One of My Favorite Gifts

     This year I got a Brother sewing machine for Christmas. It is one of my favorite gifts. A sewing machine is a gift that keeps giving. It has already given me an outfit for my American Girl doll, including matching shoes. I have another outfit cut out and ready to sew. I am planning to make clothes for myself and Christmas gifts for others next year.

     I had never used a sewing machine before, so it taught me a new skill. I have learned to use a pattern, wind a bobbin, thread the machine, and sew with a variety of stitches. I have also learned about facing and basting. I now know that a good gift, especially for a child, is a gift that teaches a skill.

     I am looking forward to finding patterns for stuffed animals, clothes and bags. I also plan to do some quilting. If you have a child who is artistic or crafty, I would recommend a sewing machine as a gift. Although sewing may seem intimidating at first, it is really much easier than you would think. As I have proven, even an eight year old can do it.

     As Lao Tzu would say, give a girl an outfit; clothe her for a day; give her a sewing machine; clothe her for a lifetime... or maybe it was fish.

Natchitoches Christmas Festival showcases Anna Margaret

Christmas Festival 2010 was a major event for the children of Natchitoches, with Disney Star, Anna Margaret, as its Grand Marshal, bringing the attention of children everywhere to this Christmas town.

All around Natchitoches on Christmas Festival day people anxiously awaited Anna Margaret’s concert. Girls lined up on Second Street the day before to meet Anna Margaret and get her autograph. Photos of Anna Margaret with Natchitoches kids popped up on Facebook Friday afternoon, and children excitedly exchanged stories with their friends about the Anna Margaret meet and greet.  But it wasn't just the little girls who were excited.  This young star's sweet prettiness is the kind that young fellows observe with quiet admiration.

Anna Margaret talking to fans

Anna Margaret, Hollywood Records recording artist and Disney star, was the Grand Marshal for the 84th Annual Natchitoches Christmas Festival. Anna Margaret was all smiles during her parade ride. She threw beads, posed for pictures and leaned down to talk to her fans during parade stops. 

The audience was shoulder to shoulder during her concert at the main bandstand. After her first song she said how pleased she was to be in Natchitoches. She was overwhelmed by the crowd’s response to her and began to cry. The audience started chanting, “An-na. An-na. An-na.” She wiped the tears from her eyes and sang her hit song, “Something about the Sunshine”. This exchange endeared her to Natchitoches even more.

I had the opportunity to interview Anna Margaret before the meet and greet on Friday. She was very kind. I was a little bit nervous, and she quickly put me at ease. She was raised in Alexandria, Louisiana but moved to Los Angeles to pursue her career. I asked her what she missed about Louisiana, and she said her family, her friends, and the food. She enjoys traveling and meeting new people through her singing career. Anna Margaret gave up competitive gymnastics to focus more on music at the age of eight but continued to do gymnastics for fun until a year ago. Now she says her schedule is too busy to keep up gymnastic practice. 

This is me with Anna Margaret during the interview

Not only is Anna Margaret a talented singer and dancer, she also modeled for American Girl. I am an American Girl fan myself and was curious about her favorite American Girl historical character. She told me she likes Julie and Elizabeth the best. 

Anna Margaret co-writes her music with her mother and Princess Kenya. Her song “Heal Us All” was inspired by the Gulf Coast oil spill, and some of the profits from this song will go to the Supriya Jindal Foundation for Louisiana’s Children.

Natchitoches girls will be following Anna Margaret’s career on Facebook, Myspace, and on AnnaMargaret.com. This was an exciting year to attend the Natchitoches Christmas Festival. The weather was perfect, the music was great, and local children really enjoyed the youngest Grand Marshal the Natchitoches Christmas Festival has ever had.

Weekly Column

Check out my latest weekly column on Green Heritage News to find out how you can help local animals. My article last week was picked up by a Toronto news site. Watch for my upcoming article on the Natchitoches Christmas Festival and Anna Margaret, Hollywood Records recording artist and Disney star.

Blue Christmas

I was invited to paint a picture for the Blue Christmas service at church. The Blue Christmas service is a service for people who are feeling sad around Christmas. I was happy to do a hopeful picture for church. I painted this picture with acyrlics and pen. Hope you like it. 

Geodesic Dome

R.Buckminster Fuller was a great engineer and inventor. He did a lot of work with geodesic domes, but he didn't invent them. Geodesic domes are domes made out of triangles. Triangles are very strong, so they hold up well under pressure unlike squares that tilt under pressure. I made mine out of toothpicks and clay. It is strong enough to hold a banana, but only for a little while before collapsing. I suggest you make one. It is a lot of fun. Happy building. 

