Home School Week 1

This week I learned about Bernoulli's Principle.

Basically it means that the lower the pressure, the faster it goes.

AKA "Flip the Ship"

FLP (or flip) stands for, "the faster it goes the lower the pressure."

SHP (or ship) stands for, "the slower it goes the higher the pressure."

The experiment I did with dad was blowing on a card with a match behind it.

The air pressure was lower in the section of the flame which caused it to go towards you.

Another science lesson dad taught me was about inertia.

Newton's First Principle AKA inertia is,

"an object at rest tends to stay at rest until it is acted upon by another force."

To demonstrate this principle, we shot a BB gun at a can.

The can stayed still until the BB hit it.

The BB was acted upon by air pressure, and the air pressure was released when we pulled the trigger.

Then the BB hit the can and acted upon the can so it moved as well.

So far I think home school is awesome.

I like it because I like the way we test and practice spelling.

I also like that we have awesome new books to learn from.

So far my favorite topic this year is spelling.

So far I don't have any complaints about home school.

My favorite thing about Laurie is that she had her first dog pile - 

on me!

I love playing with my baby sister and my brother - 

my sister especially.

My goals for next week are:

To get to Chapter 8 in math.

To Memorize my preposition song for grammar.

To get to the review test in spelling.

To learn about the constitution for social studies.

To properly spell Pacific States, Mountain States, Nothern Central States and Southern Central States for geography.

To read Heroes of Olympus Book 4 for reading.

And a few other things...

Kayaking in Ketchikan

I am in a five day - day camp to learn about kayaking.

I have been looking forward to this for most of the summer.

On Sunday our family drove to the Kayaks to make sure we knew where we were going.

I was SOOOO excited!

My lessons began on Monday.

The office is in this boat.

We started our lessons on the top of the boat.

We played games while we waited for another group to get there.

We got to kayak up Creek Street.

I was disappointed to not get to do the rutter but I was good at paddling.

On the second day (Tuesday) we kayaked to Pinnick Island.

It wore me out!

I had to paddle against the wind and waves.

My partner was one of the instructors.

Once we got back, we waited in our kayak while everyone took turns getting out.

To get out of a kayak you put your chest on the dock and then roll out.

On Wednesday we had our first time going in single-person kayaks.

We went around Thomas Basin.

We were also in double kayaks and went by the cruise ships and docked somewhere for our snack.

I have two more days of kayaking adventures and I am looking forward to them!

My First Day of the Family Marathon

This morning my mom challenged us to a family marathon. Everyone in the family runs miles until we all get to 26 miles. Our goal is to finish before traveling to Utah on June 30. Everyone who finishes gets to have a family Papa Murphy's pizza party while we are in Utah. The first one to finish also gets $25 to spend on whatever they want to buy. If I win first place, I already know what I want to buy: it's an EX Pokemon pack with a big EX Pokemon card. Big cards are rare and so are EX's.

To work on the challenge, I immediately did two miles on the treadmill. Then we walked another mile to Dad's work. I am currently winning with three miles. (Peter has two, Mom has one and Dad doesn't have any yet.)

We ate lunch at the middle school and had fun playing with North and April (and Peter). While we were playing hide and seek I was hiding down a trail. I got bored waiting for them to find me and went back to where the lunch was. No one was there except for a lady who said that someone was looking for a boy in a red jacket (me). She told me what direction the people looking for me went in (about 15 minutes earlier) and I decided that I should go the other way to meet them. I got back to the car and no one was there. Then I just waited at the car and eventually Dad found me. Dad told me that people had been looking for me for a long time. He was more than  half an hour late getting back to work from his lunch break. Mom said she was really scared and almost called the police,

We went home and played for a while. Peter and I played war (card game). Then we went to the library. North and April were there too! (Unplanned.) I played chess with April, checked out some books and two movies. We went home and I started reading. After a while Peter and I were continuing our war game.

Oh, and by the way, the war game started this morning (before the marathon challenge.)

To be continued...

End of 4th Grade

To celebrate the end of 4th grade, I made an ice-cream sundae. (shown above)

I am going to miss having Mrs. Lebeau for a teacher. She was just super nice. I liked the spot parties. They were parties we had throughout the year that were different each time. Sometimes they were read-ins. Sometimes they were movies. My favorite spot party was the last spot party - surprisingly on the last day of the school year. We watched Frozen and had treats.

My favorite subjects in school this year were math, science and reading.

In math we learned how to add decimals. We learned how to add and multiply fractions.

In science I learned about the willow ptarmigan (shown below). It is the state bird. The scientific name for this bird is the Lagopus lagopus. It's higher classification is lagopus. It's lower classification is the red grouse.

The best thing I read this year was Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book 4: Battle of the Labyrinth.

Other highlights of my year include participating in the Geography Bee where I took 4th place in the school. My other highlight was participating in Battle of the Books. I hope to do both of these again next year as a 5th grader.

Another great thing about this year is that my parents bought me Minecraft. My user name is peanutbuterninja.

My New Baby Sister

Laurie was born on New Year's Eve. On June 8th she is 5 months old and wears 12 month clothes!

I love being a big, big brother. But it's only to my baby sister. (I am a big brother to Peter and a big, big brother to Laurie.)

I love having a baby in the house because I love playing with her dinosaur toy. I love to see her have fun. But I don't like it when she interrupts my reading because I am babysitting her.

My favorite thing to do with her is hold her and pretending to "eat" her tummy. (That makes her laugh.)