A Piece of Dirt

MA was given the assignment of using her five senses to describe a piece of dirt.

I'm describing a piece of dirt right now. And I'm describing it with my five senses. It feels grainy, looks rocky. It smells smoky. It sounds windy. It takes yucky (don't worry; I didn't really taste it; I just imagined what it tasted like). I'm off now to describe a piece of sand.

She actually told me, "In parentheses, put..." :-P


(No, the picture doesn't have anything to do with the post other than being of the author, but I thought she deserved a picture with her writing, too, and we forgot to take one of her dirt...although I could still get one of what's left on the stairs from where she spilled it.)

A (Cold, Soggy) Morning

JW was given the following quote (from A Lion to Guard Us) and asked to add some descriptive adjectives to make it more interesting:

On a morning in 1609, a man made his way over a bridge. He wore a jacket and a cap. His clothes were splashed with mud, and mud sucked at his shoes. He could hardly see for the rain in his face.


This was what JW came up with:

On a cold, soggy morning in 1609, an old man made his way over a rotting wood bridge. He wore a torn jacket and a dusty cap. His old clothes were splashed with cold mud, and wet mud sucked at his worn shoes. He could hardly see for the muddy rain in his old face.

An adjective for every noun! That's JW's motto today :-)

Outline: The History of Chocolate

The outline that started it all.

A. It all started with a bean …
1.The beginning
a. First, Aztecs saw monkeys eating the pulps and spitting out the seeds of cocoa beans.
b. Soon the Aztecs were eating and spitting too.
2. A whiff of chocolate
a. The second step to the chocolate bar began with a few Aztec farmers…
b. A couple of Aztec farmers stopped to take a whiff of chocolate rotting under…
3. Banana leaves
a. After this first whiff, the Aztecs did the same thing
b. Pretty soon, the Aztecs came up with a scummy drink called…
B. Cocoa
1. I claim this land in the name of…
a. The Spanish then came, saw, and conquered
b. The Spanish then went back to their land with loads of cocoa beans.
2. Muy delicioso!
a. The explorers introduced the drink to their king.
b. The king liked it, though he thought it needed more flavoring.
3. The era of Cocoa
a. After the flavoring was added, it became a very popular drink in Spain.
b. For many years the Spaniards kept it their secret.
C. Finally, the bar!
1. The British find out!
a. Eventually, the Spanish hold it anymore.
b. The British got hold of the secret!
2.Mmmmmmmm!
a. The British loved the new drink, but decided not to keep it a secret.
b. Soon the whole world knew.
3. It’s crunchy!
a. Years after Cocoa, the bar had still not been made.
b. Henri Nestlé finally made the world’s favorite treat.

Bill's History of Chocolate

ML's research project last year (yes, last year; bear with me) was "The History of Chocolate." I don't think it fell within the parameters of the suggested topics from his Language Arts curriculum, but it sounded more interesting (both to him and to me), and he could still apply the principles of research he was learning, so we went with it.

Rather, we went partway with it. We never actually got to the point of writing the paper.

I figured we'd do better this year. Hopefully. (He's just begun the research, and I have high hopes for the project, especially given the monumental scope of the topic: the State of Texas.)

However, he came upon an assignment the other day in this year's Language Arts, which was to outline a paper on a topic and then write from it (once again, I think this was outside the parameters of the options he was given, but I'm just not a stickler for such boundaries, as you may be deducing). He had the idea to use the information from his History of Chocolate research and below you see the result. (I'll post the original outline separately.)



Hi, my name is Bill the Monkey. I’m here to tell you the History of Chocolate from my perspective. It all started when I was climbing a tree to find some cocoa pods.

No sooner than I had broken one open and was sucking the pulp out when I realized some Aztecs were staring at me. Didn’t they know it’s rude to stare? The Aztecs then got a couple of cocoa pods down and started sucking on them too! It was like a game of Monkey See, Monkey Do!

This went on for a couple of days until they found some cocoa pods rotting under banana leaves. I must say, they smelled good, and the Aztecs thought so too. Later, I found them laying banana leaves over rotting cocoa beans, and making a drink out of it.

And then some guys with tin hats and metal poles came and started raiding our cocoa stash. I figured that they wore the hats to avoid being hit. What wimps! They also put me on a giant tree surrounded by water. Then the tree started moving, and I stayed there out of curiosity. I am now currently in a place filled with more tin hat people with too many clothes on.

A small girl came and put a loincloth around my neck. This had never happened to me before, but I didn’t like it. I ripped the loincloth and jumped onto a big hut. While on top of it, I realized that Tin Hat Land had tons of them. The hut I was standing on was the biggest hut I could see, and when I looked in, I saw people drinking that same stuff the Aztecs were making out of cocoa beans.

