wedding dance

Vicky S just sent the link. I cried through most of the video.

That's because I have 3 kids. Back in Studio City I told my friend Debra, after the twins were born and I found myself mail-ordering goofy Christmas sweater knitting kits,^* that once you have 3 kids you turn into the kind of person who cries over Hallmark ads. My mom had four kids and she always cried over Hallmark ads.

She didn't cry over real life.

She just cried over the ads.


^* Once you have 3 kids you also turn into the kind of person who doesn't manage to actually complete the Christmas sweater knitting kit.

The best of hands-on, real-world, interdisciplinary, multi-media learning

From In Memoriam: William R. Bennett Jr., Laser Inventor and Collector of Data, in this past week's Yale Bulletin:

Over his 38 years at Yale, Bennett carried out research in diverse fields ranging from atomic physics to computer science and acoustics...

Many of the approaches Bennett used to collect data for his projects provided much amusement to his students and colleagues. For one project, he rented a truck and filled it with equipment and a mattress and, together with his wife and dog, set out to measure the "Fifth Force" at a site where a large body of water changed height rapidly. The site he chose was the locks on the Snake River in Washington, which gave him special dispensation to camp there with his truck for the summer.

He was also frequently seen at various sites around the Yale campus collecting data for his popular course on "The Computer as a Research Tool." For this course he was named one of the 10 best professors at Yale for many years in a row. His lectures in that course were multi-media events and included demonstrations of firestorms, removal of warts by laser, calculations of how long it would take monkeys sitting at the typewriter to produce phrases recognized from great works of literature, and comparisons of the sound waveforms of the French horn and the garden hose.

One time the professor was spotted dressed in scuba gear and pushing scales and other gadgets at the bottom of the Yale swimming pool, measuring drag coefficients.

...He used his expertise in physics and sound to make calculations on how to decrease the noise levels in the Yale dining halls and used those successfully to improve the ability to converse and to enjoy chamber music concerts there. He also measured magnetic fields around campus and around New Haven. With the magnetic field data, he showed that it was improbable that those fields could cause cancer.

(Cross-posted at Out in Left Field).

Sigh.

Office Depot here is selling tip cheat cards by the cashier -- for those who can't calculate a 15% tip. A locally-owned video store is having a clearance sale, 50% off. They have big signs next to the clearance aisles that tell you for each video price what 50% off would be.

black and white

We are having some issues with my son Sean. He is in 3rd grade and a very bright kid. He is in the talented and gifted program and made the A-B honor roll last semester, but lately he is presenting us with some difficulties.

On Monday night we discovered that he turned in a blank reading log for the previous week. This despite him assuring us several times that he had filled it out. We go through stages where we physically check it, but last week was one where we assumed he did. We know he read (he has to read for 15 minutes a night and record what he read) and filling out the log only takes a few minutes, but he totally ignored it (and us).

Tuesday evening he forgot his science book even though he had to do some science homework, and it was listed in his agenda. By nature he is a bit scatter brained (like his dad), but we have repeatedly had this problem and counseled him to check that he has all his books before he leaves the class. In the past, we were usually able to let him borrow his step-sister Christina's books since she is also in 3rd grade, but she didn't have it this time. We wrote a note to the teacher, telling her that we would have him do it tonight, along with any other "extra" homework she saw fit to give.

We also found out on Tuesday, that he had gotten behind in his TAG class. He is meant to make flash cards for a few prefix's and suffix's every month and learn them, but he was a month behind. It didn't take long to make them up, and I am reasonably sure he could memorize the years worth of words in two or three days if he applied himself. He has a good memory and has no problem learning his spelling words. I do have to admit that I hate his TAG program, because it's all enrichment and ran by a kooky art major, but I still expect him to do well in it.

Tonight he remembered his science book so he was able to do the missed assignment plus an extra assignment his teacher assigned, but there was a note in his agenda to work on a social studies composition. When we asked him about it, he told us that he had no idea what she was talking about.

Additionally, he often acts like... well a big dummy. Tonight he was answering questions and we had to make him reread it several times for him to get the answer. At one point, my girl friend got frustrated and told him that the answer was right there in "black and white".

He replied, "I see the black words, but where is the white?"

Later when Shannon had him read the sentence with the answer to the question, he replied "That sentence doesn't have the word 'why' in it."

He is not a bad kid at all. He is very sweet and pretty well behaved, but its like he has no common sense sometimes, either that or its laziness.

It's hard not to pile on punishment after punishment. We think we give appropriate positive feedback to encourage him. Our main problem is that because of the number of kids we have, it's very difficult to micromanage his homework and still teach give our other kids the time they need.

I would tear my hair out if it wasn't the fact that I have none.