Tom Sawyer at the beginning of the story was a person who wanted to trick everybody into thinking he did the right thing. Like in one part of the story, in the beginning actually, Tom wanted to go swimming but he didn't want his Aunt Polly to know that he went swimming. So he took off his shirt but the collar broke, so he sewed it back up with a different color thread. When he got home Aunt Polly thought he didn't go swimming, but his half-brother Sid pointed out that Aunt Polly used white thread not black when she sewed it. That meant that Tom Sawyer used black thread, not white.

One day Tom was white-washing a fence. Some person that he knew named Ben came along and saw him white-washing the fence while he was eating an apple. He ended up white-washing the fence because Tom tricked him into thinking it was fun and not boring. So Tom got the apple while Ben did the work.

A girl named Becky is a girl that Tom likes. First he tried getting her attention by showing off and getting in trouble in school. Then he wrote "I LOVE YOU" and showed Becky and whispered "I LOVE YOU TOO".  Then he said they should engaged, but then she got mad because Tom mentioned the last girl he got engaged with, Amy.  He tried giving her a flower but she wouldn't accept it and then she ran home crying.

At the beginning of the  book of The Sign of the  Beaver, Matt's dad dropped him off in the woods. And while Matt was in the woods he met a guy named Ben. While Matt was out doing  stuff and he let Ben stay at the cabin, Ben took the rifle that Matt had gotten from his father while his father was  getting his family to pick them up so they could move into the woods too with Matt. After Ben took the rifle, a bear got into Matt's house and took the honey from the cabin.

Ben was trying to get some water by his cabin and got stung a lot of times. And he went  to the river and it didn't work so two Indians saved him. The indian grandfather said can you teach my grandson to read we signed a contract that let some people take  our land so that's  why the grandfather wanted his grandson to learn how to read.

Matt thought the indian boy didn't want to learn how to read because he didn't have a nice smile on his  face. The indian kid after a few days started teaching Matt how to be like him. Like how to hunt fish without using a pole, how to hunt animals in the forest and do things like Indians.

Laura, her mom and her sister liked to do things together. They did things like make cheese and do chores. During the harvest, their cousin Charley got  in big trouble. He lied when he screamed that a snake was attacking him. So Pa and Charley's dad stopped everything they were doing to help him. But then they found out he was lying. And he kept doing it over and over - lying about needing help. Finally he actually did need help and they didn't want to help him until they actually saw that he needed help from getting the yellow jackets' from stinging him.

The Wonderful Machine was called a thresher. The thresher separated the grain from the stalks. It was a great invention because it did it a lot faster than Pa could.  The thresher people would get wheat for helping them get the wheat off the stalks much more faster so they could make more food.

Pa saw a baby deer in the wood and he didn't shoot it because it was too small. Pa said he'd never shoot a baby deer to his daughter named Laura.

The lesson that I learned from this book is that you should never rush to judge a person if they're poor or not. And you should never actually pick on other people, even if they're poor or not. Maddie felt guilty for not telling her friend Peggy to stop picking on this Polish girl that was named Wanda.

They felt really really sorry for not believing Wanda when she said she has a hundred dresses (that she drew them, not actual clothing). When Wanda stopped going to their school they felt really really sad because they felt bad that they didn't get to say sorry to her in person. Wanda didn't get to get the medal for winning the art contest in person because she moved, but at least they got to mail it to her.

I think that Maddie and Peggy changed their ways of being mean and not being truthful to other people at the end of the story. I feel like that they actually didn't get to meet the real Wanda as a friend. I think Wanda is a really really nice person and truthful to her friends if she had some. I felt  bad for her at the end of the story because she didn't have a mother and she was poor. She only wore this blue dress that was raggedy but it was clean even though it was wrinkly.

I have read the first two chapters in The Little House in the Big Woods. The characters in the story are Laura, her baby sister named Carrie, and  her older sister  named Mary. Their  parent's names were Pa and Ma. They lived in a cabin in the woods in Wisconsin state. This was a long time ago. It was  over 60 yrs ago.  It was in the late 1800's that they lived in the woods.

The things that Laura's mother did with her children show that she loved  them. She would bake with them. She made them paper dolls because she wanted to have fun.  She taught  them how to cook, sew, make butter, clean, iron and wash clothes.

Pa was a fun parent just like the mother. He would always play with them after he came home from work. He told them stories about his father and the panther, and he told them jokes. What Laura liked best was when he played his fiddle. If I was Laura, I would want to learn how to play the fiddle.  I'd want to sing Yankee Doodle with my dad too.

