Sunday, November 26, 2006

Wet Blanket



It is wet and soggy, but it is definitely snow! This morning we awoke to a layer of heavy flakes. Stephanie immediately played the "Skating" song from Charlie Brown's Christmas CD, and made hot chocolate. Toby was let outside, and he played around, biting and throwing it up into the air. Toby usually hates the rain and getting wet, but snow is different - he ran around and played by himself for about five minutes. It is forecasted that it will snow again this evening and again on Monday morning. Will there be a delayed start to school?

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Thanksgiving Hijinks & Homage to Laika



When my family gets together, there is always a fair amount of goofing around. The three dogs were the brunt of our jokes this year. After Tim and my mom made antenna for Emily and Holly, Toby joined in on the fun. Soon all three dogs were sporting aluminum foil headgear. Emily stated that she was "Thankful and proud to pay homage to the first dog in space, Laika." Toby agreed by wagging his tail, and Holly headed toward the back door to be let outside.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Mystery Tube of Science


This was a short week at school - perfect for the Mystery Tube of SCIENCE! The Mystery Tube has four holes, and strings come out of each. When one string is pulled, the others react in unexpected ways. They are all linked somehow - and that is for the students to figure out. They are given a Pringles can and as much string as they want. This is more than a puzzle - it is a way for students to work their way through a problem using scientific thinking skills. They must observe, ask questions, make and test predictions, and compare their results to the model. The first group to solve it did it in about two hours. On the final day, I gave some clues, and almost all groups were able to build their own Mystery Tube, which they promptly took home to amaze family and friends over Thanksgiving Break.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Shocking!

This afternoon at about 1:30, and powerful storm moved through the Puget Sound area. My students were at lunch recess, and the pea sized hail fell as the bell rang. As I went out the get them, thunder and lightning rocked the area. After we got to class, I turned on our LCD projector, and we watched the Doppler Radar animation of the storm moving toward Seattle. It finally got there, and let loose with lightning and hail. Three buildings in Downtown Seattle were struck, simultaneously! I love crazy weather, but not too crazy.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

November Evening

After all the rain and wind and a disappointing Seahawks loss, the sunset tonight was refreshing. Steph and I are looking forward to a short 2 1/2 day week at school and a long Thanksgiving Break next weekend.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

A weekend at Pete's


My brother Tim came over and spent Friday and Saturday night with us. We had a great time watching select episodes of the second season of the Office, eating pizza, and building lego robots. Tim built a great praying mantis model, and I built a robot that follows a line on the floor. It was harder than I thought, but I'm getting the hand of engineering and programming Lego robots (how old am I?). This afternoon we watched the Hawks game, in which Josh Brown scored a last minute, game winning field goal against the Rams. The game was made even better by the entire jar of salsa con queso we consumed.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

FEMA, can you handle this?

Earth has it's fair share of violent storms. Hurricanes and typhoons form in our oceans and batter nearby land-masses, and people. Recently, there seems to have been a rise in the frequency and intensity of Atlantic Hurricanes, although currently there haven't been any major doozies this year. Some scientists think that this might be related to global warming. On Saturn, the hurricanes don't mess around.

At 5,000 miles across (two-thirds the diameter of Earth) and 350 mph, this thing packs a punch. It isn't really a hurricane though - there is no ocean below it, it does not drift around, but has eye-wall clouds. The most amazing thing is that these eye-wall clouds allow scientists to see farther down into Saturn's interior than ever before. FEMA, get those trailers ready.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

This isn't good...

So getting a kit a build a robot may not be all it is cracked up to be. Apparently, robots think humans taste like bacon. If robots love bacon as much as I do, we should be worried.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Mindstorms NXT

Today I received a Lego Mindstroms NXT building kit for my classroom. A generous community member wanted to donate the system to a classroom, and after a grant-type selection process, I was chosen. The kit was delivered in a tough Pelican case with a Masterlock. The Pelican case has foam cut to fit the pieces, which are in small compartmentalized containers. Not only did I receive the Lego kit, but it came packaged in an indestructible, waterproof custom made case! Wow! During the next few days I am going to figure out how to build and program the NXT system, then I'll get it going in my classroom.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Blog changes ... and rain



I changed the title of my blog today to reflect the fact that I want to publish more than just about things that happen in my classroom. The previous title was "Mr. Darragh's Class".

Today was the second day of the projected three day rain/wind experience for Washington. It was rained over 2.5 inches in just 2 days! Snoqualmie Falls is raging, and flooding is predicted for low lying areas such as Skagit Valley. In anticipation of this deluge, I worked on our roof and gutters today. Our carport basically needs a new roof, but it will do for now, and our shed needed a few repairs.

Tomorrow might be a big day at school. I applied for a Lego NXT Mindstorm kit through a grant provided by a community member. I think I will receive it, and am really looking forward to learning how to use it, and then use it in my classroom. Tomorrow in class we begin a new math investigation, and start memoir writing. Soon, I hope to get the kids outside and use the GPS devices that PTA bought for my class a couple of years ago. The geocache that was placed two years ago was recently muggled, so it is time to place a new one with this class.