06.27.07
Posted in Family, Kids, Outings, Photos at 3:42 pm by Christina
After we finished up in the exhibit hall, we decided it was time to let Jamie out of the stroller for some free-range time. We headed to the kiddie carnival at the back of the fair and he enjoyed three rides with his grandparents. First, a helicopter ride with Cissa:
He just loves helicopters and has a sound-word for them – one tongue click. Propeller airplanes get the same sound, but jet planes get the ASL sign for airplane.
Next was an elephant ride with Meemom:
And finally a carousel horse ride with Poopop:
Took him a while to settle into this one, with some tears at the start, but once he got a better hold of Poopop’s shirt the tears stopped and he enjoyed himself!
All of these rides culminated in requests for “more”!
After a snack – which was actually three different snacks for Jamie as I tried to find something he would eat in quantity, since he hadn’t had anything since his naptime bottle – we moved over to the small animal exhibits and enjoyed rabbits, guinea pigs and any number of birds. Jamie really enjoyed these and the birds, which he could be standing for and under his own power, were favorites:
Then we went to the Alaskan Pig Races and Emma was chosen to lead a cheering section for one of the finalists:
Finally, the girls gave the bungee jumping a shot, convinced us to let them have a second turn so they could achieve somersaulting, and begged us to please let them do it again on our second trip to the fair after the 4th of July:
We had a terrific time! After the bungee jumping we got some more, dinner-like food and listened to a washboard band. Then we spent a little bit of time at the garden exhibits before moving on to the adult carnival where Katie and Emma convinced Cissa to ride the swings with them. I got some cool video of them on the ride – with the dusky sky behind them, it looks like they are being computer-generated against a special effects blue screen.
We’ll be spending a second day at the fair in July, with the girls bringing along a couple of friends whose mom is recovering from surgery. We bought them unlimited carnival wristbands and expect they’ll be on the rides all day! Friends of mine from chorus will be coming for the evening karaoke competition, too, so it will be fun to watch that as well.
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Posted in Arts & Crafts, Family, Food, Kids, Photos at 12:03 am by Christina
I decided to write up our Monday excursion to the Alameda County Fair first, even though it came after Saturday’s outing to Katie’s music camp which I briefly mentioned, and also Emma’s Sunday birthday and the shared Sunday birthday party. I know family will be looking for the scoop on the fair, as Katie entered eight items in the youth competition, and Emma entered six items in the non-competitive children’s categories. The county fair projects are part of their weekly “Camp PooMee” day with Jeff’s parents; grandma Meemom has been sharing all her wonderful sewing, cooking and crafting talents with them over many years! This is the second year they’ve done the fair and we plan to continue. (I was asking my mother-in-law while we were there if she plans to figure out a way to help her other grandchild, my niece Dorothy in Seattle, have so darn much fun every year!) This year we also included my own mother in the activities; Katie made her zucchini bread entry while on a visit to Spokane in May (and froze it to keep for the fair), and we tried to get Emma to work on formatting her poem up there as well but she wasn’t willing…
We headed one town over to Pleasanton after Jamie woke up from his nap; the 4p.m. arrival kept us out of the midday heat that was so hard last year. After juggling all the advance purchase, discounted e-tickets, we headed right for the exhibit hall to see the girls’ entries and especially to see how Katie’s submissions had been judged.
The hall is not organized at all by category, which makes it difficult to track down one’s personal entries. It does make for a fun experience when you let go of the hunt and just absorb, though; the team setting up the exhibits comes up with all sorts of interesting groupings! The girls’ flowerpots that they made for their grandma Cissa were in a large grouping of many different flower entries:
Katie earned a blue first on her pot; the youth entries are judged by the Danish Judging System, which “is based upon established standards of quality for each type of product. In this system each exhibit is judged according to how well it meets that standard, rather than how it compares with other exhibits.” A blue first is 90-100%, red second 80-89%, white third 70-79%, and pink fourth 69% and below.