Powhatan Indians

This is a report I wrote on the Powhatan Indians. It is written from the perspective of a girl from the Powhatan tribe. Chama Wingapo!❶ My name is Umpsquoth Naantam❷. I am 8 years old. My tribe is known as Powhatan. We Powhatans use our time wisely. The men of the Powhatan tribe fish in rivers around us. They also trap and hunt animals for food and clothing. They make weapons and tools for farming. Women’s chores are making pottery and wooden plates, gardening, and gathering food like nuts and berries. I help out with the women’s chores. We grow grapes, corn, pumpkins, squash, sunflowers, and beans. My favorite plant is pumpkins, because they are yummy, pretty, and come in all shapes and sizes. My favorite chore is making pottery, because you can design it in any shape. You also can choose your pattern and color. Then you put it in the shade to dry. Women also make clothing for everyone in the village. All men, women, and children work very hard.

Our tribe lives in longhouses. A longhouse is made of trees where many families sleep. My mother, grandmother and aunt built our longhouse. I live with two of my cousins, one brother, my aunt and uncle, my best friend, Keshowse Onxe❸, and some of her family. I really like living with my best friend. She does chores too so we have a lot of fun doing chores. My mom always scolds us for being too silly during work time. She says, “Play after.”     

Powhatan Indians only eat foods we can provide. We grow tobacco, corn, and other crops. People grow crops in gardens. Men hunt deer, bear, raccoon, rabbits, and other wildlife. We never waste any parts of an animal. You might call this perfect conservation.

I hope you enjoyed learning about the Powhatan tribe from me. I hope you can come visit me sometime. I'll help make you rabbit stew. Chama Eweenetu!❹

❶Welcome, friend ❷ Moon Wolf ❸Sun Fox

❹Peace, friend

Pueblo Indians

This is a report I wrote on the Pueblo Indians. It is from the perspective of a girl in the Hopi tribe.

Haw! I'm a member of the Hopi tribe. Hopi Indians are one of the four main pueblo tribes. I lived in 1300 A.D. My parents often tell me stories about the easy times in the Hopi tribe. I will now pass on the stories to you. My people and I are descendants from the Anasazi tribe, my mom used to say. People lived in mud-brick houses called pueblos. Oh. Did I tell you my dad is the chief? Dad always told me 1 A.D his tribe started growing pumpkins and corn. He also told me back then they didn’t use pottery instead they used baskets. My older brother told me, about 500 A.D maybe 600 A.D pueblo people learned how to grow beans. They also started making pottery like other tribes. Then he quickly would ask, “Why did Hopi Indians start farming?” I always answered, “Because they knew how to grow plants already so they started farming pumpkins, corn, and beans.” Then he would say, “Very good.” Grandma would say around 700 A.D pueblo Indians began to build bigger houses out of mud-brick or sometimes even out of stone on top of high cliffs called mesas. She would talk about how pueblo people started to grow cotton for their clothes and started to make more complicated pottery with different shapes like cups, jugs, jars, plates, and bowls. These are some of the things I don’t remember who told me. Years and years ago the Hopi tribe traded turquoise for pretty parrot feathers and other things. There are four main groups of the pueblo tribe Zuni, Hopi [The one I’m in], Tanoan, and Keresan. It was very dry where they lived so they learned how to build dams and stone cisterns to store water. The water was not just for drinking but for irrigating their corn, beans, and pumpkins. By 1200 A.D People stopped living on top of mesas and moved to pueblo houses built halfway up the cliffs, in caves. Some people moved back up to the mesa tops [unlike me and my family] because they thought it was safer. But around 1300 AD, Pueblo people stopped building houses altogether and moved away from their homes. They lost all their power, and they stopped living in their fine houses, and they stopped farming. They traveled south-west, into southern Arizona and New Mexico, looking for new homes. That's when the Pueblo people first met the Navajo, who are moving south into Arizon and New Mexico at about the same time. I hope you like the facts about the Pueblo Indians. Bye!

My Personal Logo

I created this in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. This is my personal logo.

Leashed Puppy

Here is another math problem that I made up.

A puppy has a leash on that is 2 yards long. He climbed up a chair 1 foot from where he is tied. The chair is 2 feet tall and a half of a foot wide. With the amount of leash he has left, can he jump down the other side without hurting himself or breaking the leash?

Zoo Break-Out

This is a math problem I wrote for my mother to solve. It was too hard for me,but I didn't have any problem writing it. I tried to write one too hard for my mom, but it was pretty easy for her. Maybe if I would have accounted for acceleration time it would have been too hard for her. If you would like to, try to solve it and leave your answer in a comment. Have fun solving!

