Friday Fun

DRILL BABY DRILL:The kids continue to make baby steps forward in their art/science/expo projects. Today, after two MORE stores/stops, we found a mini Yoshi that could be modified to work to ride in the Mecha Yoshi.

This evening, CJ started marking where the rivets (well brads, really) will be placed. Naturally, this involved a discussion about what rivets are and when/why they're used.

Once the marks had been made, it was time for a power tool! CJ (with Christian's help) drilled the holes! He was very careful and stayed focused (thank goodness).

WITH THE NAKED EYE: The triops continues to grow. Now, he can be spotted from a couple feet away darting 'round his/her/its tank. Can you find it? It seems to like the bottom of the tank best. Maybe it's feeding down there? I think it looks a bit like a helicopter.

OVERHEARD: Playing with LEGO figurines. CJ's LEGO man said to Annabelle's character, "Wow, you've really let yourself go..." Later, the figurines were discussing how to get a flat belly.
ROOTS: This morning our literature (and social studies, in a way) centered on reading "The Origin of Life on Earth - An African Creation Myth."

Heck, the title alone was enough to prompt a 15 minute discussion about creation stories and from whence humans came. I reminded the kids of the NOVA shows we watched about Lucy. And we sang a bit of "My Brother the Ape" by They Might Be Giants. I also recounted the Garden of Eden creation story. And there was a nice forward in the book by author David A. Anderson explaining that early people "dreamed and the people imagined and they brought forth answers to some of the things that worried them."

The myth, of the Yoruba, started in the heavens with the all powerful Olorun and his helpers, orishas. One of the orishas, Obatala, aspired to do more, and eventually he was permitted to found Earth, where he formed humanoids in his own image from mud. FYI, he formed many, not just two, and some of the ones he formed were made after a night of drinking fermented palm juice and that, my friends, is how Obatala became the guardian of people with handicaps.

After we finished the book, the kids took an Accelerated Reader quiz on it.

WE HEART HART: Today we had the most wonderful math session thanks (again) to math whiz Vi Hart. (A great interview with Hart appeared in the New York times on Jan. 18, in which she describes herself as "a full-time recreational mathemusician.")

Today, before we watched one of her latest videos, I had the kids watch me make them each a couple of loops - one was a regular, circular one, the other was a möbius strip. We were ready to watch the story of Wind and Mr. Ug.

The kids were absolutely rapt throughout the video, wondering why it was Wind never met up with her neighbor, Mr. Ug. And when the video ended in a challenge, they were up to it. ... Not only that, they wanted to watch the whole thing again, through new eyes, and they spotted all sorts of clues they hadn't picked up the first time through.

It was awesome.

VGL? OMG!: I reminded the kids that tomorrow night is the "Video Games Live" concert. "OMG!!" Annabelle exclaimed, jumping up and down.

I feel the same way. :) Can't wait!

Mishmashing

Image: NASA - Kennedy at the aptly named Kennedy Space Center, 1962

ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU: Fifty years ago today, John F. Kennedy was sworn into office as our 35th president.

It occurred to me that CJ and Annabelle might not even know who Kennedy was - or realize that's whom their big brother Kennedy is named after! So, we were definitely due for a quick lesson in JFK.

Fortunately, BrainPop had a bio of him, so we started there. Afterward, we watched some excerpts from Kennedy's inaugural address thanks to a History.com video. (I wanted the kids to see and hear the actual JFK instead of just his cartoon image and other people talking about him.)

Once that was over, I spied a link to the right to a video about the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was mentioned in the BrainPop video. Since that was a Really Big Deal, I thought we'd check out the video. Told by musician and artist Jeffrey Lewis, it was quirky, but it kept the kids' attention, so you can't argue with results. :)

MORE HUNTING: We were back out and about today in search of supplies for the kids' expo projects. We needed to find paint for CJ's Mecha Yoshi and we were also hoping to find some props for the mini Yoshi in Mecha Yoshi - specifically a small plastic computer. Where would one find such a thing? Archie McPhee, of course! It took some looking, but we found the perfect props amongst their bins and bins of weird plastic imports. And only 75 cents!

