Visiting Sea World

On our Winter break, my mom, dad, siblings and I went for a visit to San Diego. It took us about 135 miles to arrive at San Diego. We spent three days there. On the first day, we went to Safari Park and on the second day we went to Sea World. The last day we started to head north to our home, and we stopped in La Jolla to see seals and look at the beautiful galleries.





Sea World was one of my favorite because of its unique animals and numerous shows. When we arrived at Sea World, we were greeted by flamingos. They were walking around the park greeting all the visitors.

At Sea World, we went to 3 different shows. The first show was the dolphin show. The dolphins were Bottle Nosed Dolphins, because their mouth looks like a bottle. It is one of the most familiar species of dolphins. In that show there were also parrots and whales. Parrots can live more than 80 years, depending on the species. Parrots are easily trained and capable of performing many variety of tricks and sounds. During the show, the dolphins did many tricks such as jumping out of the water, pulling their trainers across the pool, and splashing the crowd. In the photo below, the dolphin is clapping with his fins.

The second show, was my favorite. It was on killer whales and called the Shamu Show. Killer whales are large and fierce hunters and are one of the main predators of the ocean. Killer whales live in all oceans in the world. You would most likely see a killer whale in the arctic and other cold areas.  During the show, the killer whales favorite thing to do was splash the crowd. If you were siting in the soak zone you got soaked. The whales went around the whole pool splashing everyone. I'm glad we didn't sit in soak zone because it was already cold, and we didn't have an extra pair of clothes.

Whales clapping with the audience.

Whales kissing

Whale splashing

Whale opening its mouth for fish. He had many rows of sharp teeth.

The last show we attended  was the seal and sea otter show. It was hilarious. The show was about a little sea otter that takes Santa's good and naughty list because he was on the naughty list. The seal was looking for it with the Santa's helper. During the show, the seals did many tricks such as balance a ball on his nose and do many different jumps and flips.

Seal doing a flip out of the water.

Seal balancing a ball on his nose.

In addition to seeing shows, we also went to a couple of different exhibits. The shark exhibit was my favorite. We were in a see through tunnel and when you looked up and to the side you saw all difrent kinds of sharks. There were large sharks, small sharks, and some with huge teeth. I am glad we were behind the glass.

Shark swimming above us. The shark bit off a piece of our photo!

The penguins were also very cute. Penguins are birds, but they are different from the birds we see outside. They can not fly, but they use there wings as flippers and can swim very fast. It was a little sad to see so many penguins in one exhibit and barely any room for all of them to fit. 

Which animal was your favorite?

Have you ever been to Sea World or a similar type of place?

A Visit to the Zoo

A few weeks ago we went to the Los Angeles Zoo and saw many animals such as seals, alligators, deer, reptiles, giraffes, gorillas and chimpanzees.We also visited a reptile exhibit. It was recently built, and it was our first time seeing it. The exhibit had all types of reptiles such as poisonous snakes, turtles, and lizards. I took photos of some of my favorite animals.

 The American alligator is found in fresh and slightly salty waters in the Southeastern United States.   They eat almost anything found in the water, such as crabs, fish, frogs, snakes, birds, and small mammals such as raccoons. This alligator's teeth were huge and scary.

The American black bears lives in numerous forests throughout North America and is found in 41 of the 50 United States.They eat grasses, fruits, berries, nuts, insects, human foods, and occasionally small animals. They weigh approximately 150-600 pounds. This bear was just sleeping at the opening of it's cave.

If a Meerkat gets bitten by a scorpion or snake it doesn't get affected. Their burrow can  have multiple levels, which can be as deep as ten feet with up to 90 entrances. These animals were very active and look like people standing on two feet. They were putting a show for the crowd.

Flamingos usually stand on just one leg, even while sleeping, with the other up close to their body. These birds eat small shrimp, worms, insect, and plants. They receive their pink color from the natural things they find in the foods they eat. When we came to the exhibit, it smelled terribly, so we just took the photo and moved on to a different exhibit.

This turtle’s other common name is pig nosed because of its nostrils. I've seen many turtles laying on a rocks on The Big Island in Hawaii. This turtle is a different specie from the ones we saw in Hawaii.

Gorillas are the strongest and largest of the great apes. All gorillas in U.S. zoos are western lowland gorillas. They eat various parts of plants including leaves, bark, vines,stalks, bamboo, and wild celery. They weigh 350 pounds, and have long sharp teeth. This gorilla was laying around his large home.

This is a Grevy Zebra. It's most important adaptation for its survival is its stripes because they confuse predators. The Grevy is the largest of all the zebras. The males are five feet tall and weigh as much as 900 pounds. This zebra was very active throwing dust all over the place!

three Grevy Zebras

Orangutans are the only surviving great apes in Asia.  They act like humans in there behavior. Orangutans spend most of there time looking through trees for fruit. They also eat flowers, young leaves, bark, and eggs. In the Malay language, the word orang means person and utan means forest. This Orangutang was very furry and had two largefront teeth. He was orange/brown and had chubby cheeks.

A tiger’s tracks are called “pug marks.” Tigers get up at dusk,and may travel more than twenty miles to find food. These tigers were only sleeping and were very boring to look at, so we took the photo and moved on to the next animal.

Do you ever visit the zoo?
What is your favorite animal and why?
What interesting facts do you know about your favorite animal?

Fall Orchestra Concert

Recently, I had my first concert in orchestra this year. This is my second year in Camerata Strings.  We practice every Saturday from 9:00 to 11:30. The conductor is really nice and she picks beautiful pieces or us to play. Everyone must practice there part during the week, so we could play it together on Saturday.


