Gettysburg and Washington D.C. March 28-30

Gettysburg and Washington D.C. March 28-30

Last Thursday, we went to the famous Gettysburg National Military Park.  It took five long and boring hours to get there. Once we arrived, my mom bought a three-hour auto tour. My favorite stop on the our was Little Round Top. It was my favorite because there are a lot of big, black rocks that I could climb on. We also went to stand on a tall observation tower to look out at the battle fields. It was so windy and rainy that I was afraid that I might get blown off.  I also liked the Pennsylvania State Memorial because I could climb to the top of the memorial. It was very cold and raining the whole day, so we did not stay on the top for long. The stairs were spiral stairs and hard to climb. If it was not raining all day, we would have been able to get out of the car more to look at more of the fabulous monuments.  I knew about the mini ball and other Civil War weapons already, and got to see some in the museum. I also saw many green and black canons. We saw the Gettysburg National Cemetery, but we did not go inside the gates because it was pouring rain. We had a big lunch at a nice restaurant, and then we left for Washington D.C.

It was two short hours from Gettysburg to Washington D.C. We arrived in the late afternoon. The hotel we stayed at is called the Embassy Suite Chevy Chase.  We went on the loud and dirty Metro (subway) to Union Station to get tickets for the Old Town Trolley Moonlight Monuments tour. The orange trolley first stopped at the famous Lincoln Memorial. It wasn’t dark quite yet, so we walked up the many marble steps. I saw the Gettysburg Address on the wall, and the giant statue of Abraham Lincoln. After seeing the stupendous Lincoln Memorial, we went to the amazing Korean Memorial. That is the one were the marble statues looks as if they are on patrol, and one of the soldiers is looking behind him as if he heard something. The marble statues are wearing rain coats and helmets, and they carried guns. The marble statues were standing in bushes and grass, and they were lit up from underneath. I thought that the lighting at night made the brave soldiers look like ghosts. After the Korean Memorial, we went to the sad Vietnam Memorial. That is where there is a tall black wall that has carved on it all the names of the people that died in the Vietnam War. There are 58,272 names of brave soldiers on the wall, and next to some of the names, people left flowers.  The tour guide told us that around 3 million people visit the Vietnam Memorial each year. We were sitting on trolley for a while, and we passed the World War II Memorial and the Washington Monument. The Washington Monument is closed because there was damage during an earthquake and it’s getting fixed. We then stopped at the newest memorial, the Martin Luther King. Jr Memorial. It opened to the public on August 22, 2011. The last time I went to Washington D.C., the Martin Luther King. Jr Memorial was not there. The stone that has the relief of MLK is quite big. None of the statutes can be larger than Lady Liberty on top of the Capitol, but since Martin Luther King is a relief (and not a statue) he is much bigger than the 19 ½ foot Lady Liberty. We spent time at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial too, since it is near the Martin Luther King Memorial.  The Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial has many small statutes of FDR. One of the statues is of Roosevelt sitting in a chair with his little dog sitting beside him. Another statue is of him in a wheelchair. There is a waterfall too, but it was drained for the winter. There are statues of men waiting in a line for bread. We walked along a moonlit path next to a lake. On the other side of the lake we could see the Jefferson Memorial. We drove past the Capitol building many times on our moonlight tour, and many more important buildings. Our tour guide was funny and told us stories about all the buildings. We left then and went to Arlington to see Iwo Jima. That is the Memorial that has five American Marines and a Navy Corpsman raising an American flag. The soldiers raised the American flag on Mount Suribachi in February 23, 1945. The last time we came to Washington D.C. we did not get to see the Iwo Jima Memorial. We passed Arlington cemetery and saw all the grave stones. By the end of the tour, we were all exhausted. We decided to take a taxi back to the hotel instead of the metro. Leo and Sam were asleep in the taxi. It was after midnight.

The next day, it was raining all day. We were lucky to have nice weather for our moonlight tour, so we mostly sat on the trolley all day and toured the city. It was raining so hard, we stayed on the trolley and rode it all the way around and did the entire tour two more times. We did get off once to see the Jefferson Memorial. There was a 19 foot statute of Jefferson inside. At 2:00, we had to be at the Capitol for our scheduled tour. We got to see the iron Capitol dome and the paintings that are on the ceiling of the dome. One of the paintings on the round ceiling is called a fresco. The Capitol building has a massive statue collection. There are sand pillars that hold up the Dome. Every state has two statues in the statue room. The dome is so big that the Statue of Liberty could fit in the capitol dome on its side lying down, and there would still be some space to spare, but the pillars would get crushed under the weight of the statue of liberty. On the roof of the Capitol building is a great statue called Lady Liberty and she faces east because the sun rises in front of her and the sets behind her. There is another painting in the dome that shows the long United States history. After our tour of the Capitol, we went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. At the museum, we went on a ride where we pretended that we were pilots. I rode with my big brother. He was the pilot and I was the gunner. My brother kept us upside down all the time. I had to shoot the enemy aircraft. We only shot down two before our airplane got shot down. At the museum, we saw the first ballistic missile and Amelia Earhart’s plane. I’ve been to the Air and Space Museum before, but I was still disappointed that we didn’t get to stay there too long. Everyone was tired and hungry and wanted to go back to the hotel to eat. We had to walk around in the rain for thirty minutes to find the Metro, and then it was a long train ride back to the hotel. We were soaked to the skin and cold. We ate in the room and watched movies on TV. The next morning we left for home.

