Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Avery: Blog Of The Day

5/31/2011

Well... how do I say this... I am a.... SUPER HERO!  Well a sidekick. I work with the Terminator! I'm not so sure if he's a good person but he seems cool! I don't even have to wear a stupid costume! He told me to wear a leather jacket. But as a girl I thought it was kinda stupid and all. Anyways, somhow somehow he gave me cool robot super powers or something. I can teleport, shoot lazers out of my hands, and fart flames! I know that one is kinda gross, but it is still funny! :) Last night I killed a rabid cat. It almost bit me so he told me to stab it with a nife knife. Anyways, I got to go now. It's time for my "4:00 meeting".
Later! :D

Daddio: 5/31/11 Blog of the Day

Remember a couple of years ago when Uncle Mike and I were going to start a second podcast called Diary of a Sidekick?  It was going to be about a superhero sidekick that keeps an audio diary about how crazy his life is as a sidekick.

For today's blog of the day, I want you to write a diary entry (or multiple diary entries) as though you were a superhero sidekick.  Give as much or as little information as you want about who you are, what your powers are, or who the superhero is that you work for.  But the post entry has to be in the form of a diary entry and it has to be about you being a sidekick.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Daddio: Nana Bit Her Tongue

Nana bit her tongue pretty bad last night.  She didn't think it was bad enough to have to go to the hospital, but I thought she might need stitches:

Friday, May 27, 2011

Mommio: New Kid

Mason finally decided his hair was too long.  Here he is this morning....
And here he is as a brand new kid this afternoon.  So handsome!

Mommio: Art Class- Turner

This week in art class we studied the English painter Joseph M.W. Turner (1775-1851).
Turner was a very well known painter during the Romanitc Period who worked in watercolors and oils painting landscapes and marine scenes. He is most well know for his use of shades of color to portray the sky at different times of the day and during different types of weather.  He had a special interest in painting sunsets everywhere he traveled.  We looked at two of his famous paintings and compared them by giving a weather report on what time of day and what the weather must have been like when he sketched these.
Snowstorm, 1842

  The Fighting Temeraire, Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up, 1838
 
The art project for this class involved making a background with shades of colors to mimic what Turner did with his skies.  First the kids picked colors of tissue paper, cut them in strips and placed them on watercolor paper to create their desired background.

 Then they took the strips off  and painted the paper with a mixture of glue and water.
 Next they applied the tissue paper strips to the sticky paper.
 The last step for the background was to paint over the top of the tissue paper with the diluted 
glue to give it a glossy look.
Here's what the completed backgrounds looked liked.
We had to wait overnight for these to dry before the kids could complete their art.  The finishing step was to use oil pastels to draw a pictures over their backgrounds.

 Here's how they turned out.  The colors are really beautiful!





Connor: Word Challenge

Mccune-Albright Syndrome is a congenital disease.
Max fooled Nana with his own conjecture.
Zeus conjured up a mighty storm that shook the heavens.

Connor: Blog Of The Day

The Mystical Camera
By: Connor M Jones

One day I was roaming around my home in the Grimm lands.  Suddenly, I spotted a strange artifact from the real world.  The item was a camera, a machine that humans use to take pictures and videos, which is very rare in this world.  I tested the camera pressing the power button and then taking a picture of a passing monster.  The picture showed Bigfoot terribly, you wouldn't be able to tell it was him, rather you would think it was just an ape.  I picked up the camera and took it with me, in order to sell it to the highest bidding monster, for, real world items fetch a high price here.  Before I so much as left, a group of three or four human children came near.  Knowing that children don't take kindly to thieves, I hid in a little hole in the tree.  The humans didn't spot me and went off toward the left searching for the camera.  With that done, I headed toward the shops in the biggest city in the lands.  I set up shop with the items I'd found, human children that I had hostage and was willing to sell as food to the highest bidder, an item of power that will grant anyone the ability of super strength, and the camera that I used to take a photo, for the high price of nine trillion bananas.  Bananas are the only currency I accept, seeing as I am a monkey,  because nothing is worth more than bananas to me.  Luckily the monsters started bidding for the camera at nine trillion and then it exceeded the known numbers and went up to nine trillion and as many bananas as it would take to fill Jupiter's center, the planet not the god, I accepted the bid and handed the camera over to the monsters that still appeared in the real world.  You see Bigfoot, Nessie, and El Chupacabra had each chipped in every banana that they had.  I got a report the following century that they had taken multiple bad pictures of themselves and gave each one to a human.  The humans they gave the pictures to are now blamed for the "hoax" as the humans call it.  Now I live in peace and quite with more than enough bananas to keep me alive for trillions of years.  The End 

Mason: Blog Of The Day

The Monkey Vacation
By Mason
One day in the Marble Falls zoo there was a family of monkeys. They decided to go on a vacation to the Grand Canyon. So they broke out of their cages and got on a big van heading to the canyon. When they got to the canyon they saw huge rocks. The rocks were stripes of tan and yellow.  They went to a camp site. I saw a camera on one of the trees and got it out of the tree and took a picture of my family. We had a lot of fun. I can't wait until next vacation. The End  

Gabe: Blog Of The Day

The Lemur's Paradise
By Gabe 
I was being tested on by stupid scientists and they were trying to make me a smart lemer even though I already am smart. So one day I got away from those stupid scientists. I decided to go live under someones car. I chose a silver Honda Odyssey. The person had a nice yard and some good pooping spots.  I saw a black cube shaped thing and it had buttons all over it and it had light. So I picked it up and I looked in the glass and there was a flash of light in my eyes and I got dizzy. I looked in a hole and it took a picture. I figured out it takes pictures. So then I was in paradise. There was a car, pooping spots and a camera, so I stayed there.

