Return of the Tadpoles

Along time ago, about three or more months, I went kayaking with my family at Watson Lake. While we were there, Patrick and I caught six tadpoles. While we were catching tadpoles, I spotted a tadpole that had actually started growing legs. It was even bigger than the frog that we saw earlier. Patrick nearly caught it, but the tadpole escaped too quickly. We put the others in an old water bottle we found in the car so we could take them home. When we arrived at home base, we left them in their water bottle on the porch. We had decided not to move the tadpoles into something bigger until Patrick and I got home from Eagleridge the next day. Now you are to hear the more recent story of the "tadpoles."

The day after we went to Eagleridge, we spent our day studying tadpoles. We learned what they like to eat, how long it takes for them to turn into frogs, and other helpful things about tadpoles. We also tried to figure out what type of frog would come out of our tadpoles, but we couldn't find our type of tadpole. That's when we found out they were not tadpoles at all. Our dad had suggested they were this from the beginning, but we didn't believe him. After a little research we found the truth. These animals live in large groups. We saw some real tadpoles swimming around with them which was why we thought they were all tadpoles, but they weren't. We had caught a group of minnows!

Just this week we went to Flagstaff to see some fall color. We wanted to go to Hart Prairie, but it was closed so we just drove around in the mud pretending we had four-wheel drive. :) We had decided to bring the minnows with us so we could drop them off in one of Flagstaff's lakes. We wanted to put them in something similar to their environment. When we were done driving through the aspens, we started driving to Lake Mary. We turned of onto this dirt road thinking it led to Lake Mary. We drove on this street that wasn't even on the map for an hour to only get about two miles. During our nice drive, we thought we had passed Lake Mary and were on our way to Mormon Lake. Then we thought we had passed Mormon Lake when we got out of the dirt. We saw this horse while we were going one way off the forked road, but he kept telling us to go the other direction. In the end he was right.

We ended up at Lake Mary where we deposited our minnows. We weren't even sure if they were alive, but we didn't fret over it. We arrived home late on a school (Eagleridge) night. That was okay though because we learned a lot from this trip. This is one of the ways a homeschooler learns. By experiencing! I also learned never to catch my pets again.

September News Now!!!

This September must have been the most exciting yet tiring September in my life (I think.) We started going to a new homeschool group, the youngest member of the Murphy family (our best friends) slept over for the first time, I started a new instrument, and, well, I'll just let you hear the story yourself.

We'll start with VHE (Valley Home Educators.) This is the new homeschool group we have joined. When we went to the kick-off meeting, I met a bunch of people my age. A few of them I already knew. At the kick-off we had a potluck lunch. After a few hours of chatting, all the kids around the ages 10 and up (as long as they were kids) went outside for the TNT meeting. TNT stands for teens-n-tweens. Every year in November, they have a yard sale to help a charity. This year will be there fourth annual, or that's what I remember. The next week we went to the Sea Life Aquarium with the rest of the group. We saw many different fish and sea creatures. During the tour of the of the aquarium, we answered questions that were painted on the wall. Then we scratched out the answers on the cards they gave us to turn in and get a sticker. Some facts I learned from the trip were that lion fish are one of the most dangerous fish, that manta rays are most closely related to sharks, and much more. At the end of the tour, Brenna and I played in the tubes with Ailish. Then I went to Brenna's house for a sleep-over. On the second day of the sleepover (the day I was going home) Brenna was going over to one of her friend's house to help her do something. While she was gone I babysat Ailish. It was fun.

A few weeks later, Brenna, Ailish, and Devin came over to spend the night for five days. It was exciting since it was Ailish's first time sleeping anywhere, but home. During our un-sleepover, (Ailish chose not to sleep at night, every night, but the first one) we took Ailish and Brenna to my French horn lesson. I should probably put more detail into this picture. Back in the second, or maybe the first week in August, I went back to my two-day-a-week enrichment program, Eagleridge. As you know, (or should know) I play flute in our Monday band. Actually I used to play flute in band. This year we added a lot of flutes. We took up 1/3 of the band all put together. Mr. Hink, our band teacher, mentioned one of us playing French Horn. I told it to my mom and she said I probably should try it because she remembered when she was a girl, she played flute and she knew this girl who played French Horn and had always wanted to switch, but her mom said no. So I switched and I'm glad I did. It has been six weeks and both my band teacher and my French horn teacher said I'm doing great for a kid that started six weeks ago. I really enjoy it.