My day started early in the morning because I needed to get dressed in a white top and a black skirt and black, shiny shoes. I had to be at the dress rehearsal at 11:30 because we needed to practice on stage. There was a lot of waiting around for our groups turn on stage. Finally, it was our time to perform. I was very nervous when I got on stage, but after we finished playing, there was a lot of clapping from the audience which made me feel very excited. 


We played Fiddles out West,  Sahara Crossing, DECKorations, and Starfleet. Fiddles out West was a very melodic, fast, and a light piece. Sahara Crossing, was a very slow piece. When I play this piece I imagine people crossing the desert suffering because they don't have enough water. Deckorations is a happy piece When I think of  it, I think of all the holidays in December. Starfleet was my least favorite piece. It didn't have much melody and my mom didn't even record it.


Here is a video of our performance. I am kind of hidden behind some of the older kids. I am sitting right behind the blond girl in the front. Sometimes you can see me peek through. I will try out again for first violin in January. I hope I will make it this time. 

Which was your favorite piece?

Spending Time with Grandma

A few weeks ago, I went to my grandma's house. Each of my siblings gets to spend one day with grandma alone and today was my day. In the morning, my grandma took me to my orchestra practice. I play the violin in the junior orchestra and we practice every Saturday morning. After orchestra practice, I went to grandma's house. When I first came, we cooked schnitzel and borscht. Borscht is a kind of soup that is red because it has beets inside it. It also has other vegetables such as potatoes, cabbage and red peppers.   It was delicious.

Then we took a nice walk with their dog Elsie, and picked flowers . When we came home, we planted flowers. My grandma cut some of the bad leaves off and I made a hole in the dirt and stuck the flower inside it. I hope it will grow! When we went inside, we played  domino's. It was a very close game but I won.  

Late in the afternoon, grandpa and I took another walk with Elsie to a high school field. There was a huge hill that Elsie really wanted to climb so my grandpa let him. Elsie went racing up the hill and he pulled me all the way to the top. It was very fun. When I got home, we had to get ready to go to my cousins birthday party. My grandma made my hair in two ponytails. It looked very cute. Spending a day with grandma is interesting and fun.

Do you have someone that you like to spend a day with?

Edublog Nominations 2012

I am very excited to be part of the Edublog nomination process.  I have been blogging for one and half years and have made many friends from all of the world.

Here is my list of blogs that I nominated:

 

Best Class Blog

Mrs Yollis’ Classroom Blog

Mrs. Yollis helps make her classroom interesting through blogging. She has a new interesting post up almost every week and supports her student bloggers by leaving comments on their blogs.  She also comments back to many of her readers on her blog.

 

 Best Student Blog

Miriam's Magical Moments

One of my favorite student bloggers is my older sister Miriam. She was a finalist last year for the best student blog. She has been blogging for two and a half years and has taught me many things about blogging. She has a new and interesting post up a couple times a month and always responds to all her comments.

Best Twitter Hashtag

#comments4kids

I love the #comments4kids hashtag! When I publish a new post, Mrs. Yollis tweets it out using this hashtag.  I always receive many comments from teachers and students.

Library/Librarian Blog

The Bulldog Readers By: Mrs Hembree

Mrs. Hembree is a great librarian who inspires children everywhere to read. She has interesting posts about  books I can read. I also really like her Summer reading contest. She wanted to see us reading in the most interesting places and ways. All we had to do is send her a photo of us reading and she posted it on her blog. 

Check out these great blogs!

Two Fall Piano Pieces

During the end of summer and beginning of fall, I learned two new pieces. They are both composed from different periods of music. The first piece is Invention No. 8 by Bach. He is a German composer and was born in the baroque period. I have played many pieces by him that were slow. This piece is very fast and it sounds like a bird flying in nature.


 The second song is Sonatina in C Major (Op. 20 No. 1) by Kuhlau. He was born in Germany, but was a Danish composers during the Classical and Romantic period.When he was seven, he lost his right eye when he slipped on ice. Even though he was born to a poor family, they still afforded to pay for piano lessons. Kuhlau escaped to Denmark to avoid going to Napoleon's army, and in 1813 he became a Danish citizen. During his lifetime, Kuhlau was known as a concert pianist and composer of a very famous Danish opera and other pieces for the piano. He composed over 200 published works and probably even more would have been published if his house didn't burn down with many of his unpublished pieces. This Sonatina consists of 3 movements. The first and third movement are fast. The second movement is slow and only has a few lines of music.

Can you tell when a movement ends and another begins? 
Which movement was your favorite?

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Hannah's Fall Concert

In the past two months, Hannah learned 4 new pieces, all written by different composers.She learns new pieces really quickly and memorizes them fast as well after playing them a few times. Her hand is still small and it is sometimes hard for her to reach all the notes and play fast. She is getting better with practice.

Her first piece is Sonatina in C major by M. Clementi. Clementi wrote during the Classical period. This piece has 3 movements, a fast movement, a slower lyrical movement with a beautiful melody, and a fast lively movement.  Of the 4 pieces she played, this one was probably the hardest.Which was your favorite movement?

The second piece is Sonatina in G major by Beethoven. Beethoven also wrote during the classical period. This piece has two movements and they are both fast with a very nice melody.  It is a very famous piece and both Miriam and I played it 2 years ago. This piece is probably my favorite.

The third piece is called Wild Horseman by Schumann. Schumann was a German composer, who composed during the Romantic period (1810-1856).  When Hannah plays this piece, I think of people riding horses in a horse shows.

Finally, the last piece she played is called Musette in D major by Bach. Bach is also a German composer who composed in the Baroque period. When I think of this song I think of waves hitting the shore at the beach. This piece has a gorgeous melody and Hannah plays it beautifully. Our piano teacher believes that it is important for us to play Bach, so we are always playing at least one new Bach piece.

Which piece was your favorite?