May. 20, 2009
Arachnid(based on a true story)
Posted in Narrations
|
The spider was prepared. He was ready to pounce on his prey: a small house spider. He had been stalking it for a while, and all his efforts had led up to this moment. The web of his lunch-to-be was stretched between the corner of two perpendicular walls. But he faced a predicament. If he attempted to attack his prey by climbing along the web, the other spider might feel his presence on the web and run off. But the jumping spider had taken this into account. He jumped.. And caught his prey in mid air, knocking it unconscious and thereby securing his lunch. P.S.: I actually saw this story played out on my front porch!!!!!! |
Mar. 23, 2009
American History: How Benjamin Franklin Came to Philadelphia...
Posted in Daily bread
|
To those who enjoy reading my narrations, I apologize. I was writing today's narration, and I had finished writing it out, but out of habit I clicked close, when I had not saved my progress. And as I really don't feel like writing all that all over again, I will not continue. |
Mar. 18, 2009
Church History: The Story of the Chinese Christians and the Boxer Rebellion
Posted in Narrations
|
In early 1900, the Christians in China were enduring mass slaughter. A group of men who were mostly men in connection with the officials were ravaging the Christian homes and churches. They were taken to pagan temples, and either beheaded on the spot, or tortured until they divulged the hiding places of their fellow Christians. |
Mar. 17, 2009
Literature: The Story of Hero and Leander
Posted in Narrations
|
Leander was a young man who was in love with a young lady, but she was in Europe, and he, in Asia. A small body of water separated the two people, but every night Leander would swim the lake and go to see Hero. She hung a lamp out her balcony window for this purpose, so he could find his way in the dark. One night, however, a storm was blowing the waves against him, and at last he sunk below the waves. When his body washed up on the shore the next day, Hero saw it and, heartbroken, jumped into the lake to drown. |
Mar. 12, 2009
Today I Finished My Geography Book...
Posted in Narrations
|
Today I finished my geography book, and I learned about how global positioning systems work. There are 24 GPS satellites in orbit around the earth. They send a signal to GPS receivers all around the world. The receivers calculate how far away each of the satellites are, and from this, can calculate exactly where the unit is. |
Mar. 10, 2009
Today's Geography Lesson: More Lines of Longitude...
Posted in Narrations
|
Today I read about how to measure how far east or west you are of Greenwich, England. There's a certain formula for figuring out such things, but I couldn't figure that out. Long story short, there was a man named John Harrison who had the unimaginable task of devoting his whole life to figuring out how to make a clock that came within 5 seconds a day of the real time.Eventually he suceeded, and everyone lived happily ever after. The end. |
Mar. 6, 2009
Our New Wrist-Mounted Walkie-Talkies...
Posted in Daily bread
|
Recently we ordered two wristwatch style walkie-talkies from Vision Forum, and the wrist bands literally came apart. At first, it was just the tiny pin that attached the watch to the wristband, but then, the little buckle completely ripped through the rubber wristband. Now neither of the watches are usable, and the batteries are probably dead. If they ever come out with a better material for wristbands, I will buy that. But until then, I will simply keep my eyes open. |
Mar. 2, 2009
Today's Geography Lesson: Lines of Longitude
|
We had a way of measuring how far north or south we were, by way of lines of latitude. But we needed a way of measuring how far east or west we are. So lines of longitude were invented. So now, we had a way of measuring how far east or west, but of what? So the idea came up for a "prime meridian." Every country wanted the honor of having the prime meridian run through their capital. France wanted the prime meridian to run through Paris. England wanted it to run through London. But even more people wanted it to run through Jerusalem. But none of these was correct. The prime meridian runs through a tiny town in England, not London. |
Mar. 2, 2009
American History: How Pennsylvania was Founded
Posted in Narrations
|
William Penn was a Quaker. He was the son of Sir William Penn, who was an admiral in the British navy, and a good friend of King Charles the First. When young William Penn turned Quaker, his father nearly threw him out of the house, but soon repented of his anger towards his son. Long after that, he was on his way to the new world, running away from persecution in England. The governor of New Jersey was selling a large piece of his land, and William Penn bought it, with the help of a few of his richer Quaker friends. They named it Pennsylvania |
Mar. 2, 2009
My Math...
Posted in Daily bread
|
For the past week, I have been trying desperately to learn how to divide three digit numbers by two digit numbers. Mom says that I have to learn to do it without help from the MUS blocks, but I keep saying that is impossible. "Once you get it down, it'll be easy." she says, but I just can't believe that. |
Feb. 26, 2009
Today's Geography Lesson: Maps
Posted in Narrations
|
There was once a man who loved to row up and down the beach in a little rowboat, and he always made it back home in time for dinner. Every time he saw a recognizable spot, he would carve a sort of image into his oar handle, and he would always know where he was. In the olden times, you didn't have maps to look at to guide you. The only available asset was the globe. Many people found it hard to lug around a big, heavy globe (for in those times, you made globes out of a wire frame, smeared with plaster, which was very heavy), and so the first map was invented. If you take an orange, and cut the peel off, leaving it in one piece, it will lie flat. This was the basic idea. But this method leaves large gaps in the map, cutting whole countries in half. This is where Gerhard Kremer invented the map that we see today. Gerhard was an arithmetic teacher, so his job was to know math, and this math helped him to calculate a way to flatten maps completely. Imagine a can, with the label still on, instead of an orange. Take the label off the can, and this was the kind of map that Gerhard Kremer, or "Mercator" as he eventually came to be called, had. |
Jan. 13, 2009
My geography lesson
Posted in Narrations
|
Today I learned about the different plates that form the earth's crust. In 1858 a christian man named Antonio Snider-Pellegrini believed that the different continents had once been fitted together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. If you look at the edges of the east coast of the Americas, they look like they would fit perfectly together. |
Dec. 2, 2008
The Earth is Shaking! The Earth is Shaking!
