Recently Colonel Virts visited our school. Colonel Virts is an astronaut who wrote many books about leaving the planet. During his time in space, he took more than 300,000 photos. More than any other space mission. A lot of the photos were used in the movies One More Orbit and A Beautiful Planet. We loved having him talk at our school and I encourage you to go check him out at https://www.terryvirts.com/

About a week ago, my L.A. class started a short project. We took our fingerprints and identified them. To do this, we colored on our fingers with pencil until our fingers were black. Then, we stuck tape to our fingers and peeled the tape of. Then, the fingerprint was on the tape! Then, we stuck it on the paper and it was done!We are doing this because we are reading The Westing Game and it is a mystery.

Here are 8 facts about fingerprints.

1. Koalas have them too!

2. Identical twins have different fingerprints.

3. Some people are born without fingerprints.

4. British police once ordered an entire town to submit their fingerprints.

5. Ancient fingerprints have been preserved for thousands of years.

6. Removing your fingerprint is very difficult.

7. The scientific name for fingerprints is dermatoglyph

8. There are 3 different types of fingerprint patterns.

Recently my L.A. class we made our books about our Perfect Planet Project. To make them, we where helped by Peg Gignoux (http://Gignouxart.com). The way we did it is we use akua ink and spread it on a jelly like sheet. Then we put leaves on The paper and pressed against the ink to make the paper. Then we cut out shaped to be on our planet and glued them to the book. Next we glued the text on and finished.

For L.A, we had to write a story from when we where little. We had to do this because we were reading The Last Cuentista and in that book, Petra finds stories very important. I could not think of a story, so I extended 3 mini stories. Without further ado, witness this disgrace to writing.

Once upon a time, I got a dog. I loved my dog. I played with it, watched tv with it, and played games with it. But one day, I got bored of it being brown and white so I decided to get some paint out. I did not know what color to paint him but I decided on blue. So then I got some blue paint out and painted the dog! Once I had finished painting him, it hit me. My mom would be so made if she found out our dog had been painted blue! So when my mom got home that night, I hid him in the shed! But the next day our WHOLE house was woken up by the sound of barking! Next thing I knew, I was grounded for a week for painting the dog blue and locking him in the shed. The end.

Once upon a time, I wanted to go skydiving. But you couldn’t go skydiving without a permit or a ton of money. So one day I thought of an idea. I was going to make a parachute, and jump off the barn! But I could not do that when my mom was home. I’d get in a lot of trouble. So the second my mom walked out the door, I got to work. I took the sheet and made it into a parachute shape. Then I took some cardboard and taped them together and went to the barn. I had a hard time getting on top with the parachute getting in my face and weighing me down but I got there eventually and I jumped off and then, THUMP! I fell right on my arm! As I lay on the ground the pain started to build! It felt like it was almost going to fall off until my mom got home, took me to the hospital, and when I was better, my dad broke my arm with his belt when he was punishing me. The end.

Once upon a time, we planted a tree. It was a pretty big tree but the branches were pretty thin. One day I decided to climb that tree but I fell and hurt myself. So after that I was never going to climb that tree again. But I loved climbing trees. But I still did not climb it. Every day after school I would play in the backyard and pass it every time, but still, I did not climb it. But one day I passed the tree and started playing in the backyard and saw something that was thin and had a pattern on its back. I just ignored it the first time but the second time, I realized it was a snake! I dashed over to the tree and started climbing. I climb faster that I ever had and made it to the top in what felt like under 10 seconds! I am sitting at the top, petrified, watching the snake when I hear a snap! I look down and I see a big crack in the trunk of the tree and as if in slow motion the tree falls! As I see the ground coming closer, I put my hands out in an attempt to catch myself but I miss! I hit the ground and scream so loud that the trees shake! Then I see the snake coming right  at me! It slithers right in front of me, and looks me dead in the eye and I say “hello sir.”  And he slithers away. The end.

Over the weekend, I watched Mario. I think it was a good movie but it left out some stuff. Also some reveals could’ve been more exciting. SPOILERS AHEAD. My first thought was Yoshi. In the end-credit scene, it showed a green Yoshi about to hatch. But this was not that exciting because earlier in the movie, we see a heard of Yoshi in a montage at the beginning. Also, the only character that really felt like he had character development was Luigi who was a coward at the beginning, and a hero at the end. Also, the Donkey Kong army was really underwhelming because they got taken out by Bowser’s army. Also, I feel like the whole Bowser liking Peach thing really took away from Browsers intimidation. But now I am going to point out some things I liked. One thing I liked was the Mario Kart reference where they were on Rainbow Road and the blue shell knocks Mario and Donkey Kong into the water. Another thing I liked was how at the beginning, it showed bowser absolutely destroying these penguins

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For L.A class we are pretending to invest $20,000 in stocks because a character in the book we are reading (The Westing Game) is investing in the stock market

My friend and I invested in Nike, Apple, Crispr, and Amazon. Crispr was suggested by one of our friends. We hoped that all of them would go up but that did not happen. We invested 102 stocks in Crispr, 40 in Amazon, 20 in Nike, and. 50 in Apple. Most stocks are doing pretty well, but Nike just refuses to go up. But Crispr is up about $20 so we are up $2300. Right now we are third in the competition. In second is Sunrise Stocks at $2600, and in first is Invest Now (the friend who recommended Crispr) at $3500.

