A Simplified Abacus

Alright then, we've been messing around here making abacus(es) (abaci?) using beads, kebab sticks, and tongue depressors. 

The first ones we made were traditional and had the "heaven" and "earth" beads and all of that. Which was cool.

However I also recently made a simpler version, which is great for anyone learning math facts for both addition and subtraction.

I just put ten beads, in alternating colors (so you can see even vs. odd numbers) on each level. Then I labeled each decimal place. The kids wanted to go up to millions so that's how many we did.

The cool thing about using this one is that often when you add you also get to subtract.

Example: Suppose you've moved over 5 beads in the bottom rung. You want to add 8 to that.

Well, you haven't got 8 more beads to add. So what do you do? Go up a rung and add 10, then go back down and subtract 2. That's it. Then you've got one bead in the 10's place and 3 in the 1's place. Or 13.

You can do that all up and down the various decimal places.

I'm liking this one for my kids since they're in math-fact-learning mode. And it teaches things in decimals which is useful for how our numbers work.

Anyway it's worth a try. I kind of like just messing with it while I have breakfast.

Recipe for a Superhero

Yesterday I had the pleasure of drawing cartoons with lots of kids (and their tutors) at 826 Valencia in San Francisco.

Our theme was superheroes.

First we brainstormed a list of all of the things that you need in order to create a superhero. This list method can come in really handy when making up a character. It is a "skeleton" that you then fill in with your own details. 

Recipe for One Superhero:

Name

Species (what type of creature your hero is)

Cape (or not)

Mask

Secret Identity

Hidden Lair

Transport (flying, rocket, car, etc.)

Utility Belt or other Tools

Superpowers

Weakness

Story of how they got their Superpowers

Costume

Logo or Emblem

Transformation from Secret Identity to Hero

...there's more I'm sure.

We came up with Captain Poodle, who is by day a mild-mannered poodle but who has a special collar that lets him transform into a Mastiff with a cape and boots. He also has laser vision through his goggles and can fly and has super strength. His hidden lair is accessible through a secret door in the bottom of his dog house.

Next, you need a Nemesis or Enemy.

Recipe for one Nemesis:

Name

Species

Powers (usually directly opposed to Superhero's powers)

Costume

Weakness

Lair

Technology

Transport

Story of how they came to be the Nemesis

We came up with "The Dog Catcher," who is of course a cat. He wears a hat and trenchcoat and can shoot out a special super net.

Then the kids came up with their own. We had an ant with armor, and cats, and unidentified creatures, and folks with jet packs and rockets coming out of their feet, and lots more.

You can try this too -- what would your Superhero and Nemesis be like? Oh, and for extra points you can also add a Sidekick. For both of them, to keep things even.

Felt and Glue and... Puppets!!

At the afterschool center where I teach we are messing with a)Felt, b)Fabritak (expensive but works well for quick fabric projects c)scissors and d)eyeballs.

This was my puppet - a 4-eyed dragon type guy.

I hope to bring you pictures of more of the creations once the glue dries. Then, perhaps we can put on a show!

Here's a place where you can find a nice pattern for the outline of a puppet. Note: This pattern is kid-hand-sized, so make it bigger for grownups. And, if you're wanting to venture further into puppet-land, here's a pretty cool site on all sorts of puppet making.

Looking Up

Since a movie came out this summer called "Up," I think it's time to notice more things about changing one's perspective.

I already wrote about looking from the inside out - any change in how you look at your environment can reveal a lot about what is around you, what you've been missing, and how you tend to look at things.

This morning, I spent some time looking straight up into trees. 

It's amazing how many people go around looking down all the time. Nowadays, often it's looking down at some screen or other, thumbs a blazin'.

Looking up shows you information you didn't know before. Like, what tops of buildings look like. Or, what it's like to turn your gaze toward infinite space.

Interestingly, my sense of hearing also perked up when I started looking straight up. I became aware of lots of bird conversations going on up there that I had been oblivious to.

I remember looking up a lot when I was a kid, since I was too short to see anything. I remember what the undersides of counters looked like at the pizza parlor and the bank.

Now I have to remind myself to look up, even though I'm still just human-sized.

From the Inside Out

So if you look at a Pottery Barn Kids catalog, you see lots of nifty play kitchens and boxes and easels and things that are so... color coordinated and perfectly proportioned and meant to look nice.

And, I think you can spend $250 or more just by looking at one of the pages for too long.

Yesterday we scored a big box.

So I consulted with my 2 kids on what to do with it. We took it outside and cut it in half. We discussed how to make it so it wouldn't fold up on them. We cut out "trap doors" in the top.

After that, they grabbed their boxes and took off into the house.

Did they paint them pretty colors? Cover them in cute drawings? Um, no.

The first thing they did was locate a suitable wall in their room and put the box up against it, creating a little cave.

Then, they put things in there. Like a "rug," or a "bookshelf." And they added things like buttons, which control something I think.