 THE END

Marney: Blog Of The Day

Monkey Almost Got Lost
By Marney 
One day I was sitting in a tree and I climbed down to go and play.  So I went and sat in the tall, green grass. At that point someone said "Hi! I am your new owner." The person had blonde hair and was super tall.  She grabbed me and I wanted to get away but she just kept on walking.  I was so sacred that I tried to run away but I could not.  I was so sad that I could not see my mom and that mad me mad. So I jumped out of her hand and I landed on the ground and ran back. When I was running I bumped in to a camera and I pressed a button that was circle shaped and there was a flash.  I tried breaking the camera because the flash scared me.  It never would break so another person grabbed the camera and took it away.

Mommio: Word Challenge

Write a sentence for each word.  
Anyone who can come up with a complete sentence that makes sense for each word gets a dollar!
congenital- (adjective) existing since birth
The infant's congenital health problem was corrected through surgery.


conjecture- (noun) speculation, prediction
The actor refused to comment, forcing gossip columnists to make conjectures on his love life.


conjure- (verb) to evoke a spirit, cast a spell
The cotton candy conjured up the image of the fairgrounds he used to visit as a child.


*all words, definitions and sentences are from the Kaplan SAT Vocabulary Prep Level 1 book

Kiki: Blog Of The Day

The Monkey Who Fell Off A Vine
By Kiki

I was swinging on the vine today and the vine couldn't hold me so long, so I fell on a tree stump and saw a camera.  I went to go tell my mom, Monkey Go Happy.  When she saw the camera she tried to destroy it.  I went to go take pictures of the people who were looking at me.  I looked like a pig because I was so fat.  Then I got skinny and took all the mud off of me.  Then I took more pictures of the people.  They were so excited to see a monkey taking pictures.  I pressed the video button and I took a video of the news reporter.  That news reporter was really, really weird.  She had a really high pitched voice and she liked monkeys.  It was weird, but still I put her in the newspaper.  She was weird, so whatever.

Daddio: 5/27/2011 Blog of the Day

Write a story about the following picture.  Your story has to be a first-person narrative from the perspective of the animal in the picture.  That means you have to write your story like you are the animal-- for example, "I was climbing a tree the other day and saw a camera..."

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Marney: Blog Of The Day

Boy Got Pooed
By Marney

This really tall boy got tons and tons poo,
He looked and he saw that it landed on his shoe.
He went to get it off,
So he put it a trough.
 Then he heard the cow that pooped on his shoe go "Mooooo!"

Mason: Blog Of The Day

Banana Peel
By Mason 

Once I slipped on a banana peel,
I fell on my head and it made me squeal.
 It made everyone laugh, 
They took a photograph. 
And then I decided it was no big deal.

Connor: Blog Of The Day

There once was an ancient geek
Who just happened to be Greek
He didn't know his latest theory
and thus had another query
When he didn't complete the idea it made him shriek

Gabe: Blog Of The Day

The Man with the Pan
 By Gabe

 One day on the beach there was a man,
 Who had a greasy non-stick frying pan.
And he wanted to date it,
 But the pan threw a big fit.
So the man just played with a old aluminum can.

Avery: Blog Of The Day

Girl In The Snow
By Avery
 
One day a girl was playing in snow,
When suddenly she started to grow.
She fell on her knee,
And she sang songs from Glee.
She decided that snow is not the best place to go.

Kiki: Blog Of The Day

The Man Who Ate A Mouse
By Kiki

There once was a man who ate a mouse 
He ate the mouse in a really big house.
He said it was yucky,
But he was very lucky.
He didn't throw up on his wife's blouse.

Daddio: 5/26/2011 Blog of the Day

Okay guys.  Last time we tried this (about a year ago)--- it was a struggle.  So now that you've had more practice with writing poetry, we'll take another swipe at it.  That's right.  We're going to try writing limericks again.

A limerick is normally a humorous poem that has five lines and a special rhyme and rhythm pattern:

Rhyme Pattern: The last words of the first, second, and fifth lines all rhyme with each other. We’ll call those rhyming words “A,” however the words could be “ Peru,” “shoe,” and “true” as illustrated in the first poem below or “Tim,” “swim,” and “him” as illustrated in the second poem below. And the last words of the third and fourth lines rhyme with each other. We’ll call those rhyming words “B,” however the words could be “night” and “fright” in the first example or “dock” and “rock” in the second example.

Rhythm Pattern: The first, second, and fifth lines all have this rhythm pattern: da DUM da da DUM da da DUM (notice there are 3 DUMS or beats). Say, “There once was a fellow named Tim” out loud. Now say, “da DUM da da DUM da da DUM” out loud. Notice that both have the same rhythm. The third and fourth lines have a different rhythm pattern: da DUM da da DUM (notice there are 2 DUMS or beats). Say, “He fell off the dock” out loud. Now say “da DUM da da DUM” out loud. Notice that both have the same rhythm.

Here's an example of a limerick:

There was an old man from Peru
who dreamed he was eating his shoe.
He awoke in the night
with a terrible fright,
and found out that it was quite true.

So try writing your own limerick.  It can be about any subject you want, but it has to follow the rhyme and rhythm patterns described above.

Today's blog subject was suggested by Gabe.  Thanks for the help, dude.