Misunderstood

Once upon a time, there was a fair maiden, the most beautiful and elegant in all the land. She had long blond hair, tall, and flawless as thought possible.Tho as perfect as she may have seemed, she had a deep dark secret, one she feared to share with anyone. When she was born, her father made a deal with a witch in order to get food for him and his only daughter, Natalie, to survive after his wife had passed away. The deal included giving away his daughter when she reached the young age of five. So with the short time he had with her, he tried the best he could to care for her. When the witch came to collect her payment, Natalie refused to leave her fathers side, infuriating the old witch. As a punishment she put a curse on Natalie, turning her into a half bat, half girl when the moon was at its fullest.

One day when Natalie, now in her late teens, was walking through the market in order get food for her and the witch, who insisted that she called her mam, was looking at a stand full of fruits, deciding which was the best to choose. After she took her pick and paid the man minding the stand, she backed up and accidentally bumped into some one knocking their things to the ground. She quickly apologized, and picked everything up without looking at the person. When she handed them back, she saw that the person was hooded and could not see their face.

“Watch it!” they shouted so suddenly that Natalie flinched away. The hood fell of the their head, and she saw who it was. It was Prince Gavin, the heir to the throne, as soon as King Leon passed away, which was bound to be soon, because he so old, around 98 if she wasn’t mistaken. When prince Gavin’s eyes locked with hers, all the anger drained from his face, only leaving the look of being fantasized.  Gavin apologized for being so rude, and Natalie apologized for not watching where she was going, and the two struck up a conversation.

to be continued tomorrow……

 

Can You See Me Now?

You could say I was playing hide and seek

But what I was really doing was hiding from the camera

For if i did not, we would not get anything done

 

No Title Haiku

So bored we may be

But music will always help

To dance all the day

 

Critical thinking about those clothes…

Mom says:

 

Try this site and see what you think about the statements people make with their clothing.

http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/ngfl/2007-08/english/echalk/you-are-what-you-wear.html

Click on the online Activity.

 

Haiku-Rushing Water Fall

One Stop Poetry

 

The Ginger Bread Man

Ginger Bread Man

Tall in spirit

Short in height

Ginger Bread Man

I cant wait to take a bite

Ginger Bread House

With candy Christmas lights

You’re very pretty

And I’m sure you taste nice

 

my poetry award from Jingle

 

Thee Moon

The Moon

The Moon, My Moon.

This is a Moon, bright and tall

This is a Moon, it shows it self to one and all

This is a Moon I love to look at

This is a Moon I see every night

This is a Moon I love as my light

G’night Moon

 

No words…

Mom says:

What do you like with no words?  I’m told I use too many words…

 

AVI…a popular author.

Mom says:

Do an essay in a different way.  Write your answers to this post in a different color for the font.  Use complete sentences and pay attention to the spell checker prompts.  Let’s get a picture with it linked to a site.

Who ?

AVI is a book writer. He got the name AVI when he was younger, and his twin sister called him that. He said it just stuck, and its the only name he uses. I think many people like his books, and think he is important. If you go to his website,  http://www.avi-writer.com/blog/ you can find out some facts about him, and see all of his books.

What ?

AVI writes books for children, teenagers, and young adults. I have read at least two of his books, and thought they were very good.

When?

AVI made up his mind to start writing books when he was about seventeen years old.  So if he started writing books in 1954, and its now 2010, he has been writing books for 56 years.

Where ?

He was raised in Brooklyn, New York. He gets his ideas for his stories from his family.

Why ?

In one of his interviews AVI said the reason he became a writer is because ” Since writing was important to my family, friends, and school, it was important to me. I wanted to prove that I could write.” He said it took about two years before he got his first book published

According to what I have read, the most previously published book of his is Crispin The End of Time.

 

“Sleep is my best friend.” she says…

Sleeping

Peaceful, Calm

Dreaming, Tossing, Turning

Active, Messy Hair, Warm, Breathing

Walking, Eating, Sitting

Alert, Curious

Awake

still sleeping……..

 

Re-do of my Glog with my Greadgrandmother and me.

 

My Greatgrandmother and I. Do we look alike?

Mom says:

I think a bit of review is needed.  Spelling?  It looks nice, but it’s a little hard for me to quickly figure out what I’m seeing.

 

The Secret School

Mom says:

You read The Secret School by Avi.

You said it was good.  It looked good.  It also looked like a very different school from your school.

But…who is Avi?  That’s a very strange name.

Find one of your writing prompts and let’s do some online searching and see who goes by the name of Avi.

 

What are these kinds of words?

