SEND SOMETHING YOU WANT TO SHARE OR BRAG ABOUT IN KMAIL TO YOUR MENTOR Ms.Alia Herrod
Waterton Park - The Best Vacation Spot
by Alex Z. Waterton Park, Alberta, Canada, is a place filled with greens and blues, as trees meet waterfalls and grass meets rivers. I and my family visit there about every two years, and the 14-hour drive from Utah is well worth it. The spectacular view from the nearby mountains provides a grand view of Waterton Lake, and makes the nearby town look like a miniature village. Cameron Falls, a waterfall that is close enough to almost be considered a part of Waterton (the town, not the park) itself, is one of the many amazing works of nature at the park. There are many nearby forests, lakes, waterfalls, mountains, and hiking trails that go through all of them, and Cameron Falls is just one of them. The mountain known as Bear’s Hump is one of the most popular hiking spots, as the view at the top looks like it came out of a movie, with a grand view that goes for miles around. The town of Waterton itself is small compared to Salt Lake City, but its size is a feature, as it makes town feel like a quiet and peaceful place, a perfect spot for a vacation. There’s a plethora of shops selling a variety of items, from gas station chewing gum to toy store toys. My personal favorite store is a candy store called Welch’s that has the greatest ice cream I have ever bought. The wildlife in the park is everywhere. Squirrels are a common sight, scurrying around the trees. Deer are often seen in parks resting, occasionally wandering into someone’s yard for some grass. Bears are occasionally seen on trails, and rarely come down into the town. All of the dumpsters are large with heavy lids to prevent the bears from opening them and eating the garbage inside. Our grandparents own a cabin in Waterton, which is where we stay when we visit. The cabin is one of the largest cabins in Waterton, even being featured on the front of book called “Cabins of Waterton”, which features the various cabins in the town. The cabin has a basement, a main floor, and a loft. The loft is where all the children sleep. Me and my cousins often played our games up in the loft, coming down only for meals and to go hike. It is the most fun place to spend summer, and every year I hope we get to go again. |
Guinea Pigs Gone Wild
by Kyna H. I will be talking about wild guinea pigs. Some of you now them as pet guinea pig. Cute, cuddly, and sweet loving animals. Well there are wild guinea pigs, also. In these next three paragraphs, I will be talking about their habitat, the food they eat, and the predators they have. Please read on. The kinds of guinea pigs most often kept as pets come from wild guinea pigs that still live in South America. These wild guinea pigs live in the mountains and flat grasslands of South America. Guinea Pigs are also found along the edge of forests, marshes and rocky areas. As you can tell, Guinea Pigs are very good at adapting to any kind of environment. Guinea Pigs in the wild live in small groups, called herds. These herds generally have 5-10 animals in them. The herd has one dominant male with several females and their babies. The herd usually eat, sleep and rest together. Wild guinea pigs make their homes in the crevices of rocks, in shrubbery or in burrows (holes that have been dug in the ground) left by other animals. Wild guinea pigs spend much of their time eating, grooming themselves, resting and playing. Guinea Pigs are most active at night. Wild guinea pigs enjoy a vegetarian diet. They treat themselves to leaves, hay, grass, and even flowers. Clover is a special treat to the guinea pigs palate. Grass is a guinea pigs natural diet. Their molars are growing throughout the animals life. Most grass eating mammals are quite large and have a long digestive tract. While guinea pigs have much larger colons then other rodents. To enhance their nutrition, guinea pigs eat there feces (poop). However, they do not eat all of their feces. They only eat the softer poop. Guinea pigs are a food source to the people of many indigenous South America groups. Being a small animal, guinea pigs face a lot of challenges being in the wild. They are the prey of other animals such as humans, wild cats, owls, coyotes, and wolves. Snakes may even target them for a meal. Humans are still more of a threat to the wild guinea pigs, as they may hunt or take the guinea pigs from there homes. The humans sell or breed them. |
Do you know where pizza comes from? Read this by Cort. Very informative.
