My First Yard Sale

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.

Math Tricks

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!

Beginning Latin

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.

Beginning Chess

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.

Basic Algebra

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

Book's Rock!

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.

The Sandlot

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.

Fudge Book

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.

My Traveling Mom

My Mom is Chicago this week for work.

Chicago is a big city in Illinois.

It is called the "Windy City" and has the 3rd largest population in America.

But it is still not the state's capital - Springfield is.

My Mom will be home tomorrow.

Book Report - Who Cloned The President?

Today I finished reading this book.

In this book there was some bad people who kidnapped the President and cloned him.

Nobody knew that this happened except for KC and Marshall.

They found out because they saw the fake President on TV writing with his right hand when he was supposed be a lefty.

So they got in to the White House on a tour and hid under Lincoln's bed.

Then at night they searched everywhere and found the real President tied up in the basement.

So they freed him and the bad guys got caught.

Ron Roy also wrote the A to Z Mysteries books.

Book Report - Squanto

That's a book I read this week.

It is a true story about an Indian boy named Squanto.

He lived in America and then he went to London with the white men.

He learned English there and stayed for many years.

Squanto wanted to go home and boarded Captain John Smith's ship.

A bad man named Captain Hunt kidnapped him and tried to sell him as a slave.

But some good men freed him and he got back to his home in America.

My Project

That was the Italy project that my sister and I made.

We made it for our geography fair in our homeschooling group.

Everybody got to choose a different country. Some examples were: China, India, Japan, Spain, Romania, Easter Island, Galapagos Islands, Antarctica, and USA.

We made passports, visited each country, and got stamped.



Also, everyone made some food from their country. We served potato gnocchi in a sausage red sauce.