I stayed here for a couple of years and the people gave me metal circles for wearing clothes and drinking “cocoa”.
This was a good life, and one afternoon, I had been enjoying another cup of cocoa when I found out they had turned this cocoa into sweet solid stuff. It was delicious, and very creamy.

Well, there you have it, the History of Chocolate from my perspective. Bye, Bye, for now! I’m off to find a Mars bar!

MS's Journal Entry 15 Dec 08

Please excuse the tardiness of this and the past couple of posts. Mommy's morning sickness is completely to blame.

Yesterday, at about 8:30, we started a meeting with all of our ex-pat friends, since we don’t live near a church; we meet at the McBride/Green building to gather together. The older kids and adults split up into accountability groups, and the younger kids stay downstairs.

After that, we have communion (Advent in December), and then we just have worship time, and we read the Bible. And then, we spent a lot of time preparing for the McBride kids to come over.

When they did come over, we spent a lively three hours playing Wii, dress up, and computer. Then, we watched episodes, and the McBrides went home. I played Wii until Taekwando afterwards. And then I came home and ate breakfast burritos for dinner.

JW's Journal Entry 19 Dec 08

This journal entry was a big step forward for JW. He has been resistant to such open-ended writing assignments in the past but handled this one well.

I just typed as dictated, so you get to see the free-flowing style of his thoughts/writing. It covers a several days.

We went over to the McB's for a few hours. Finished two school books. Got a few presents (they were all books). We started the Advent calendar. Each day, one of us puts up a figure from the story of Jesus’ birth. Watched and finished The Very First Noel. Put out all the Christmas books and Christmas videos (found a lot of non-Christmas books on the Christmas shelf). I turned seven. Last night, I planned to leave my water bottle in the refrigerator for a few days until it turned to ice (I love ice). I got to sit in front of the heater with the pillow for a few minutes. When I didn’t work diligently, I had to sit on the floor. Put up the Christmas decorations. Put up the angel at the top, and all the other ornaments. Put the gold ribbon around the Christmas tree. Put up the kids’ Christmas tree after a few days, but before that, we put on the lights of the big Christmas tree and lit them. We put some lights on the kids’ Christmas tree (they change colors every few seconds). After that, we put on all the ornaments. Oh, and every year, we take turns putting up homemade stars. Looked through our albums. And, in a few weeks, we’ll go to America.

The Life of Paul

What happens when JW's Language Arts assignment is to re-tell a Bible story? Almost a month later, you have an epic biography of the life of Paul...from the perspective of a seven-year-old...with a large vocabulary...and a complex grammar structure.

Note the last paragraph. It was a hard-won battle by Mommy to end the writing assignment.

Paul grew up on the island of Tarsus. He always wanted to serve God, and his first step to making his dream come true was when he was taken at the age of 12 to be taught by priests. He was better any other kid who was taught by the priests (actually, in Bible times, people who are age 12 are considered adults). He and the priests discussed all the scriptures that told about the coming Christ. Paul wished Christ would come, and he would worship Him now.

Later in his life, Paul watched the stoning of Stephen, which caused him to persecute Christians, because he didn’t believe that Jesus was the coming Savior. After that, when the Christians were chased from Jerusalem, they spread the news of Jesus everywhere they went. Paul was angry, because they were already as far north as Damascus, so he decided to go there to persecute them.

On the road to Damascus, Paul was caught by the Holy Spirit. He was led into the city, because the Holy Spirit made him blind for three days. In a couple of days, Paul had a vision about a man named Ananias coming to restore his sight. Ananias had a vision in which the Holy Spirit said to go to a man named Paul who was staying in a house on the road called Straight. So, Ananias went down Straight to the house which Paul lived in. He told Paul about his vision and prayed that God would return Paul’s sight. He praised the Lord after his sight had returned, and, since he ate nothing in the days he was blind, Paul ate something to restore his strength.

Paul went to join the believers in Jesus, but they were afraid of him. They didn’t know that he had turned. Only Barnabas believed, and Barnabas took him to Peter and said to Peter that Paul wanted to follow God by following Jesus. For days and nights, they discussed Christ, and after that, Paul started preaching about Jesus in the town. This made the Jewish leaders who had given him the permission to persecute Christians angry, so they wanted to kill him. They knew only death would stop a man like Paul speaking, so they planned to persecute him. Paul was warned that he was going to be persecuted, so he left that area and went elsewhere.

For the rest of his life, Paul faced hunger, cold, bandits, whippings, beatings, stoning, shipwrecks, and imprisonment because no matter where he went, he wanted to preach the Gospel.