SNACK ATTACK: While we were out today, the kids spied more damn circus peanuts and immediately obsessed over them. I knew how to solve it. I bought them.

When we got home, I wasn't long in opening them. I took a whiff when the bag opened and said the first thing that came to my mind: "It smells like banana barf."

CJ was quick to conclude that's what it tasted like, too. "We've decided that circus peanuts are NOT for us!" He declared shortly before spitting his in the toilet.

Probably just to be contrary, Annabelle tried to convince herself she liked the circus peanut. She carried it around for awhile and would nibble on it now and then. I don't know if she finished the thing or not. SPELLING: A few days ago I saw a video of a teacher working with her class on spelling words that end in ING. I decided to copy her. :)

I asked the kids to come up with "ing" words, and when they did, decide whether you spell the word by doubling the letter at the end, dropping the e, or doing nothing other than adding -ing. For instance hit is a doubler - hitTing. Smile is a drop e - smiling. And so on. For the last word, I tricked them with skiing. They both got it wrong, which is what I was expecting. But I bet they remember next time!

PROJECTING: More work on the Yoshi's tonight. Annabelle sculpted and glued in Yoshi's skeletal schnoz, and did some work on his/her/its innards. We also made the first cut into CJ's Yoshi tonight and spent a lot of time talking design. CJ is adamant that he wants the jaw/faceplate to hinge (so that he can lower and raise it). That is going to complicate things, but I'll bet we can figure something out and I'm thinking some pieces from his Erector set will come in handy. MATH: We're still plugging away on multiplication. At one point his afternoon I asked, "What's 9 times 2?"

"Nineteen!" shouted CJ.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

He thought for a moment and then said, "It's actually 18. I stand corrected."

Zooming Around

HUNTING AND GATHERING: Today, a "good" two hours was spent chasing down supplies for the kids' expo projects (the event is on the eve of Jan. 27, BTW). Our first stop was the always overwhelming Michaels, where we spent an inordinate amount of time in the scrapbooking aisles, looking for little gems and gears and other accessories we might be able to use on CJ's Mecha Yoshi.

We also picked up a couple of tools to use while forming the Sculpey into a skeleton, and bought some plaster casting stuff to fill Annabelle's Yoshi's boots, so now he's more stable.

We had to stand in line for more than 5 minutes, of course. While waiting, we were surrounded by displays hoping to tempt people into a last minute purchase. One of the items hanging at the kids' eye level was a bag of circus peanuts.

CJ and Annabelle have never had circus peanuts, and that's no accident. Honestly, could there be a worse "food"? They're neon orange, and definitely NOT peanuts. To kill time, I picked up the bag and asked the kids what they thought the number one ingredient in the 'peanuts' was. CJ ventured "orange food coloring" as a guess. Wrong - both red and yellow food coloring were named, but they were at the bottom of the list. Annabelle studied the bag for a second and then guessed, "Clowns?"

At that, the lady in line ahead of me busted out laughing. So did, I, of course.

"Well there's a clown on the bag," Annabelle reasoned. "This is one of those things that you really should write down," the woman ahead of me said."

"Don't worry," I told her. "I will."

After Michael's, we were off to Toys R Us to buy another Yoshi (we'd only bought one, for Annabelle, until CJ decided he wanted to make a Mecha Yoshi). We found one, which was a relief. We were in our car and off to school when Annabelle announced, "There's something wrong with Yoshi's face."

Huh what?

Sure 'nuff, on the side of Yoshi's head that was turned toward the back of the box, his ENTIRE CHEEK was caved in. And while that would have been acceptable for Annabelle's model, where we chopped off half his head, no way would it work for CJ's project. Aaaaaaaaargh. That meant we'd get to go to Toys R Us AGAIN after science class. Awesome.

ZOOMERS: Today's science was tons o' fun, as always. Last week the kids learned about how tops spin on their axis.

