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Feb. 27, 2009

Writer's Circle 2/20/09 and 2/27/09

Posted in Children's Work
The girls did their assignments last week but we didn't have time to gather for our circle.  So we did both last week's and this week's circle time today.

So A's assignment last week was to write about "A Blessing in Disguise":

I dropped the bird food in the fish tank and my clown fish got stronger.  Oh my!  The bird food is a medicine to the fish!

And this week her assignment was to write a description of her dog.  She had to be specific about her dog:

Jake has brown eyes and has a pattern on his hind leg.  He has no fur in some places, tall pointed ears, black and brown fur.

I had talked to A. about writing more in her weekly assignments.  You would never tell from her assignments what a writer she is.  She writes stories in her free time.  She has notebooks and notebooks full of stories.  I spoke to her about making her assignments more like the stories that she writes for fun, because those stories are long and full of detail.  Hopefully, she'll do a better job next week.

Here is my "blessing in disguise":

I was walking my dog, Jake, in our neighborhood.  Jake is a very sweet dog, but like many dogs, when he sees other dogs, he sometimes turns to them and tries to sniff them.  Usually that is it though—he doesn’t chase after them or become aggressive.  Today, however, when we walked past a clearing in the Greenbelt, he suddenly began to growl.  He turned his head towards the wooded area in the Greenbelt and strained against his leash to go into the woods.  “No Jake,” I told him, trying to steer him back onto the sidewalk.  But he insisted on heading towards the woods.  “No, Jake,” I said more firmly, and pulled harder on the leash.  Jake again strained against the leash, turning his body towards the woods.  And that was when it happened—the leash suddenly went ping! and went limp in my hand.  The next thing I knew, Jake was running away from me and heading into the woods.  “Oh no,” I thought.  That is the last thing I needed!  I threw the broken leash on the ground and ran after him into the clearing.  He was barking loudly now, rushing toward some unknown destination in the woods. 

When I finally caught up to him, he was sniffing around a large rock  “What is it, boy?  What’s bothering you?”  I looked at the large rock and that was when I saw it.  A flash of bright red cloth, ripped and trapped under the rock.  Hmm….I thought, leaning down to pick it up.  Suddenly, Jake raced off toward another area in the woods and I ran after him, leaving the red cloth where it was.  There, in between a clump of bushes and a large tree, laid a small little disheveled looking girl, with torn red pants and a skimpy red sweater.  She was asleep on the ground, and I went over to her to gently wake her up. 

“What happened to you, little girl?  Who are you?  What is your name?”  It turned out that she was walking with her parents and a large group of people and had started to run after a butterfly.  She didn’t tell anyone and by the time she had given up on catching the butterfly, she realized that she was lost.  She had tried to lean up against the rock and that was how she had torn her red pants.  Thank God she had only been missing for 30 minutes.  We found her parents and brought her home.  It was truly a blessing in disguise that Jake had run so strongly and broken his leash.

And here is my description of Jake, our dog:

Jake is a medium sized, 40 lb mixed breed dog.  He is about 9 years old, and I adopted him from the animal shelter when he was just a year old.  He has medium length, straight coarse black hair with some tan mixed in.  He is mainly black though.  He seems to be part Chow, part Shetland Sheepdog, and part German Shepherd, but of course, one can’t really be sure what he is.  His nose is longer and his ears point up.  He once had a tail covered with soft black hair, but unfortunately, it got matted and I de-matted it and it hasn’t grown back properly ever since.  I feel terrible about that.  Also, for the past few years, he has been losing hair in an area near his neck.  It first started as a small patch with a one inch diameter where his collar was, so I removed his collar.  However, the hair never grew back and he began to lose more hair, again without it ever growing back.  So now, he has a large square patch approximately 3in. by 3in near his neck.  The vet says that it looks like the skin beneath is scar tissue so hair probably won’t ever grow back.  We don’t know what started it—it probably was not due to the collar though. 

Jake is a sweet and friendly dog.  I wish I could say he was really smart, but he’s of average intelligence.  It takes him several tries to learn something.  However, he does know “sit” and “stay” and he’ll actually stay for a few seconds.  He also has very good leash manners.  I trained him to pee on command though every now and then he’ll have an accident in the house.  Usually that happens when there is a break in his routine.  He mostly just sits around and hangs out with us, though he used to love running around in the back yard.  He is quite mischievous and knows very well how to escape from the back yard.  We now have a wireless fence and he has to wear a collar to stay in the yard. 

I love Jake.  He is a very sweet dog. 

