Longer School=Less Homework, Right?

         In my opinion, homework is the absolute worst thing about school. If it weren't for that darn homework, I really wouldn't mind school one bit. Here's my plan. We eliminate homework altogether by making school an hour or so longer. Here's why. That last hour of school could be more of a study hall time (Which any of the kids in band in my school don't get, which we think is bogus.) The teachers could be there to help us when we ran into problems with our homework, so we don't have to stay up until 1 am trying to do our math.

       It could work like this. Teachers could assign homework just like they always do, and then an hour before school was over, all the students and teachers could head down to the cafeteria and have a huge study hall. This way, if you don't understand something, you could get it explained to you, by the teacher who assigned it to you. Then, if you still don't finish your homework, you could take it home and do it there, (and at least you'd have a better understanding of it.)

        Some people are totally against this plan. I can kind of see their points, but I sure do not agree with them. A lot of people against this plan think that homework should be done at home, and that's just the way learning is. Some of them also would rather have more of their after-school time free to do other things (it's not really free if you have buckets of homework...) And lastly, some of them just like doing their homework in the quiet of their own home without lots of other kids there.

       So, who's with me? Who'd rather have more school and less/no homework? It'd help you to make sure you got it done, and understood it, and it frees up the rest of your evening. I think it's a great plan... how about you?

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What do you think? Do you like my plan? Do you have a different (possibly) better idea? Do you already do something like this at your school? Are you already out for summer vacation? Please post your answers in a comment, because I sincerely do care about your opinions.

Into the Wild

What happens when you add:
    34 teens +
     5 annoyed adults +
     A WHOLE lot of chips and salsa +
     and a dorm room cut off from everyone else's =

    An amazing week at an environmental learning center (and some hi-larious Man Vs. Wild remixes....) Last week my eighth grade class went on a week long over night trip to an environmental learning center in northern Minnesota. It was absolutely fantabulousyawesome (If that's even a word). Anyways, there was never time to be bored, because we were:

That's me on the ropes course ☺

• Rock-Climbing
• Ropes-Coursing
• Hiking
• well... learning :)
• Chips and salsa eating
• Truth or Dare playing
• Star tipping
• Endless talking.....
• Picture taking (duh ☺)
• Getting Lost
• Playing Frisbee

        This list goes on and on and on. One of the best things at ELC wasn't a class. It was our liaison, Danny. Danny was very interesting to say the least. He just came to Minnesota in August from England, and he looked like Harry Potter! (Maybe he was secretly Daniel Radcliffe) Danny also taught our birds class, and showed us his bird mating dance. We were about to pee ourselves with laughter.

I'm the short one on the end

        One of my other favorite things at ELC was a class called Voyageur life. We all got a character and had to remain completely in character for the whole three hour class. (Lucky for me I got to play the only American character because everyone else had to attempt to use French accents.) My character was Mr. Daniel Harmon, the American clerk for the Northwest Company. We hiked in sleet to this replica voyageur camp and made biscuits and played voyageur games. It was really fun, but my toes were very numb afterwards.☺
Speaking of coldness, the weather there was really weird. The first day it was almost 70 and we were wearing shorts, the next morning we woke up and it was snowing. Only in Minnesota...

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Have you ever been on a field trip where you've stayed over for a week? Does where you live have as wacky of weather as Minnesota? Have you ever been to an enviromental learning center? Do you like my blog's new make-over? Please comment with your answers! ♥♥♥♥

Joining Up

In today's world, when the Internet is a huge thing, social networks are huge. I mean, if you're reading this, you're on one right now! Out of my class of 40 something, I think about all but five of my classmates have Facebooks. Half of them have blogs, and every one of my classmates has an email. That's a lot. For part of the Blogging Challenge, we were to answer these questions... Enjoy :)




Photo By: Asthma Helper



Q. What Internet sites have you joined?

A. A LOT! I'm on Blogger (duh), Facebook, Yahoo!, Google, Neopets, Snapfish, Piknik, Youtube and probably twenty more...

Q. How much info do you give out on those sites?

A. Umm.. I try not to give out much. I normally stick to my first name, state, and age.

Q. Have you filled in the asterisk questions? (with this*)

A.Sometimes. Not if it seems usless/dangerous.

I then websearched my name and my town to see what I could find.