Mom says:

I was looking for the clock

But couldn’t find it

On my chair, it sat.

You were terribly funny

And made your own rhyme

When I tried to sit down,  you said,

“That’s really killing time !!!”

 

That song sounds rather…

Mom says:

anti-boy to me.  But it’s fine.

I don’t think the Yuck was fair and if you’re going to yuck at me, then I don’t think I want to play.

But this was one of my favorites !!!

 

No, let’s do Art Garfunkel…

My love must be a kind of blind love

I can’t see anyone but you

Are the stars out tonight?

I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright

I only have eyes for you dear.

The moon may be high

I can’t see a thing in the sky

’cause I only have eyes for you.

I don’t know if we’re in a garden

Or on a crowded avenue

You are here, so am I

Maybe millions of people go by

But they all disappear from view

And I only have eyes for you

 

More About the Bedroom Fire

• In the beginning of last week, my family had a bedroom fire. Unfortunately, it was my room.
• My mom, my brother Jack, and I were sitting on the middle floor, doing our different things. We all heard a loud bang or pop, but my mom and I thought it was my other brother cleaning his room. Jack said it sounded like someone was up in my room, so I went upstairs to go see what it was. When I got up there, I saw smoke and flames, I yelled “My rooms on fire!”, I was thinking, “Oh no, oh no, oh no, my candle caught on fire, the house is going to burn down, I’m going to get killed!” My mom came running from her area, and grabbed the little extinguisher thinking that it was like my lampshade caught on fire. She says when she got up there my bed was in flames. She told Jack to call 911 and get my dad up.
• She was running down the stairs telling people to get their coats on. By that time my little brother, Keelin, was awake, and asking what was going on, I told him there was a fire, and that is when he got all jumpy. After Jack finally got my dad out of bed, and my oldest brother, Micheal, was out of his room, we all went outside and waited at the end of the driveway for the fire trucks to come.
• Six fire trucks ended up coming to the house. The first few that came took their equipment and asked my mom to show them the way. Luckily, they put it out with extinguishers. If they had done it with water, we would have water damage. After the fire was put out, other firemen took out a huge fan to air the house out. After most of the smoke was gone, one firefighter asked my mom and I to come up to the room so I could identify some of the things. When we got up there, everything in my room was covered in soot, and my bedside table was all burned up, and the room smelled…BAD. After I told them what some of the things were, I went back outside. After a while, some of the fire trucks left the house. Soon it got calm, and all my neighbors went back inside.
• Finally there were about two fire trucks left, and my parents were talking with one of the firemen. A little while longer and the firemen left. We were all frazzled, so we didn’t get to sleep for a long time. Of course since my bedroom had a fire, I had to sleep in the living room on an air mattress. My mom slept on a cot in the dinning room, Jack slept with my dad because his room had some smoke damage, and Keelin and Micheal just slept in their regular rooms.
• So now we go into the present. Since my bedroom is on the top floor, the smoke went down, and through the rest of the house. Now my family is staying at a hotel, to be more precise, the Embassy Suites. We have been here almost a week, and I think we will be here for another. The reason my family is staying at the hotel is because the inside of our house is being painted. So,we might be here a while.

Here are some pictures of the things in my room after the fire happened.

This is the wall where the fire happened. You can see the streak of black.

This is the part of my bed that burned up, and this is only my box spring.

You can see how close the fire was to my bed, all that was left was the bed frame.

 

Give me a poem, please.

From this…

To this…

 

What was it like to be 12 in 1912?

The childhood of the kids in the early 1900s was not anything like today.  I read Factory Girl by Barbara Greenwood.

In the early 1900s, many families were very poor. While the parents were working, there was usually not enough money coming in to support the family. So many of the kids had to drop out of school at a young age, and find a job to help get money. Filthy factories were usually the only place kids under the legal working age could get a job.

Young boys are risking their toes to replace to spools

If the Inspector of the factory found out about this, he would shut down the factory, and the children would lose their jobs. In factories it was very dangerous. The men that worked there were allowed to smoke, and that was dangerous because there were flammable scraps all over the place. If there were a fire, it would be hard to get out because of the many people there, but also because the windows were boarded up. Young boys would usually go to the dump to look for things that they could sell, or use for their family, like a tea-pot that is in good shape. Sometimes, when the boys earned enough money, they bought as many newspapers as they could, and sold them on the street to make even more money, but if some papers were not sold, it was a waste. Little children sometimes went out scavenging coal for their families to use, often pushed by an old wagon or baby cart that they found.

