The Library

So we get to have library time every week at my school.  This last week I checked out two books.  They make you check out one fiction and one non-fiction.  I don't really care about the fiction book I checked out.  I just really wanted to check out "THE ULTIMATE CROSS-SECTION BOOK".  It's AWESOME it has pictures of all sorts of vehicles like old cars and trains and stuff.  My favorite section is the one on TANKS.  I recognize a lot of the tanks in this section from specials I've watched about tanks on TV.  My favorite Tank is the M1 ABRAMS.   I think it would be amazing to get to ride in one, especially if they could blow something up with the gun.

What was your favorite book in 4th grade and why was it so awesome.

I'm Back!

I have decided to get back to blogging.  I'm no longer being homeschooled, I am going to Northlake Elementary here in Longview.  We are the eagles.  I am taking several different things this year.  PE, Chinese, Music, Library, Science, Spelling, Writer's Workshop, Math and some others.  My new teacher is Mrs. Wilson and my room number is 2.

I am really excited to go back to public school.  I love their PE.  I get to make a whole bunch of friends from my neighborhood.  For PE, we've been playing a whole bunch of "Squad" tag games.  For example, Tunnel, where there are four people who are "it" and there are four bases.  You can only be on one base for ten seconds. Also, the people who tag aren't supposed to puppy guard the base.  But sometimes they do anyways.

Next week my Chinese teacher told me that I could have two minutes to introduce the Great Wall of China to the kids in my class.  Right now I'm going to go do some research so I'll be very prepared for the lesson.  I am very excited!

Welcome back to my blog, and thank you for reading it!

The Light Bulb is Invented

My Famous American today was Thomas Edison.   The first invention of his that I heard about was the light bulb.  Edison was born in Ohio in on February 11, 1847.  He was always curious about machinery.  As a young kid he asked his teacher so many questions that she got impatient with him.  His mother took him out of school and home schooled him.  He learned by doing experiments.  That's kind of like me except my mom isn't cool and doesn't let me learn only from experiments.  When I was in kindergarten I only got to have 20 questions per day because they got fed up with me.  Edison had problems with his hearing and he said it was because he was running to catch a train and a conductor pulled him up onto the train by the ears.  I don't know if that's really true though.  Besides the light bulb, he invented the phonograph and combined the phonograph and cameras to make the first motion pictures.  Altogether Edison got more than 1,000 patents.  I think he might be the most awesome American ever.

La Citta Eterna

Today for reading I read about the city of Rome, which is sometimes called the Eternal City because it's so old.  It is the capital of Italy.  First we read about a little about the history of the city and then about things to do and see there.  The article was an interview of 12 and 13 year-olds so they talked about cool stuff for kids.  I thought the Mouth of Truth was the coolest thing in the article.  It said that if you put your hand in it, it would bite your arm is you lie.

Robert Fulton

So today in School I got to learn about Robert Fulton.  He was an inventor and made several things better.  They didn't really tell me much about what he did so Dad let me see on wikipedia a little more about what he did.  He worked building boats and invented the first Submarine, for Napoleon!  People say that he also was the first one to make a working torpedo. He also made sky rockets for his town celebration when he was only a little boy.  Now days we call these fireworks!

It talked mostly about his steam boat though.  He made the Clermont.  That was the first successful steam boat.  It traveled up the Hudson river from New York City to Albany. That was a trip of 150 miles in less than 30 hours which was really fast for back then.  Sometimes depending on the wind and currents that distance could take weeks.

A New Year and Back to School

Today is my first day back to school after Christmas break.  It was a great break.  Before I tell you about my break, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who read and commented on my blog in 2011.

For Christmas we got some great stuff.  It was fun to see Madelyn get things she loves.  From Grandma and Grandpa Zemke, she got some jewelry and fingernail polish.  I got a Hexbug Battle Bridge set from them.  It's so cool!  They also sent an animal to a hungry family through the Heifer Project in my name.  Thank you, Grandma and Old Guy.  From my parents, Maddy got a new book, a puzzle and a straw cup with Dora on it.  I got some Bendaroos and a chemistry t-shirt that spells bacon.  I love bacon.  Yum.  Grandma and Grandpa Pearson got me a Roku box and arts and crafts supplies for my sister.  We also got a playdough dentist set from them, and I got a Nightfinder Nerf gun.

