We got off the subway, walked a couple of blocks down Broadway to 26th, saw the Flatiron Building ("Built because somebody was good at math!"), crossed 5th, and there we were: MoMath -- the Museum of Mathematics.
1. It's a bit pricey. For the four of us it came to $48. Considering that, it seemed like "good" value to plunk down (or swipe, rather) the $125 for a family/year. I figured that if we even just go twice more before the school year is done we come out ahead. Not sure if that was good figurin' or not. I need MoMath.
2. It seems small, but once you get going with all the different events/games it's clear that there's a lot there. An hour could be spent really learning and exploring just one project. And to be honest, sometimes museums like this work best in small, but frequent doses.
3. It was awesome for the first hour. Then the school groups came. I liked watching my kids having to negotiate/jockey for place, etc... but it did fracture their already-fragile concentration. Watching the horde of students reminded me that when the kids are in school, field trips are just for fun (hopefully), not learning -- it's just a bunch of spastic flurry until the small people are shunted back on to the bus by the larger people. Note: the best time for us to go is right when it opens (before the school groups get there), or around 1pm, when the school groups all seemed to be heading out.
4. Today was our exploration day. We now know what's there. I plan on doing a bit of homework before we go again, with the expectation that we slow it down, and spend some time thinking about what we're doing. The museum says that it's geared toward grades 4-8, but I thought it might be slightly more advanced than that conceptually. I mean, even little bitty kids will have fun there, but the concepts seemed kind of hard (note: that might just be because all of math seems kind of hard to me). My goal for us when we go is to continually expose the kids to the concepts (logic, patterns, angles and arcs, relationships, etc.), and for them to realize how much math is in our daily lives.
5. The kids had fun.
6. I tried to stay out of it. It really is a great place for people of all ages to participate and learn, but I find that excursions like this are often when my kiddos bond and stick together -- if I stay out of it. So I did a lot of lurking. And I carried the coats because I was not about to put ours in the cloak room. We should not get lice if we aren't at school.
7. There was adequate, and friendly, staff. When we go back I plan on utilizing them a bit more -- turn them into short-term teachers.
8. The kids want to go back.
Here's a good clip that explains some of these mathy-machines.
When we were done we walked down towards Union Square and ate some delicious cheesy things at Beecher's while we watched them make delicious cheese. I'm thinking that a cup of macaroni and cheese is going to be their motivation for applying their brains and learning some of the concepts when we go to the museum in the future ("You want a cup of cheesy goodness? Explain to me in your own words what you're learning here..."). Perhaps Pavlov's example is the key to math making us feel happy inside.
The Boy became betrothed to orthodontia the instant that he grew himself some teeth. This week it was consummated. With his new appliance he looks like a character from a John Hugh's movie (i.e. if Long Duk Dong had a best friend). Today we had to return to the orthodontist for an adjustment and on the way from the office to the subway station we traversed the familiar street that we used to walk every day, back and forth, to school. And lo and behold, somebody new has moved into the neighborhood. A very cool buffalo-bison-yak-thing painted green and blue and smack in the middle of a posh jewelry store. If my memory serves me, it's where a SuperCuts used to be. Judd the Red Chicken got his hair cut there once or twice.
Nothing stays stagnant in this town. You can go away for a two week vacation and come back to find that your favorite grocery store is closed, a new public art installation is up, and because of a movie being filmed your car has been relocated.
Our business with the subway station was to head down to Bryant Park. We poked around the Main branch of the NYPL for a bit. The last time we went we tried to see the free movie that plays on the half-hour, but it was down that day, so today we finally got to see it. It touches on the history of libraries, explains the set-up of the NYPL system, introduces the history and purpose of the building there on 5th Avenue, and explores the ideals of the public library. The nucleus of those ideals being that vast stores of information and knowledge are available to everybody -- for free. If the American dream is about bettering oneself and improving a life by becoming educated (while tugging hard at those boot-straps), then nothing is more of a resource than a public library. And there isn't a finer collection of original documents, and reams of dream-fodder than what is circulated and shared in New York City. The president of the NYPL system said that it is a right of the people to have access to these resources, and the internet helps makes that happen. One interesting feature is the online digital gallery.
