Sabu -- Blogmeister

The Phantom Tollbooth Theme
By Sabu

The theme of the book The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster is to be positive about things. If people do that they would move further in life instead of being negative about things. Milo has lots of really cool things, but he thinks they were boring and useless earlier in the story. A tollbooth shows up from nowhere, and Milo uses his little car to drive himself through it. Milo meets all of these “people” and creatures. Throughout the book this lesson came up when a character named Alec Bings told Milo, “it’s all in how you look at things.” In this case Milo looked at his life better, and now he cares about things and is doing really well in life. Also it came up when Milo visited the town of Reality. The people there didn’t pay attention to the wonderful things around them so those things faded away. Milo learns the lesson of having to just look at things so they won’t fade away. I am so glad Milo followed this theme.

My class went to Westminster Woods on Tuesday March 17th, 2009! We stayed until Friday March 20th, 2009. I had so much fun!
My favorite activity was the solo hike at Armstrong Redwoods. What was so fun about it was that Ocean, our naturalist, put cards along the trail, and then we would do what the card said. Since we were on a solo hike so we got to listen to the wonderful sounds of nature. The whole entire hike at Armstrong was about three miles long! Wow!
My personal favorite trip was the tide pools because we saw so many different creatures that were so cool. Also, I found a baby sea star. It was so cute, and it was the first sea star I’ve ever found.
The most interesting information I learned was when you close your eye, and leave the other eye open staring at light, and then switch your eyes use that eye in the dark to see. You are able to see better than with the other eye. It was so cool, and we got to try it on our scary night hike.
My favorite memory will be, when I am old, is the hikes because when I am old I might not be able to do those wonderful hikes. This truly was an exciting trip because the naturalists are very active and fun. Also, the redwood trees were amazingly huge. I saw really big redwoods at Armstrong Redwoods.

My Trip to Coloma

My trip to Coloma was very fun! It was a very good experience to be in Coloma because my classmates and I learned lots of things about the gold rush. The part I enjoyed the most was when we got to pan for gold, but there was barely any gold in the river. I enjoyed that the most because I found two really really small pieces of gold, but it might be fool’s gold. Also, it was the best part because we learned how to pan for gold, and how they panned back in the gold rush times. I learned that gold could be mistaken for iron pyrite and mica.

Sabu

Golden Gulch Journey

Traveling to Golden Gulch from the East Coast to the West Coast was very challenging. On our first try our team went on a wagon train, and our oxen starved because we left in May when there was no grass. Then, our team had to walk back home to the East Coast, and it was long because we were already in the middle of the country. Our team tried another route across the ocean around Cape Horn. It was horrible while we were on that ship because our ship crashed, and then we were floating around in the ocean for a while. After that, my team tried again, and we took another wagon train. Then, we made it to Golden Gulch and got a good claim. Also, my team was the fifth team to get to Golden Gulch, so we earned 20 gold nuggets. When we got there our team was happy, but we were sad because we were far from home, family, and friends. I think our team will have some success finding gold because we’ll have enough tools and courage to find it. I feel finding gold in Golden Gulch will have its ups and downs, but I think we’ll find lots of gold.

Sabu

In chapter 15 of The Cay an old black man named Timothy dies in a massive hurricane. Personally, I think the death of Timothy was very, very sad, and normal because he was already old. Also, the death of Timothy was heartbreaking for not only me, but also Phillip. I don’t think the author, Theodore Taylor, should have killed the main character because he was sweet, helpful, and life giving for the other main character, Phillip. Phillip was blind. Also, it’s just sad to see such a nice man die so harmfully. Having someone die like that especially, someone who’s very close to you, is depressing. I bet the author killed the main character because Timothy was already old and tired. I also think the author killed the main character because he wanted to make the story more dramatic by making someone die, and someone getting blind. Now, as you can see, the wonderful heroic Timothy had a horrible type of death.

Sabu