hispaniola (today's Dominican Republic and Haiti), men in his party had killed or "exported" one-third of its estimated population of 300,000. Um, ouch. I'm guessing there's no Columbus Day there. ...
As I was working on a cake and some cookies, I kept my ears open for history that might need a little moderating. One thing I heard was that Queen Isabelle of Spain was "such an enthusiastic Christian, she insisted everyone in Spain be a Christian."
O Really? What one person calls "enthusiasm" another might call "oppressive" or "dictatorial," I pointed out to the kids.
We also listened in on a Scholastic published book "Christopher Columbus," by Lisa Wade McCormick, which was much shorter and just-by-the facts.
After the pair of Columbus books, I showed the kids "We are the Explorers," a NASA film. This one will give you goosebumps. It explains everyone from Leif Erickson to SpaceX's Elon Musk
Then, I asked the kids to write something about explorers/exploring. I wasn't any more specific than that. Here's what they came up with, CJ first. ... Buckle yourself in. ...
Explorers are people that explore. Exploring can range from a lot of different things, from taking a walk on the street looking at new things, to going up in space to study. Often times, explorers will want to be the first person to go to a place or to be the first person to do something at that place.
Ancient exploring just started with our monkey ancestors before we were alive crawling around places, clueless where to go, to us going to the Moon and even more recently, us sending rovers up to Mars. We can go anywhere with exploring, really.
Exploring can be as safe as sound, like bouncing up and down softly in a pillow world where there is nothing to be afraid of, to as deadly as Hell, like trying to juggle a million flaming chainsaws that explode like a atomic dirty bomb when they collide with the floors, walls, and roof in a impossibly tiny room in hell. Kind of makes you claustrophobic a bit, eh?
Often times, modern exploration will defeat the accomplishment of earlier exploring, such as Apollo 11 beating Christopher Columbus' feat of sailing to the Indies, though, some earlier accomplishments will still be better then future explorations, such as Apollo 11 compared to the Curiosity launch.
Interesting, CJ. Very interesting. ... Times like these I think it's probably a good thing he's not in a traditional public school program, LOL.
Here's Annabelle's essay ... It's a little more sedate, with no atomic dirty bombs. ;)
Why do we explore? So we can find new things. Why find new
things? So we can learn about the world – possibly even other worlds! Exploring
allows us to find things we have never found before. For instance, Christoper
Columbus found out about the land between Asia and Europe, (no maps show what
it's called, neither do the books!) and we've already discovered ice on... no,
not Mars.... Mercury! Yes... It's closest to the Sun.... But really, ICE. Ice
could've used to be water, and could support *drum roll* ... Life! Yes, just because of
exploring, we have found Mercury can support life! Exploring also allowed
Christoper Columbus to discover the Indies! Christoper did this because he wanted to
explore – if you want to learn new things like Columbus... you're destined to
be an explorer – just like Christoper. If you love finding new things – an
astronaut would be perfect! Maybe even go to Mars... and be THE FIRST PERSON
TO STEP ON MARS. It would be awesome, if I do say so myself. So, happy
exploring... And may you find great things!
GOOGLE DOODLE: This morning, Annabelle was remarking on how cool looking the Google Doodle for the day was. I looked at it and told her I thought it had something to do with communications or computers. Not until I read Washington STEM's Facebook post tonight did I figure out that it was a tribute to Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer. The daughter of the poet Lord Byron, today marked the 197th anniversary of her birth.
FINAL MISSION: Forty years ago today, the enormous (363-foot high!) Apollo 17 roared sky- and spaceward from Pad A, Launch Complex 39 at Kennedy Space Center. Apollo 17 was the final lunar landing mission. It was a nighttime launch (12:33 a.m.), and the fire in the sky show was spectacular! On board were astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, commander; astronaut Ronald E. Evans, command module pilot; and scientist-astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt, lunar module pilot. There's a great video of the Apollo 17 lift off on YouTube featuring network TV and NASA footage. Watching the behemoth Saturn V clear the pad is SO different than space shuttle launches. You can (and should!) view it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmwc8E9fCLI&feature=youtu.be The best part is when you can hear the crew chatter as they're climbing. Last December, we had a chance to visit the San Diego Air and Space Museum, which was featuring a special NASA exhibit at the time. On one of its walls was this quote from Cernan, the last words ever spoken on the moon. ...
Forty freaking years it has been. And now we can't even launch our own astronauts to the International Space Station in low earth orbit. Ugh. REPORTERS: In an ongoing effort to get the kids writing more frequently and in a more structured manner, I asked them to write a report, Annabelle was assigned Cuba and CJ was assigned Puerto Rico. First, we talked about elements one would expect to see in a report, such as a little history about the place, something about its geography/location, something about the government, and something(s) about the people (languages spoken, customs, food, etc.). I asked them to write a paragraph about each of the elements listed above, and I also told them a good reporter never uses just one source, and so they could not just use Wikipedia. I was working around the house as they worked on their computers. I was impressed when Annabelle pumped out a fact filled report post haste. CJ took longer to write his. They each emailed me their 'final' reports, and later that afternoon, I read each of them and proceeded to freak out. First, Annabelle and I had a discussion about plagiarism. ... I asked her if she had just copied and pasted sections from Wikipedia into her report. She said she had, and seemed genuinely surprised that that was a bad thing. I think she thought she was just being efficient. She was mortified when I told her in the Real World the consequences of doing that can be devastating. So, we went over how to read, glean facts, and then include them in your own writing without straight up copying it. Then, turning my attention to CJ's report ... well, it was just crappy. He touched on half the elements he was supposed to, and what he did write was lame sauce. And so, I rejected his report, as well. Their second versions were markedly improved, though we've still got a long ways to go. Interesting factoid we all learned yesterday. Check out the flags from Cuba and Puerto Rico. Do you know which is which?
