Christoffer Columbus

Columbus was born in Italy in one of its port cities.  He was a sailor.  He was shipwrecked and swam six miles to Portugal with an oar.  Prince Henry had started a sailing school in Portugal.  Christoffer Columbus learned about sailing there.  He became a captain of ships and was considered one of the greatest sailors.   He thought he could sail west and get to the Indies.  He asked people to sponsor his trip.  The king and queen of Spain did.  He got three ships, the Pinta, the Nina, and the Santa Maria.   He sailed across the ocean and found land.  He thought it was the Indies, and he called the people on the land Indians.  He started looking for gold.  He didn't find any gold but he made a settlement on an island called Hispaniola.  He left for a year.  He came back and the settlement was destroyed by the Indians because the men were treating them badly.  So he started it again.  He wasn't a good governor so a man from Spain came to be governor.  Columbus ended up making four trips to this new land.  He thought it was the Indies.  When he died he didn't know that he had discovered the American Continent.

Prince Henry the Navigator

Prince Henry the Navigator wanted to find a way to the Orient because the Eurpeans would pay lots to be able to have the spices from there. He thought he could do that by sailing down around Africa.  But no ship captains dared to do that.  He sent them on small trips down Africa.  He had them make charts and sail farther and farther until they reached Cape Town.  They were a part of the school he had started.  Prince Henry was the one that improved the compass so it worked better.  He started making captains of the ships write logs.  And he was the one that inspired Christopher Columbus to sail west and find America.  He also designed the ships that later were used by Columbus.

Leif Erikson

Leif was the son of Eric the Red, the first man in Greenland.  He wanted to be a sailor.  He heard from a trader that a man had been blown off course and had seen three different pieces of land.  He also learned  that the man hadn't landed on any of them.  So he wanted to find them and explore them.  The first one he found was all rocks.  The second one he found was really rugged.  He found the third one and it was very beautiful and had lots of plants and trees.  He called it Vinland.  They built a settlement there and stayed for about a year.  Then they sailed back to Greenland.  They had a hard winter and his father died.  He had to sell all he brought home.  He never made it back to Vinland.  He discovered America about 500 years before Columbus.

Robert Frost

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco.  His father died when he was 11, and then his family was very poor.  Him and his family went to live with his grandpa and he worked in a mill as a bobbin boy.  His grandpa paid for him to go to high school.  When he finished his grandpa wanted to send him to college, but he didn't want to go.  He wanted to write poetry.  He loved a girl that was in school with him, and he got married with her.  They had a little boy, so he was going to be a college teacher, but he had to go to college to be a college teacher.  So he went to college, but he and his son got sick, and his son died.  He quit college.  His wife begged his grandpa to give them a farm, so he gave them a farm if he would work on it for ten years.  It was a dairy farm.  He wrote poetry and worked on the farm.  When he had worked on the farm for ten years, he sold it and moved to England because nobody in America would publish his poetry.  The people in England published his poetry.   He went back to American and they decided to publish his poetry.  When he got home, people wanted him to work at the college and do classes, so he got to work at the college.  He taught English classes.  Everybody liked his poetry.  It was about farms and pastures and animals.  He got awarded four Pulitzer prizes for his poetry.

The Pasture

BY ROBERT FROST

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;

I'll only stop to rake the leaves away

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):

I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf

That's standing by the mother. It's so young,

It totters when she licks it with her tongue.

I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

Brady's poem based on The Pasture

I'm going out to play with friends;

I'll play football

And play games.

I sha'n't be gone long.--You come too.

Nests

Book read:  A Nest Is Noisy, by Dianna Hutts Aston


Army ants hook together and make big huge hammock nests for their queens to live in.  A hummingbird's nest is the size of a golf ball.  There are some nests that birds make out of their spit.  They are one of the most expensive foods, because people make them into soup.  Nests are amazing and extremely hard to build.  Birds and lots of animals build nests.  Platypuses, prairie dogs, owls, hornets, alligators, and lampreys are nest builders.  I would like to see the nest of the dusky scrub fowl because it is so huge.

Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin

Snowflake Bentley grew up in Vermont, where the average snowfall each year was 10 feet.  He liked snow.  So he would stay out in the snow and try to look at it through a microscope.  He tried to draw the shapes of the snowflakes.  They all melted before he could.  He found a camera in a magazine that had a microscope on it.  He said to his parents, "If I could get this, I'd be able to get pictures of snow."  Finally, when he was 17 his parents spent their savings and bought it for him.  Then he took pictures, and most of them didn't work.  Finally one year he got it to work.  He took lots of pictures of snow.  He showed them to his friends and family and gave them to them for birthdays and stuff.  Some people laughed at Wilson Bentley and some people thought he had a great work.  One year his book was published when he was 66 years old.  Less than a month later, he went on a walk to take some pictures of snow.  On the way home he got sick.  Two weeks later he died of pneumonia.  He left the world knowing about snow and about snowflakes.
I liked how he kept trying even if it didn't work.

Good King Wenceslas

December 10, 2015

When Wenceslas was 13 his father died.  So he went to live with his grandma.  His grandma taught him to be a Christian.  His mom didn't like what the grandma was teaching him because she was another religion, so she arranged for the grandma to be strangled.  Someone found out about it and she was banished.  When Wenceslas was the king, he brought her back into his castle.  He forgave her.  He was a good king.  He helped people.  He bought slaves and set them free.  One night he saw a poor man gathering wood for his fire.  He asked his squire where the man lived.  The squire said that he lived by a fence and so he said to gather wood and food to bring to the man.  As they were going along the squire's feet got cold and tired.  So Wenceslas said to walk in his footsteps.  They found the man and gave him the food and the wood and went back to the castle.  Wenceslas' brother invited him to a party and people said that he was probably plotting against him, but Wenceslas said no.  When he got to the party his brother hit him with his sword, but he forgave him.  As he was going away a whole bunch of people got him and killed him.  They thought he was too nice to be a king.  He is remembered for his kindness.