United States Army Field Band Concert

Yesterday, we went to see the U.S. Army Field Band at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theater.  We had to wait a little while because we got there early. Before the show started, the soldier/musicians handed out souvenirs and I got ear buds. The Eastman Theater has a huge glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and it has balcony seats. For some reason, there were trap doors too, with golden flowers on them. There were many fancy paintings on the wall. The paintings on the walls had a lot of different colors. The soldiers’ uniforms looked nice. The uniforms were blue and had golden stripes at the end of the sleeves. It was very loud, and there was a lot of clapping and shouting and cheering during the concert. There was a lot of excitement in the air. There were at least 100 musicians on the stage, and the band played all types of music. The musicians had many different types of instruments too. My favorite song is Armed Forces salute. It is my favorite because the band leader called out a branch of the military, and all the people from that branch stood up.  There is another song I liked, called Let Freedom Ring. You can download the songs at ArmyFieldBand .com.  It was my first time at The Eastman Theater.    

Maple Syrup Madness

As usual, I have been very busy this month. First of all, I started a new typing program it is called Mavis Beacon Typing. We also went to the Genesee Country Village Museum, and we went skiing at Holiday Halley. Later this month, we are going to Gettysburg and to Washington DC.

I am doing a new typing program called Mavis Beacon. The program is teaching me to type better. The other typing program that we were using before did not help me learn to type. It is important that I learn to type so that I can write essays when I get to college.

On Friday of this week, we went to the Genesee Country Village Museum to attend a homeschooling day called Maple Madness. I was happy we were able to go because there was a huge blizzard a few days before our field trip, and I was concerned that the trip would be cancelled. At our house, fifteen inches of snow fell in twelve hours. At the GCVM they taught us about the history of collecting sap and making maple syrup.  The first thing we saw the Cooper Smith. The Cooper Smith makes wooden barrels to hold the sap. The barrels were made out of wood, and were put together like a puzzle and held together with a metal band. The Cooper Smith taught us all the parts of wooden barrels and how they used to be made.

               After the Cooper Smith demonstration, we learned how to make 1-2-3-4 cake. We got to try a sample of the cake too. It is called 1-2-3-4 cake because the recipe is 1 cup of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 3 cups of flour and 4 eggs, all mixed together. The frosting was made out of maple syrup.

               We then went over to our pancake lunch. Before lunch, we learned a line dance called The Boston Tea party.  There was a young woman who played the fiddle for our dance, and we learned the steps. Sam had a difficult time following the dance, and unfortunately he was my partner! We ate chocolate pancakes and sausage, with real maple syrup, for lunch. After lunch, we went to see the modern sap/syrup evaporator. A man told us that in the late fall, water goes down from the branches to the roots of the tree. That is so the water doesn’t freeze inside the tree and crack the tree. In the early springtime, the sweet water (sap) goes up from the roots and travels to the branches. The tap is drilled into the tree only into the first layer because the sap is only in the first two layers of the tree. The middle of the tree is hardwood. We learned how to identify a maple tree. In the early springtime, the best way to identify a maple tree is to look at the branches. Unlike other trees that alternate branch sprigs, the maple tree has branches that are directly across from each other, like arms. When there are leaves on the tree, it is easy to tell a maple tree from other trees. Maple trees only grow in Northern states in the USA. All maple syrup in the world comes from our area of the country.

Then we walked on the nature trail to see the other maple syrup stations. The nature trail demonstrations were set up so that as we walked the trail, we would go back in time and see how syrup was produced in the early 1800’s.  At one station, we got to drill a hole in a Maple tree with an old- fashioned hand drill and put in the spile. The spile is the name of the tap. First, the tree has to be measured so that the number of taps can be determined. The farmers use a rope with tape markings on it. If the rope goes around the tree and meets the first tape, then the tree is forty years old and can have one sap tap. If the rope meets at the marking with two pieces of tape, then the tree is eighty years old and can have two taps. We saw a tree that was 120 years old and had three taps. The taps used today are metal, and the sap runs through plastic tubing down to the collection bucket. Pails are no longer hung from the trees because they get knocked off or bark and dirt get inside the sap.