Posted in Narrations
|
This week I read in my geography book about how geographers can read seismic waves to get an idea of what the center of the earth is like. The reason they can do this is because of the two types of seismic waves: Primary(P) waves and Secondary(S) waves. Both types of waves travel through the earth, emitting from the central point of the earthquake. The difference is the fact that S waves cannot travel through a liquid, but will either bounce back or turn into the aforementioned P waves. Therefore, if an earthquake occurs in beijing, a geographer in new york could see P waves and guess that there must be some liquid between the two pieces of crust. |
Dec. 1, 2008
This is is Sirius Stuff...
Posted in Narrations
|
Today I read in my astronomy about the different constellations. The one constellation that caught my attention was Canis Major, or The Great Dog. When you look at the Sirius satellite radio symbol, you see the eyes as stars. I see this to be based in the fact that the eyes of Canis Major are formed by the double-star system, Sirius. |
Nov. 25, 2008
Today's Geography Reading
Posted in Narrations
|
Today I read about how far down you would have to dig to get to the core: 3,975 miles. We actually don’t know exactly what it’s like, down there in the core, but we can make a good guess, based on the seismic waves generated by earthquakes. We cannot even begin to send a man that far down. For a price tag of about $100,000,000 dollars, a hole was dug over the course of 20 years that was seven and one half miles deep. Think about it. 7.5 Into 3975. That’s 530 times as deep as the hole that we dug. That’s 16,790 times the height of the |
Oct. 24, 2008
Leadership and Caring for Others
Posted in Narrations
|
In 1916, Ernest Shackleton was on a ship to Antarctica so that he and his crew could be the first people to cross the continent on foot. But as they were nearing the coast, the water froze around the ship. The hull split from the pressure and the crew were forced to row for the nearest shoreline in a lifeboat. They finally landed on a barren piece of land called Elephant Island. If it weren't for Ernest Shackleton, who sailed for shore in a longboat, hiked across desolate, mountainous terrain to reach the populated side of South George Island, all of his men would have perished. But thanks to Ernest Shackleton, not a single man left this world. From, Boyhood and beyond by Bob Schultz |
Sep. 4, 2008
Today's Narration
Posted in Narrations
|
Today I will narrate what I learned in my astronomy book. I have just started reading about space rocks. I have read that comets are big giant balls of snow, ice, and rock. Asteroids are really big rocks that are orbiting the sun. Unlike comets, asteroids are only rock, instead of ice mixed in. Meteors are rocks that some people call shooting stars. They are rocks that are falling through the earth's atmosphere. Not many of these make it through without disintegrating, but the ones that do that reach the earth are called meteorites. Some astronomers like to collect these rocks for testing. |
Sep. 13, 2007
There is a Narration this Day...
Posted in Narrations
|
I am going to tell you about a martyr whose name was Richard Cameron: There once was a king called Charles II and at the moment I am going to tell you of he is fuming. He has just come to the end of a chase through a marsh in Scotland. He is an English king and he rules at this point over all of Scotland. Just across the mud there stands a band of not more than sixty-five men that are not armed. You can imagine the contrast as shiny armor meets farm cloths. The splendor of polished armor versus the dullness of everyday shirts. But there are two dead men that stand out. They are the two Cameron brothers. Two leaders of the puritan church. A little while ago they arrived from Holland, where they had been hiding. The king's men did not stop until every puritan person was dead. When the deed was done, they chopped off Richard's head and hands and rode through the streets of London saying," Richard is dead!" Richard's father was is jail. They came to him and put the head and hands in his lap. They asked if he knew who they belonged to, and he said," They belong to my Richard" and broke down in tears. The story is a sad one as are many martyr stories.
|
Aug. 27, 2007
Today's Narraton...
Posted in Narrations
|
I just read Chapter #22 of This Country of Ours which is my history for this year and also keeps on for like a year. But anyway... After the MAYFLOWER landed in New England the pilgrims got off the little craft and went about setting up a new colony in a cold winter in a new land. But after a while a disease came around and many people got sick and a few died. When winter went and spring came, however,the deadly disease went away. There on the bank of the harbor where they had docked their ship, the little MAYFLOWER was leaving and it was a sad farewell as the little ship sailed away for England. Then, when the ship sailed out of sight over the horizon the pilgrim fathers went about their daily chores. They had their friendly Indians, their fights with other Indian tribes, but overall they prospered, and eventually became part of modern day Massachusetts.
|
Aug. 25, 2007
Still Bloggin'
Posted in Daily bread
|
I'm still blogging but I'm running out of ideas on things to blog about. I never thought I'd be saying this but um... SOMEONE PLEASE TAG ME!!!!!!!!!! |