Last night I finished a biography about Helen Keller.
She was a girl who couldn’t see, hear, or talk.
Then she had a teacher named Annie Sullivan.
She learned a lot from the teacher.
But soon the teacher couldn’t see either.
Helen learned how to write letters in the palm of her hands. If she could see, she could use sign language like other deaf/mute people. Here is a demonstration:
And she learned braille so she could read with her finger tips.
2 days ago it was one my cousins’ confirmation.
A sacrament in which the Holy Ghost is given to those already baptized in order to make them strong and perfect Christians and soldiers of Jesus Christ.
I went there with my cousins, uncles, mom, my sister and one of my aunts.
I nearly fell asleep.
Yesterday I went to Jones beach for the first time.
It is an enormous beach on the south shore of Long Island.
There were non-stop big waves and my sister and I rode them for a long time.
After I read the first Droon book, I read the next dozen in the series:
And today I hope to finish Book 14 – Voyage of the Jaffa Wind. I read 80 pages so far today and have 52 pages left. This is the longest book yet in the series.
The other day I watched Free Willy.
It was about a killer whale/orca who was caught and put in an aquarium.
But the whale was sad because he wasn’t in his home, the ocean.
A boy named Jesse loved him so much.
He got some help and made a secret plan to set the whale free.
On Monday we climbed up Mt. Wachusett.
I went with my grandfather, my dad, and my sister.
We were going to drive up but the road was closed.
So we started up the trail instead.
My dad didn’t think that we would make it to the top but we did.
I was the leader.
I fell two times and hurt my knee.
My sister fell three times.
My grandpa was the slowest hiker.
Mt. Wachusett is 1,000 feet tall.
That is Latin for “I came, I saw, I conquered”.
“avenue” comes from veni.
“video” comes from vidi.
“invincible” and “convince” come from the Latin verb vici/vinco.
Invincible means not-conquerable.
And convince means to conquer-with.
My Grandma had a garage sale.
She was trying to sell old stuff she doesn’t need.
She sold furniture, books, toys, pictures, et cetera.
My 11 year old cousin sold cookies and munchkins.
It was fun.
When my mom has a yard sale, I am going to sell lemonade and iced tea.
Did you that:
a·(b+c) = a·b + a·c ?
It’s called the distributive law of equality.
You can use it to make hard math questions easier.
For example:
19·20 = ?
Well, I know that 19·20 = (20-1)·20
And I know that 20·20 = 400
So 19·20 = 20·20 – 1·20 = 380
I say out loud, “nineteen twenties equals twenty twenties minus one twenty – which equals four hundred minus twenty – which equals three hundred and eighty.”
I can do that in my head!
Those are Latin words that are on coins.
Latin is a really old language.
A lot of English words come Latin.
E means “out from”
Pluribus means “many”
Unum means “one”
So “E Pluribus Unum” means “out of many one”.
It means that America is made of many different people but it’s one country.
I am learning to play chess.
My uncle bought me a chess set for my 4th birthday.
To win you have kill your opponent’s king before he kills your king.
There are several kinds of pieces: pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, a queen, and a king.
Each piece moves differently.
Pawns advance one square at a time. But on their first move they can go two spaces. And they can go diagonally one space only when they take someone.
Knights move up two and over one square in any direction.
Bishops move diagonally in any direction.
Rooks move up and down and sideways as many spaces as they want.
The queen is very powerful. She can move in any direction, any number of spaces.
The king can also move in any direction but only one space at a time.
11X + 23 = 4X – 5
That ↑ is called an equation.
My job is to find out the mystery number X.
First I get all the X’s on one side.
So I subtract 4X from both sides of the equation.
11X + 23 – 4X = 4X – 5 – 4X
7X + 23 = -5
Next I subtract 23 from both sides.
7X + 23 – 23 = -5 – 23
7X = -28
Now I need to turn the 7 into an invisible 1.
So we divide both sides by 7.
7X / 7 = -28 / 7
X = -4
Let’s check our answer.
11·-4 + 23 = 4·-4 – 5
-44 + 23 = -16 – 5
-21 = -21
Yesterday I finished a book called The Secrets of Droon – The Hidden Stairs and the Magic Carpet.
It was about three kids Eric, Neal, and Julie who found a small door in Eric’s basement.
They opened the door and found a magic staircase that led to Droon, the Underworld.
They had a wild adventure with Groggles, Ninns, Princess Keeah, Lord Sparr, a magic carpet, etc.
I really liked it and will read book 2 of the Droon series next.
I collected 5 tokens From cereal boxes and then we ordered the movie The Sandlot.
I watched it the other night and I liked it.
It was about a kid who was learning how to play baseball and a mean dog.
But it was actually a nice dog.
I just read that ↑ book.
It’s about a 5 year old boy nicknamed Fudge, his family the Hatchers, and their friends the Tubmans.
Together they shared a summer house in maine for 3 weeks.
They went on a boat, played a lot of baseball, had a fake wedding, and a real wedding.
It was a very silly book by Judy Blume.