The class stated with a Doodletops demonstration. They're cool little tops with pens in the middle of them, so they make a design as they spin. While the first one was going 'round CJ turned to me and said, "I want one of those SO BADLY!"

The project of the day was spinning on a horizontal axis. They used a string and discs to make "zoomers." The string was threaded through the disc, and then they had to spin it in circles to wind up the string and then pull it in and out to make it "zoom." (And yes, I know that was a bad explanation and yes, I know I should have taken a video.)

Here's CJ demonstrating his zoomer for Christian this evening.

TAKING FORM: Tonight, some progress was made on semi invisible Yoshi. We got into the Sculpey and Annabelle mooshed it around a bit.
Annabelle started sculpting Yoshi's arm bones. It was a good chance to review some anatomy, talking about the names of the bones in the arms.

Thankfully, I'd found a great game online just yesterday Whack a Bone game on Anatomy Arcade. You have to wait out a 15 second commercial first (and when it's over, be careful not to click PLAY on the ad, but down on the page below it), but worth it's worth the wait. I chose the arm game, since I knew we'd be sculpting Yoshi's arm first.


And tonight, that's just what Annabelle did. Using some gum paste forming tools, she carefully carved a humerus, and ulna and a radius, carpals, metacarpals and phalanges.
We baked the Sculpey and tomorrow we'll stick the arm bones in and get busy on the skull, I suppose.

Under the Knife

PROJECT TIME: The kids have an expo coming up at the Home Education Exchange. Today, we started their projects for the big show.

Annabelle is going to try to recreate an "invisible" Yoshi - or a half cutaway cartoon dinosaur character, which will reveal his innards/skeleton. (The project was inspired by artist Jason Freeny's work.)

Annabelle will not be able to do this alone, as the first part involved cutting very hard plastic with a very sharp knife. But she and CJ were in on deciding where the cuts would be and watched with great interest.

And they weren't the only ones interested. These plush Yoshis had a view to a kill ...
After much careful cutting, we had about a half a Yoshi left. Tomorrow, hopefully Annabelle can start sculpting some of his innards!

OUT OF AFRICA: We finished off the "Ring of Tricksters" book today by reading 30 pages worth of African trickster tales. The tricksters in these tales were a hare, a spider and a tortoise.

HEAR THE PONY: CJ and Annabelle did some transcribing and glockenspieling (yeah, I know, not likely a word) this morning in preparation for music class this afternoon. Today's song was "Hear the Pony Galloping." They got through it with no trouble.

A bit later, I was reading up on a show coming to town - "One Night of Queen performed by Gary Mullen & The Works." It's a Freddie Mercury/Queen tribute band and judging by some YouTube clips, it's uncanny how the lead singer has captured Freddie's sound and mannerisms.

Hearing Queen (or what she thought was Queen), Annabelle asked for "We are the Champions." I obliged, and then for several minutes after listening to it, Bee kept singing it over and over and over - sounding very much NOT like Freddie ;). I was able to film some of it before she caught me. ...

"I just can't get it out of my head!" she explained.

GOING SWIMMINGLY: We saw at least one triops still alive today. Maybe the second one's hanging out in the castle? The one we did see seems to have grown since yesterday.

OHM: We went to yoga late afternoon. It's so nice that it's not pitch black at 4:45 when we get there anymore.


EXTRA CURRICULAR: Annabelle was playing some games on PBSkids.org and printed out a worksheet where she was supposed to predict the trajectory of a soccer ball. I love her logic, and her self-assessment. Except the genius needs to learn how to spell genius - ;

MLK Day

ALIVE! ALIIIIIIVE!: Imagine my surprise today when I held up the Triops tank to take one last look before dumping its contents down the drain. I sighed and scanned the watery horizon, wondering where we went so, SO wrong. Again.

But wait - what's that? An air bubble - with a tail? ... Nope ... I'll be damned, it's a real live Triops!!! And wait - there's another!!!