WHAT IS PIZZA? A Pizza is a round, open pie made with yeast dough and topped with tomato sauce, cheese, and a variety of other ingredients. The ancient Greeks used to cover their bread with oils, herbs and cheese. The Romans developed what is called placenta, a sheet of dough topped with cheese and honey and flavored with bay leaves. Modern pizza originated in Italy as the Neapolitan flatbread. Flatbread or rounds of dough with lots of different kinds of toppings can be found throughout history. What is known as pizza today can be traced to Naples, Italy in the Middle Ages. We also give credit to Italians for coming up with the term Pizza. It might have come from the Italian word for point, Pizziare, meaning to pinch or pluck, or a verb meaning to sting or to season. When the pizza first started out we think it may have included cheeses, dates, herbs, olive oil, and honey. Tomatoes or tomato sauce were not introduced until the sixteenth century when explorers brought the red fruit back from South America. When the tomato first came to Italy all of the rich upper class citizens avoided them thinking they were poisonous but all the peasants in Naples were enjoying them with rounds of dough. Pretty soon the tomato pie idea became very popular and spread as open-air pizza parlors started to pop up all over the country. Pizza came to the United States when Italian immigrants made their way here. One of the earliest known pizzerias was opened by Gennaro Lombardi in New York City in 1905. He made a thin crust pie that had a layer of tomato puree, mozzarella cheese and various toppings such as sausage and pepperoni. In 1943 my own personal hero Ike Sewell invented a deep-dish version in his Chicago restaurant called “Pizzeria Uno”. The deep-dish pizza combines the sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms with cheese then its poured into a high-sided crust then a layer of tomato sauce is ladled over the top before it is baked. Without Ike’s amazing invention I would never have been introduced to my favorite food of all time the Hawaiian deep dish pizza from Papa Murphy’s. Now days you can find all kinds of different pizza’s from the expensive restaurants who sell escargot and caviar on their pizzas to the kind my mom makes with sliced French bread spread with pizza sauce and topped with pepperoni and sliced cheese. I’ve even had some homemade pizza that didn’t use bread of any kind it was made with deep fried eggplant instead of bread. You can walk into most pizza parlors today and they will offer up some dessert pizza with all kinds of sweet toppings like cinnamon and sugar and marshmallows to creams with sliced strawberries or kiwi on top. To end, I’d like to offer my unending thanks to men like Ike Sewell, Gennaro Lombardi and all those Italian peasants who ate that strange red fruit even though they thought it might kill them. |
Video Games
by Justice Video games are the best thing in the whole world. Not only do video games entertain you, they are also exciting to watch. The graphics and the different types of games make it fun. Some of my favorite games are Dungeon Defenders, Skylanders, Injustice, and Minecraft. When you play video games you use your brain to help solve puzzles and to make a plan to win the game. Also, gaming never gets boring! That is why I love video games. |
What I like
by Amber I like video games. There are several video games I like. My favorite is "Super Mario 3D Land". It’s a wild thrilling adventure in only 3 minutes. You can duck, jump, smash, and fly during level, but there are "Power ups". There's a "Mushroom". If you get hit and become small, you can use a “Mushroom” get big again. If you get hit 2 times, you die or, if time runs out, you die also. Then there’s a “Fire flower”. It makes you shoot fire balls at an enemy. After that there are “Ice flower”and “Raccoon Power”. “Ice flower” makes you hit things like enemies, and they freeze. In “Raccoon power” you can fly and hit enemies with your tail. Then there are my favorite characters. They are Goomba, Bowser, Bowser's sister, Bowers brother, Toad, Princess Peach, Princess Toad Stole, Raccoon boo’s, Boo’s, King Boo, Wendy O. Koopa, Morton Koopa Jr., and Lemmy Koopa. I like all of these characters because they all have cool, fun, and amazing powers. So this is why I like “Super Mario 3D Land”. It’s fun and SUPER exciting, and it’s been around since the 80’s. If you play this game, you might like it and enjoy it like me! |
Amanda shared this adorable Bunny Video.
Enjoy. |
One of my favorites
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Amanda shared a great story about an endangered animal. Read to find out. Enjoy.
An Animal of Four What has the head of a giraffe, the body of a horse, and the legs of a zebra? Give up? An Okapi. This species is an endangered animal found in 1901 by scientists. Though its looks are strange, what scientists find even stranger, is that it wasn’t discovered until recently, yet most animals were discovered quite a bit earlier. The person who discovered the Okapi was Sir Harry Johnston, a British explorer and naturalist administrator. At first, he thought the okapi was just a long necked horse, but soon discovered that the okapi was closely related to the giraffe. It was discovered in the beautiful rainforests of Belgian Congo. Okapi camouflage with their brown, gray and white colours. They have a long neck, and a long black tongue, both used for picking leaves off of trees. The tongue can wrap around branches and leaves. Animals groom themselves in all kinds of ways. The okapi though, use their flexible tongue to groom its ears and eyes. Okapi are normally very solitary, and with a keen sense of smell and hearing, extremely wary of humans. When an okapi has a calf, the mother hides her calf for four to eight months. Calves often triple their size by the end of its second month, and when they are three years old, they normally reach their full size. They are a very unique species, but like all animals, they are still at risk. Leopards are predators to them, and their home is being cut down. So maybe we can save this beautiful creature by visiting zoos that sustain and raise them or by preventing hunting, or maybe even helping them stay alive and safe in the wild. |
September 20th was Scooby Doo's B-day and Star Spangled Banner Day.
Mark wrote this tribute to both. Enjoy. I wish he would record and sing it for us, too, don't you?
"Oh say can you see, by Scooby Doo's first drawing
"What's so proudly we hail, at the birthday of Scooby!"
I LOVE MY SCOOBY, BY THE DONSER OF DOO!