All of Emma’s entries were given a rainbow participant’s ribbon; she will not be able to participate in the competitive exhibits for two more years. (They start at 9 years of age, and your age for the fair is the age you are on January 1st of the entry year – just like the Kentucky Derby!) The children’s exhibits also had a limit; Emma was able to enter six items and had to exclude a cow drawing that she had been planning to enter. Besides the flowerpot, Emma entered a magnetic poem that we couldn’t find in the hall (magnetic because it was created using tiles in the magnetic poetry kit); a place setting based on the book On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder (second from the left, with the tin cup and navy bandana napkin):
A shift dress that she made for her American Girl doll Josefina:
A sunprinted fabric box:
And some cookie press cookies (again second from the left, sugar cookies with sprinkles):
The kids are allowed no direct assistance in making their entries; every step must be done by their youthful hands.
Katie’s other entries included a sunprinted box as well, for which she earned a blue first and also a yellow and white “Judge’s Choice” ribbon (we’re not sure how many of those each judge gets to distribute, but we’re going to ask!):
Her colonial dress, which she made for her Hallowe’en costume last year, earned not only a blue first but a blue “Best of Class” ribbon, which means that of all the single-piece garments submitted, hers was considered the top entry (the machine sewing division has six different classes):
The rules make it sound like Best of Class and Best of Show entries are not limited to the age subcategories (9-11, 12-14, 15-18) but are across the entire youth competition; we’re going to ask that question on our second trip as well!
Her Gilgamesh story was awarded a white third; we’re interested to see the judge’s comments resulting in that. I’m curious if maybe it wasn’t considered “creative writing” enough because it was not an original piece; perhaps it should have been entered in a different division… (Homeschooling mom trying not to panic!)
Her photograph of a ladybug on a blooming sagebush got a blue first; it had terrific depth of field presentation with a macro focus on the bug and the background blurred out a bit:
Her marker drawing of a black leopard earned another blue first:
The flannel I-Spy type quilt she made for Jamie was also in the machine sewing division and earned a blue first:
Her last entry, a loaf of great-grandma Nana’s Zucchini Bread, also earned a blue first, and marched beyond that to take a blue Best of Class AND A PURPLE BEST OF SHOW! That means that of all the nine classes of food entries in the youth competition (not including preserved foods which are a separate division), her (and Nana’s) zucchini bread was judged the top entry. And let me tell you, this is a very popular category for the kids – there are baked goods especially all over the exhibit hall!
I’ll be providing this award-winning recipe in a later post for you all to try!
We did some other fun things – and Jamie was along with us for them! – but I’ll put them in a separate post, and in the morning – it’s time for bed!
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04.06.07
Posted in Homeschooling, Kids, Photos at 11:54 am by Christina
Last Friday we participated in a homeschool Geography Fair organized by another family in our local group. The girls chose to study India, primarily because they had costumes that they could wear from the business trips their father and grandparents had made over the years. When we returned from Colorado earlier in March we got a lot of books out of the library and started researching the project. After they had read a variety, I had them brainstorm a list of things that they would like to share about India, with a focus on sharing things that would help people understand India better if they were going to visit there: people, places, events, artifacts, etc.
The next step was to discuss and plan the layout for the display. I purchased a presentation board, and we knew we would have around four feet of table space. I also knew I wanted to do a map project with Katie as an integrated mathematics part of the unit. So together we decided that we would make a map the centerpiece of the display board and come out of the map to different items off of our list. (The list was quite large and we didn’t use everything!) Things that weren’t appropriate for the map we would display on the table, and everything would be labeled.
The map project was for Katie to work on, both because the mathematics are beyond Emma at a functional level (though she participated in the conceptual aspect of it) and because it was going to be a significant project and Emma wouldn’t have the endurance to complete it at this point. What we did was take a small map of India (4in. x 6in.) and scale it up to a very large map (18in. x 27in.). Katie has been learning about fractions and we introduced the concept of ratios with this project; once she determined the base ratio by reducing the fraction (4/6 to 2/3), she could measure the display board and determine what size the final map should be. Then I established a 1/2-inch grid on the smaller map (8 squares by 12 squares) and she figured out what the grid size needed to be on the larger map. I drew that grid and we made a little view window so she would just see the square she was working on, and away she went!
