Friday, August 26, 2011

The Things We Did Yesterday

Hello! This is Blaise (10th) and Kaleb (5th).

Yesterday our school (all 9 of us) went on a walk to a pond and caught 5 tadpoles. Then the little kids thought one was pooping, but its intestines were falling out. Then Andrew tossed the tadpole back into the pond. We continued to search for tadpoles and then we came back to school. First we studied them; we discovered that they were not tadpoles but they were in fact pollywogs. A pollywog is like a tadpole, but it has started to sprout legs and is bigger than a tadpole. When a tadpole becomes a pollywog it eats meat. We estimated that these pollywogs are between 97 and 105 days old. We also learned that there are only two kinds of frogs in Alaska: the wood frog (Rana sylvatica) and the boreal toad (Bufo boreas boreas). We observed the pollywogs and everyone made a prediction about what kind of pollywogs they are. But only time will tell. For now they're in a tank in one of our classrooms.

Walking to the pond.

Andrew S., our crazy teacher

Dan, Kiara, Jolynn, Kaleb, Caleb and Aiden looking for tadpoles with Andrew.

Dan trying to capture a tadpole.

Keilan, our kindergartner

Kaylee (2nd) and Jolynn (3rd)

One of our pollywogs in a petri dish.

Blaise looking at Kaylee through a magnifying glass.

Dan eating a pollywog (just kidding!)

Our pollywogs in their new home.
Enough about amphibians. Someone asked a question: what are no-see-ums? They are small, travel in the thousands and really drive people crazy. They're like mosquitoes, but a lot smaller; like a quarter of the size of a mosquito and their bites are bigger and hurt. So wear a bug net if you go outside in Alaska anywhere near a water source. They're so small that they get in every crook and nanny of your clothes, so you have to get a no-see-um net, not a mosquito net because they can get through mosquito net. You should get a bug jacket. Our school mascot is the no-see-um because there are so many around here.

Enough of these creatures. Let's move on to hunting season! Moose season starts on the first. [Blaise] I'm really excited to go hunting again. I hope I catch another moose. The moose I caught last year was really tender and tasted so good. [Kaleb] I hope my moose is bigger than your moose. [Blaise] Haha...very funny!

Caribou season is open, too.

Enough about hunting. Now about the traveling to the east coast! The LSAC, Local School Advisory Committee, has approved our travel to the east coast. We want to go to Boston for five days. We will take educational tours around Boston and do a cultural presentation to a class in Boston. And then we take the Amtrak to Orlando, Florida. We'll sleep in for a day because riding the train can make people tired. After we sleep in, we hit the beach to get some sun. (And hopefully we won't get burned.) And then we hit Universal Studios to check out where they create movies for a day. The next day we ride roller coasters at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure.

We need to raise about $50,000 for this trip. We will have lots of fundraisers, like movie nights, burger nights, spaghetti nights, selling stuff at carnivals, taming a moose and selling it on eBay (just kidding) and a fundraising website. We also have to convince our school board that this is a very educational trip, not just for fun, and a once-in-a-lifetime chance to explore areas we may never get to go to again. You can donate money at our website. It will be linked on our blog when we set it up.

Thanks for reading our blog. We really hope you enjoyed it.
From,
Kaleb and Blaise

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