These are so not Pottery Barn. But it's not because they aren't up to the task of making things cute and colorful, it's because they are looking at these boxes from the inside out.

The minute they saw a big box, they saw a cool space that was theirs. They set them up and burrowed into them.

Art projects are often judged on what they look like, but some projects should really be judged on what they feel like. What it's like to push them around, or create a new little space to be in or use materials in some new way.

They may not be much to look at for the Pottery Barn crowd, but there are whole little worlds in there.

An Old, Tired Quote... or is it?

"It's what's inside that counts."

Wow, that's an oldie. The sort of thing your grandmother would say, right?

As I mentioned, I've just finished reading "The Beauty Myth." And, I've also mentioned that I think the concepts in that book could actually be applied to just about anyone.

One of the major concepts is that a consumer society strives to keep its citizens focused on things outside of themselves, in order to manufacture "need." You see, in order to need something you have to not already have it. Or enough of it.

So, the beauty myth keeps women always looking outward, toward ideals, and away from their true selves.

This is the exact opposite of art.

Art is about what is inside, it is a way people have of taking what they have inside them and making it visible. Writing does the same thing. Same with music.

So you could argue that in a certain way, the arts are how we counteract this culture of manufactured need. By letting people express what they have inside, and giving them lots of ways to do that, we acknowledge that an inside exists. And that it does not "need" external things to be fabulous.

Seattle - Science Fiction Museum

I have a confession to make. Earlier this year when we were in San Diego, we actually skipped the zoo and actually went to an exhibit at the Space center on Star Trek. We even had our picture taken as a family on the bridge of the Enterprise.

So, these are geeks we're talking about here.

But, I have to say that the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, which is in the same building as the Experience Music Project (near the Space Needle), is well worth a visit. 

What they did really well was to mix together the work of many different science fiction creators, and show how their ideas influenced one another. And, they had really cool artifacts like a model of the Death Star used in the movies and the plastic raincoat from "Blade Runner" (which appeared in a pretty gnarly scene, so it's a grownup thing, but just hanging there it's no big deal).

Science fiction is like one big thought experiment, where people try on various realities and decide what happens. Star Trek was a huge breakthrough when it put people of multiple races and genders on the bridge together. And there are so many other examples. 

Anyway, if you are a sci fi nerd like me, it's totally worth it to see such a massive number of artifacts and props and stories and personalities so well presented.

Seattle - Experience Music Project

As I mentioned in my previous post, we're just back from Seattle. While there we got to the Experience Music Project and the Science Fiction Museum. The EMP was both nostalgic and interactive simultaneously, with tons of artifacts from Seattle-area artists and bands arranged chonologically. There was also, of course, a memorial to Michael Jackson outside and a small case containing his sequined jacket and glove from when he first performed the "moonwalk." And, a really big room with Michael's music playing where people could just dance around and watch the back wall light up. What a great space.

But the coolest part, especially for kids, were the soundproof rooms where you could take ten minutes and jam. There were keyboards, drums, guitars, and computerized lessons on how to play them. There was even a room for vocals, although we didn't get into that one. But I did manage the bass line from "Smoke on the Water." Thank you, I knew you would be amazed.

Anyway, these exhibits really showed people of all ages the basic structures of music on lots of different instruments. And the way they did it, with exhibits and with soundproof rooms, meant people with little or no exposure to making music could goof around in a way that made them comfortable. 

We have a spinnet piano in our house, and I'm observing as my daughter makes progressively more structured sounds with it. She doesn't take any formal lessons, but you can really hear her thinking as she noodles around. I wish all kids had something like that. I think you could accomplish a lot by just providing some boxes or upside-down buckets and a paper towel roll to use as drums and drumsticks.

I really recommend those exhibits and rooms for anyone of any age. If you're near there, go. It's right near the Space Needle.

Seattle - Jim Henson Exhibit at the EMP

We're just back from a visit to Seattle, where we got to go to the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum. I highly recommend both, although we are bigger geeks than your average bear...

They currently also have an exhibit on Jim Henson's work, including Muppets and a lot of storyboards and sketches. It's fascinating to look at proposal covers for the Muppet Show, done by hand with ink pens and whiteout. This stuff was put together waaaay before desktop publishing.

I also really enjoyed seeing storyboards and sketches for what were called "counting films," which you may remember from Sesame Street as the bright animated shorts in which they counted up to some number using fabulous shapes or characters and music. I love seeing the thought process, and for kids it's cool to show them all the thinking that takes place before anything ever shows up on a screen.

In fact, it was really striking how low-tech most of the productions were. And, as an added bonus, there was a sketch showing exactly how the puppeteer gets inside of and operates Big Bird. 

And, as a nice touch, they had a notebook out with a pen where you could sketch out a character just the way Henson used to do it. I loved how that made the exhibit about inspiring people, not just showing them what someone else did.

Anyway, if you're in Seattle before August 16th it's well worth seeing both for the nostalgia and for the peek at the ideas taking shape.