Life on the Frontier

Last week we rode our magic time machine (aka our school bus) back to the late-1800s to visit the cabin of Job Carr, one of Tacoma's earliest non-native settlers. Carr himself travelled out west in a covered wagon, much as we have been doing in our Westward Ho! simulation, and we really enjoyed experiencing a little slice of life in Tacoma as it would have been back then.

We started by singing a few old-time songs, and even hearing a dulcimer played. The kids always love a rousing round of "She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain." Whoa, Babe!

We made some quilt squares (the easy way - gluing cloth scraps onto paper), which we later turned into a little classroom quilt.

We played with some frontier-era wooden toys:

We even got to try on some frontier fashions:

 These bonnets were so cute, Mrs. Towne and I had to join in the fun!

All in all, a wonderful step back in time.

Do Cars Transition?

 We had so much fun looking at old cars at the LeMay Car Museum!

 Our guide, Jim, knew a LOT about cars.

 We looked at some of the first car designs and talked about what we noticed about them. The oldest cars no windows or doors.

 A lot of them were originally made of wood. Over time, this was replaced with metal, and now even plastic. This wheel, we noticed, looked similar to a wagon wheel.

 This whole car looks a lot like a wagon!

We noticed that the wheels started to have spokes, like a bicycle wheel, and that the shapes of the cars became more sleek and aerodynamic.

This one was mostly wood.

 This one looked like a bicycle.

We put pictures of cars in order from oldest too newest, noticing how the body shapes changed. The most recent car in this lineup was a Prius, and we talked about what makes them special and why people want cars that use less gas today.

Then we had our picture taken against a green screen. This car reminded us  a lot of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

We looked at future ideas for cars...

including solar powered!

Then we designed our OWN cars:

and, or course, tested them out on a racetrack:

Car designers of the future? Watch out, Indy 500!

Celebrating ... Reading! With Math?!

We love Dr. Seuss for the fun he had with words -- and the fun we have reading his books! So we are always happy to celebrate his birthday with "Read Across America Day." At Seabury, this involves comfy pajamas, lots of reading, various silly and Seussical activities, and, of course, our annual Dr. Seuss trivia contest.

This year, the Bumblebees took 1st place, with a three-way tie between the Pioneers, Innovators and Navigators for second place. We know our Dr. Seuss around here, that's for sure!

The Pioneers and Navigators also did some Seuss-inspired math, first solving some story problems featuring Dr. Seuss characters and language, and then writing their own for the rest of the group to solve. Here were a few:

There were 12 Yertle Turtles stacked up. 8 fell off and 10 joined the stack. 4 more stacked on, and 3 fell off. How many Yertle Turtles are stacked up now?

If the Onceler drove away 45 Bar-ba-loots, 34 Humming fish and 57 Swomee swans, how many animals did he drive away?

A Geisel needed 15 groups of pixels so he multiplies by 5. How many pixels does the Geisel have?

Goopy Gopp has 7 pops. Gogas has 12 pops. How much more does Gogas have than Goopy Gopp?

1or 5, 6 or 10, age doesn't matter. Old or young or bold or stunned. Looking' like nothing but - this isn't right - I feel a fright. 1 or 5, 6 or 10,  or older than Big Ben? What is 5+6+10+1x2?

How many times am I to try to make the man eat green eggs and ham? Less than 10, but more than 4.

The Cat in the Hat has 89 fish bowls. He gives away 51. Then Thing 1 gives him 33 bowls. How many bowls does he have?

Dr. Seuss, we love you. We also love reading, writing, and MATH, too!