After the outline was done she figured out what features to include on the map: neighboring countries, mountains and rivers, significant cities. She and I did the coloring and labeling together. In the process we discovered that we had missed a strange offshoot of India that is north of Bangladesh, so we spliced more paper onto the map and repeated the process. The finished map became the centerpiece of the display board:
Emma chose the title font and did that coloring; she also did the coloring on the world map showing where India is.
Starting at the upper left and going down, the the right side down, the topics and cities highlighted on the display are: yoga (Delhi); the Indian flag (New Delhi); Gandhi (Ahmadabad); population (Mumbai); the Taj Mahal (Agra); a sitar (Vasanari); a Bengal tiger (Darjiling); and the British Empire (Kolkata).
Emma worked on yoga, the flag, the sitar and the tiger. For each item we used a five-point note-taking scheme, limiting our notes to four words per item. After the note-taking was done we worked together to figure out a logically progressive order to the topic, and then Emma dictated the sentences to me based on her notes. In addition, she did a drawing of the flag and used a borrowed light-box to trace a drawing of a sitar. Together we did research online and in books, practicing skills with indices, tables of contents, and so forth.
Emma also assembled a special activity for visitors to our table called “Guess the Asana!”. Asana is the word meaning “pose” or “posture” in yoga. She researched online for 15 different asanas and then we took pictures of her in each pose and made up a flash card of each one. We provided visitors with a master list of the 15 poses and they got to match names to pictures. That’s the “half moon” on top of the pile:
Katie was responsible for the other four topics: Gandhi, population, the Taj Mahal and the British Empire. (Both girls learned about all of the topics; the diagrams, pictures and note-taking were divvied up.) Katie used the same research and note-taking skills, with a lot less assistance from me. Where Emma and I worked together to order the five topics, Katie worked independently and rearranged things after testing them out. Then she dictated her paragraphs to me at the keyboard as Emma did.
For Gandhi, she highlighted the Salt Satyagraha or Salt March that started in Ahmadabad; this was a protest against the laws prohibiting the making of salt by anyone not appropriately licensed (and taxed) by the British. It really resonated with her that thousands of people including Gandhi could be arrested for picking up salty dirt on the beach and boiling it in a pot… On population she made a pictorial chart of the percentages of different religions (another mathematics concept that we’re beginning in depth). The British Empire and the Taj Mahal used photographs from online; she was “freaked out” by the idea that Mumtaz Mahal (whose tomb the Taj Mahal is) died giving birth to her fourteenth child.
Along with the costumes, the girls collected other objects to display from their grandparents’ trip to Mumbai, and we (mostly I as we were running out of time!) made labels for those items as well. They displayed a sari (I wore a sari and we’d hoped to help kids try on the smaller one, but we had no takers!); some rupees (Indian money); some little statues of elephants and Ganesh, the Hindu elephant god; a list of English words that come from India (mostly Hindi); a plate of samosas to try (sort of a potsticker or ravioli); some children’s books on India; and our fact sheet, which each display was required to provide. We brought a stereo and a CD of Ravi Shankar’s sitar music. We also needed some kind of sticker or stamp for the passports which were provided for the “trip around the world”; we ran out of time to create our own stickers so we taped letters together spelling “Gandhi” (better words like “India” or “Namaste” required double letters…). Here’s one final picture of the display and the girls in their costumes:
We are hoping to submit our display board to the Alameda County Fair from our homeschooling “class”. The Young California exhibition hall last year had a number of projects on display, both by individuals and by classrooms. I don’t think those things were judged but I still have to read the requirements which have been delayed in publication.