I squealed and called the kids over to see. They both spotted them, too, and were very happy. While we expected a whole lot more than two Triops, we're very happy to have ANY at all! We fed them and are looking forward to tracking their growth.

I AM HAPPY TO JOIN WITH YOU TODAY: Naturally, our day had to include some Martin Luther King Jr. content.

For starters, Christian and the kids toured MLK Jr.'s birth home. (You have to have QuickTime in order for it to work.) Hosted by the National Park Service, the tour lets you 'walk' through MLK Jr.'s childhood home in Sweet Auburn, an African American hub of Atlanta. Along with a floorplan and 360° views of each room, there are narrations that tell stories about his childhood. It's informative and definitely worth checking out. There is also a link to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where his father was minister.

After the tour, together we took turns reading "I Have a Dream," a picture book about Martin Luther King Jr's famous March on Washington speech in August of 1963.

The text was pulled straight from the speech and there were lots of big words for CJ and Annabelle to tackle (momentous, captivity, segregation, discrimination, hallowed, gradualism, ghetto, brutality, selfhood, righteousness, redemptive, oasis, oppression, nullification, prodigious ...). And, of course, not only did they have to pronounce them, but we had to talk about what they meant. Heady stuff, indeed.

FRESH AIR: We went for a long overdue run/ride today. The destination was CJ's choice. He picked the Purple Play Park, more formally known as Lawton Elementary School's playground.

Though they rode their bikes there, the kids both spent awhile tooling around the blacktop once we arrived. (It's a lot more fun to just tear around with no obstacles than it is minding alleys, streets, sidewalks, potholes, hills and such en route.) CJ was experimenting with being daring at the playground. One of his stunts was sliding down the slide head first, on his back. I think he was disappointed that it ended up being so tame.


LAYING IN SUPPLIES: Today our errands included stopping at a Jo-Ann (fabric and craft) store for some Sculpey III, which the kids will be using for their Home Education Exchange Expo projects. They are each going to craft anatomical models (a la Jason Freeny). Tomorrow, we'll start cutting into Mario and Yoshi and maybe even make some skeletal supports for the clay pieces to come.

BUILDING: The kids spent a couple of hours today playing with their LEGOs, which is time well spent as it's all about being creative and engineering.WEEKEND REWIND: On Saturday, we put our fancy schmancy ($3 apiece) Goodwill tennis rackets to use for the first time. It was all sorts of fun! Annabelle took to it pretty quickly. CJ, not so much, but when he finally got it, he had a nice, powerful stroke. We'll definitely be doing more of that.

Sunday brought Annabelle's first soccer game as part of her new indoor soccer team at Arena Sports at Magnuson Park. It's just a rec(reation) league - supposedly no one keeps score, and it's supposed to be about skill building.

I was really surprised to find that Annabelle is the smallest person on her team. I guess since we're not around groups of girls her age on a regular basis, I've lost a bit of my frame of reference. But she's definitely the shrimp, er, I mean most petite member, and has to hustle to keep up with those with longer legs.

I was really proud of her. For a kid who has never played soccer before, she didn't hesitate to jump right in the mix of things. I could see her improve even as the game progressed. Also, by my eye, she was the only one on her team interested in playing defender, positioning herself between the ball and the goal all the time.

CJ cheered her on, which was sweet, but during her next game, we'll probably spring the extra $7 to let him enjoy the inflatables on site. CJ's "sport" is jumping (he's on his trampoline too many times a day to count), and the inflatables are fantastic for that.

Tricks and Toons

FAIRY FLYBY: This morning, Annabelle was happy to find the Tooth Fairy paid a visit last night. This time the Tooth Fairy left a letter in addition to some cash. That was a first.

HMM...: I'm sure you're just dying to know how our Triops growing experiment is going. Wish I had something positive to tell you, but the fact of the matter is, there's nothing to report. Right now it still looks like small bark chips floating in distilled water. No sign of life at all.
We're trying to stay positive. The directions said they'd hatch "with in a day or two." It's been a day. And a half. Hopefully (sung to the tune of "Tomorrow" from Annie):
The Triops will come out, tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar, there'll be some. ...