A 2.2 meter long zebra, named Stripes, breaks out of her pen, when she’s getting fed. The zoo-keeper just happens to be on a racing bike. Stripes got a 3 meter head-start and is running 40 mph. The zoo-keeper has to get in front of Stripes to catch her. The zoo-keeper is biking 45 mph. Will the zoo-keeper ever catch her? If the zoo-keeper does, how long will it take in seconds? When you’re done convert the seconds to minutes.

P.S. Don’t worry about acceleration time. There is none in this problem.

Hammurabi takes Assyria

Hammurabi was a very powerful king in Southern Mesoptamia, but up north there was another king building a different empire. He was Shamshi-Adad. He didn't want to be fair and make good laws like Hammurabi. He wanted to rule the whole world. Shamshi-Adad lived in Assur. Assur was a city in the north part of Mesopotamia by the Tigris river. Shamshi-Adad became ruler of Assur. He thought that Assur should be the center of a new empire.

The god he worshipped was the god of wind and storms. He made a temple for the god out of cedar logs with silver and gold. Shamshi-Adad rubbed the foundation with butter, oil and honey so that his god was happy and would be on his side to give him more power. When his temple was finished, he told the people of Assur "the god of wind and storms loves the temple. He will give Assur power to win control over other cities."

Shamshi-Adad conquered other cities and made them follow him. How did he do this? He cut off the heads of the rulers of the cities and burned down buildings. Each time he conquered a city he put one of his sons in charge. Most times as soon as Shamshi-Adad came,rulers came up to him and surrendered and said that they would follow him just so that he would let them live. Shamshi-Adad would say that they could live as long as they followed all of his rules. But Shamshi-Adad never bothered southern Mesoptamia where Hammurabi was ruler. He knew Babylon was too strong for him.

One day Shamshi-Adad died and put his two sons in charge. He hoped that they would keep his cities strong and keep control. But the brothers fought with each other and Hammurabi took over. Hammurbi was much nicer and let the rulers keep control as long as they followed his laws. The people all thought they would be free again and be back in power someday but still agreed to follow Hammurabi for the time-being.

Hammurabi's Code

As you probably know from my other essay on Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia was not a peaceful place to live. Leaders fought other city-states to try to gain power. Sometimes one leader did not hold power for very long, before another leader took over. Other times leader held power for longer like the one I'm going to talk about today. About 500 years after Sargon, another leader took control of Southern Mesopotamia. His name was Hammurabi. Hammurabi was a very important leader, just like Sargon. In time, he started to conquer other cities around Southern Mesopotamia.

Hammurabi was a very religious man, and he didn't want people to listen to his laws just because they were forced to. He wanted them to follow his laws, because they were fair. He didn't want just some people to follow his rules, he wanted the whole empire to follow them. So Hammurabi wrote down the laws he thought were fair on a piece of stone [called a stela] showing the god Shamash handing him the laws. Hammurbi was very important, because he came up with the first written laws.

He encouraged his followers to leave offerings for the gods and to learn about them. They believed that they could find out what the gods were doing by watching the planets and stars, so they spent lots of time studying the sky. They knew all of the constellations and even knew the difference between stars and planets. They knew that the Earth moved around the sun. When it went around the sun once, they knew it had been a year. They also were the first people to divide the year into 12 months and to divide the day into 24 hours.

If you haven't read my essay on Sargon and want to know more about him, scroll down.

My Cube

"Hi, look at this fantastic cube on the What Makes Me website.Click here..."

Cuneiform Writing

     Today for Social Studies I learned about Mesopotamia, which means between rivers, and the first Sumerian Emperor, Sargon. As an art project to go with it I thought it would be cool to write everyone in the immediate family's name in cuneiform. The picture above is of me writing in cuneiform. You may think it's so cool that I get to write in cuneiform during the school day, but, trust me, it's a lot more work than you may think. First we had to make the clay tablets. My mom did that. When she was done, I took the clay tablet to the computer and translated a person's name into cuneiform. Then I carved it into the wet clay. Trust me, it was really hard to erase when I made a mistake, and I kept running out of space on the clay tablet and my mom had to add more clay to the end. Once I was finished with all of them, my mom and I were both exhausted, and I'm still pooped.

     Now I'll tell you a little something about Sargon. Mesopotamia used to be divided into a bunch of different city states. They always fought between each other. There was one person, named Sargon, who wanted them all to live in peace. There is a bunch of stories about Sargon, but the one I'm going to tell you is about where he grew up and how he became emperor. Some people say that Sargon had no parents and that one day he floated down the Euphrates river in a basket when he was an infant. He got stuck in the reeds near the city of Kish. One of the servants of the King was down at the river getting water. He heard a sound, and the servant saw a basket stuck in the reeds. The servant looked down inside the basket and saw a little baby crying. The baby was Sargon. The servant took the baby up to the king and the king said that he could raise him. The boy grew up in the palace, and served the king wine everyday. The king trusted Sargon, but he shouldn't have. The king didn't know that he had the army on his side. One day Sargon ordered the army to kill the king. Once they killed the king, Sargon became king. He didn't want to be king of just one city. He wanted to be king of all of the cities. He fought the other cities to gain power. He fought 50 wars and finally he was in control of all of Mesopotamia. Some people didn't like Sargon being king. They wanted to have their own rules and their own laws like they had before. When Sargon heard about this, he ordered the army to start a military dictatorship, and some of the army lived in every city to make sure they followed Sargon's laws.

