Crivens!

We've been reading a book series by Terry Pratchett. The cool thing about this series is that the author has made up his own language. For instance:

Crivens! - A general exclamation that can mean anything from "My goodness," to "I've just lost my temper and there's going to be trouble."

Bigjobs - Human beings.

Blethers - Rubbish, nonsense.

Geas - A very important obligation, backed up by tradition and magic. Not a bird.

Hiddlins - Secrets.

Mudlin - Useless person.

Scuggan - a really unpleasant person.

Scunner - A generally unpleasant person.

Ships - Wooly things that eat grass and go baa. Easily confused with the other kind.

The best thing about this book series is that it is exciting and funny. We are going to start the last book, "I Shall Wear Midnight," as soon as Erica can pick it up from the library. I highly recommend these.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

Today we played a game where you collect story elements and then make them into a story. Dan got a dragon, a cave, a knight, a Puss In Boots, a sack of gold, some magical potion, and a hot air balloon. He wrote the following story. There can be no doubt that this young man is very creative.

Beware: Not for those who hate dragons or are easily frightened. If you hate Puss In Boots, you'll be OK.

It was a dark and stormy night, and the dragon was asleep in his cave when the cat, Puss in Boots (OUCH!) came wandering in. The cat was weird and a little crazy. The cat had a knight with him. “This crazy knight has come in to kill me!!!!” yelled the dragon.

Well, in self defense, the dragon bit their heads off. He knew that he shouldn’t have, but the cat was so good. He dipped the bones in ketchup. The knight’s bones are still there. He spent the knight’s gold on a computer to write the story that you are reading, because, surprise, I am the dragon! As for the knights other stuff, well, I drank the potion (burp!) and popped his hot air balloon.

My essay

Dan Tersigni
12-13-2010

The Fall and Rise of Count Gavin

For all of you Star Wars fans (like myself) out there, you might have noticed how important it is for the main character in the movies to change. Take Anakin Skywalker for example. He starts out as a Jedi and goes to the dark side. Like Anakin, Gavin, one of the main characters in this book, has also changed. By the end of the Blood Red Horse, by K.M. Grant, Gavin has changed from a brat to a loving brother.

In the beginning of the Blood Red Horse, Gavin is described as a big fat brat. For example, Gavin threw Will in the horse trough after he said that Will was a flea on a dragon. Gavin almost kills Hosanna by running him to the ground. He doesn’t think about anybody but himself.

During the Crusades, Gavin also acts like a brat. Gavin has one of the women from Acre read one of Will’s letters and pronounce their dad’s name. “How dare you allow one of those women to read Ellie’s letter and pronounce our father’s name! Get out, get out before I punch you!” (pg. 135) Gavin disrespects his dead father and humiliates Will by associating with the people of Acre, their enemies. Gavin also spends all of his spare time gambling and drinking and losing his horses…… he is an idiot!

However, Gavin changes from a brat to a loving brother. He loses his arm protecting Will and at the end of the book he says, “I give you William, Earl of Ravensgarth, a true earl, a true brother, and a true son to our father.”(pg. 276) This statement shows that Gavin has changed.

While Gavin is a brat at the beginning of the book, he changes to a loving brother by the end. Just the opposite of the Star Wars’ hero, Gavin changes from Darth Vader to Anakin Skywalker: “from light to dark, rise to fall and back again.”(jacket cover, The Rise and Fall of Darth Vader) Change is important because it lets us grow in many ways.

The Final Battle On Ares

I wrote a science fiction story. It took days and days to write. Here it is, if you want to read it:

One day, I decided to go to the planet Ares, so I built the MILLENIUM FALCON. As soon as I was done, I built a fire sword and some golden armor to protect me from the methane atmosphere on Ares. Then I trained and trained and trained. I trained by playing video games simulating conditions on Ares and fighting simulated Arian creatures. Then I invited my friend Daniel, so I made another suit of golden armor. Then we went in the FALCON and we blasted off.

I heard some thumps during hyperspace and Daniel showed up with something green in his hand. It was Jonathan. He was a stowaway and he was an alien from the planet Gobllein. When he told his life story, we decided to let him live.

Just then, our sensors indicated a fleet of aliens, and something that rhymes with backer beam. It was a tractor beam. We were pulled down to the planet Ares. But before the aliens shot our engines we got a good look at the planet. The planet was dark green and the main star was blue. Just then, our engines failed. “I knew that the engines were not ready yet!” I said.