Every Christmas we try to help somebody who has greater needs than I do.  Sometimes I think I don't have very much stuff, but I really am very lucky.  I have a nice play to live, parents who love me, good food and lots of ways to have fun.  This year since I've been doing school through CVA I have also learned about how lucky I am to have a good school, and choices for finding the ways that school is best for me.  Sometimes I think school is dumb, but really I'm glad I get to go.  I saw a video about kids in Africa who don't have desks in their classroom, and decided that this year I wanted our family to buy a desk for them.  It cost $48 to get a desk for a school in Malawi.  My mom says she also likes that the desks are made at a factory in Malawi, which means they are giving people jobs while getting desks into classrooms.

New Year's was kind of neat.  We didn't do a whole lot because my mom worked most of the night.  She has some really crazy people who call her at her job!  We did get to have some sparkling cider and watch fireworks from our balcony for a bit.  It was too cold to stay out long, though.  And now it's 2012!

ZOO DAY!!!

So today I went to the zoo with Aunt Bethy and John-boat.  We went to the Portland Zoo.  It's on the top of this hill so it was extra cold and windy there.  There was nobody there though so it was great, we got to run around and see all the animals without have to wait for people to move.

My favorite animal this time was the cheetah.  It was patrolling its cage and came up to the window to see what I was.  I stuck my hand out and it jumped against the window and tried to bite my hand off.  It was GREAT!!!  It was way better than the lazy lions who were freezing their tales off.  They were all on this heated rock in the middle of their enclosure.

I was sad because we didn't get to go see the tigers.  I don't know if they would have even been out in their enclosures though.  They were too far away and Maddy and John-boat were getting tired and cranky.  This is why I put up a picture of a tiger.

I liked going with Bethy and John-boat.  They're lots of fun.

Benjamin Franklin

So today in Famous American we studied Benjamin Franklin.  We studied all the different things he invented and all the thing he did in his life.  I think him inventing glasses is pretty cool.  So is the lightning-rod! This makes me wonder how much electricity is in a lightning bolt.  He also invented a new type of fire place and chimney.  He's so cool that he has a couple of scientific institutions named after him!

What's also cool is that he was home-schooled. His father could only afford two years of school for him, so after that he taught himself everything he needed to know.

Finally he's cool because he pretty much invented the way we do the post office.  They had mail before him, but he created a system and a governmental department to take care of it.  I wonder how many stamps the Post Office has for Benjamin Franklin?

My Trip downtown

So today I had a field trip downtown to the shops.  We were looking for sewing materials for my projects for sewing and PE.  Sewing is going to substitute for some of the other art projects.  I want to learn how to sew so I can make things and can sew things like my cub scout patches and fix my jeans.

PE hasn't been working out for me, so mom and Dad have bought me a book for home-school PE games and sports.  Lots of these take a bean-bag.  My first sewing project is going to be to sew the bean bags for PE.  This is going to be GREAT, because I get to make something that I can use.  Then every time I play games with my bean bags I'll know that I made them.

So back to about the field trip.  We went to the thrift stores downtown to get material the bean bags.  We did this because they always have great bits of fabric for cheaper than Joann's.  We also don't need tons of fabric or really nice fabric since I'm just making it into bean bags.  Finally we finished our field trip with a trip to Bob's.  They have a big store full of hunting and camping stuff, but they also have a small store full of kitchen stuff and toys.  We got some Hula Hoops for the PE games too.  I wish we would have had time to look at all the camping stuff, but I had to get back home to do some more homework.

Oh this picture of Longview is a picture from the 60's or 70's but the downtown looks the same except the cars and some of the signs have changed.

Charles Darwin

Today we started studying Charles Darwin in Biology.  He was born in England.  The year was 1809.  He went to college at the University of Edinburg to study medicine, but he didn't like it.  After two years he dropped out.  His family sent him to Cambridge to become a pastor.  He did not want to do that either. After Cambridge, he went aboard the HMS Beagle and was a naturalist.  Darwin published a book call On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle For Life.  However, he was not the first person who came up with the hypothesis in his book.  His book was the one that got people talking about it, though.  It still causes lots and lots of arguments today.  I will be learning more details about Darwin's work and the theory of evolutionary change in the next few weeks.

Suburban Communities

Today for Social Studies we learned about suburban communities.  The town we studied was Levittown, NY.  It was once a potato farm.  The Levitt family bought the land and started construction.  They included schools, parks and churches in their plans.  When they were done, there were more than 17,000 homes in Levittown, which was originally called Island Trees.  I learned that highways were one of the primary reasons that suburban communities grew.  People would not move there if they could not get to and from their jobs in the city quickly.  They were designed around people owning cars so sometimes suburban communities are not very good for getting around in if you don't own a car.  This picture is an aerial photograph of a part of Levittown.  It kind of looks like a circuit board to me.

