Lost in Space

Good cosmodog :)

FOUR LEGGED ASTRONAUTS: This morning we read "Hedgie Blasts Off," which Christian scored at Goodwill for 99 cents a few days ago. The book is about a hedgehog who works maintenance at Star Lab where, through a series of far fetched events, he is promoted to astronaut. Hedgie rockets to a faraway planet where space tourists have accidentally plugged up a showy volcano by throwing coins into it.

Faced with fixing it, Hedgie remembers something he'd seen a professor do involving a cork and a bottle and figures he could become a hedgehog cork, cause the volcano to build up pressure and help the volcano blow the coins out. (FYI Hedgie appears in a number of books by author/illustrator Jan Brett.)

When we finished to book we talked about the fact that it was a work of fiction. However, I let the kids know that non-human animals have, indeed, rocketed into space, starting with Laika.

We moved from the couch to the computer, where I had several Web pages cued up all about Laika, the canine astronaut who was launched into orbit on Nov. 3, 1957.

After reading up on Laika, we talked about the differences between fiction (Hedgie) and fact (Laika) - although I pointed out that some of the Laika 'facts' from the U.S.S.R. were fiction, as was often the case during the space race.

I then gave the kids the choice between writing about Laika's story or the Hedgehog book. They both chose Laika.

CJ wrote, "There is a dog called Laika. She went into space. She survived for four days. Russia lied that Laika survived (longer)."

Annabelle wrote, "Laika is a dog. Poor Laika lived only 4 days (in space). Laika was an astronaut. Laika had to be cage trained."

BALANCING ACT: The kids started a new science unit this afternoon - it's about balance and motion. They spent most of their hour experimenting with a a cardstock crawdad and two clothespins. The trick was to try to get the crawdad to balance on your finger on his side, his tail, his nose, etc., using the clothespins as counterweights. After class, we headed to the library, where the kids hung out with some classmates and played with the PhotoBooth feature on the iMacs again.

Today, CJ was creating characters from his face. Once when I walked by it looked like he was in a windtunnel. He was talking in a low/foreboding voice, saying something about being the master.
I asked him what his character's name was and he said "God of Death."

That's about as foreboding as one can get, I'd suppose ...

THE COUNTDOWN'S ON: Tonight after dinner, CJ reminded me it was time for them to start opening up the little windows on the chocolate advent/countdown to Christmas calendars. Man, December has come quickly this year.

I LEAVE YOU WITH THIS: I can't even remember how I stumbled across this at about 6 this morning, but boy did it capture my attention. It's a fascinating-sometimes mortifying-spot on verbal 'essay' delivered by Sir Ken Robinson, a world-renowned education and creativity expert to the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce about the current educational paradigm - and what's so woeful about it.

Muddling Through

IT'S A SIGN: "What if bliss didn't exist?" CJ asked me this morning, while mashing buttons on a video game controller. I told him that if there was no bliss, it would be a bummer, since bliss means happiness.

CJ reminded me that someone wrote "Follow your bliss" on a stop sign near our home. "That is not cool," he said of the grafitti, but immediatelly followed that though with, "but it's kind of cool for someone who is really sad." I thought that was pretty thoughtful of him.

A couple seconds later he added, "Mommy I want you to follow your own bliss."

IN REVIEW: Last night, much to CJ and Annabelle's delight, we scored a copy of "Sonic Colors" from a local Redbox. They spent time playing it last night and this morning.

I thought we could exploit their infatuation with it as today's writing exercise. I hopped to Scholastic.com's educators' pages for some ideas. There, I found a good article about "Exploring the Genre of Reviews". I also decided to modify one of their reproducibles, a movie review chart (PDF).

So, the kids and I talked a bit about elements of a review - that they'd need to talk about the characters, the setting and the game's plot. Here's what they came up with in their reviews of "Sonic Colors"

"Sonic, Tails, Dr. Robotnic, Wisps are the characters in Sonic Colors. (There are) five planets with different einvirmints, inclueding Dr. Robotnic's ship to make six. Dr. Robotnik snatched Wisps from their environmet! Sonic zooms through 5 worlds to save them!"

ET PHONE HOME?: I see that NASA has an announcement to make that will impact the search for extraterrestrial life-but they're keeping it under their space helmets until Thursday, at a 11 a.m. PST press conference.

They have said that at the presser they will announce "an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life."

Can't wait to hear what they have to say, and I can't help but wonder if it has to do with recent discoveries by Cassini in the vicinity of Saturn.

PICTURE WIZARDY: Part of the kids' music homework involved drawing a picture representing their favorite part of "Morgan's Greatest Spell," a story Miss Nancy read them a couple of weeks ago.

I'd never heard of the story, and couldn't find a version online. The kids recalled some of the details. Apparently the wizard is 100 years old and so he's very tired and falls asleep all the time. That was about the only detail the kids could remember. Neither could remember what Morgan's greatest spell was.

CJ chose to draw the evil wizard. He was VERY unhappy with the way its hands turned out - specifically the fingers on the wizard's right hand. They were too crookedy for CJ's tastes. I pointed out to CJ that an evil wizard's hands very well could be gnarled and pointy looking. That made him feel much better. :)
CJ pointed out to me that when drawing the three skulls on the magician's cape, he chose to draw "toast" first and then turn the toast into skulls. I thought that was pretty clever of him!

Annabelle drew a picture of the story's hero, Morgan.
HIGH TEA: This afternoon's Musikgarten session was their last day on the British Isles unit. To celebrate, teacher Nancy put on a British tea party for the kids.There were British crackers and shortbread, a couple of kinds of British tea, and fancy British cups and saucers.