Q. What did you find?

A. I found out that I am in the paper... a lot. Sports stuff, honor roll, and random things from when I was little. I was also apparently in some ads for my school when I was like five.

Q. How many footprints are you leaving behind?

A. I'm not sure. Probably a lot. A lot of times when you're little, people say that your parents can start the footprints for you, but my parents aren't online very often, and I'm not sure if they even had a computer when I was born, so I'm almost positive that they wern't posting baby pictures online. :)

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 What about you? Do you have a Facebook? What sites have you joined? Are you careful about how much info you give your viewers? Search Yourself, and try to answer the following questions in a comment please :)

National Debt....

             As you probably know, our national debt is huge. Really huge. If we spilt up our debt, there would be $200,000 for every man, woman and child to pay. But Why?

We are self indulgent

We spend money we don't have

We need to lower our debt, or else other countries will stop lending us money, and we'll be even worse off. 68% of our borrowed money is from other countries, and they are getting impatient.

Obama refuses to pass this problem on to another generation

Doing nothing is not an option, and we need to lower the national debt.

But what I don't get is:

Why’s the deficit so high?

What is it we are paying for?

Was there something huge that started the debt?

When we were in the green with Clinton, why?

How can we pay back other countries without raising taxes?

 

TACKLE THE FLU!

http://www.lincolncountyhealth.com/PH/FluPage.htm

        This past month for class, we've had to make flu prevention related public service announcements. I was in a group with Megan, Jacob and Tim. We definitely had an interesting time. Tim played our flu germ, but we couldn't figure out how to portray the flu. We ended up just making a giant paper germ and hanging it around his neck. We weren't sure people would be able to tell what he was, so we had to make a sign too. Unfortunately, Tim's costume kept ripping and we had to use packing tape to fix it. Paper probably wasn't the best choice. 

       I hope you enjoy our video, we spent a long time on it. If you want to see some of our classmate's videos as well, they are on http://vimeo.com. Just search flu prevention under groups. These videos were made for a contest online. The winners get $1,000 for their school. Wish our group luck! Winners are announced February 11th. Enjoy our video:

 

Tackle the Flu from sharleen berg on Vimeo.

Catholic School's Week

         This week is Catholic School's Week. It's like spirit week for Catholic School kids, but ironically we have spirit week, too. The real reason for Catholic School's Week is so the staff can try to get a whole bunch of people to register for St. Mary's next year. My mom and I came in on Sunday to lead tours of the school. We only got to lead one tour in the hour and a half because the people asked so many questions. We were successful though, because right after the tour, they registered! During Catholic School's Week, we do lots of fun things. Today, for example, we have to dress up as book characters. I'm Jesus. Sadly, only three people in my whole grade dressed up. Party Poopers. Tomorrow is Era Day, and I'm wearing a poodle skirt and saddle shoes. Wednesday, each grade is wearing either red, white, or blue and then when we are at church, someone will go up in the choir loft and take our picture, because we'll look like an American flag. Thursday we'll be in camo, because it's support our troops day. Friday, we're wearing sports  clothing. Look's like fun!

Why I Love Going to St. Mary's!

     
        Yes, I go to St. Mary's...I think its a great school. I've been going to St. Mary's since preschool, so I've been there for ten years, and that's a lot of my life! I wouldn't spend that much time at someplace I didn't like (unless my parents made me...)  I like St. Mary's for the obvious reasons... small class sizes...Catholic teaching...etc. But I also enjoy St. Mary's for other reasons. My friends are there, and if I went to public school, I'd probably be an invisible nobody. At St. Mary's, there are less than 40 eighth graders, so everybody knows everything about everybody. That can be a positive or a negative thing, because good and bad things about you can spread quickly. Overall, St. Mary's is a great school, and I will be very sad when I go to the public High School next year.

I'm... Czechoslovakian

http://www.everyculture.com/Cr-Ga/Czech-Republic.html

   
     Most of my family came from Czechoslovakia. In Czechoslovakia people eat a lot of different things, that I find gross and funny looking, but I'm sure that most of them think the food we eat in america is weird too.
Here's some some food that I think sounds most interesting:

• Smetane: sour cream 
• Pudink: pudding
• Kapr: carp
• Kynute Houscove Knedliky: yeast dumplings with sauteed bread cubes blended into the batter before steaming.
• Husa: goose
• Bramborove Knedliky: potato dumplings

Well... pudding and sour cream sounds okay to me, but the rest not so much. For sports, they have a lot of the same sports as America. Czechoslovakia has football, baseball, some tennis players (woo!!) and a nice ice hockey team. On another note, the most popular name for a boy in Czechoslovakia is Jakub, and for a girl, its Tereza. In America, the most popular baby name for a boy is Aidan, but for a girl its Sophia.

