One weekend I went to New York City. I was really excited to go to New York, but that meant that I wouldn’t go to the New Children’s Museum with the rest of the class! So instead of making a  museum review, I wrote a story and wrote about my trip to New York. Enjoy reading!

6 hours of a plane ride was worth it. Flying across the country was worth it. As long as you are going to New York City. Imagine a beautiful skyline across the Hudson River with more landmarks then you can imagine. Got it? Ok we can start now. You must be wondering how you get across a huge river. Boat? Too expensive. Plane? You can fly into queens, but if you are coming from New Jersey like me the plane ride is too short. So you drive. Sounds crazy right? Driving over a river? Just kidding. There is a tunnel called the Lincoln tunnel that goes under the river. Cool indeed. Once I got to the other side, I went to the hotel with my grandparents. My mom and dad were not there. We checked how long the wait was and it was four hours! So we had quite a bit of time to spend. First we went to a store called M&M’S world. There, I got a whole pound of M&M’S. With sugar dancing in our bellies, we went to the top of freedom tower. Fun Fact: the freedom tower is 102 stories tall, and is the third tallest building in the world. We stayed there for around two hours and realized that our hotel room was ready. So we walked back to Times Square(that was where our hotel was) and went to our room. We just chilled for a little bit there and figured out the plan. We went to dinner, and then got back to the hotel and went to bed at 12:37 am and me and my sister couldn’t go to sleep. The next morning we woke up bright and early and went to breakfast at a place called “Ellen’s stardust diner.” It was a long line in the cold, in the dirty depths of Manhattan. Finally, we made it inside. I got a nice and greasy (which I love) egg sandwich. Me and my sister shared a s’mores milkshake. It was so good! After that we went ice skating in Bryant park. For awhile I skated alone, but then my grandpa came and ice skated with me. When We were done ice skating we went back to M&M’S world to get an M&M’S dispenser without the girls there to say no. Then we went back to the hotel to change into fancy clothes. Do you know why? Because we went and saw the radio city rockettes! I loved the show so much, I would cut off my arm to see it again. (Just a metaphor) and then the next morning we flew back to San Diego.

Tsunami!

In the coasts of the Indian Ocean there was a boy named Chris. He didn’t live in the coasts of India but he was very fond of it his dad lived there in a very nice part of it when he was a kid. But Chris had a different experience then his dad did. He experienced a tsunami!
Chapter one 11:52 am India
It was a beautiful day for Chris. It was summer brake off of school. He hoped for a chill summer in India. And it was. The first day he got there he got to visit his grandpa. Then he went surfing with his sister Lilly. On the second day he went to the breakfast house in town. Then he took a long nap. Now he is on his third day. “This is the life.” He says while he is walking down to the beach.
Chapter two. Day four. Four am.
Crash! Goes Chris’s lamp. Bang! His table falls on its side. He feels like he has a vertigo that controls the world. Then it stops. He runs to his moms room and hugs her with all his might. Then an hour later they turn on the news. The news reporter says, “a temporary but massive earthquake has struck India.” She says. “Major damage closer to the shore.” She continues. Then a picture appears on the screen. People are crying, houses are destroyed, and people are buried alive. Chris’s mom turns of the tv and hugs Chris again.
Chapter three. Day four 12:00 am.
As Chris walks down from his room, he thinks about last night. The only thing that could take his mind of it is surfing. As Chris is walking down to the beach, people are running the opposite direction. “What is going on?” He asks someone in Indian. “Tsunami!” He says back. Then he sees the wave. A 20 foot tall wave rushing straight at him at 15 miles an hour. He try’s to run away, but the wave swallows him up. Chris has enough air though. When the tsunami stops thrashing him around, he grabs onto a bed mattress. He just sits there until all the water rushed back. Then he runs home. As he is running, he sees major wreckage. When he gets to what used to be his second home, he just finds a big pile of wood and his sister and mom standing there.
Chapter five.
The plane ride home was silent. When they got back to California it was weeks before they started talking. Then they made up finally in a year. But otherwise they where scared for life.

Well, that was the story how the Kane family experienced the scariest thing in their life. A tsunami.

For our book clubs each of us focused on different endangered animals and we made a video in Touch Cast. Enjoy watching!

I took my photo with a black and white filter at my school in the courtyard outside our class. I think this ties into exploration for many different reasons, but for one, you don’t see much civilization, and exploration is finding new places and discovering. And if you had already been there, then it wouldn’t be exploring for you. You may have been there many times, but looking from a different vantage might make it look different. And if you haven’t taken a good look at that spot, then it’s not really exploration. So I got to take a good look at a different vantage at that wonder of nature and I explored that spot.

Things to do if You Are a Tree

Stay still.
Wear a nice rough
Brown coat and a
Green top hat.
Sway in the wind,
And grow big
Strong branches.

Poetry is awesome. But do you know what is more awesome? A poetry poster. A poetry poster is exactly what it sounds like. It is a poster with poetry on it. I did a poetry poster below. We each made a poetry poster from our language study notebooks (a notebook where we study sentences), by taking writing concepts from sentences and putting them together. Enjoy reading!

