My Trip to Space Camp

Animation

My nana (grandma) came for the weekend, and she loves to manufacture crafts. She is also the one who owns all the Christmas toys.  We decided to do animation. The animation I wanted to do is the type where you take a series of pictures that you change a minute bit in every picture, and if you click through them fast, they look like a miniature movie. My nana thought I meant the old kind of animation. In that kind, you draw pictures on a notepad and you flip through the pages fast to see a little movie.

My sister, Tabby, wanted to do the old type of animation. While I set up my scene and took pictures, Nana made short notebooks for Tabby and herself. They worked for about a half hour on their projects and they turned out great! When I was finished, they said mine was excellent! Do you agree with them?

What was your favorite part of my animation?

Are you going to try it yourself?

Flying Kites

In April, my good friend Sammy's mom, Dana, came into Mrs. Yollis' class and conduced an art project. I know her very well! The art project was for each student to make a kite out of paper. Here are the directions, so you can make one at home.

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Step 1. Take a piece of paper and fold it in half. Then open the paper and make a one inch mark on each side of the paper, five inches in from the side. Put the two marks together and fold the paper back on itself on each side until the paper is flat. Tape the two sides together.

Notice the sides are not rectangles. They are trapezoids. The part that sticks up (the part with the string attached to it) is another trapezoid. Photo by Royce.

                                                       

Step 2. (optional) On the bottom of your kite, draw any design you want. You cannot see the design that I drew in the photo above. 



Step 3.  Do not worry if your kite will not stay together. Attach a wooden stick across the bottom of your kite using tape. Try not to cover your designs (step 2).


Step 4. Collect a rainbow colored piece of fabric, and cut the inside of the end just a tiny bit. The end should be split into two pieces of fabric that are connected to one. Look in the picture above. Glue or tape one end of the cut fabric to one side of the stick-up middle part and the other end to the other side of it. You have your tail!


Step 5. For your final step, punch a hole into the end without the tail on the stick-up middle flap. Tie a LONG STRING to the hole. The longer the string, the higher the kite can fly. Tape the other end of your string to a toilet paper role. You can ravel or unravel your string on the toilet paper role without it falling off because it is taped. 


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Enjoy!

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Here are some pictures of my class playing with their kites:

Playing  outside the classroom. I hope they all had fun with their kites!
Photo by Mrs. Yollis

Still outside the classroom. I bet they would play with them every day!
Photo by Mrs. Yollis

Did you make a kite following my instructions?

In the comment section, make up a story about a kite.

A special thanks to Dana for sharing this wonderful art project with Mrs. Yollis' class! 

Thanks Dana!

My Skiing Trip to Big Bear

Recently, my family went on a vacation to the town of Big Bear. The best part of my trip was skiing.

Skiing is so fun!

I had never been skiing before, so I had to take skiing lessons. My instructor's name was Caren. 

Here Caren and I are skiing.

Skiing, in my opinion, is really hard at first, but then it got easier. First, Caren and I went on a small ski lift to the top of a small mountain covered in man-made snow. I could see my sister, Tabby, and her teacher, Debbie, skiing down the mountain that I was just about to ski down.

I couldn't get a picture of her on the ski lift, but here she is just getting to the bottom of the mountain.

Like I said earlier, skiing can be hard at first, so I fell a lot learning to ski.

Oh no! I fell down!

The skiing mountain that I went to, Snow Summit, also had snowboarders. They fell down Way more then the skiers. It was really hard getting off the ski lift, because there was a huge group of snowboarders at the top, who had fallen on the ground. It was hard to get past them.

Not only were there ski lifts, but there were "magic carpets." Those are like escalators, but they are flat. An escalator has stairs, but a "magic carpet" doesn't. 

Here we are on the "magic carpet."

For our last run, Caren told me that I could go to a skiing area that was a mile long! It was called Summit Run. It was HUGE! Some of it was hard, and some of it was easy. Most of it was a green square, and some of it was a blue square.

