That Dam Trip!

     Today I went to Bonneville Dam!  First I need to say THANK YOU to Uncle Landis and Aunt Carrie for taking me. For the longest time Bonneville was my FAVORITE DAM, but now it's my second favorite, only being beat by Grand Coulee Dam.  Bonneville is different because it crosses the Columbia where it's the boundry between Washington and Oregon, so each side has a different visitors center.  The Oregon side has a fish Hatchery, while the Washington side has a fish ladder.

    For our field trip we went on a short tour of the dam and then went to the fish hatchery on the Oregon side.  The fish hatchery had a machine that would push the fish into the spawning tanks.  Spawning is another way to say laying eggs.  It was funny to watch because they kept swimming banging their heads into the wooden doors because they think they're in a stream, and wanted to keep swimming upstream.

     This tour was different than most of the ones I've been on in dams.  Usually we look at and talk about the power generation of the dam and watch the turbines hummmmmm.  This time we didn't even get to watch the Dam movie!  If I was there independently I would have wanted to get scuba gear and go through the fish ladder.  If I was indestructible  it would be fun to go through the turbines to see how they work too.

John Paul Jones

I read about John Paul Jones in Reading today.  He was the captain of the Bonnehomme Richard.  He had a great battle against one of the best trained British ships, called the Serapis.  The Serapis shot some big holes in the Richard, crippling it.  One of the crew members went to lower the flag in surrender, but Captain Jones threw his pistol at him.  When the British captain asked if they were ready to surrender, Captain Jones yelled, "I have not yet begun to fight!"  In the end, the crew of the Serapis surrendered after six hours of hand to hand combat.  The Americans held the ship for ransom from King George III.  That's why Captain Jones is called the Father of the American Navy.

The Stolen Ring

For Composition and Spelling, I wrote a paragraph about a stolen ring on a thick chain.  I used nine of my spelling words when I only needed to use five.  I forgot to underline the word something.  That's also one of my spelling words this week.  I did my best handwriting work.  It took me 25 minutes but I worked very hard on it.  Dad said it was my best handwriting work ever.

My Favorite Marketplaces

We are studying economics in Social Studies.  Today I am learning about markets and what they do for my community.  I named three interesting markets that I like and what I like about them.

My favorite marketplace in Longview is Bob's Sporting Goods.  I like to look at their guns, fishing gear, and Boy/Cub Scouts uniforms.  I especially like the taxidermied animals displayed there.  I also like their archery equipment and camping gear.

The next marketplace I enjoy is Target.  I like their Nerf Guns and their cheap DVDs.  They have a good Hot Wheels selection.  They have good clothing for boys and I like to play on their video game testers.  I also enjoy looking at their music section.

The last place we talked about is Your Marketplace.  It was a grocery store that closed last month.  Some of my favorite things to get from there were seafood, Brach's Butterscotch disks, Hot Pockets, Tiki Punch and Heavenly Doughnuts.  My dad really liked their meat department because they actually knew how to butcher.  I am very disappointed that they are closed.

Getting Started with Spanish

I am just starting to learn Spanish.  I have only completed one lesson but I wanted to show off how much I am learning.  Here is a video of me using a few of my new words and phrases.

 

The Monticello Convention

My lesson for Social Studies today talked about museums and memorials.  We talked about memorials in our area.  In Longview there is a memorial for the Monticello Convention.  It is located by the Civic Circle in the middle of Longview.

I went online to learn more about the Monticello Convention.  I found this website that talks about it.  Not all websites have accurate information on them.  I think this is a good website to use because it is from the State of Washington and they probably know all there is to know about the history of Washington.

The Monticello Convention was when a group of people got together in Monticello, which was about two miles away from what is now the center of my city.  They met on November 25th, 1852.  They asked Congress to make a new territory with the land north of the Columbia River.  It was signed by the governor of Oregon Territory because Washington was a part of Oregon back then.  They wanted to call the new territory the Columbia Territory because of the river.  Congress agreed to making a new territory, but they called it Washington instead of Columbia.

Vegetable Vote Results

 
Yesterday I made a list of five vegetables and asked people to vote for their favorite one on the list.  Today we took the results and made a tally chart and a bar graph.  My tally chart showed that there were 18 total votes.

Mom helped me draw the axis and I learned about picking a scale.  We labeled the scale with units.  The unit I used was votes.  My scale was two squares for one vote.  Looking the the chart shows me which vegetables of the ones I asked about are the favorites.  The most popular vegetables on the list are potatoes and tomatoes.  The least popular are celery and radishes

I also learned how to put the data in a spreadsheet and use that to make a pie chart.  It gives the same information but shows it in a different way.  It lets you see how many votes a vegetable got in relation to how many votes were cast in total.








This project helped me with my math and spelling because we used words with consonant blends that I am working on right now.

The Golden Age

This morning I started reading about Greek mythology.  Today I learned about the Golden Age and was introduced to Zeus.

People in Greece believed that gods and goddesses ruled nature.  They believed in many gods instead of one god.  The gods and goddesses lived in palaces on Mount Olympus.  Cronus was the king of the Titans.  His son Zeus became king of the gods after throwing Cronus in prison.  His brother Poseidon was in charge of the sea and Hades rule the underworld.  I think they called it the Golden Age because people were fighting for gold and there was lots of war and killing.

Vote for your Favorite Vegetable!

I am working on a project and I need your help!  I need to make a tally chart and then use the results to make a graph.  I have picked five vegetables.  Please pick your favorite vegetable.  I will use the answers to make my graph.  Thank you for taking the time to answer.


Voting has ended, thank you for your help!  Click here for the results!

My First Field Trip!

I went to OMSI yesterday with my father and other CVA students.  I woke up at 5 in the morning.  I was excited to go, even though it was still dark outside when we got on the bus.  It was a lot of fun.

The first thing we did was we went to the Turbine Hall.  It had a model of one of the return shuttles from one of the Apollo missions.  Next we went over to some robots that play Connect 4.  They were big yellow robots and they could only move left and right. They could drop the ball too.  Then we went to the Physics Lab.  We had a lot of fun there playing with generators and telegraph machines.  Next we went upstairs and played with a robot with a vacuum arm.  It could move up, down, left and right.

Next we went outside to tour the submarine.  It was awesome!  It was the last diesel submarine in US service.  It was in the Willamette River.  The outside of the submarine was painted black.  It was a hybrid.  That means it has an electric motor and a diesel engine for going fast and deep.  The bad parts were that it couldn't go under water because they cut doors in the side and we couldn't go into the sail to see the control bridge.  We got to see everything else, even the torpedo room.  We were warned not to touch any switches or buttons because they had a torpedo loaded and ready to fire.

I had a great time at OMSI.  I learned a lot about telegraph machines that I didn't already know.  I am excited to go again and maybe even participate in some of their science camps!

Welcome to my CVA World!

My name is Jonathan and I am 8 years old.  I am attending Columbia Virtual Academy (CVA) for 3rd grade this year.  This is not a regular school.  It is a homeschool program.  I am not going to a regular school anymore because I was getting picked on a lot and I wasn't learning enough.  I am very exited about CVA.  I get to go on all sorts of fun field trips.  I get to help pick what I learn about.  I'm even going to try fencing for PE this year!

I am using this blog to tell my family and friends about what I'm doing in school.  I'm also using it as a part of my social studies and my science instead of writing in a notebook.  I have a fine motor delay.  It makes writing hard for me.  I am learning to type this year.  Until I am good my mom and dad will help me type but I tell them what to say.