 The next stop was a man with a long mustache who talked about the science of making syrup. He showed us how to measure how much sugar is in the sap using a hydrometer. The hydrometer is glass and it had a weight inside. It measures the density of the water/sap. In plain water, the hydrometer sunk to the bottom of the pail, but the higher it floated showed the higher amount of sugar in the sap.

 We also went to see a sugar camp. In the 1800’s, a family would live at the small sugar camp for two to four weeks to collect the sap and boil it down into syrup. After boiling and boiling and boiling the syrup, the syrup would eventually turn into a brown sugar rock. The sugar was easier to transport than syrup, and they could always add water back in to recreate syrup if they needed syrup. The Native Americans taught the colonists how to collect and boil down the sap of Maple trees.

At the Nature Center, we got to eat sugar on snow. Maple syrup is heated to over 200 degrees, and then a little bit is poured on snow. The cold snow makes the syrup harden quickly into a candy. At the Nature Center, we saw many animal skulls and skeletons. That wasn’t part of the Maple Sugar day, but we spent time looking at them too. There was a Bison, an Elk, a Moose and a deer mounted on the wall. I correctly identified a skull of a carnivore. I knew it was a carnivore because the teeth were all sharp and pointed, and there were no flat teeth for chewing plants.

The last stop for the day was at the Tin Smith’s shop. He talked about how to make tin maple syrup buckets. It was getting late, so we had to leave then.  Going to the Genesee Country Village Museum never gets boring to me. 

President's week

Mom is making me write again. I get frustrated sometimes when I have to write, but Mom thinks it’s important. I would rather play a new game that I learned, called Rummy Roots, during my English time, or read the new book series that I started.  Almost everything is better than writing.  

               I don’t like writing because typing is a subject that I am horrible at. I don’t type fast because I can’t think and type at the same time. Then, I get frustrated.  I still don’t know how to type because the program that I use does not seem work for me. Mom is going to find another typing program, I think. Also, after I write, my mom makes me print my writing. Then, I have to circle every linking verb (was and were) and rewrite the sentence using active verbs. I would rather just read. Today, I accidently deleted my writing, after working on it for over an hour, and then mom made me write the whole thing all over again. She said that mistakes like that will happen over and over again (this is the third time I’ve done that) if I don’t learn to save my work. She said I will not learn my lesson unless I rewrite it over again. I cried when she said that, but then I finally stopped crying and rewrote this blog.  

               Last week, I finished my fourth-grade vocabulary book. My mom did not order the fifth-grade book as she planned, because she decided that I was not really learning the vocabulary words.  I would study the vocabulary words long enough to take the quiz, and then I would forget them. Mom decided that I should learn root words instead of vocabulary words. Mom found a card game using root words. It is called Rummy Roots. When I learn all the Greek and Latin roots, I will be able to figure out long words. We play Rummy Roots the same way that we play Go Fish. After I know all the root words, we will play the game similar to the game of Rummy, except we will play it with root word cards. I like Rummy Roots a lot better than the vocabulary words. I’ve only been playing it with my mom for a few days, and once I played with my dad, and I already know many of the root words.

               Mom took us to the library on Monday, but it was closed because of President’s Day. We never even thought that the library might be closed because we are not taking off a week for President’s Day. On Tuesday, we went to the library again. I checked out a few Greek Mythology Books. I just started reading a new series by Rick Riordan, and it’s about characters in Greek Mythology. I love the series, but I need to understand the myths better in order to follow the books. Mom also chose a book for me called The Secret Garden. At first, I did not want the book because it looked like it was for girls, but now I am enjoying it a lot.

               Yesterday, my friend and his family (and my Grandma) came ice-skating with us. It was the only day we took off school this week. All the grownups watched us kids skate. The ice-rank is a gigantic oval, inside an arena. I was so sore after skating for three hours that my legs hurt that night. We played bumper cars with chairs on the ice, and ate pizza for lunch. It’s been a busy week for everyone.

Catching up!

We had several field trips this year already that I never took the time to write in my blog, so I will do that today.  We've been busy homeschooling during the week, and skiing every weekend. This winter has been exceptionally cold and snowy, which is great for skiers.  To top all that off, we also got the stomach bug in February.

On Friday Jan.31, we attended laser tag for a boring class on lights and optics. A worker presented a slide show on a screen that explained how light travels. She asked questions, but none of the kids would raise their hands to answer. The slide show did not interest me at all, but the laser tag games made my day. The big laser tag arena was dark and foggy. The fog helped us see the lasers so that we could aim and hide. The arena had two floors and a lot of walls so that we could hide. There were mirrors on the walls, so that we could shoot the mirrors and the laser would bounce off the mirror and hit a person.