ISLANDERS: We continued our exploration of tricksters in literature. Today's readings (all from Virginia Hamilton's "A Ring of Tricksters") were three tales from the West Indies. The gullah speech took a bit getting used to, but in the end it certainly made for more authentic sounding trickster tales.

In each of the three stories, one of the lead characters was a spider, Anansi (from the African word Ananse, meaning spider).

FREE READING: CJ spent some of his free time today reading "Nintendo Power" magazine, which is no great surprise. However, he also curled up with "Popular Science" for about a half hour on the couch. Nice!

GAME O' THE DAY: Our discovery of the day was ToonsTunes.com. It's a relatively new Web site, describing itself as a place where kids can experience music, create music and share those creations, play games and make friends.
Though it's nowhere near as big, it reminded me a bit of Club Penguin or ToonTown in that there are several places you can visit on a map, and in each place (everything from a music store to ). The site is in a trial period, and CJ and Annabelle are more than happy to be beta testers.

My favorite part of the site is where the kids can create songs by combining hundreds of different guitar and bass riffs, drum tracks, keyboards and more. They can even adjust the tempo and key. Here's a link to one of CJ's songs, "Mega Ultra." And here's a link to one of Bee's, "First Song." (After you follow the link, give the songs a second to load.)

Annabelle's favorite part of ToonsTunes.com is the social networking aspect. Her buddy list is already bulging and I heard her complaining that she can only be a member of 5 bands. I watched her chatting with a 'friend' who was complaining about their account getting hacked (Annabelle advised her to change her password). I saw that the girl typed back, "Your a nice friend." (At least hopefully it's a young girl ...)

RAISING HAPPINESS: Mothering, good and bad, has been a hot topic here in the staff room at MPA this week. This morning, I came across a sane, humane sounding counterpoint to the inflammatory Wall Street Journal story about "Superior Chinese Mothers."

The article, on the Huffington Post, was by Christine Carter, PhD, author of "Raising Happiness." In it, Carter points out that three decades of research "clearly suggests that such a narrow focus on achievement can produce wildly unhappy people." She also points out that "we are a country full of high-achieving but depressed and suicidal college students, a record number of whom take prescription medication for anxiety and depression."

While we're on the topic of good/bad mothers, we can't forget the horror show that is "Toddlers and Tiaras." I've never watched a full episode, but I've seen tons of commercials and enough of it to conclude the mothers portrayed on the show are fruitcakes at best, potential child abusers at worst. Case in point - here's a lovely video of a mother having her FIVE YEAR OLD daughter's eyebrows waxed.

Unfortunately, Annabelle saw the first part of this and she practically started hyperventilating. :/

BONUS SHOT: I swear, Kirby was just begging me to take her picture today. So I did. Hmm, now that I think about it, Kirby looks like she needs her eyebrows waxed. ..

Falling Arches

ROUND TWO: We got the tank ready two days ago, but I've been putting off pouring the Triops eggs in because, well, I'm afraid of another failure.

As you may recall, we managed to kill and entire Sea-Monkeys colony in less than 24 hours in the not too distant past.

However, we can't just have the tank sitting there forever, filled with nothing but water, sand and a plastic castle. So this morning we took the plunge.

Precisely per directions, we poured one half of the eggs into the tank. And now, we wait. The directions said they'd start hatching in the next day or two.

Fingers crossed. ...

MORE TRICKSTER TALES: This morning we started a new book, Virginia Hamilton's "A Ring of Tricksters." This 111-page book has animal takes from America, the West Indies and Africa.

Today, we read four tales from America. The animals featured included a rabbit, an alligator, a buzzard, a wren, a cat, a rat, a fox and a wolf. There were tricks aplenty, as well as morals to the story. In one, the moral was "Bruh Flop ears is always asking for help. Then he helps himself!" In another, it was, "Never call in a bigger rogue to add, subtract and divide for you. For there's always less than honor among thieves."