Here is the key:

■ Green square represents easy

■ Blue square represents medium

♦ Black diamond represens hard

♦♦ Two black diamonds represent extremely hard

First, we rode on a gigantic ski lift. When we got to the top, there was a restaurant. We didn't stop to eat. We just skied down the mountain until we got to the blue square part. We rested on the side, watching other skiers zooming down past us. There was even a boy with a camera!

When we were done resting, Caren told me that I was about to go down the part of the track that was a blue square. We got back on the hill and RACED down the mountain. The other skiers almost hit me! When we got past the blue square area, I was awfully tired and relived. We darted down the rest of the track, and I was so excited to see my dad, sister, and mom. 

Big Bear was awesome!

Predators

This post is a sequel to a post called Amazing Things You Find in Nature.

I have a lot of animals in my backyard. Some are just nice, harmless ones such as quail and deer. However, other animals are not nice at all. Those are called predators. The predators eat other animals!


First of all, I have a bobcat that lives in a huge plain area behind my backyard.

Photo by Gregg (Royce's dad).

Here is a picture of the bobcat. He is light brown with some dark grey and black spots. 

Photo by Gregg.

You can see his muscles when he walks.

He is never scared of the sound of the camera, and when you see him, and you are outside (which I never have been), just back away slowly and go inside. 

Photo by Gregg.

Now, it looks like he is creeping in a green and brown forest and is about to pounce on another animal.

Next, there are the coyotes. I have never seen them trying to kill any animals before, but they do kill.

Photo by Tara (Royce's mom)

Here is a coyote. It is almost the evening, therefore it is kind of hard to see it. 

There is actually another coyote in this picture. Can you find it?

I've seen this last animal in my yard, but it is not in my backyard. It likes to be out on hot days and has something noisy near the end of its body.

Photo by Linda (neighbor)

Here is a photo of it.

Can you guess what he is?

Have you ever seen a bobcat? If so, what did you do when you saw him?

Have you seen a coyote? Where were you? 

What kinds of predators have you seen in your backyard or just around town?

P.S. Click here for a link to a predator in my Aunt Joann and Uncle Charlie's backyard.

A Bird of Prey

Guest Post by Aunt Joann and Uncle Charlie

In my Aunt Joann and Uncle Charlie's backyard, there was an amazing site! A Cooper Hawk was about to kill a woodpecker!

You can see the Cooper Hawk. It is the large grey bird. The woodpecker is the little bird with a wing with yellow stripes on it. 

Before the Cooper hawk could kill the woodpecker, Uncle Charlie ran towards it! 

The Cooper Hawk thinks that Uncle Charlie is an enemy.

The Cooper Hawk decided to let go of the woodpecker and fly away!

Hooray for Uncle Charlie! 

The woodpecker was saved!

As you can see, the woodpecker has a red face. His face is not covered in blood; his face is just red in general.

Have you ever seen a bird try to kill another bird?

Have you ever seen a Cooper Hawk or a Woodpecker?

Amazing Things You Find in Nature

Over the past few months, I have taken a lot of pictures of interesting things that I found in my backyard. I saw animals and a cool math leaf. I bet you are wondering what a math leaf is. It is a leaf that has a pattern on it that has something to do with math. I will show you a picture of it soon.

Usually, a covey (k∂v • ee) of quails comes to our backyard. The biggest amount of quails I have ever seen was 34 quails!

Here are all of the quails in the backyard.

Here is a male quail (hey, a rhyme :-)). 

Here is a female quail. 

We also see other animals such as deer.

Here are two deer grazing (eating grass).

Here is one deer eating grass and one aware of my camera's sound. That's a smart deer.

Now both of the deer are aware of my camera's sound, and they are running away.

Now the two deer are running away really fast because they think the little click that my camera makes is an enemy coming to get them.

 Here is the math leaf!

The math leaf looks like a fraction! The numerator and denominator are not numbers though. They are colors! The fraction is red greens (that sounds really weird)! 

Here is the other side of the math leaf. That fraction is green yellows. 

What interesting animals do you have in your backyard?


 Have you ever found a covey of quails?


Have you ever investigated plants to see if their were any cool leaves on them?