For children, there weren’t any playgrounds for them, so they played in the streets. In the streets, there were sometimes dead animals crawling with bugs where the kids played, and it would sometimes be days before it was taken away. The people who had money, had plumbing and running water. The people who didn’t have money have to go to the bathroom in a bucket, and walk sometimes long distances to get some water. For families who lived in alley ways, a room was often turned into a kitchen, and a bedroom.

Living like that was not a good and healthy way, and people died because of it. Now, as you can see what I said was true. Childhood in the early 1900s was harsh compared to now.

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/index.html

http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/about/us_history.html

 

Piknic, Family History

I am doing a project about my great-grandmother and I.

On a site called

http://www.piknic.com

I am making a collage of her and I together, showing how much we look-alike.

So far I have just finished the photo, and moving on to what it was like to be 12 and working for a living.

First I will write a short essay on the book Factory Girl, then put in the photo of my great-grandmother and I, Finally, I will record every thing I’ve done onto my blog

 

Lake Otis Elementry 1% art

Here is Lake Otis’s 1% art.

This is a video I took of the words that are under the 1% art. The words are,

Late us take the Ribbons, Black ones from Africa, Yellow ones from Asia, White ribbons of Europe, Brown ones of the Middle East, and Red Ribbons of the Americas. With then we will weave a beautiful and sacred tapestry that cannot be soiled by our prejudices.

Here is the actual sculpture,

Here I’m standing next to the sculpture.

Here is the sculpture from the end.

Here it is from the front.

From the middle,

The whole sculpture again.

My thoughts on this sculpture is, they did well showing that all races, could, and can go together. I like how all of the ribbons are intertwined, and all the colors seem to go together. Some of them are longer than others, but they still go together. When I think about it, I have never gone to a school where there weren’t different types of races. My mom said when she went to school, all of the students were white, and everybody was moving away to get away from the integration.

There are other sculptures through out the school.  They are of the Alphabet, and the photos will be uploaded, either later today or later this week.

 

Sharon Creech

WINNER OF THE 2002 CARNEGIE MEDAL

Ruby Holler is a beautiful and mysterious place, deep in the country, a “basin in the hills. . .where cool breezes drifted through the trees, and where the creek was so clear that every stone on its bottom was visible.” An older couple, Tiller and Sairy, live in the holler and are looking for new adventures, each of them hoping to set off on a trip. When they invite the “trouble twins,” Dallas and Florida, to join them, all of their lives take new turns.

Sharon Creech states:

About six years ago I received a letter from my aunt in which she related a story about my father when he was young. She ended the story with “and that was when we lived in the holler.” Holler? I hadn’t known about the holler and was intrigued by the notion of my father and his many siblings and parents living in this place.

I began to imagine the place, and as I did so, I knew it would be a great setting for a story, but it was several years before I began to see who the characters might be who would live in this holler. I think that the older couple, Tiller and Sairy, evolved because I was thinking of my grandparents living in a holler, and this couple resembles my grandparents in some ways.

The children, Dallas and Florida, probably came to life because I’d been thinking of my father as a mischievous child (that was evident in the original story my aunt told) and his equally-mischievous siblings.

via Sharon Creech.

Mom says:

Sharon Creech has written other books.  We’ll get them.

I wonder.  How could you set up a book circle or a book club blog for books you enjoy reading?

There has to be a way.

 

Black history month. Thats true. . . . .revised essay.

HUSH was a good book. The story was about a black family that had to go into the Witness Protection Program. The reason they had to do this is because the father witnessed the murder of a black teenage boy by two white cops. The cops got sent to jail, but the family had gotten threatening calls.
When the father tried to kill himself, didn’t it go through his mind how much harder it would be on his family if he were to die? What I wondered is, if the guys who killed the kid went to jail, why did the family have to stay in the witness protection program? Why were they in it in the first place? If everybody believed the cops that shot the kid, why would they need protecting? Unless I’m confused, and the cops don’t have you put in the witness protection program.

I think there could have been other people involved, that wanted to hurt the family for sending the shooters to jail. You said when they got the threatening calls, they weren’t from the shooters, so those people were probably the other ones that we involved.

In HUSH, the dad witnessed a murder. The person that was killed was a black teenage boy. The two cops that killed him said that he was reaching for a gun, but the dad was there, and saw the kid standing there with his hands up, not reaching for anything. The reason the cops killed the kid, was because he was black.  Because he was black, the two cops had fear. Then the fear let to behavior, which led to the boy being dead.

Now in real life, a man named Medgar Evers was killed for a similar reason. He was working to get blacks the right to vote. Since he was a black man getting people to vote, it was all about race. Both of the stories are about race. The teenage boy in HUSH was killed because he was black. Medgar Evers was killed because he was black.