Catching your food and surviving in the wild was hard back then. You had to catch your own food in the wild. They caught bears, pigs, and deer for food. That was the easy part. The hard part was they had to drain the blood and then skin it. It makes me feel GROSS really. Then they had to cut it up and put salt on it and then pack it. They salted  it  so then it wouldn't get rotted. They packed it away for the winter because the winter coming. That meant you couldn't get that much food in the winter. That's why they packed it so they could have it whenever wanted it during the winter, instead of just keep going out and getting it in the wild.

Mary had a rag and Laura had a corn on a cob doll. They played inside upstairs in the attic. They liked their attic. Their family life was nice and the girls felt loved.

Last night I had a bad dream and the first one was when I went to sleep. So actually I had two bad dreams. First one started out like this: I was watching on channel 35 the Higge Kids. I think that's how you spell it. After I watched it, well not the whole thing,  just a little bit of it, well I went to sleep then America's Most Wanted came on and popped into my for some reason, I was trying to relax and not think about anything. And after AMW wanted popped into my head, the AMW wanted's host's voice popped into my head. Then his voice was saying none of us could know the real story about the Higge Kids. Then he put up all these pictures of the pictures that were in the books but there was no writings in them he said. All he could find was pictures of what the writers put in them  but there was no writing.  All of them looked ok but just the one scary picture was one of the tall kids with big wide eyes and spiky hair. And she had a scary look on her face. And that's when I woke up and then went to the bathroom after I saw that. Then I got back into bed and  went back to sleep.

Then I had my second dream. There was like a police guy. And he was talking, sorry it was actually a newsperson. They showed a picture in my head. There was a news person inside my head saying there is going to be a severe snowstorm. And you should be moving quickly. He said because that the snow is going to be made up of volcano rock and lava. And it already hit Boston, Mass, and it's already heading for Albany, Rochester and Buffalo. Now are the news of Boston Mass of where the scene happened of the severe snowstorm. Then a box popped up with the scene. The newsperson was covered by the stuff. The host was like here as you can see a person, a pregnant woman got hit by the snowstorm really really hard because it's not going down lightly, it's going down really really fast, like an avalanche. But guess what she said that they heard that the doctors said they could hear the heartbeat of the pregnant woman and the baby.So then that was before we went to Gramma Sue's house. Well when we got there the robbery started to happen. When we got there I started hitting the guy with my crutches on the  head because I was so scared I didn't know what to do. I started hitting him and dad started hitting him with something like a stuffed animal that  was on the floor. And I used my crutches and then like he fell on the floor. So he was unconscious for a little while and he started waking  up again. Then  Gramma Sue was like THANKS and everything. And we said YOU'RE WELCOME.  After a few minutes Joey was shivering because he was scared because he knew what was happeneing. (Joey came with us while we brung him to Gramma Sue's house-We didn't see Belle or Ivory anywhere-those are Gramma Sue's dogs). Then all of us went into the  car and I think that Mom was  driving  for some reason and Dad was right next to me. We were in like an SUV but it had like 6 seats and someone was holding Joey all the way in the back but not in the trunk. Like it was Zachary I think. Zach was holding him because he wanted to hold him and number two he didn't want him getting out because they said on the radio that the snow was going to be coming in three hours.

We saw people like on the side like not even bothering that they were going to be in this storm. They were at a soccer game and while we kept driving we saw these two people in the middle of the road, talking for some reason.  And then we thought that there was a truck coming towards us in another lane but it wasn't really, actually it was and we didn't know so mom switched to the other lane but she speeded up a little bit because she wanted to be safe with her kids and family. She squeezed up into the lane and when we got to Ohio, because the snow as going to be going over the sea, but really we went to Columbus, Ohio. And when they said it has left New York mom said we can go back because it's gone finally.  And then mom stood up while mom was driving and the car wouldn't even turn and she found something that Gramma Sue wanted  her to find for the car. Gramma wanted mom to find this part to the car so then we listened to music on our way back home. Then mom grabbed the CD and then that's when I woke up right now.

And I'm on crutches now! 

Tonight I finished my Ancient Babylonia Research Report Project!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is the link:

http://rachieshomeschool.tripod.com/id19.html

I spent a lot of time on this. It took me months.I had tons of notes from a million sources.My mom had to help me organize all my thoughts and notes.Because I had to many pages of information. Tomorrow I just have to photograph all my art for this past quarter and put them on my homeschooling site.

I'm going to bed now because I'm really tired. BYE EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just so you know, we finally finished the 6th book in The Chronicles of Narnia, The Silver Chair. Today we are watching the DVDs of the 5th and 6th Book.