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT/GSFC TEEVEE: Right after My Little Ponies ended this morning, we switched over to NASA TV. :) What a treasure trove it was. We started off by watching amazing images returned by Ebb and Flow, the twin satellites mapping the moon using precise microwave measurements, The satellites are flying in tight orbits around the moon, at about the same height a commercial airliner would orbit Earth. In the photo above, ted corresponds to mass excesses (bumps) and blue corresponds to mass deficiencies (craters). The map shows more small-scale detail on the far side of the moon compared to the nearside because the far side has many more small craters. And here's a video of their findings ...
TANDEM DREAMS: At some point early this a.m. CJ migrated his way
up to our room. At about 5:55 he was more than ready to get up and start
his day, but first he wanted to tell me about the dream he just had. He
said he was dreaming about the 2016 presidential elections, and it was a
candidates debate and the debate degenerated into "whether or not
Americans like their bacon too crispy" and the news anchor/moderator got
fired on the spot for letting that happen. LOL!
But what I found REALLY funny about his dream was while he was dreaming
that, at the very same time I was also having a dream about the 2016
presidential election and whom the candidates would be. Quite the
coincidence, no?
SANTA WATCH: Since December 1, the kids have been keeping tabs on Santa's activities via the NORAD Web site: http://www.noradsanta.org/en/ .
For most of the year NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command has to worry about the mission of aerospace warning and control for North America. However, in December, all that mundane stuff is set aside for their important Santa tracking duties.
There's an absolutely charming story regarding how NORAD got into the Santa tracking business. It seems back in 1955, a Colorado Springs based Sears Roebuck & Co. ad misprinted a telephone number for kiddies to call Santa. The number in the ad rang through to the commander's operations hotline. Doh! Fortunately, the director (Harry Shoup) had a sense of humor and civic obligation, and he had his staff check the radar for Santa. Thereby, a tradition was born.
In 1959, when Canada and the US created a bi-national air defense command called North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the tradition of tracking Santa continued, and it has lived on through today.
Thanks to the magic of the Internets, NORAD is more popular than ever, and each day their Web site adds another game and more info about the Jolliest of Elves. It's an exciting, engaging way for the kids to get into the holiday spirit.
LIT UP: Thanks to a Facebook post by the White House, we caught
some of the live broadcast for the National tree lighting ceremony. This
year marks the tree's 90th anniversary. The tradition dates back to 1923, when President Calvin Coolidge lit a 48-foot fir tree featuring 2,500 red, white and green bulbs. It's been lit in times of war
and peace, depression and prosperity.
A sign of the times, of COURSE the National Tree has its own Web site. There, we discovered a neat-o interactive history lesson for kids (and adults) in the form of an interactive timeline (http://www.thenationaltree.org/timeline/)
In addition to ogling a pretty tree, we got to hear holiday songs performed by
the likes of Phillip Phillips, The Fray, James Taylor, Colbie Caillat, Jason Mraz, and more. Cool! You can watch some or all of what we saw here: http://thenationaltree.org/tree-lighting/
The National Tree's Web site even has
fun holiday cards you can email people. Check 'em out here: http://www.nationalparks.org/holiday-2012/ecards.
SPARKLE PLENTY: We've all seen photos of Earth at night, taken by satellites. But today NASA released the latest, greatest versions of said photos were released. Stunning! Seriously, doesn't it look like fine art?
The photo is a composite of data from the Suomi National Polar orbiting Partnership satellite. The images were taken over nine days in April of this year, and 13 days in October. According to the NASA press release, it took 312 orbits to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth's land surface. The data from these passes were mapped over existing "Blue Marble" imagery of our planet to give this amazing new view.
Here's the view in motion ...
SPACE SPIDER: Sad news to report. Nefertiti, a spider that traveled 42 million miles (!) aboard the International Space Station, has died.
After her long and storied service, the astro-spider was sent to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. There, she promptly died. :/ Guess once she had a taste of space, all this Earthbound stuff was beneath her, so to speak. ;)
The kids and I followed the spiders in space program. It was an experiment designed to determine if the spider could catch its meals in a micro gravity environment. (It could!)
MAPMAKERS: This afternoon in science class, the kids used a transparency film to trace the model of the school grounds they made last week.
Once they had their transparency, they each used graph paper to draw maps with keys.
While the kids were working on coloring their maps, I heard CJ tell a frustrated tablemate, "Don't worry, it doesn't have to be like Michelangelo."