Dreams

So today in Phonics we had to read a dumb poem out of the Phonics book about Dreams.  It wanted us to learn that the word Dreams has more than one meaning.  Sometimes it means what your brain does when you're asleep.  But other times you can use it to mean what you hope to see happen...like I dream of having a wii.

Dad and Mom thought I should hear a good example of the word dream being used as a synonym for hope.  I got to hear the whole I have a dream speech from Martin Luther King Jr.  I think that he certainly had a point and that he was giving this speech to help black people like him have true freedom. I liked that he quoted Thomas Jefferson and said all men are created equal.

Dad explained again about the Jim Crow laws.  They made it so that if you were black you couldn't go to school with white people, or use their drinking fountains, or ride on the  buses with them.  I looked at the date this speech was given and noticed that my Grandparents were alive when this happened.  I don't know if any of them remember it because Old Guy was only like 6 when it happened.

My Adinkra Cloth

Today I decided to post about my own Adinkra cloth.  I have one symbol so far.  The symbol is two crescents forming a circle with three lines: one going down, one going across to the right and one going across to the left.  They all lead out from a star in the center.  This symbol represents bacon.  I chose bacon to be in my Adinkra cloth because I love it.  I am working on some more symbols.  My goal is to reach ten symbols.  Once I have ten, we will go to the fabric store and pick out some fabric to work on.  I'm not sure yet if we will actually dye anything or if maybe we will just use fabric pens or paint to make the cloth.

General Robert E Lee

So we missed a couple days of famous Americans so I got to read a couple different stories.  I wanted to tell you all about Robert E Lee.  Lee is was born in Virginia.  His family was a very old and famous family in Virginia.  He was even married to George Washington's one of great Granddaughters.  When he was 18 he went to West Point.

What makes him cool is that if he had been born in a different place or time, he probably would have been President. Because he was born in Virginia during the Civil War he ended up going to the Southern Army.  Lee loved being in the United States Army and was really sad when he had to leave because he wouldn't fight against people from his own state. I think that might have been a wise choice. I wouldn't want to fight against my neighbors either.

Another thing that is interesting is that his horse  "Traveler" is almost as famous as he was.  It got buried at Washington and Lee College alongside Robert E Lee.

Biology

So science for third graders doing Calvert pretty much sucks if you know anything about science.  So mom and dad got me a different curriculum for science.  I wanted to study Physics but I couldn't do multiplication good enough to do the problems in a book that had science ideas I hadn't seen yet.  My next choice was Biology.

Today in Biology we studied about what makes something alive, and the Scientific Method. I think that the section on what makes something alive sucked compared to other books I've read.  What was cool was that it listed the six elements that must be present for something to be considered alive.  Those are Hydrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus, Nitrogen, Sulfur, and most important CARBON.  Here's an interesting idea though, by most definitions of what makes something alive Fire is alive.  The part on the scientific method was much better.  I thought is was cool though that it talked about what happens if you don't do the process all the way, or don't like the results you get from your experiments.  Dad said he hadn't seen a text book yet that admitted that researcher bias exists, but this one does.  It makes me wonder how often people publish the actual honest data without changing it to make it fit their hypothesis.

AHHH SPOKANE

So, I took some time off from my blog because I was reviewing for a unit test, and then we had to get ready for Thanksgiving.

I went to Spokane this Thanksgiving!  We got to stay at my friend Kim's house in downtown.  Kim is one of my three best friends from Spokane.  She's the only one that I still hang out with after the move.  So I got to go on walks around downtown Spokane with Kim every night we were there.  We went to some pretty cool places, but mostly it was fun to run around with my friend Kim. The picture at the top is of the Looff Carousel.  Kim and I got to walk around it at night.  Then, the day after Thanksgiving we go to ride it a couple times!

So I went over to Grandma's house for Thanksgiving lunch.  I got to eat my weight in biscuits and a few pieces of turkey.   So dad's biscuits are pretty good, but Grandma's are amazing.  They make dad's taste like sawdust.  So if you get the chance you have to eat as many as you can.  What was also cool was that Grandma let me watch some MacGyver.  What was also cool was Old Guy's physics toys. He has a remote controlled air plane and these rocket-launch helicopters.