Both, Medgar Evers, and the teenage boy were killed with the same reason in mind, emotion, and that emotion was fear. Then the fear led to irrational behavior, witch led to both of them being killed.

 

We finished HUSH

Mom says:

And it was very good.

What’s the likelihood of that happening in our neighborhood?

It was a little about race, and a lot about pain

The father almost killed himself for himself to regain.

I don’t know if we’ve talked with you about a suicide,

But maybe it’s time, since it’s been four years

And that’s how your Uncle Jim died.

 

What does. . . . . .

What does Black History Month have to do with me? I have a brother named Michael. He’s part black and part white. My family doesn’t do really much anything for Black History Month, but we do eat Soul Food. Black History Month has to do with me because. . . . . . . . . .

My older bother is a mixed race person, the reason he is mixed, is because his dad is black and our mom is white, and my mom tells me that makes us a mixed race family. My thoughts are Black History Month doesn’t really have anything to do with me, but it does with my brother. My friends mom said she wouldn’t let her daughter go to a certain school because there were to many black people there. She didn’t know that I have a black brother. My mom said, if she knew I had a black brother, she probably wouldn’t have said that. I agree with my mom. If she had known, she probably would have made up some other excuse. Now, if I think about it, Black History Month does have a little to do with me. My friends mom said, that she practically doesn’t like my brother because of his color. She said it without even knowing it.

Here is part of my family. Keelin is the one in the very front, my Grandma is the one holding Keelin. My brother Jack and I are in the back, and Michael is on the very right.

 

My thoughts are. . . .

Kim says:

I think Black History Month matters because, there are a lot of African-Americans who did great things.

Also, this is the one month that is all about them. I think that’s nice. I think Black History Month

is important because, it shows that everybody equal.

Mom says:

This is really shallow and doesn’t show much thought.

It sounds like a “goody, goody” answer you would give when you’re in doubt.

I asked and I’ll ask again.

Just what does any of this have to do with YOU ????

 

You took a break…

but didn’t break a leg.

That’s good, so now think upon a peg.

Sit upon your stool, and put your cap back on,

Get out that writing noggin,

And tap, tap, tap the essay before dawn.

 

So, now there is a problem…

Mom says:

You got some information

And I said, “Write it down!”

You said, “I don’t know how.”

Which left me with a frown.

Seventh grade is writing time,

to learn to express yourself.

Let try again with Write Source 2000,

One of those books upon my shelf.

 

Walk Two Moons: Sal’s Story

Mom says:

But where did she go?

Kim says:

Sal went all over the state, and to places like Chicago, and that’s one thing I have in common with Sal, we both have been to Chicago. In the story, Sal and her grandparents start at their home, Bybanks, Kentucky, and in the end they were in, Lewiston Hill, Idaho.

Mainly, the story is about a girl named Sal. When she was younger, her mom left, and said she would come back, but she never did. After her dad came back from seeing her mom, he told her she wasnt coming home. But Sal always belived she would. Now its her turn to see her mom, so her grandparents drive across the state to where Sal’s mom is. Sal is hoping she can bring her home before her moms birthday. As they drive across the country, Sal is telling a story of when she first moved, and she made a new friend, and got a boyfriend. While they are driving, they see places like Old Faithful, Mount Rushmore, and the Black Mountains.

This is Old Faithful

This is Mount Rushmore

These are the Black Mountains

Later in the story, when Sal and her grandparents got to Lewiston, I Idaho, her grandma had a stroke, and had to go in the hospital, but Sal really wanted to find her mom, so her grandpa let drive the car all along a very dangerous and twisty road. By the way, Sal is 13 years old. When she pulled into one of those places, where you can stop and look at the view, she decided to walk the rest of the way, because it was way to steep for her. She heard about a bus chrsh goin down this hill, so she went to the bottom to see if any of her moms things were there, because there was only one survivor. When she was at the bus, a cop came up and asked who she drove down here with. She told him nobody, then the story about her mom, dad and grandparents, and why she needed to drive by herself. The cop knew who her mom was, so he said he would take her to see her. When he pulled up to a graveyard, Sal started to cry, cause her mom was dead. When the cop took her back to the hospital, she found out her grandma died at 3 in the morning. So the cop took her back to her hotel where her grandpa was waiting for her. When they drove back to their home, Sal and her dad moved back, Ben her boyfriend, and her new best friend, were coming to visit soon, and she said the spirit of her mom lived through the golden fields of their farm.

 

Maya Angelou’s Poem “I Rise”

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Mom says:

What does she mean with this last part of the poem?  Explain to me what you think.