far afield

Monday's journeys.Josh took the Undead Goats back to Mills Canyon Park for more outdoor adventuring.They rolled up their pants, carried their shoes, and went into the water.They forded the creek, waded through puddles, got muddy feet and wet seams, trekked downstream until they reached houses and ended up in the backyards of Burlingame.Happy birthday, Evan!Mackenzie took the Flying Fish to the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos. They were welcomed by the enormous sign out front!The docent, Mike, walked the Fish through the history of flight, aircraft by aircraft.They marveled at a replica of the Wright brothers' first powered aircraft, and learned that the Wright brothers weren't the only engineers fascinated with taking to the sky. They learned that gliders and blimps of various designs had already been flown before the Wright brothers got off the ground.The Fish also got to see a design that never left the ground. It was based on the idea that flight happens when air is pushed down. Getting into the cockpit of some of the planes was especially exciting.The Fish had lunch in the back courtyard, where they could watch the planes land and take off. Every couple of bites the kids would jump to their feet and run to the fence to watch the wheels of the small planes touch down.In the afternoon the Fish spent some time at Coyote Point in San Mateo playing on the playground, stalking geese, and making daisy chains.Chane is thrilled that the Marshmallow Ninja Cats have found quite a special comfort zone with each other and are able to jump into fun, spontaneous group bonding time. Here, Norabelle and Coke create an optical illusion by hiding Norabelle's body and hiding Coke's head.Park time continues to be a huge factor in seeing how the Ninja Cats have bonded. They are inseparable and move around the playground in unison and close together. Today they were engrossed in an imaginary place where they avoided nefarious antagonists.Chane asked the group, "What questions would people ask if they noticed the boys tying up the girls?"They asked her to take this picture:During reading time, even though they had a huge space to spread out for reading, they huddled together like little peas in a pod. Each of them is reading a challenging book and their task is to interact with their reading by noting difficult or unfamiliar words. As they find these words, they write them on sticky notes and we discuss the new words for vocabulary development. Today's words were "executed," "clause," and "custody."The Ninja Cats played some mathematical dice games with partners in the morning. One game fostered some practice with place value and naming three digit numbers, and the other facilitated practice with adding numbers in your head.They recorded the results from the dice games on a chart that Norabelle and Nicky drafted. The rest entered the frequency of totals derived from rolling three dice three times and keeping the highest number from each roll for an ending total.Chane has been reading aloud Terry Prachett's book The Wee Free Men (one of my favorite stories!). This amazing novel tackles classic stereotypes about witches with a frying-pan-wielding 9-year-old heroine while engaging the reader in all sort of literary delights. The Cats have been laughing about certain lines of the book for several weeks - "Wenny wanna go a-toilet!" - which has added greatly to the strength of their band.The Ninja Cats ended the day by laying out a storyline for their imaginary play from park time. After recording the general storyline, Chane asked the Cats to act it out. She would freeze them to help them create a tableau of their characters. She picked someone and asked, "What noise would your character make, or what would your character say?" This activity ended in fits of giggles because Nicky kept making the group laugh by interjecting on Coke's ideas. Nicky has melded into the group and now the inside jokes are starting to grow.