IPAD!!!!

When we were in Pittsburgh my mom and dad gave me a big surprise... an IPAD!! So far I have downloaded: Solitaire, Lasers, Battle Bears, Warp my Face, Blue Block, NFL sports network, and IBOOKS.

Snow

  It started snowing tuesday night. I ran around jumping of humongous rocks pretending I was being chased. After a while it got boring so I went back and got the push broom. I used it to push all the snow on the deck into one big pile. Then I lined all my action figures up and squished them into the pile. I picked up all my figures climbed up onto the table and threw them one by one into the snow.

Papercutting

Today we are hosting the home school group at our house.  We are going to be doing some simple papercutting, starting with cutting snowflakes. Papercutting is a art form practiced across cultures, in China,  Germany, Poland, and Mexico to name just a few.  Check out these amazing examples!

The Science Center

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Last weekend me and my friend Leon went to the science center in Baltimore. We had a lot of fun: We dug up dinosaurs, shifted tectonic plates, designed mars rovers, classified blood, and saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 in the IMAX theater.  

Guy Fawkes day.

            Saturday it was Guy Fawkes day. Guy Fawkes was a Englishman who tried to blow up parliament. We burned a big effigy of him in a humungous bonfire. Then we set of fireworks in a cardboard house of parliament, (it caught on fire). 

           We played 4 games, They were: Family where we made up fake names for ourselves and talked in funny voices, Damsels In Distress where the girls climbed out the bathroom window, Escape From The Castle where we ALL climbed out the bathroom window, and Hide From The Cops where we all climbed back in the bathroom window.

The Aquarium

When I was in Chicago we went to the Shedd Aquarium.  We watched a movie in 4-D,it actually snowed on us.  We also went to the dolphin show to see how the trainers trained the dolphins.  Recently I watched a movie called The Cove.  It shows some footage of Japanese fishermen capturing dolphins, selling some off to oceanariums, then slaughtering the rest to sell as FISH meat!                                                              

If you want to view the movie look at this link. http://www.thecovemovie.com/buy_the_dvd.htm                                                                                   This link talks about how dolphin captivity is wrong.  http://www.dolphinproject.org/the--dolphin-show.html.

My friends in Chicago

I went to Chicago and saw a lot of my friends who live there.  Their names are Micah, Stella, and Lucas.  Here are some pictures of us at Aunt Caroline's house.

The Stone in the Road

I was in a play at the Our Town Theater.  The play was about a stone that was put in the middle of the road by a queen who wanted to see if people could think for themselves.  I played a knight who only knows how to take orders and does nothing without the assent of my superiors.

The Bean/Cloud Gate

I visited Chicago for three days and did a lot of stuff there.  One of the things I did was visit the Bean in Millenium Park, which is actually called Cloud Gate and was built by the English artist Anish Kapoor. It is a big bean-shaped mirror that you can go inside and have yourself staring down at you from every direction.

Our home school group

Our home school group meets every Wednesday.  Our first project was an art project and we made batiks.  When we were done with our projects we take off our shirts (the boys) and run around with nerf guns in the woods.  We play boys against girls.  My friend Elijah has an eyeclops.  It is a device that you can hook up to a tv and look at things up close by focusing the eyeclops on a object.  On a rug it could show you every little thread on the rug. There is a special treasure map that comes with the eyeclops.  There are secret messages hidden in the lines (such as: find the gold dagger).  This a picture of us looking at the map with the eyeclops.

Chopping wood

Last Saturday, my Dad and I were chopping wood.  He had rented a machine that was able to chop wood in four seconds.  I operated the machine and Dad set the wood in the machine.  Then he threw the chopped pieces into a big pile.

Kayaking

Last Friday, my Dad and I went kayaking.  We kayaked the Lower Yough on a section called "The Loop."  First we went through "Entrance rapid." Then it was on to"Cucumber" one of the hardest rapids on the whole Lower.  I led my Dad through both of those rapids.  Next was "Camel walrus, " "Eddy turn," and "Dart mouth." The we went through "Railroad" the last rapid on "The Loop."  Then we took out and walked a quarter mile with our boats on our heads.

Step Afrika

Last Thursday we went to a dance program called Step Afrika.  They do a kind of dance called step dancing. It was invented by African American college students around the 1920s.  They did it in fraternities and sororities.  They use their hands and feet as percussion instruments while dancing and sometimes incorporate chanting and singing.  

http://www.stepafrika.org/home.htm

Home schooling so far

It's really raining today.  Today I had a toasted blueberry bagel with butter  for breakfast.  Me and my Mom read The Woodland Indians by C. Keith Wilbur.  We learned about how pottery became popular with Woodland Indians in Ohio.  We also learned about the Indian mounds.  The Adena Mound builders cremated the dead in huts on top of the mounds and then covered up the ashes with more dirt.   The I got on the computer and practiced using the radius to figure out the circumference of a circle.  You multiply the radius by pi (3.14).  I'm getting pretty good at reducing fractions to simplest form.  I finished reading Book I of a series called The Edge Chronicles.  So far I have read Al Capone Does my Shirts, Gregor the Overlander, The Giver, and The Edge Chronicles.  Every Tuesday I go to Morgantown, West Virginia to the Monongahela Arts Center and take a two hour art class.  I am making a batik with an image of two toucans.  Every Wednesday and Friday I go to rehearsal for a play I am in called The Stone in the Road.  I play a Knight who does not know how to think for himself and can only take orders.  For lunch I had broccoli, Wheat Thins, chicken noodle soup, and carrots.  Then I wrote on my blog.  It's still raining.