Adinkra Cloth

Reading this week is a story call the "Talking Cloth".  It's a story about a girl who's aunt has collected wonderful things from her travels around the world.  The girl in the story likes to go to her aunt's house to hear the stories about the different things.  This story explains about a type of Adinkra Cloth.

Adinkra Cloth originally was only worn by Royalty and Religious leaders.  It is the richly dyed and printed cloth from the people of Ghana.  Most of the shapes are symbols with special meanings.  Also the colors were important.  White meant Joy, while Red meant Sadness.  Blue meant Love and Green meant Growth.  The shapes were put on the cloth by putting a wood cutting into ink and stamping it on the cloth.  This meant that they could say lots of things based on the color and symbols on the cloth.  I've included a picture of some of the different Adinkra Cloths.

One of my projects for reading application and art was to come up with an Adinkra Cloth of my own pattern. I'm still working on what symbols I'd have one it, but I know I would want it to be green.  I think I would change what green means though.  I want green to mean Excited!  I also have been thinking about the shapes. I think anything with a square outline should mean sneaky. Circle shapes should mean Joy or happiness.  I also think that I would want to have metal string woven or embroidered into the cloth like in some of the really expensive cloths written about in my book.

Mitosis

This week for science I'm waiting on a new book.  The one for third grade is way to easy for me.  So Dad is teaching me about different types of cell replications.  The first one we learned about is Mitosis!  In Mitosis there are a whole bunches of phases.  There's Interphase, Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase, Telophase, and Cyto-kinesis.  I want to tell you what happens in all the different phases.  But that would take WAY too long.  So I'm going to pick my favorite phase and tell you all about it.  If you write back and ask questions about the other phases I'll tell you what happens there too.

My favorite part of Mitosis is actually not considered part of Mitosis.  I like Cyto-kenesis the best.  I like it because after the new nuclear envelope has formed and all the chromosomes are turning back into chromotin, the cell is pulled apart into two daughter-cells, that are EXACT COPIES!  I also like this because the name makes sense after my study of Physics.  Kenesis comes from the same word we use for Kenetic Engergy.  So it makes sense because the cell is actually moving during this phase.

If I had to choose a different phase as a  favorite where something was actually happening to the DNA,  I would choose PROPHASE.  I like Prophase because the nuclear envelope actually blows up in this phase.

So Dad and I got to watch this amazing video on youtube about Mitosis.  I'm going to share it as a link and hope you all can watch it.  It's great.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGV3fv-uZYI

Veterans Day !!

                                                            HAPPY VETERANS DAY
  So today is my favorite non-religious holiday of the year.  I like it because it celebrates all that the men and women who are in the military have done to keep us safe, and give us freedom.

   I want to thank some of the veterans I know.  First I wanna thank Jeff Dobson.  Most of the time when my dad talks to his friend Jeff, he spends some time talking to me too. Jeff is in the Army and gets to do all sorts of cool stuff.  He can't tell me what he does, but he can tell me what it's like to be in Army, and use different weapons.

  Next I wanna thank my Great Grandfather.  Great Grandpa Zemke was INVITED to be part of the Army in World War II.  Thankfully for him he got to build the Al-Can Highway.  I didn't get to meet Great Grandpa, but I get to hear fun stories from Dad and my Uncles about him.  Somehow I get the idea he wasn't as excited about the invitation as the Army was.

   I saved some of my favorite Veterans for last.  Capt. Vance and his wife Meghan are both in the Army too. I want to thank them for all they do to keep our country safe, and keep us free.  I also want to thank Vance for keeping me on track while I'm at school.  I have a picture of him at my desk to remind me to get my work squared away.

   Thank you to everyone who has served in the military and has fought to keep us safe and free.

Chariots of Fire?

Today I learned about the myths of Apollo and Artemis, and why the Greeks believe they were special.  They were special because the Greeks believed that they got to drive the Sun and Moon Chariots for the god Helios.  I think this would be a very interesting job.  This was extra special because they weren't gods, but they got to do a god's job.

I think this is just another time where the Greeks got it wrong and makes it hard to believe what they say. We orbit the sun, and the moon orbits the Earth.  That's what makes them rise and set, not someone riding on a chariot.  I wish the Greeks could have had a telescope maybe we'd get better myths, or know more about space than we do now.  But this does explain why NASA used Apollo to name all their early space-craft after.  My favorite Apollo mission is Apollo 13.  Partly because it's the first I learned about (thank you OLD GUY!!!) and partly because they had to fix the machines and computers while they were in space.