CJ stuck to water (of course), but Annabelle tried some Earl Grey. With two cubes of sugar.
Even though it made the cups feel slippery, Annabelle insisted on wearing fancy gloves while drinking her tea.
BOOKWORM: Yesterday while Bee was in ballet, we went to the library and got a bag full of books. Today, she spent a fair amount of time sitting on a couch cushion, making her way through the bag.
Truth be told, as she pulled books out, a couple of times my first inclination was to tell her, "Stop!!" as I had certain times or things in mind for some of the books. But I immediately thought better of putting the kibosh on her reading. After all, books are for reading. And re-reading.

Kings for a Day

HOT DOG: We're wieners! I mean winners! Back on November 19th, our field trip was running all over Seattle Center, toting a cardboard Elvis and taking 22 different photos as part of the Seattle Center's Elvis Returns Photo Scavenger Hunt contest. Today, via an email around midday, I found out that our hard work paid off! Woo hoo! Here's what it said:

Kristine,

Congratulations! Your family won the Elvis Returns Photo Scavenger Hunt, with a total of 450 points. It looked like you had a lot of fun exploring Seattle Center with Elvis.

We are going to issue a press release announcing the contest winner. Could you give us a couple quick sentences about your experience participating in the contest for us to include in the press release? Also, if the media wants to pick up a story on the contest, would you be willing to talk to the press?

As the winner of this contest, you will receive:

- A cardboard cutout of Elvis
- A DVD of It Happened at the World’s Fair
- Exclusive footage of Elvis during the filming of the movie, courtesy of Albert Fisher
- 2 cruise tickets to Tillicum Village with Argosy Cruises

To receive your prize, you must fill out and return the declaration of eligibility and release (attached in a Word document). Thanks so much for your time, and congratulations again!

I wrote back post haste, telling her, in the words of Elvis, "Thank you, thankyouverymuch." :)

We are so happy to hear we won the Elvis Returns Photo Scavenger Hunt! We undertook the challenge as a fun and educational experience, but winning is super cool! :)

Per your request, here are a couple of quick sentences about our participation:

We love Seattle Center and we love Elvis, so when I saw the Elvis Returns Photo Scavenger Hunt announced on Facebook, I knew our family had to enter!

Our family has been to Seattle Center too many times to count. From splashing in the fountains in summertime to seeing Santa at the Space Needle come winter, it's our favorite year-'round destination in Seattle. We thought we knew the campus well, but during the Elvis Returns Photo Scavenger Hunt, we discovered so many Seattle Center gems we had somehow missed in our many visits. I mean, who knew there is a section of the Berlin Wall in the food court?! And we were wowed by amazing pieces of artwork we'd breezed by so many times before.

While the scavenger hunt was fun, it was also a lot of work. Don't get me wrong, we love Elvis, but toting The King around for two hours, trying to keep him dry in a cold Seattle rain got to be a bit much! And let me tell you, having a life-sized Elvis in your group garners a lot attention. We got hundreds of stares and smiles, and fielded a few questions from curious strangers.

The King of Rock-n-Roll created quite a stir at EMP. When we arrived, a worker at the front desk called security to let them know "Elvis is in the building." And when we stood Elvis up at EMP's Sky Church, tourists asked if they could have their picture taken with The King.

CJ Kisky, 7, admits to being a little disappointed that our trip was all business on Elvis scavenger hunt day. "I thought it was great, but it would have been even more great if we could have played in the Fun Forest," he says of the experience.

Annabelle Kisky, 6, has no complaints. "I loved going up on stage with Elvis," she said of being photographed at the Mural Amphitheater.

The kids are very jazzed about having won the contest (winning = awesome!). And it was a good learning experience for them. Not only did they learn lots more about Seattle Center, but before we struck out for our photo shoot/ scavenger hunt, they helped assemble props (guitar, tambourine, Elvis costume) and helped me research and plot out a game plan to hit all 22 points on the 'to do' list. And the kids were real troupers as we trudged around Seattle Center getting all our shots. Go team!

I'll get together a photo album of all 22 shots and post a link. Stay tuned.

IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK: We are slowly but surely trying to update the 100-plus years in our ol' schoolhouse. Unfortunately, our remodeling has not, to date, unearthed any gems worth $$$, but on Sunday, Christian did find some old insulation that was interesting. It was from June of 1942, at the height of WWII.

The old paper was nasty due to time, elements and rats (ewwwww), but before we threw it in the compost bin, we took a good look at it. I asked the kids what their 'take away' was from the newspaper. Each of them honed right in on "We're at war." That was true then - but it's also true now. I can't help but think that our nation has been at war for how many years now? First the mess in Iraq and now our war in Afghanistan? And how often is that on our front pages? Almost never.

Times change.

MR. PHOTOBOMB: Part of our edumacation here at MPA involves memes. While trying to take a photo of Annabelle demonstrating taking a math measurement (we're learning about meters and centimeters, can't you tell?), CJ kept freaking out in the background, so we had the opportunity to talk about photobombing. :)

Once he had a name to go with the 'crime', of course CJ thought it was HYSTERICAL. )

BFG: Last night the kids watched a video of Roald Dahl's "BFG," which is short for Big Friendly Giant. Today, I had them sit down at the table and I asked them to each choose three letters from the alphabet. CJ chose GSL. Annabelle chose ATE. I asked them if they could figure out why I asked them to choose the letters. After about 30 seconds Annabelle realized it was related to the BFG.

I asked the kids to create a character that used their letters in its name and to write a bit about that character. Annabelle wrote, "The ATE is tall becase lots of pepole streched him to be as big as the BFG. The ATF is a elafant."

Of GSL, CJ wrote, "Pes (an alien creature of his imaginaton) have put grmes (germs) on him. He is smley (smelly). He is the grmey smley lime."

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.