So.. that's my ethnic heritage! I'm am also a mix of...

1.  Irish
2.  Norwegian
3.  German

So that just proves that America is a great big mixing pot :)

Fred, The Hot-Tempered Mouse

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21599153@N00/123885782
by: Andi

       In my house, there lives a hot tempered mouse. His name's Fred. Fred G. Baker. He works part time for minimum wage at a shoe string factory in the crummy part of town, in the hole under the bathroom sink.  Every morning he makes his commute up the stairs, over three rooms, through the kitchen and into the bathroom.  He was a wife and five children, and as you can imagine, with a part-time, minimum wage job, it's not easy to make ends meet. Everyday at work his task is to put the plastic ends on the tip of the shoestrings. That seems like a pretty simple job, but noting is ever simple for a mouse. One day, he registers his name being called. FRED!! FRED G. BAKER!!! It was is his boss, Mr. K. Ratt. Fred has been assigned a job. He is to go and get extra wax from the neighboring factory. That means (gulp) that Fred has to cross... the yard. Fred sets off across the yard cautiously. He is wondering why the yard seems so quiet. Then as if out of nowhere... Stacey, the neighbor's black and white cat appears.(double gulp) There's a meow and a flash of claws and fur. Poor Fred the hot tempered mouse is never heard from again.

Hannah Bueller's Day Off

        If you haven't seen the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, you'd better hurry up and go see it. Or you might die. Just kidding. It's about a kid who skips school a lot,and everyone loves him. Well, except his principal. The principal leaves work and goes on a mad search for Ferris to try and prove that he's faking. But Ferris always seems to come out on top.
       I'm having my own day off tomorrow, but it probably won't be nearly as exciting as Ferris's. I got a personal day off from school for raising $225 for my school's marathon. I'm going up to the mall of america to go shopping! I'm hoping to go on the Rock Bottom Plunge too! It should be lots of fun, (I hope)

Gospel Videos

Every year at school we are given a gospel to make a movie about for religion class.
This is the one I was in this year. I am the adorable 5 year old :)
I had a lot of fun throwing a fit in "Target". I thought it was a pretty awesome movie.
Our gospel was from the 3rd Sunday of Advent, Year A.
The gospel was about being patient.
(Keep in mind, I don't act like this in real life)

Used Blogster? Try Glogster!

We made glogs in class on finances, I hope you like it!

Construction Work, Construction Work Go Away!

Our school is having some construction work done. We are moving our playground and getting a new office and preschool rooms. That sometimes makes it really loud when we are trying to do our work, and once we even had a power outage because of it! It's also frustrating because now we don't get recess on a playground, just standing on the courtyard. I know I shouldn't complain, because our school is the only one in town where eighth graders even get recess, but I still miss my playground equipment. Hopefully it will all be done before we graduate in the spring. I am kind of excited to go High School, but also a bit nervous because I've never been to public school. Do you still get recess? What do you think?

Money Money Money

What reasons can you think of that make it difficult to dicuss money?    
A lot of people think of money as kind of a taboo topic. Why? Many would say that it just isn't others business, while some say that they don't really care. Here's what I think:

Andrew Magill

 

I think people who have a lot of money, are always worrier than  if they talk about their money, they'll seem all high and mighty, because their rich. Then those who may be struggling to make ends meet are afraid that their peers with more money will look down on them for having less. I don't know if that's right, because I feel when talking about money, you should just keep your business to yourself. What annoys me though, is when little kids ask how much money their family has, and the parent just says "Don't ask that"
 and doesn't really explain why. That always made me more curious. What do you think?

 

Banning Books?

It’s crazy how many books are banned in the U.S. each year, and I've read many of them. When Americans think of banned books they often think of Harry Potter, but not often do you think of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?. Yes, that book has been banned. That was my absolute favorite book when I was little. It was banned in an area of Texas because apparently that author had written a different book that was inappropriate. What do you think? Should books be banned? I'm still not sure...

For more interesting info check out:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20100924/en_ac/6827290_10_surprisingly_banned_books