Earth Day is time when you take care of the Earth.
Birthdays are a time to celebrate your birth.
What if your birthday’s on Earth Day?
Then your activities are to pick up garbage
and go to the park and have some fun.
No cars allowed.
So go tend your garden or plant a tree.
Then put on your shoes and go run free.
You’ll have a blast celebrating your birthday
on Earth Day outdoors with me.
The end.
For my presentation on the dilophosaurus, I had to stand in front of the whole class on Valentine’s Day. Here are a few words from my presentation:
“Dilophosaurus lived in the early jurassic time period about 200 million years ago. It’s blade-like teeth were lined along its jaws to help it bite its prey. It had two crests on its head. In some places, the crests were as thin as paper.”
After my presentation we had a big Valentine’s Day party. It was fun.
Dad says: Annie spent a lot of time and hard work on her presentation. We went to a dinosaur park in Granger. We checked books out from the library. We spent several evenings cutting and pasting and writing and printing. She did a great job on her presentation. She spoke up and looked at her audience. Dad is proud of Annie.
I have a substitute teacher because my regular teacher’s wife had a baby. The baby’s name is Amelia. My substitute teacher’s name is Mr. Neff. Yesterday, the substitute teacher gave us hard math. It was harder than Mr. Hausske’s math. We also played my favorite game. It’s called “Sparkle.” In Sparkle you stand in a circle and the teacher pulls the spelling words. Then we go around saying each letter of the word. If you don’t get the letter right, you have to sit down. The person who is left standing is the winner of Sparkle. Today, we played another one of my favorite games. This game is called “Hausske Quest.” In Hausske Quest you have buzzers, white boards, and markers. The teacher picks a team and the team gets to choose a category. And they get to choose point values. The teacher pulls the card from that point value in a category. He reads it out loud and we try to buzz in first to answer the correct answer. If you don’t answer correctly you don’t get a second chance.
Dad says: Annie’s back at her mom’s house for the last two weeks of summer. I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you about Annika’s reading skills. I can’t believe how this girl loves to read. She reads chapter books in just days. She’s read the entire “Little House on the Prairie” series at age six. I recently read her the first Harry Potter book. When I finished reading it out loud she read it over to herself in two days. It’s amazing. You give her a book and she devours it. Then she’ll reread books when she runs out. I must say it is getting a little expensive. I suppose a visit to the library would be in order.
We’re at my dad’s friend’s cabin. We’ve had a lot of fun the first day. I was a little scared about sleeping in the loft, but now I’m not scared. This morning I woke up and we went to Mt. Rainier National Park. At the park we went to Sunrise and hiked on a trail to a nice, grassy viewpoint. On the way back on the trail we saw a lot of flowers There were all of the rainbow colors and more. I went to a shop and got a nightie and a neat stone and a travel phone/calculator. Then we went on a trail with Shep, our dog, for a little bit. It was really fun and now we’re back at the cabin. We just had cheeseburgers and we’re having lots of fun.
Dad says: Annie is away at her mom’s house again, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to comment on her songwriting abilities. I think Annie has an innate talent for songwriting.
She’s only seven years old, but she shows promise. Although she decided to stop taking piano lessons, she has an interest in fiddle, guitar, and music in general. She’s also played the “thrumpet” since she was two. What’s a thrumpet? It’s the sound she makes while humming and sucking her thumb at the same time. Believe it or not, she’s actually learned to create unique, yet simple melody lines playing her thrumpet.
While we were traveling on the Olympic Peninsula last week she created a short, simple, repetitive three-note pattern. She’d play her thrumpet pattern two to four times, then sing a single lyrical line. This created an interesting effect, actually very modern, yet ancient.
The words also impressed me. She created two little one-line songs. Here’s the first song:
“I’ve got two friends, one is silver, the other is gold.”
The song is not about money, but friends. She explained to me that the “gold” friends are her best friends, but that there is always room for new “silver” friends. I thought that showed good sense.
Here’s the second song:
“Don’t chase butterflies, they’ll come to you.”
She explained that whenever she’s tried to chase a butterfly, they always fly away, but when she lets them fly their own way, they’re more likely to come to her. I thought that showed great observation skills and a touch of youthful wisdom.
Shep, daddy, and I went to Rialto Beach near the small town of LaPush. We walked up the beach to Ellen Creek, and down the beach back to the car. I found some pretty rocks and cool driftwood that I can make music with. There’s a piece of round driftwood and a piece that’s long and skinny with holes. I can use the round stick to hit the piece with holes and it makes a clunking noise.
Then we went to LaPush and ate a corn dog, onion rings, and a burrito in the parking lot. LaPush looked like a really poor town and I felt like they should have nicer houses, not just old junky ones.
Then we went back to Rialto Beach. I walked Shep along the beach. I am tough on Shep. I make him heel better than daddy. We stood in the waves and we got our feet all wet, but a huge wave came and it went up to my knees. My flipflop almost went out to sea, but I caught it and then we walked in bare feet and the sand and little rocks massaged our feet. Then we walked to a little beach hut that we found. I took some pictures with the camera that dad bought me. I went up on a big driftwood log and Shep hopped right up. I was in a little nook in the log. Here are a couple pictures that we took.
Last night my daddy and I played the banjos we brought with us. We played them in our campground on the picnic bench. It was really fun when we played them. The banjo I played is a very small one. It’s called banjolele. It only has four strings and is tuned like a ukelele. When my dad and I played I made up a little song and it was called Playing on the Banjos. The song goes like this:
“My daddy and I were playing the banjos by the ocean straight
We heard the waves come crashing in
We stayed up playing our banjos really, really late
And tomorrow we’ll do it again
And we’ll sing: we hiked on the trails today
But now we’re playing the banjos… hurray!”
First my daddy dropped me off at the classroom where they told us to drop off the kids. When all of the kids were there the teacher gave us a work packet. He told us to go to page 19. Then we went outside with our packets and a wind-wheel. We did an activity with the wind-wheel and the activity was to try to figure out which way the wind was blowing and how fast it was blowing. We drew a picture of the clouds. We played a game. We said “can I come aboard” and we helped each other on and off. The helper ran to the boat and back. We had playground time. We went back to the classroom and ate snacks. Then we went in the wooden boat workshop. There was a side door. Inside there were life jackets. We put them on. Then we went to our boat and it was called the “Martha J.” We went to the practice area and each person got to drive the boat for 15 minutes. We went back to the classroom and worked on another assignment. We gave our books to our teacher. And then daddy came and got me and I showed him the boat and where to watch me sail in the next day of fun boating lessons.
Dad says: Annie and I will be going camping the next two weeks. We’ll spend one week in the Port Townsend area and the next in the Port Angeles area. We plan on doing some hiking and swimming, too. Annie loves nature, so I expect we’ll do our share of nature walking. Maybe we’ll see some critters. Annie will be posting a couple of posts highlighting some of her favorite activities during our short vacation. Check back.