K's assignment last week was to describe our family traditions:

Do you have family traditions?  You do?  Well that is probably because you belong to the Harson familly or the Golers or the Trifs.  Well the point is, in my family we don't have many traditions, so I'm writing an essay on what traditions I would like to have in my family.

First of all on Veterans Day, Christmas, New Years and Thanksgiving, all of my family will get together.  Everyone will stay for at least a day.  We will play and talk and do anythign that will remind us of why we are here and then for a couple of hours, we will try our hardest to act the way they did when the holiday started.

And the other thing would be on Halloween, to dress up and go trick or treating.  Half the time with our family, and half with our friends.  Then we would go home and trade candy.  On Christmas, in addition to giving presents to our Secret Santa, we would all bring Christmas ornaments for the host (or hostess) to thank them for providing there home. 

Does someone prefer trick or treating to going to a Fall Fest?   LOL  I guess we can try that next year!!

K's assignment this week was to write a dialogue between 2 creatures who had just visited Earth:

Treon:  I'm glad we got sme earth soil.
Zephline:  When we get back to Plin we can see if Plin zars grow in it.
Treon:  I don't think they will, they didn't have any earth zars.  They only had those flimsy flow-wirs and tommy-to plans.
Zephline:  even if zars could grow in earth soil, they probably would grow wetter in plin soil.
Treon:  Well Duh!
Zephline:  I wonder what kind of plans tommy-tos are.  I wish we could have stayed longer.
Treon:  Me too but earth is too hot.
Zephline:  That's an understatement!  We would have died without our super coolers!
Treon:  Plin is farther away from the Plin sun than Earth is from their sun.
Zephline:  Earthlings look so funny!  Instead of snakes or spiders or grubs out their heads they had that stuff that laidy down, and some people made it stick up!
Treon:  They looked very funny!  I"m glad you have snakes and I have a spider.
Zephline:  And no wings!  How funny they looked without wings!  Oh look!  Plin!  Oh I'm so glad to be home!
Treon:  It's so much more beautiful than I remember.
Zephline:  What are you waiting for?  Let's go!

ZOOM!

Now, I totally misread the assignment.  I thought it was just supposed to be a dialogue-ish piece about a science topic.  LOL  So here is mine:

“Look—there it is again!  Did you see that????!!!”  I pointed vigorously to a spot in the distant night sky.

“I don’t see anything—are you sure?”  My best friend, Ouida, was straining her eyes to see through the Orion Starblast Astro telescope that we chipped in to buy together.  She is such a great friend.  I am pretty sure anyone else would have called me crazy.

“There—right by Venus.  A little north of it.  There is something there, it’s big and keeps blinking in and out.”

“Oh!  I see it!  You’re right!  It’s not a star and I’m sure it’s no planet.  What is it?”
“I think it’s getting bigger!!!!”

“No way!  Bigger???”

We spent the next few hours of the night, taking turns looking through the telescope and feasting on Hot Chile Doritos, the only Doritos variety that was vegan.  I’m the vegan, Ouida happily eats everything.

Three hours later, Ouida said to me, “You know, I do think it’s getting bigger.  I’m really tired and need to go to bed, but I think we should look tomorrow and see if it’s getting bigger.”

So the next night, there we were, on the balcony of our shared condo on the 35th floor, looking through our telescope again. 

“Lana, it is bigger!!!  It’s huge now!  Look!!”  Ouida pulled on my sleeve excitedly.

“My goodness!  It is huge!  And it’s getting bigger and bigger at a faster rate!  It’s as big as a…..”  I stopped suddenly and Ouida gasped.  She didn’t need the telescope to see it now. 

But it had turned a bright purple and then suddenly disappeared. 

“What????!!”  We both said breathlessly.

“Do you think that it’s a…..” Ouida quavered. 

“A what?”

“A UFO?”

“C’mon, Ouida.  Really?”

“Well…let’s get it’s coordinates with our computer and see where it would land if it were to land.  Remember when we were reading that book about UFOs and it said that UFOs usually turn bright purple before they land?”

“Well…..yeah.  There have only been 2 UFO landings here on Mars Colony though.  And they were both pretty bogus.”

“I know but still…”

So we ran inside and got our computer and worked out the coordinates.  We then hopped into our Mars landcruiser and went to the designated place.  I was a little wary, but at the same time, I thought it would have been cool to be able to report a UFO landing. 

It turned out that Ouida was right.

For there, right before our very eyes, was an enormous slimy looking saucer.

Oh well.  I will try to read the assignments better next week.  LOL

Hope you enjoyed our writings!

A.H.
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HELLO!!! This blog is a place for us to publish some of our children's work and just to journal our amazing educational journey.

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