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.

Creepy Coincidence

Earlier this month, we saw the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. The play was exactly the same as the original version except this version takes place in America after the Civil War. The costumes and set design were made to look like America during the Civil War of 1861-1865. The director of the play made these changes to help better understand how these wars do more damage than good. Before we saw the play, my mom printed off a study packet from Southwest Shakespeare Co.. The study packet contained a lot of interesting information about the play, including a section about the similarities between Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln. It turns out that both of them were assassinated by men whose first names started with J and last names started with B: Junius Brutus and John Wilkes Booth. Both of these assassins had a conspiracy of 8 men helping them. Also, both Caesar and Lincoln were assassinated when they were 56 years old, both men were Republicans in a country that did not like the thought of being ruled by a king, both were killed in theaters (Lincoln in Ford's theater and Caesar in Pompey's theater), both were assassinated after a civil war, and both had premonitions of their deaths. I think it was a good play, although I don't think the guy who played Cassius was ever told to say it not spray it.;)

Checklist to Start Homeschooling: First I Shall......

Well, there are many things to do before you actually start doing the schooling part of homeschooling. For some people it's buying the supplies or becoming an official homeschooler, getting a place to do the homeschooling, or, like us, pulling the kids out of school. I don't quite remember which came first for us, being pulled out of school or becoming an official homeschooler. For us, I think, they happened at the same time. It's quite simple to become a homeschooler. All you have to do is print out a form, sign it, then turn it in to the county courthouse. So we did just that. Yay! We're now official homeschoolers! Now we need to get our supplies. I was thinking we would take a long trip to one of those cool teacher supply stores that are jam-packed with stickers, (yay!) but we don't only use teacher supply stores. Instead, my mom decided to buy off the internet. Sure, now we don't have to go to a jam-packed (with people) store but I didn't get my stickers. Did my mom get everything we needed off the internet? Of course not! You can't get everything off the internet! We get a good amount of the stuff we need from places like Wal-Mart at back to school time (including my stickers.) "But what did you need?" you're probably thinking. Here's a list to answer that question, if you asked it:                                                                                         

Math books - Life of Fred by Stanley F. Schmidt, PhD                                                 

Writing books- Writing Strands by Dave Marks

Science books- McWizKid Science by Larry D. McClellan

History books and movie- What Your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grader needs to know and various movies and TV shows from the History Channel

Play tickets- for various plays at various theaters                                                       
                                                                                                                               

Homeschooling classes- at various places                                                                 

Notebooks- one of my personal favorites

Journals- another of my personal favorites

Folders- to hold our many reports and subjects

Pencils- another favorite

Glue sticks- to glue things together of course
                                                                                                                                
Tape- to tape things together                                                                                     

Paper- pretty essential

Colored paper- a colored version of paper

Colored pencils- our colored pencils are erasable and come from Crayola

Crayons- not erasable, but still from Crayola

Computers- I'm pretty sure mine's not from Crayola (I'm on Frankenstein, Patrick's on Lydonstein - we all have our own computers that my dad put together)
                                                                                                                                
Markers- not erasable, but washable..... from Crayola                                             

Printers- they have nothing to do with Crayola

Rulers- from various places, maybe even some from Crayola!!!

Good books- from the book store...... not Crayola

Printable learning materials- from our computer to, oh, I don't know, our printer (not Crayola, or at least I don't think)

Helpful computer games- now tell me, where would you find helpful computer games?
                                                                                                                                
Stickers :)- yet another personal favorite

and most importantly,
Pajamas (I'll explain in "My Life in the PJ Club")- um, the type I like.

Once you have all these things you are ready to become a homeschooler, sort of.