While in the neighborhood we browsed a great bookstore across 6th Avenue from the park, called Kinokuniya. While I'm embarrassed to admit it, the bulk of our time was spent not looking at books, but rather all the fun Japanese stationary items. The big finds of the day were a small clear car that has two tiny brushes inside that supposedly clean surfaces, and a button with a tooth on it that made The Boy smile through all his orthodontics-induced pain.
We grabbed lunch on 39th at Kati Roll. It was delicious, but The Boy couldn't properly bite to eat most of his, and The Girl got a rash all around her mouth from the spices. Seriously, there is always something.
Our last stop in the area was actually what prompted the expedition. For Christmas The Girl received a gift-card to Build-A-Bear and she has been patient these past two months. Walking in to the store I asked The Sister if it was all coming back to her. While she is now a mature young woman preparing to head off on a life of her own, she was once a little girl who loved, loved, loved Build-A-Bear. And it seems so recent. Now there's a different little girl who loves Build-A-Bear. Today she stuffed a pre-historic mammoth and named him Fido.
That's Keats. I can show him the poet... actually two of them... Today my offspring were both up to workshop their pieces, and both did a bang up job. It's really hard to read your work to a group of peers and then graciously sit there while your ideas are kidhandled. And let me say that these workshoppers are NOT shy. They are smart and opinionated and completely confident in their own ideas. In fact, I hurt The Girl's feelings on the way home today from workshop because apparently I was too generous in my compliments of the other kids. She asked if I liked them better. The true answer would have been, "Sometimes." But I went with the more true answer: "I don't love any kids in the world more than you," (even if other kids passionately play the piano without being nagged to practice, are socially more savvy, are beyond articulate, and in general seem more cheerful/grateful and less whiney). I also pointed out that my kids are freakin' brilliant poets.
This is what they brought to the workshop:
Polar Playing Pups
In the icy polar waters
harbor seals love to play.
Fluffy harbor seal pups
on the ice drinking milk from their mother.
Harbor seal pups are as white as cotton.
Adult harbor seals are big grey chocolate chip cookies.
(Are you kidding me? Milk and cookies? Referencing the familiar feelings of hearth and home and connecting them to icy polar waters -- a seal's definition of hearth and home... Brilliant.)
The Wet Figure
The mossy, grey and giant
figure of a dam stands tall at
the end of a giant lake
It is the croton
in the middle of mountains,
and trees
flowing water
in a graceful way
(IF you haven't seen the Croton Dam you may not know how spot-on this little gem of a poem is. We talked about the clever shift -- setting up the reader to think it's a person or monster...)
So, still rough drafts, but I'm pretty sure that Keats would have seen the crackling sparks of kindred poets. And if he didn't I would have had to kick him in the shin. Consumption, or no, you do not question the giftedness of a mama bear's cubs...
One of the kiddos in our writing class is Jane Banks in Mary Poppins. Unlike early-in-the-story-Jane, she is practically perfect in every way. Her mother is not a crazy stage-mom, but rather somebody easy-going and generous. We were the fortunate recipients of a crazy dose of that kindness, and they not only gave us insight on how to get very affordable amazing seats -- where we could see every sweet face expression of our classmate -- but after the show they took us back stage to see the tricks of the trade, ask questions, and learn about Olive, the ghost of The New Amsterdam Theatre. Apparently Olive can be a tad temperamental, so many of the people that work there very politely look at her picture that hangs backstage and wish her a good morning and a good night. There is something to be said for acknowledging that a little politeness might go along way.
I love that my kids are learning that sometimes you can't see everything that is going on. Also, that they are seeing how people help people -- obviously, this family helped our family do something cool -- but they also learned about the incredible quantity of people back stage cueing and moving and attaching and making and teaching and powdering and plugging and adjusting and... Exciting and brilliant things get pulled off when people develop their individual talents and then contribute towards a common goal. Some people are on stage and have a crowd waiting for them at the stage door each night. Some people who provide the scaffolding for the magic to happen slip out into the night unnoticed.