GAVE PROOF THROUGH THE NIGHT . . . THAT MY SCOOBY WAS STILL COOL!
OH THE LAAAAAAAND OF SCOOBYYYYYYYYY!!!
AND THE HOOOOOME OF HIS HISTOOOOORYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!
Mark wrote this tribute to both. Enjoy. I wish he would record and sing it for us, too, don't you?
"Oh say can you see, by Scooby Doo's first drawing
"What's so proudly we hail, at the birthday of Scooby!"
I LOVE MY SCOOBY, BY THE DONSER OF DOO!
GAVE PROOF THROUGH THE NIGHT . . . THAT MY SCOOBY WAS STILL COOL!
OH THE LAAAAAAAND OF SCOOBYYYYYYYYY!!!
AND THE HOOOOOME OF HIS HISTOOOOORYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!
Here's a short test for aspiring literature researchers BY PETER
Let's determine the taxonomic status of the characters in Winnie the Pooh by Alexander Milne. 1. Pooh and Piglet belong to different (a) phila within the same kingdom (b) classes within the same philum (c) orders within the same class (d) families within the same order 2. Rabbit and Owl belong to different (a) phila within the same kingdom (b) classes within the same philum (c) orders within the same class (d) families within the same order 3. Pooh and the bees, from whom he is trying to steal honey, belong to different (a) kingdoms within the same domain (b) phila within the same kingdom (c) classes within the same philum (d) orders within the same class 4. Bees and the oak where they live belong to different (a) domains (b) kingdoms within the same domain (c) phila within the same kingdom (d) classes within the same philum 5. Choose a pair that belongs to different domains. (a) rabbit and carrots for his lunch (b) a carrot, which Rabbit forgot to eat, and mold on it (c) bacteria on the carrots that Rabbit forgot to wash up, and bacteria in his house, where he hadn't washed the floor (d) a carrot, which the rabbit eats, and bacteria living in his stomach |
Image from: gotmybook.wordpress.com
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Stop Motion video by Mark
Isn't that cool? I think it's awesome!!! It takes a long time to make this because you have to capture every single frame one at a time. Great job Mark! Thanks for sharing. |
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Alex has written a 1 line Python program. "I wrote this program some time ago when I was
dabbling in writing one-line Python programs", says Alex.
According to his learning coach, his program combines several
important ideas in a single line of code:
1. recursion 2. anonymous function 3. y-combimator http://www.ece.uc.edu/~franco/C511/html/Scheme/ycomb.html The program is also short but obscure to make it a good puzzle. So, what does it do exactly? You can copy the program to a file, for instance foo.py and run it from a terminal window as pyton3 foo.py then enter a number and get another one. That's pretty cool. So here it is: print((lambda foo, i: foo(foo,i))(lambda f, n: 1 if n == 0 else f(f, n-1)*n,int(input()))) Here is a story written by Lydia. Thanks for sharing, Lydia. Enjoy.
Letter to an Author
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I remember reading one of my favorite books for the first time. I went to summer school and they gave everybody a book to read for the summer. That’s how I got my favorite book. It was called 43 Old Cemetery Road. At first I looked at it and it didn’t look great by the cover. But there’s a saying “never judge a book by its cover”. Excited, but not really, I decided to read it. I opened the book, read the first page, and I couldn’t believe it. I laughed in my mind and giggled from the outside. It was a really funny book with silly jokes and funny names for the characters. In two days I finished the book and wanted to read it more. Then I knew this was going to be one of my favorite books!
Time passed and I read it at least 4 times during the summer. I discovered from the book that it had a sequel. I was so excited to read it! I begged my mom for the book and couldn’t wait to get it. Once I got the book, I read it as fast as I could. Surprised once again it was as good as the first one! And I laughed too! More time passed and the author had 4 books released from the series. I read all of them and loved them all and still no matter what, this was my favorite series. It was a year since her other book came out, so I was wondering what happened to her series. I was curious and decided to look online to see if there was going to be another book or not. I looked and looked then finally I found a website! Kate Klise (the author’s name) had a website sharing it with her sister Sarah Klise (the illustrator). Sure enough, there was the fifth book of 43 Old Cemetery Road. I was so happy that it was coming out. I started to explore the website and found a little icon that said contact and there was her information. Then I decided to write her a letter! The next day, I got up to write my letter. I was a little bit unsure of what I should write. I thought about it and then started writing. It took me about 2 hours and finally, I had finished! I did my corrections and printed it out. I made sure the note came out the way it was supposed to be and mail it to the address of the author. Then I put it in the mailbox. The next morning, it was gone. I waited for days, then those days turned into weeks, and then a month. I had given up, thinking that there was no letter from her. Then one day there was a letter from the author! There was a big poster in the envelope about the book and on it was a note from her saying thank you for the letter. I was glad I wrote her the letter. I will never forget that day. |