kinders climb up high to do the dishes
after a busy morning spent baking.
—
“sometimes you need to give dishes a nap.”
-jose andres
Feb22
Tag Archives: learning
Feb18
idea mark.
me – “can you tell about what you wrote?”
kinder – “look up at the top.
the brown part is the idea mark.
all the rest are the ideas.”
i thought this to be brilliant
and perhaps should be our newest form of punctuation.
move over semicolon; the idea mark is here to stay!
—
“words are but the signs of ideas.”
-samuel johnson
Jan18
how things work.
seeing firsthand how things work –
up close and personal style.
—
“i always want to know how things work.
had i been aladdin, i am certain that just after one wish or two,
i’d have taken that old lamp apart
to see if I could make another, better lamp.”
-walter p. chrysler
Jan17
city.
and this is how a city is born –
urban planning at its finest.
—
“a city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time”
-patrick gedde
Jan8
science through coloring.
periodic table crayon covers teach kids science through coloring
one of the best ways to capture a child’s imagination is with a box of crayons. etsy shop ¡Que Interesante!, which calls itself a place “where geek meets art,” has created special labels for crayons and colored pencils to help kids learn about the elements of the periodic table, and their chemical reactions, while coloring.
¡Que Interesante! used the flame test, a qualitative test in which the chemical makeup of a compound is identified by the color it gives off when placed in a flame, to match chemicals to colors.
“so,” according to the company, “instead of thinking, ‘i want green’ they will think ‘i want Barium Nitrate Ba(NO3)2 Flame’ and then when they take chemistry in high school and their teacher sets some gas on fire and it makes a green color and they ask the class what chemical it was your student will know it was barium.”
—
“as long as chemistry is studied, there will be a periodic table.
and even if someday we communicate with another part of the universe,
we can be sure that one thing both cultures will have in common
is an ordered system of the elements that will be instantly recognizable
by both intelligent life forms.
—john emsley, nature’s building blocks: an A-Z guide to the elements
—
credits: etsy, mental floss, r.obias, que interesante
Dec28
wonderful.
family watches with pride and awe
as mom/wife/my youngest daughter
crosses the stage to get her master’s degree
she worked so hard for this
all while
caring for them
teaching full time
learning at night
and
showing them what is possible.
“do something wonderful, people may imitate it. “
-albert schweitzer
—
proud of you baby girl, go blue!
Nov7
how far?
my first step in the parks in my first pair of shoes
steps in the parks somewhere in the middle
my last step in the parks in my last pair of shoes
—
with all of this stepping into the parks
i thought it was be easy and interesting
to look back and see just how far i had walked
using multiple sources
and multiple attempts
it turned into quite an impossible task
as each park was shaped differently
i had walked in no particular pattern
and converting the 2061.6 total acres into distance
proved to be a bit more complicated than i expected.
s0me of my early rough calculations
(having dinosaurs on the paper seemed fitting)
scenes of me asking the big questions
with no definitive answers
i went to my daughters
who tried to create an algorithm for me
but they again pointed out that i had no consistent shape of the acreage
nor did a have a consistent path of travel through them
—
i then went online to an international group
of physicists, mathmeticians, engineers, etc. to seek their answers
here is a sampling:
after walking 2,061.6 acres of parks, how far have I traveled in distance?
can’t convert an area into a distance… If you walked the entire area of the parks so as to pass within 20m of each point, this would be 250 miles at least.
While metric units are usually easier to work with, an acre represents an area of a chain (22yds or 20m) x a furlong (220 yds / 200m) which is 1/8 of a mile. If you were a medieval ploughman, an acre (from the Latin ager = field) would be a strip 22yds wide and 220yds long. But now it’s any shape at all with that area of 4840 sq yds or 1/640 of a square mile.
Best way to work out your distance will be with a gps app. Download the Viewranger app, get it to record your track, then it’ll tell you the exact distance. Other gps apps are available.
and :
There is no way to tell. You tell us areas but not distances, nor do you give us times or velocity.
—
i have decided that according to my calculations
my final answer is that i traveled pretty far
during the time i spent covering the 2,061.6 acres
and interesting coincidence
the last park on the list
the last steps i took
were in a park at the top of the very street
where i first lived in ann arbor
in my rattletrap apartment with no money
when i moved here at age 40
having quit my job to go to grad school
and change the course of my life
this long journey with it’s twisty and immeasurable path
had somehow led me straight home.
—
‘only those who will risk going too far
can possibly find out how far one can go.’
– t.s. eliott
Oct28
goals.
the kinders naturally understand the power
of a hard helmet and a soft puppy
when getting through a day.
—
“at the end of the day, the goals are simple: safety and security. “
-jodi rell
Oct21
moving target.
“a creative project is a moving target.
You never end up where you start.’
-evangeline lilly
—
the kinders remind me of this each and every day.
Sep15
talents.
one writes numbers
happy giggles
one draws lines
purple squiggles
two young kinders
share a table
each one proud
of what they’re able.
—
“use what talents you possess;
the woods would be very silent
if no birds sang there except those that sang best.”
-henry van dyke
I didn't have my glasses on.... 
