In the evenings, Alex gets a learning puzzle. I give her a question, and she searches Google (in über-safe mode) on her computer to find an answer and then we talk about the site.

October 21, 2003
"What are the kinds of clouds?"

Answer: Kinds of Clouds
In school I learned there were three. Apparently there are now about twenty.

October 22, 2003
"What does the thing that moves the Space Shuttle look like in real life?"
Answer: APOD: 2002 March 4 - The Shuttle Crawler Transporter
In the Tonka story book we were reading, a van was about half the height of their illustration of the crawler. I wanted to illustrate how big a van really would be, and amazingly enough there was both a van and a person visible in this full sized shot.

October 23, 2003
"What does the moon look like right now?"
Answer: Moon Phases
This is a nifty little Java app she found. "Oh, there's that coffee cup again," she says as it loads. Macintoshes rock.

October 28, 2003
"How do people lose their voices?"
Answer: Laryngitis
Of course, I actually had to type laryngitis into Google for her to find it, but she did a couple of searches about "losing your voice" which is a seriously clichéd phrase in the media and political activists sites, if you ask me. We did this question because she actually asked it in the car on the way back from the supermarket.

Future questions:
What does the Chesapeake Bay look like?
Why is it actually important to eat vegetables (not just because your mom told you)?
How did people end up keeping pet dogs (or cats or horses or whatever)?
How do people explore underwater?
Where did the English language come from?
Can a newborn baby swim?

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