Safari Hunt

Happy New Year!

It has been a looooonnnnnnggggg time since I wrote on my blog. I made a deal with Mommy that I would write something new every week as part of my literacy and ITC homework.

My present to everyone for the New Year is a card game that I made mostly by myself called "Safari Hunt." See if you can download the nine page PDF using one of these two links:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/24669115?secret_password=j6s64ej3bqij5539wxq

http://www.scribd.com/doc/24669115/Safari-Hunt-Low?secret_password=j6s64ej3bqij5539wxq

Do you want to know about this game? I just kept asking my mom to make a present on the computer and finally mom let me and that's the idea I had. I was just thinking of the game and how it would be. I had to find all the pictures using Safari/Google Images and I had to learn how to make the card shapes and fit the photos on the card shapes in "Pages" (the Mac version of Word). Also I had to learn a lot about the animals. Then, I made up the rules -- it's a little bit like "War"-- and I did the typing myself, even after I smashed my finger in the door. OUCH!

*We uploaded the lower-res PDF using "Scribd." This is a bit of an experiment, so please let us know if it will print OK, if the resolution is fine, etc. It was originally a massively large file....20MB. I think our next ITC lesson will be how to manage jpeg file sizes and managing documents. It turns out that trying to convert something back to a manageable size after-the-fact is a total headache.

Seeing a wild cheetah for the first time!

I have seen real cheetahs in Africa.  They don't live in Seattle and they are not at the Woodland Park Zoo --yet!  The first cheetah I saw in a zoo in South Africa.  The surprise that I got there was the NOISE that they make.  They make a squeaking noise that they use to 'call' the other cheetahs. A cheetah does not growl or roar, it just says "eeekkk" Our camera didn't have any battery but it was very close and I got to take a little movie.  

The next cheetah we saw was at Munda Wanga.  "Munda Wanga" means "my garden" and it is a wildlife park, sort of a zoo.  It is in Chilanga about 1/2 an hour drive from our house.  The picture above is from that park.  Mommy took it.  There are two cheetahs (we think) but there might be just one. The names are Zig and Zag because they run zig-zag to confuse their prey; they use their tails to steer zigging and zagging.

On Friday last week we went to Kafue National Park, named after the Kafue River.  We went to a place called Lufupa, named after the Lufupa River.  When we got there it was night time.  When we were driving to the campsite in the bush we saw a cheetah!  It was very close to our car - is was just standing there then it was walking away from us on the road then it just turned left and disappeared into the darkness.  Then we saw SIX lion cubs! That was the first time I have seen a cheetah in the wild!  I was VERY happy when I saw it because it's my favorite animal. 

Guest Blogger II

Finn, cracking himself up

Once upon a time there was a boy named Owen and he was made out of  cars and some letters and some bees and some computers.  His head was made out of cheetahs some cushions, some bednets, some horns, some brains and some walls.

When he walked down to stores he bumped into a pig pen.  He was crying and crying and he couldn’t find his mommy. So he went back home and then he still couldn’t find his mommy.  So he went out again for a walk. He was looking for the River Ocean-Floor-Ocean-Floor. (There were two names, that is the number two name.  The first name is Ocean-Ocean-Ocean-Floor River.)

At the walk he made a horn and he made a bednet and the bednet said “I can help you find this river.” He found the river by walking through the forest, drove his car, walked again and found a street.  He went across the street and came to the river. 

He wanted to cross the river but he needed a shark to cross the river. 

The shark just swam up to the side of the river where Owen was, and said

“Jump in my mouth and I will lead you there; no one will find you in the deep forest!”

Owen jumped in his mouth and they swam across the river.  He jumped out of the shark’s mouth and walked through the forest to find another cheetah to go onto his head.

The shark said “woo-hoo you lost the winners.” and the shark gave him a clap! 

Owen went back home and his mom was at Seattle and he came back home to her.

Guest Blogger

I am Finny Peter Finch Jennings.  I am writing a story today.  First I want to tell that we had crepes today even we have had a picnic outside one day.  In this picture I am painting a buffalo on the wall in the garage.  It's called a carport.  In the carport we have bikes, daddy's bike, owen's bikes, mommy's bikes, a trailer from daddy's bike and some cars!  I get to ride in the trailer - people say hi when they see me in the trailer and they laugh and laugh and laugh.

I am painting a buffalo and I painted a warthog.  These are my favorite animals.  Owen is painting a cheetah chasing an impala. Owen's favorite animal is a cheetah.  My other favorite animal is a teeth dolphin.  The End.

Poisson Rouge

One day when I came home from school Finny was playing a game on the computer!  If you want to play the games go to:  www.poissonrouge.com

You will find LOTS and LOTS of games on it....you just have to explore and see what you can do.  I like to click on the submarine and then I play all the games on those pages.  When Finny and I play together we take turns because it's even fun to watch someone else play.

Poisson Rouge means "Fish Red" in french -- usually the description word (adjective) is after the noun (like a person name or place or a thing) so it really means "Red Fish."  You don't have to know french to do the games but if you want to do some french lessons, they are on the 'castle' games -- spanish, and english too!

art symmetry

Finny and I were painting on paper with paintbrushes this weekend.  We were using every color and we were mixing colors.  I have been making paper stencils by folding a piece of paper up and drawing a design and then cutting out the design (like how you cut out a snowflake design).  When you open the paper it is a beautiful shape and it looks like a spider a lot of times that I do it!  I had a whole bunch of stencil cutouts that we painted and glued onto the painted paper (even using Finny's papers). We put them on the matt with tacky, and mom and I put them into frames.  Don't they look nice?!  What do you think they look like?

Difference of Victoria Falls

It is June and a while ago we went to Livingstone. We went driving.  The drive was a little bit faster than last time when we went with Papa and Grandma and Nana in October 2008 because the road was better.  We saw the new road they are building and also most of the big potholes were filled.  The drive was about 6 hours and thirty minutes.

When we got there we were going to stay at Maramba River Lodge but we stayed at the Zambezi Sun instead; that way we could just walk to the falls instead of having to drive.  And so we DID walk to the falls.....but there was a difference!

This time if you wanted to cross the bridge you would get SOAKED and you could see lots and lots of mist going UP but not the water going DOWN.  You could see rainbows -- we saw two at the same time.   When we came in October it was dry and super hot.  It had not rained in Zambia since March -- in 8 months -- and the Zambezi River was not very full.

We did not take a lot of pictures because mom's camera would get wet.  Daddy broke a camera when he came to Livingstone once before we moved to Zambia.