Also we went skiing in Vermont a couple weeks ago. It was fun. Here are som pictures:

http://stratton2006.tripod.com

I have been making macrame jewelry today. I made a necklace for my mom

There were these four people. Their names were Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia, and Helena. Demetrius loved Hermia. Helena loved Demetrius. Hermia loved Lysander. Lysander loved Hermia. Hermia's father wanted Hermia to marry Demetrius because back then the parents had the choice to pick who is going to marry their child. Hermia got mad because she really wanted to marry Lysander. And Lysander wanted to marry Hermia. Helena wanted to Demetrius to love her so she asked Hermia how she made herself so beautiful and how do you get your man to love you. Hermia said you won't see us anymore because we are going to be eloping. Lysander and Hermia had to go through the woods to find the place where they would elope.

Helena decided to tell Demetrius so that he would get mad and maybe with her. She thought he would at least like her for telling him about Hermia's plan to marry Lysander. While that was happening, there was a King and a Queen of the Fairies. The King's  name was Oberon, and the  Queen's name was Titania. The king  wanted her to let the mortal boy that they were raising to be his page. She refused to let him use the mortal boy as his page.

Hermia and Lysander were in the woods. Lysander was kind of lost so they decided to rest. Hermia said to sleep away from each other because they were not married yet. While they were asleep, Demetrius was looking for Hermia. But Helena was following him telling him I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU and she kept saying that. He said I DON'T WANT TO BE WITH YOU. He started to run and Helena follows  him even though he doesn't want her to.

Oberon told Puck, his mischievous sprite, to take some petals  from this flower to make magic juice to make a person fall in love with the first person that you see. When the King saw Helena and Demetrius fighting, he told Puck to put some of the magic drops in Demetrius' eyes to help him fall in love with Helena. Puck  left to go do that. Puck finally found one of the guys, who was  actually Lysander but thoguht it was Demetrius. He sprayed some of the juice into his eyes so then he would fall in love with the first woman that he sees. Helena couldn't find Demetrius anymore. She found Lysander and Hermia sleeping  far away from each other in the field. Helena thought  Lysander was dead so she  went to him. She asked him if he was dead but he awakes and falls in love with her because of the juice Puck poured into his eyes. Then Lysander  starts telling her he loves her. Helena gets mad and sad too. She thinks that Lysander is lying and being sarcastic, because she knows he loves Hermia. Hermia is her best friend. Lysander runs after Helena.

During the time that was happening, Oberon went to where the Queen of Fairies was and she was asleep. He put the  juice on her eyes and said may the first thing you see be ugly. Then Puck made one of the  workers from the play turn into donkey-headed man. When he came onstage, everyone got scared of him, because he was a donkey-headed man. He didn't know that he had a donkey head. Titania woke up and saw  the donkey-headed man and  fell in love with him.

Then Hermia woke up and found out that Lysander was missing- found Demetrius. She started getting mad at Demetrius because she  thinks he murdered Lysander. Demetrius told her he didn't  kill him. Hermia told Demetrius that  even if Lysander is dead that she doesn't want to see Demetrius ever again. Demetrius gets really sad. Oberon puts some of the drops in Demetrius' eyes. Now both Lysander and Demetrius like Helena. They wanted to fight each other with swords to see who could win her. Oberon told Puck to make it  dark so that they couldn't hurt each other. When they finally fell asleep, the  King of  Fairies put a special herb into Lysander's eyes  so that he would love Hermia again.

During that the King of Fairies felt guilty finally of putting the juice in his wife's eyes. First he turns the donkey-headed man back into a regular-headed man. And  put the reversing  herb into his wife's eyes and turned her back to normal again. 

Hermia's father was out hunting in the woods where they were. He was with the Duke  Theseus. He saw Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius all asleep in the field on the ground. The father was mad. He made them wake up. Lysander tried to explain what happened, but Hermia's dad said she had to marry Demetrius. Demetrius  says that his love for Hermia has melted like snow and that he loves Helena now. The  Duke  hushes Hermia's father when he was about to say something. The Duke said that Hermia and Lysander  and Helena and Demetrius  can get married next to him since it was the Duke's  wedding day with Hippolyta.

The wedding had  entertainment and the actors  performed, without donkey-headed actors.

Mom took us to Yonder Farms and we took pictures there. Then we went on a nice drive through lots of country where leaves were all different colors. Mom was mad that the rain has ruined so much of the leaves. Then we ate at Pizza  Hut and I got some stuff from the toy machine there. Then we  went to the bookstore before we got  home.

You can see the photos mom took at the Autumn Beauty website:

http://nyautumn.tripod.com

I am going to play now before bed