When we landed, the ship was surrounded by humanoid aliens. We could see more and more aliens surging out of the lava rock caves that dotted the landscape. We knew from our studies of the planet and its residents that the aliens didn’t have families. They reproduced like bacteria, by splitting in half. Maybe that was why there were so many of them.

There were also Burgerlers - they are alien cows, and the Hairballs, which look like alien turkeys. We put on the armor. It protected me and Dan from the methane atmosphere. The aliens forced us to their arena. Along the way I saw human kids being forced to go to the mines without protective clothes on. I was mad because the kids wouldn’t last 14 hours in the poisonous atmosphere. We knew that they would soon become Hairball food. The day was overcast and the sky was greenish-grayish.

Daniel and I were forced to fight in the arena for 50 days. The arena was open to the crowd of aliens, who threw rocks at us. Luckily, they missed us. Jonathan had betrayed us to the aliens and was throwing rocks as well. The sky was bright green and I was sweating like a dog under the hot blue sun. During the matches I would look at the moons (9 of them) and wish to go home. Besides, I was getting really tired of the steady diet of Burgerler and Hairball meat that the aliens would slide into my cell at night. Still, Daniel and I had prepared well, and we won every time.

The aliens kept track of the champions of each Death Round in a huge book made of pressed leaves from the plants that grew on the lava rocks. No one had ever won as many times as Daniel and I. One night, I overheard an alien saying that we weren’t allowed to ever leave the place. When I tried to escape, they threatened to feed me to the Burgerlers. I was so mad that I busted down the door.

Daniel and I ran out of the arena. We raced across the hard lava rocks past the boiling lava ocean. The ground was very rocky, but also slippery, because of the plants that grew on the lava rocks, which were as slippery as seaweed. The enraged aliens and Jonathan were hot on our trail, and gaining on us. We thought they would catch us, but when we were almost to our spaceship, we noticed that the lava ocean was receding dramatically. The aliens were too enraged to notice. At the last second, I remembered that our armor came with hoverboots. I yelled to Daniel to push his button and we both blasted to the ships as the aliens and Jonathan were burned to potato chips by the hot lava tsunami.

It was lucky for us that the aliens had repaired our engine so that they could use the ship themselves so they could travel to Earth and destroy it. We left the planet Ares but we took a wrong turn in hyperspace.

And then we got dragged to the Death Star.

To be continued…

Yummmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

We have been studying plant and animal cells. Above is a picture of a leaf slide, showing plant cells, as seen under my microscope.

Besides looking at cells under the microscope, we decided to make a model cell. I decided to make a model plant cell because it had more parts. I decided to make my model out of jello and candy because it would be delicious, and I'm hungry. The cell wall was made of the pan, because it is hard and rigid and kind of squared-off like the cells in the picture above. The cell membrane was made of Froot Roll-Ups because it is soft and flexible. The cytoplasm is made of Jello, because it is a jelly-like liquid that suspends the parts of the cell. The nucleus was made of a plastic egg and the chromosomes were made of gummy worms because chromosomes look like worms. The vacuoles were made of Snickers bars because they contain food or liquid. The chloroplasts were made of green gummy bears because chloroplasts are green, they are what makes the plant leaf look green and they make food from sunshine. The chloroplasts in the picture above look red, because they have been dyed. Really they are green. I'm going to see if my Dad will eat my cell model with me, because he loves jello.

My New Microscope - A Post by Dan and Erica

a letter e from the newspaper

pollen from my mom's flowers

Dan's hair

two colors of thread crossed in an "X"

I love my new microscope. I have used it to look at pollen, hair, thread, newsprint, and prepared slides of all sorts of animal and plant cells. My favorite thing we looked at was the one-celled organisms swimming around. We collected some from my mom's flower vase water and some from the bay.

The Dragon!

On the last day before Christmas Dan finished this amazing dragon. We made it out of paper mache. One of Dan's essential design ideas was that the mouth had to open and close, so we made a jaw separately. When it dried, we connected the jaw with metal brads, and Dan painted the dragon, whose name is "Smaug" like the dragon in "The Hobbit." Then we wired it so that it has eyes that light up and a mouth that lights up when the switch is connected. Dan got to share it with his nephew Thomas just minutes after it was completed. Thomas caught on right away to how to switch it on by completing the circuit.