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03.24.07
Posted in Holidays, Photos at 4:04 pm by Christina
We celebrated another quarter of Terra’s revolution around Sol this week. The kids’ equinox baskets are packed away in the garage, but my own childhood (Easter) basket was available and so while I had the kids at choir and orchestra on Wednesday, Jeff prepared it with shredded green paper and the nice treats I picked up (decorated egg and flower cookies, and yummy filled chocolate eggs). We’d made no mention of the event, and the girls were nicely surprised when we got home!
We waited until Thursday to color and hide the eggs. (There’s a lot to be said for doing things in due time, rather than cramming everything in at once. I enjoy most holidays more when there’s an agreement not to rush…) We tried a marbling kit this year as well as the regular dye tablets (which were 1/3 dud – only three colors, and the pink wouldn’t dissolve). We have a lovely backyard this year and had fun hiding the eggs for a hunt. We scattered a few on the grass for Jamie to find, too. In fact, when we hid all the eggs a second time at the girls’ request, Jamie found several of the actually hidden ones!
Here are some great pictures – Jamie was very photogenic. The girls were moving too fast during the hunt to get anything good.
(That’s a carefully placed cup – no willy pictures on the internet!)
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03.18.07
Posted in Household, Kids, Photos at 10:13 am by Christina
All I can say is, Thank goodness for cupboard locks! We have one cupboard – just one! – that remains accessible to Jamie, and whenever I work in the kitchen, he works in that cupboard. Sometimes he’ll help me put the things back away, but usually I restack just before we leave the kitchen. Fortunately, I’ve realized the need to leave that cupboard fairly empty – just the plastic plates and bowls. However, he knows that all the cupboards are one long shelf (no sides) and so this is what he does:
There’s lots more fun stuff to the sides, Mom!
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Posted in Household, Life in general, Photos at 10:04 am by Christina
I am trying to develop a new morning habit: to be up and productive for a bit, rather than heading right to my personal time. I join my personal time with my breakfast now; I’m never hungry right away, usually it takes me 90 minutes to feel hungry in the morning. (That’s true even on the juice fast.) I used to get up, head for my email, blogs, the news, and then do that again when I ate. Now I straighten up the kitchen and cycle the laundry along every morning, in and around assisting Jamie with his needs of course. By the time that’s all done I usually am hungry, and so I move onto the computer with my breakfast alongside. (Can you imagine it taking 90 minutes to straighten up the kitchen counter, empty or load the dishwasher, fold a load of laundry and start a load of laundry? If you can, you’re the parent of a young child… or have been!)
Part of the new routine is exercising willpower to get the lights off no later than midnight, no matter how exciting the book is, because that gives me the ability to get up with Jamie around 7:30 with energy to take care of business. And with daylight savings active now, 7:30 means we’re seeing some beautiful sunrises. Here’s the distant view from our deck:
And for those of my readers who are in more northern climes, hang on just a little bit longer! Spring is definitely making it’s move northward. I’ve no idea what kind of tree this is, but it is very densely planted here in Dublin, in all the public spaces and boulevards and throughout the residential areas as well. We’ve been watching spring make it’s way across this tree; it’s about halfway bloomed now.
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Posted in Homeschooling, Kids, Photos, Science at 9:52 am by Christina
My father-in-law, a retired chemical engineer, is a volunteer at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. I think he goes up a couple of times a week and works in R&D on new projects and programs. As a result of his work there, the girls get to go to all sorts of membership and volunteer events, and Jon often takes them up for fun and learning at activities like Physics of Toys.
Sometimes, too, they get to test out projects with him at Camp PooMee (we used to call their weekly grandparent day Camp Meemom when Jon was still at work but it’s been modified for his retirement). This week, they were testing out an activity for April’s Physics of Toys: Green Gadgets for a Blue Planet (which is scheduled right at Earth Day). They built a homemade filter with pebbles, sand, cotton, and sphagnum moss and used it to clean up water contaminated by a lovely melange of kitchen materials: cocoa powder, rice, ground wheat, red and green food coloring, tea leaves, etc. Here they are in action, with thanks to my mother-in-law for the pictures:
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