About one month ago a really cool acting group called the Chamber Theater Productions came to our school. They did two plays. The Monkey’s Paw, and The Necklace. SPOILERS AHEAD. The Monkey’s Paw is a story about a family who gets this old shriveled up monkey’s paw with three wishes from a friend. But the friend warns them not to use It to make wishes because bad stuff will happen. But the family doesn’t listen so they wish for $200 to pay of the mortgage. The son goes to work and the parents stay home. In the afternoon the parents get a check with $200 dollars on it. But later, a man in a black suit comes and informs the parents that there son has died in a machinery accident. Then the mother goes to the Monkey’s Paw and wishes the son to be alive. But then she realizes that she brought son back to life all mangled up. Then she hears ghoulish knocking on the door and moaning. But then, the father wishes his son to be dead.

THE NECKLACE

The Necklace is a story about a girl who borrows a Necklace for a ball then looses it. She gets super nervous so she thinks of buying a new one. So she buys a new one and gives it to the rich girl who gave her the Necklace. It takes her and her husband ten years of living in an attic and being a maid she finally paid of her debt only to realize the necklace she had been given was barely worth $500

Yesterday at school there was a play called elsewhere where there where 4 girls and they were looking for a boy who mysteriously disappeared. They’re are looking through some stuff when they hear a bell striking 11. Next they went and uncovers a big old creepy self and then they get teleported to a realm called elsewhere where they are greeted by a half buffalo half librarian but mostly librarian to tell them about elsewhere. Elsewhere is where you go when you daydream and she said to never talk about nightmares. But they have been chosen to defeat the Frostbringer, a monster that has put elsewhere in an eternal winter so the buffalo librarian gives everyone gifts. One girl got  a cloak of protection, another got a sparkle dress, the one with a brain tumor gets a hat to help her head, and the last girl gets a rock. Then a magical door appears and they go through all these different places. The one I remember best was when one of the girls was talking about how she was scared of the tooth fairy because she thought she had minions who took your teeth. Then out of nowhere a bunch of goblins in black cloaks tie the 4 girls up and the tooth fairy comes out because she was going to take everyone’s teeth but the girl who was afraid of the tooth fairy tells her where her baby teeth where hidden and they escaped. Next the other girl has a nightmare where a mom and a dad bear are getting divorced and the baby bear goes to boarding school. That is what that girl used to act out because that is what happened to her. Next the girl with the brain tumor gets teleported to a dark place with clocks all around. Then the clock maker comes out and tells her that her time is almost up. Then she talks about how she had to remember 10 words for 24 hours and kept failing because she couldn’t remember. Then the frostbringer comes and defeats everyone except the girl with the rock so the girl with the rock throws the rock at the frostbringer and defeats him. Then they get magically teleported back. One girl realizes that the girl with the tumor is gone. So they have to go back sand then one girls boyfriend comes in and he is a scaredy-cat so when they get back to elsewhere he keeps freaking out during the nightmares. After the nightmares, the frostbringer comes back and all of them are like “didn’t we just kill you?” And the frontbringer just fights them but when they defeat the frostbringer, it is the girl with the tumor! Then she explains why she stayed there and then they get teleported back and none of them remember except the girl with the brain tumor who has the last line and says “I remember.”

A few days ago we went on a field trip to the NC Museum of Natural Sciences! First we went to look at the dinosaurs. There was a giant T-Rex skull model in the middle with information on the walls. Then we went into another room that had a models of dinosaurs with more information. Next it transitioned to the Dinos who live underwater ant at the end there was a cool blue tunnel that looked like you where underwater with all of the ancient fish. At the end there was a giant mammal.

Then we went to the snake and bug exhibit and there where giant bee heads that we could look in and see what the bees see. Then there was a snake exhibit. We looked at the snakes and then when to the race exhibit and filled out a paper.

Then we looked at the dinosaurs from the top view. Then when to a building that had a cool short bird movie going on. When that finished we looked around the weather section, then filled out a sheet about meteors.

Then there was this guy 3d printing cool stuff like statues, and then we looked at locations of satellites.

This year, during science we had a group project where we had to make a heat shield that is 1cm thick and weighs under 45 grams and has to keep the cold side cold enough to not cook an egg. What we did the final project was testing it against a blow torch but when just testing materials to see if they work we just used a heat gun. First we tested cotton balls with tape wrapped around it and that did not work very well because the tape expanded and the cotton was charred. Next we tested tin foil sponge and tape and that worked pretty well because the tin foil reflected heat and the sponge was a good insulator. In our last test we tested tin foil, sponges, steel wool, and spackling compound. That test did amazingly so we definitely wanted to use that as our final design. In the end our final design was tin foil then sponge then spackling the steel wool, then spackling, then steel wool and finally two more sponges with spackle holding them together. Here are our before and after photos.