WITHOUT WORDS: We also "read" a book called "Time Flies." Before I opened its cover, I asked the kids, "Do you think a book can tell a story without using any words?" They were skeptical.But together we paged through the book. When it was over I gave them a sheet of paper and asked them to write the words describing what it was about.

CJ wrote, "There once was a bird. He/she went to the museum. The bird thinks the dinos are real."

Annabelle wrote, "It's about a little bird traveling through time. Characters: Bird, dinos. The bird flys into a museum then travels in time to when the dinos were alive!"

I pointed out to the kids that oftentimes animation tells a story without words, and I turned to YouTube. There, I showed them three funny shorts in the "Simon's Cat" series. This one was CJ's favorite ...

ON THE INSIDE: CJ asked if he could check out Capcom's Web site, as he was curious about a new Mega Man game coming out. We checked out the fan forums and official Capcom blogs, and didn't find a specific answer to his question, but we did make another amazing discovery. We found photos of some cool sculptures people had created doing cutaways of oversized video game character toys. We found one of Mega Man, revealing his robotic inside; a neat-o one of Mario, guts and all, done by artist Jason Freeny, and then we hopped for Freeny's Facebook page where he posted a step by step of a Yoshi statue.

WADDLE, WADDLE: We headed to the Seattle Children's Museum this afternoon for Art Club. Imagine our surprise when we found out the museum was celebrating National Rubber Duck Day today.
We were there just in time for a Ducky parade. The kids were all issued blower beaks (courtesy of Ride the Ducks, a super fun city tour/attractions). And so a couple dozen kids waddled and flapped through the museum. We had to cut CJ and Annabelle's waddling short, so they could make their way over to Art Club on time.


CASTLE HASSLE: Today's advertised theme at Art Club (a one hour workshop that's free with museum admission), was building a castle. When we checked in, the two women leading the workshop both told me that I didn't need to stick around, that I could wander the Museum, but I had to stay on site. I found that kind of funny, because like your average adult is just dying to get time in the Children's Museum alone. ;) My first inclination was to stay in the room, but I reminded myself I don't need to be hovering over the kids all the time. That said, part of me thinks I should have gone with my first inclination. ...


I sat outside the workshop, surfing the Web on my cell phone. About 25 minutes into class, I notice CJ is roaming the room, definitely not castle building. I decide that would be a good time to check in. ... When I went in he was teary and stiff postured. Everyone else was sitting around a table, trying to build an arch out of croutons and clay - an odd combination, to be sure. And one that didn't work well for any of the kids, might I add. The crumbly croutons did NOT stick well to the terracotta clay. CJ was super frustrated, which I get, but his reaction to that frustration (tears and belligerent "I quit!" type talk) was completely unacceptable. He was acting about half his age, maybe less. We had a little Talk and I worked with him to try to build an arch, but honestly, it was an impossible task given the materials at hand. I told CJ it's not that he can't build an arch, it was just that these materials were troublesome. I told him we could have all sorts of fun building an arch out of marshmallows and toothpicks at home.


The next task at hand was drawing a castle. CJ's creative juices had pretty much run dry during the arch debacle. All he drew was a door. However, as we talked about his door, he explained it was a door to "a magical, mystical castle." I asked who lived in the castle and he said it was a fierce dragon. I asked how people get into the castle (hoping he'd draw a door knob or something) and he said they don't. :) I suggested that maybe people tunnel in. At that, I was told the castle has a metal floor. He did finally decide that smoke from the dragon's fire breath might be leaking out from around the door, so the castle did get that bit of embellishment. (Bee's is left, CeeJ's is right.) Once art was over, the kids had lots of fun in the museum. They spent a lot of time in the multi cultural villages - especially in the Japanese house, where Annabelle whipped up "sushi soup" and they enjoyed it sitting on pillows at a low table, Japanese style. Before leaving we also swung through the theater - an exhibit we'd never seen before. The kids had fun operating the backdrops and curtains and the theater lights. Here, CJ's commanding the stage. ..