Just this Wednesday I went to Open House and Mr. Hink told my parents about how good I was. At Open House I performed a song with  my fellow classmates, about 1/4 of them. We also did a hand clapping routine like the one from the Kleenex clapping commercial with 6th grade Wed., 6th grade Fri., and 5th grade Fri. It was great. I did the clapping almost perfectly. It has been busy, busy around here, but September was fun.

Earth Month

It's almost the end of Earth month! Oh no! Help celebrate while you can. Here's three things you can do to help the environment:

One: clean up right. Most light bulbs contain mercury. Because of that fact, we must properly clean up our light bulbs. If we don't, the mercury will get in the air and the water. Lots of fish have mercury in them, in fact, fish, out of all animals, have the most amount of mercury in their bodies. Mercury gets in their water and their food from toxic waste. The larger the fish, the more mercury the fish contains in its body. This is because a larger fish eats more than a smaller fish so it takes in more mercury. At our Earth Day celebration, I learned how to properly clean up a broken CFL light bulb you must:
1) Keep people and pets away from the breakage area - do not step on the area when leaving.
2) Open windows and leave the area for 15 minutes before returning to begin cleanup.
3) Wear rubber gloves and dust mask - put in glass container when finished.
4) Carefully remove large pieces and place them in glass container.
5) Using duct tape pick up all the remaining fine particles and put in glass container.
6) Wipe the area with a damp micro fiber cloth, then put the cloth in glass container but, do not rinse the cloth between uses.
7) Put all waste and cleanup materials in the glass container, seal and label it Toxic Waste Broken Light.
8) Wash your hands and face carefully with soap.
9) Remove glass container from the home.
10) Continue ventilating the room for several hours.
11) Take the glass container with the waste material to a facility  that accepts toxic waste.
12) Check http://earth911.com/ for a toxic waste facility near you.
13) If you have throw rugs, remove them and bring them to the toxic waste facility.
14) If the break happened on carpeting, cut the area of carpet were the breakage occurred particularly if the area is requested by infants, small children, pregnant woman, the elderly, pets, or people with compromised immune systems
Never:
Use a vacuum even one with a HEPA filter.
Use a broom.
Pour mercury down a drain in your yard or sewer.
Wash clothing or other items that have come in direct contact with mercury.
Walk around your house or yard if your shoes might be contaminated with mercury.

Two: think before you throw. Our front yard has been totally trashed by litter. We live on the end of our street and people throw everything on our yard. One time we found a bike behind one of our really big bushes. The sad part was at that time we had a rabbit living in another one of our bushes. About a month later he left. All this litter is killing our plants and animals. Throwing our trash away is no better. It's just being put in landfills which also hurt the environment. The best we can do is recycle so we can reuse what we already have. I have a poster on my closet door showing endangered animals of Arizona. There are 18 types of fish, 17 types of plants, six types of birds, six types of mammals, and one type of reptile on this poster. That's 48 types of almost extinct animals! I would think before I throw.

Three: no more oil(!) Recently, there was a large oil spill near the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently, it's losing a few thousand gallons a day! Oil spills kill lots of animals and coat their fur in oil. The oil spills are more dangerous than you probably think. The oil pollutes the water that fish breathe, and it kills the fish. Once all the fish are dead, then the animals that eat the fish die. Then all the animals that eat those animals die out and so on until there's nothing else on this planet. It's definitely worse than you think. No more oil!

That's just some of the things you can do to help the planet. There's also one other thing you can do to help the planet without doing labor at all. Start a writing campaign or a series of shows on YouTube or another website that you can show to the public to help the environment. One last thing: remember, every day is Earth Day.