Every week our teachers select a hard word that we call a vocabulary word. We try and guess the meaning of the word by getting hints from the morning message, which is a message that is different every morning and we read it to tell us what we are going to do that day. On Thursday or Friday the teachers tell us what the word means, and then we add it to our vocabulary word wall. These words are hidden inside this blog post story. Enjoy reading!

As our game guide hastily led us into our room, I shivered. It was cold, dark, and it looked complicated. While our game guide told us the rules, I started to scrutinizing. There were three locks— one on a door that looked like it led into a cabin, one on a trapdoor on the stairs that led into the cabin, and one on a box under a blank sign. A screen in the top right corner told us the story. A very rich gold miner claimed to have lots of gold. He got in big trouble with the Las Vegas mobs. You have been tipped off on where the gold might be, but so has the mobs. You have a hour to find the miner’s gold before the mobs come. Our game guide gave us flashlights and the darkness immediately diminished. I was still inquiring. Will that work? Nope. That is just a place where mom can put her purse. With the luster of the flashlight, I kept looking. Finally the game guide left. 3…2…1 go! The first thing I did was look in a hole in a tree. There was nothing nestled in there. We saw the blank sign. We could slide letters into it. My parents kept counting the number of fake animals in the room. We kept being vigilant. My sister Maisie found letters in the bushes. My dad found a map that was a diagram to knock on a tree to get a code. We kept on striving. There was a vast selection of places to get stuck, but we didn’t too badly. I tried to keep tranquil, but there was still adrenaline pumping through my veins. We made it into a cabin, diverged into a mineshaft, then we did it. “You escaped!” Our game guide told us.

“And Bobby the cat lived happily ever after”…. I was just on the ol’ iPad making a story on Storybird. What is Storybird you ask? A story-making app. You want to know more?

First of all, you should know that there are three types of books: long form, picture, and chapter. Next, you should know that the pictures are drawings, and people make the pictures.When you want to have a story about cats, you have to find a picture of a cat or choose a category or choose an author. Then you press “start a new book with this photo.” A little bar will pop up and have three choices. (Again, long, pic, and chap.) Then you will have a bunch of pictures to work with and you can start your story! Wooooo hoooooo!! Why don’t you check out an example below?

So do you think you might use Storybird? I think you can get inspired by it. I hope you liked this blog post on Storybird. Goodbye!!!

One day as a mentor text ,we studied the two voice poem “fireflies” by Paul Fleicshman. Then Ms. Boyesen said, “What if you wrote a two voice poem?” And that is where it started. A two voice poem is a poem that has two voices. First, we worked in our notebooks and finished. Then, we typed and edited. This part for me was kinda hard. After that we submit to Schoology. Now, we printed them out and recorded them in GarageBand. Then, our strategy is to mail our recordings to ourselves. Then we coped our link and put in on Edublogs and with this introduction. And that was how we did this. Enjoy watching! Or… well listening.

Hi everyone! It’s me… again. And today I will be talking about my amazing field trip! I know, I know, you are probably thinking, “When the heck did he go to a field trip?!” I went on April 20st 2016 at… what time was it? Whatever. Anyway, we went to the Solana Beach side of the San Elijo lagoon. The first thing that was awesome was our gear. First, our “swag bags.” A swag bag is a invention that the MAC class invented. It is basically a bag that has pencils and colored pencils in it. We stick our science notebooks in there too. Then the second part of the gear is binoculars. I think they were really helpful for the far away animals (like egrets). So we arrived and we already saw something whimsical! It was a great egret wading in the distance! You can look at the field notes below and see a drawing of the egret. Once I got over how amazing that was, we started on the first side of the trail. We first saw these orange and yellow flowered plants that looked beautiful. We kept on walking until we made it to this huge tree. It had a dry lizard on it. Then we took some field notes and kept on going. We ended at this dirt area and went back, and saw a lot of bees. The picture will show a close up of a bee. We switched to the other side of the lagoon, and we kept on seeing these great egrets! Then at one point we saw a California brown pelican! It is a endangered species! Then we went back and sighed. We had so much fun today. And so that was so that was my lagoon field trip. If you enjoyed please leave a comment below and… GOODBYE!!

We had some extra pieces of writing, and so our teachers asked us to make a blog post on them. Enjoy reading!

A pencil is a magical tool. You can do whatever you want with a piece of paper and a pencil. Use it wisely, use it well. It doesn’t last as long as you think! It can draw the plan of a home. It can make the plan for a family get-together. It can make a birthday wish come true. It’s a magical tool.

Oh, I think that is one of my best poems. And one of my favorites. The reason I love this poem, is because I use pencils so much, it just… flows, and sharpens minds. I hope my readers, young and old, love it too! And also teachers, and people all around the world, even football players. (I am talking to you Tom Brady! Please?) This is pencil. It is a magical tool.