The first week of Feb. we got the stomach bug. We were throwing up all week. We had to take a bowl into our beds for several nights. Charles got sick first, then Asia and then pretty much all of the family the only one who didn’t throw up is my brother Connor.  What a horrible week for us!

               After we got over the stomach bug, we drove to Sky Zone in Greece, a thirty-minute drive. Sky Zone is a place that is an indoor trampoline park that just opened up last month. A homeschooling family reserved the whole gym for a homeschool group. There were over a hundred homeschoolers there, although it was not an educational field trip. This is the first field trip that we’ve taken that did not have learning involved. I played dodge ball on the trampolines and basketball too. We jumped for a full hour.  We got a lot of exercise, but Conner complained the next day that his legs hurt.

               This winter we have been able to go skiing every weekend. We ski at Swain Ski Resort. We used to be at taekwondo every Saturday, but now that we don’t take taekwondo anymore, we have more time to ski.  I usually go skiing with Connor, while Dad takes Leo and Sam. A few weeks ago, I fell and hurt my knee. The ski patrol came and took me down the hill on a toboggan.  The ski patrol put a splint on my leg. The next day, I limped around, but it did feel better in a few days. We were supposed to go to Holiday Valley on February 3, but that week is when we got sick. We have rescheduled the Holiday Valley ski day for a day in March.

               It’s been a busy year so far for the Peters. I will try to write more regularly so that I don’t have to spend so much time trying to remember all that happened in the past month.  The foster children will be moving out soon, and we will have less noise in the house. That will be better for homeschooling. 

Rochester Museum and Science Center---AGAIN

     I went to the Rochester Museum and Science Center three times this week! Two times we went to the planetarium, and one time to the actual museum. Altogether it seems like we have been to the museum 100 times this year already!

     On Saturday, we went to see a star show. The star show was about the constellations. The big blue projector(named Carl) magically rose out of the floor to display the amazing night sky. I learned how find Orion, Taurus, Sirius and the North Star. Now I know that if I find Orion, I can find Taurus and Sirius easily.

     On Sunday, we went to see a Grand Canyon show. The show was about three families that went river rafting down the Colorado River. The Grand Canyon has many colors because of the different types of rocks. Mostly the movie was about the Colorado River and how the Grand Canyon formed. The show also taught us how to save the waterways.

     On Wednesday, we went to a homeschooling class at the Rochester Museum and Science Center. The RMSC offers weekly classes to homeschooled students. This class was about animals, plants, adaptations and how animals camouflage themselves. After the class, mom took us to see the new exhibits at the Museum. The first exhibit was about construction work and how workers build stuff.  There was an explanation of wiring and circuits, floor tiling and a pretend crane. The second exhibit, Math Midways, displays many ways to solve math problems.  For example, square wheels on a tricycle will work just fine if the biker rides on a round, curvy surface.

    I learned a lot of information that I did not know before I went to the museum.  I know we will go again before the school year ends, but I’m not sure if we’ll attend any more of the homeschooling classes. We go on many field trips and we sometimes have to just stay home and do our workbooks. I had an fantastic time, but going to the museum takes up the entire day and we’ve already been there many, many times. 

Friday January 17. Half way through the school year!

I am creating a project for school. I am making a U.S History time-line. I am researching the history of the United States from the year 1600 to the year 2000. I am learning a lot of new facts. The project will probably take the rest of the year, but I am excited to make a time-line. My time-line is longer than our dining room table that seats twelve people. I will put all the wars, some pictures of the presidents, and other important facts. I might put the changing of technology on it too.
For Geography, I am learning the capitals of the states on the computer. For Math, I am working in my Math book, but it is hard. Today, I learned how to factor and metric measurements. We are so busy now that we have decided not to go to taekwondo anymore. We just don't have enough money and time right now. Also, we can't travel around the United States anymore to go to competitions because of our foster children. I am kind of sad, bu also I like having the extra time at night. If there was a daytime taekwondo class, we might still go, but there isn't and when we go to taekwondo our dinner gets to be too late at night. Instead, now we have time to watch a family movie at night. Last night we watched a movie (called April Morning) that was all about the battles of Lexington and Concord. A few years ago, we went to visit Lexington and Concord. We have a coffee cup with John Parker's famous saying, "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."  That was the beginning of the Revolutionary War. I feel that when I homeschool, we get to do many things that we didn't get to do in regular school. I miss my friends though. I hope that they are doing well. I hope that I can see them in the summer.