Teeth, Cable Cars, and Feeling Music

We have been busy traveling, so I have not updated this blog recently.  Anyhoo, Sathya has returned from a trip to Colorado having completed his first scavenger hunt!  Yay!  His prize?  A strawberry milkshake from The Malt Shoppe in Pagosa Springs.

Sathya has been getting his hands dirty these last couple weeks with some hands-on projects.  We learned the answer to the question: why are our teeth shaped differently?  I had Sathya take a bite from an apple, and chew the piece with his front teeth first, and then his back teeth.  Then I had him try to take a bite using his back teeth.  Which worked best and why?

We learned that our back teeth are flat, which make them easier for chewing, and our front teeth are best for biting.

I picked up some neat ideas from one of the parenting magazines we get, which talks about ways in which to reuse items to create new items.  One of the ideas was taking an old milk carton and cutting out a window, decorating it, and then hanging it on a string.  Wa la!  You have a cable car.  We worked on making two, and they are now hanging in Sathya's room:

He likes to make them go up and down, and he has filled them with some of his favorite stuffed animals.

Lastly, an idea that I came up with, which revolves around the question: how do you express music in words?   I have started a new music/emotion project with Sathya, which I will eventually carry over to Anand too.  Today we listened to five very different pieces of music (Fela Kuti, Miles Davis, Christmas music, Yo Yo Ma, Mandarin nursery rhymes), which I wrote on colored pieces of paper:

and then I asked Sathya to describe in one word how he felt when he listened to them.  His responses were amazing.  Fela Kuti made him sad (he didn't like the song), and Yo Yo Ma made him "really happy."  "Oh Christmas Tree" made him feel "loved" and the Mandarin nursery rhyme made him feel like "giving flowers."

I let him write his emotions and then decorate them:

I am going to date them and keep them in a binder, so he can look back and see all of the different kinds of music he has listened to and how each one made him feel.  I am also teaching him how to express himself.  This is a valuable lesson for all of us.

Last but not least, my husband sent me a link about banned books (since we are getting into banned books week), and one of the most banned books of 2012 was?  You guessed it.  Captain Underpants.  Haha!