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.

Julius Caesar, Loch Ness Monsters, Olympics, and Komodo Dragons

Wow, it's been almost a month since I've blogged! In January, we began reading Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. We are using the "No Fear" version by Sparknotes. On one side of the page is Shakespeare's version in iambic pentameter which gives it a sing-song quality. On the other side is a more modern translation that is easier to understand. We were laughing at Act One, Scene One where they translated Flavius's words to, "Get out of here! Go home you lazy men!" I wouldn't have guessed that Shakespeare would write something like that. We also saw the play, and we're going to see the movie, or at least everyone else is. I have no intentions on seeing the bloody, tragic Julius Caesar again, not that I didn't like it. I also wrote a paper on Mark Antony's speech. I will share it with you as soon as possible.



I have been doing a lot of writing recently even though I haven't let you see it yet. I wrote a story called "My Night with the Loch Ness Monster" for my "Fantasy Fiction" class at Eagleridge. It's about a girl who finds a Loch Ness Monster egg and helps get the baby monster back into the loch it came from. I also wrote an article on Dian Fossey in my Composition class, also at Eagleridge. The next article we'll be doing in my Composition class is one on "The White House Gang," Teddy Roosevelt's children. The latest thing I did in my "Fantasy Fiction" class was write a summary on the book The Water Horse by Dick King-Smith. I'm also writing two stories right now. One is unnamed, but the other one is so far called "Terri Cooper." This blog is also one of my at-home writing projects. I want to share all of them with you. I will let you see them..... once I'm done with them.


While we have been doing all this writing, we have also been learning about the world around us. Since the earthquake in Haiti to the Vancouver Winter Olympics, our month has been filled with world geography. We even have our world thinking day celebration in Girl Scouts coming up! How do we get our answers to our questions? Well, one of the books we have been using is The Handy Geography Answer Book. It gave us answers to questions like: what is the fertility rate (average children per women) in Haiti? 4.7. What is the fertility rate in the U.S.? 2.1. What languages do they speak in Haiti? French and Creole. What about in the U.S.? English and Spanish. We can even look up populations and laugh at 4.7 of a person being born. Because of the Olympics, we looked up a lot more places than just Haiti and the U.S. We looked up just about every country that participated in the Olympics. We also decided, because we're learning about the world, to start learning German. I love it. I've been teaching it to my best friend and now we speak German(or Deutsch, pronounced doy-tch) very loudly in the car. My mom has lots of German books and just got a clearance ($2) German phrases and expressions calendar with a phrase for every day. I don't know what's more fun: teaching the phrases to my best friend Brenna, learning the phrases myself, or saying them with Brenna.

On Friday, February 19th, we went to the Phoenix Zoo to draw animals with a homeschooling art class. Even though we used only one type of pencil, we bought three different types: B, 2B, and 4B. Our teacher, Ms. Brown, sold us our special sketchbooks and gum erasers last year when we took a class with her. Some of the tips she gave us were to: look for basic shapes in the animals body, squint your eyes to see details better, look for the outline of the animal, and instead of looking at your paper, look at the animal and let your brain take control and focus on what the animal really looks like instead of what it's supposed to look like. We drew giraffes, zebras, ducks, komodo dragons, and elephants. Brenna went too. It was so much fun drawing pictures and laughing at our horrible imitations of these more realistic looking animals. It was truly a unique experience.