It takes Mary Poppins to remind the Banks of their priorities. It takes a ghost to remind performers that sometimes knowing that you've done all that you can (even small, seemingly nonsensical traditions) helps avoid being bogged down in a mess. It takes meeting new people in a class to get invitations. It takes an eleven-year old actress to show me that some actors are authentic because they fall in love with a story and as the journey becomes real for them they want to take along others for the sake of the journey -- not attention. It takes a man with a microphone watching a screen speaking to a woman with a blanket to make a magic bed appear. It takes a lot of little pieces:
In The Boy's write-up he posits: "Mary Poppins is an amazing show about a nanny who teaches the Banks children important lessons. At the end Mary Poppins flies over all the seats. She does this by putting on a harness that's attached to a rope that moves on a track on a piece of wire." The harness, the track, the wires -- to him, that is more magical than if she had flown off powered only by umbrella and twinkling music. I'm learning this everyday as I become more acquainted with who my children really are -- not who they used to be, not who I want them to be, not who I'm afraid they might become -- but who they are right now with this set and this script. Magic -- that which makes life meaningful for us -- is different for everybody. And to make it even more complicated, we all keep changing.
They say that Olive is most naughty when there's a big change, so the theatre employees are starting to get a little squidgy about the closing of the show this Sunday. Maybe they need not worry, maybe like Jane and Michael she has learned something from Mary Poppins: fighting against change is about as productive as fighting against a shift in the wind. Be blown over, or fly.
The wind is already starting to shift around here. Yesterday the Sister received word that she got accepted into her school of choice -- BYU in Provo, Utah -- the Harvard of the Mormon World. We couldn't be more proud. While there is still time left to the scheme, as we start discussing plans for our final trip of the year, and as The Sister chats of next year's dorms and meal plans, we can smell the change in the air.
Obviously, we don't want the children to start requesting to be breast-fed. The goal for this year is for them to become more independent, as they seek out new learning opportunities in new environments, not regress and become more dependent. To that end, I've found that I've become shameless in poking and prodding people into being guest teachers. About two years ago Judd the Red Chicken decided that he no longer wanted to wear regular ties to church -- he was a bow-tie guy. Fine. I bought him some velcro numbers, and Big Sister and his Nana made him a couple more. While I recognize that they are the fashion equivalent to the faux-turtleneck dickie, they have served us well. However, when a super-cool young bow-tie-wearing fashionisto leaned over in church one time to give my kid the thumbs-up on wearing a bow-tie, I immediately seized the opportunity and requested a lesson on real tying. He was super great and came for dinner this weekend with his wife and another family of friends (who happen to have teenage boys who were also taught the art of bow-tie construction by this ever-so-nice-hipster). Not only did the bow-tie-master come to give the lesson, but he also brought a bow-tie to give to my kid. How nice is that? The Boy learned how to tie a bow-tie. I read about a bow-tie club in England -- in the advertisement (please, for the love of all that's decent read that with the proper accenting -- there should be a "tiz" in the middle there) it mentioned that only those who know how to tie their own bow-tie can be a member. Check.
This weekend the kids asked to use their pocket knives to carve something out of soap. It's quite hard. We gained proper perspective on what a gift it is when Boo makes the figures for Jem and Scout.
Our altar was created with our Chinatown finds. We ordered Chinese food for dinner and went to a Chinese New Year festival put on by the Chinese members in our church. When the enormous dragon-lion came down the aisle and batted its eyelashes and wiggled its mutant face in my face I did this weird jazz-hands thing that The Girl keeps teasing me about.
And we did indeed make the cake to celebrate The Boy's newly acquired understanding of the Roman numerals. We added mandarin orange slices to Chinese it up a bit. Our friends that were over for dinner made a proper fuss about the accomplishment. Kind people -- that is something to celebrate.