    

Pyramid at Giza

This is a diagram of Cheops' pyramid (pronounced "key-ops"). Cheops was a Pharoah in ancient Egypt. After Cheops died, priests started collecting things to make Cheops into a mummy, like salt, spices, oil and linen. They washed his body with wine and spices. Then they took Cheops' organs out of his body and covered them with special spices to preserve them. They believed that in the afterworld that the god, Osiris, could tell if the heart was good or bad. If the heart was good, Cheops could live in the after life. If the heart was bad, a monster, part hippo, part lion and part crocodile, would eat the heart. They put his organs in more spices and put them in special jars with animal heads so that other gods could protect them. They wrapped his body in linen and brought him to the pyramid that workers had built during his lifetime. Cheops was also known as Khufu. His pyramid was the tallest building on Earth for over 4,000 years. This tomb also had another protector that they built for him- the sphinx. I drew the picture above with pencil, pen, and colored pencil. I REALLY REALLY hope you like it and learn a little something about Egypt and Kufu. 

Uranus

I painted this in Adobe Illustrator. It is the Greek sky god, Uranus.

Foal on the Beach

Color Pencil and Pastels

Bast

     Bast, also known as Bastet, is an Egyptian goddess for cats, fertility, art, music, dance and lots more, and when I say lots, I mean more than a dozen other qualities. Her Greek name is Artemis, goddess of the hunt. At the top of this paragraph, you can see how to write Bast in heiroglypics. Her name means "devouring lady."

     New paragraph down here! I have a secret for you. Shhhh. We don't want Sekmet to hear. I bet you're wondering who Sekhmet is. Sekhmet is Bast's evil twin sister. Together they creat a balance between chaos and order.

    

Squirrel

This is done with charcoal pencil. I was practicing shading and tone.

Nez Perce Design

This is a traditional design of the Nez Perce tribe. They used geometric shapes for decorations. I made this with chalk pastels and glitter glue.

Lakota-Sioux Winter Counts Calendar

This is a Winter Counts Calendar of my life. I picked the most important event of each year of my life and drew a symbol to represent it. The first year was the house. We moved from one house to another. The second year I learned to talk, so I drew a mouth. The third year I learned to read. The next year we adopted my sister, Addie. After that I joined the swim team. Then I wrote my first book Trapped. The next year I learned to ride horses with my friend, Carol. This year I joined the Angel Chorus at church. 

Amen-Ra

This is a picture of Amen-Ra, the Egyptian god of the sun. I drew it with marker, crayon and watercolor. I learned that watercolor washes better over crayon than marker.

Kokopelli

 This is my picture of Kokopelli, the Hopi god for agriculture and fertility. I drew it with crayon, marker, and watercolor. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed drawing it.

Pterodactyl

     Pterodactyl means "winged finger." Pterodactyls had a wingspan up to 40 feet long! It takes me 13 steps to walk 20 feet. So, that's .... whoah!.... I can't even think about it! Pterodactyls flew around and with their keen eyesight caught their Thanksgiving feast.

     They lived in the late Mesozoic Period. They were carnivores who ate things like fish, lizards, insects and mollusks. They killed their prey by swooping down like hawks and grabbing  the prey and flying back up. The Mesozoic Period served a great lunch. Yummy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

     Pterodactyls ruled the sky. They had no enemies.

Sacagawea

This is Scagawea with her baby. I did this on a stretched canvas with acrylic. I used a grid to do the underdrawing, before I painted.

Triceratops

     The first thing you might want to know is what "Triceratops" means. It means  "three horned face".  Full grown Triceratops can get up to about 30 feet long and 10 feet tall thats about twice the size of a rhinoceros! WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They are about 6 to 12 tons. That's way more than a full size van! Triceratops is a three horned giant.

     They lived in the Late Cretaceous Period. Period. They were herbivores who ate plants from the cretaceous period, like cyad, green thicket, ferns, conifers, palms, and even gastrolith (a certain type of rock.) They lived in an environment perfect for them.

    The Triceratops enemy was the Tyrannosaurs Rex. The T Rex means Tyrant Lizard king, but that is a whole other essay. Triceratops hurt its enemies by charging and inserting its horns (two long ones above the eye and a short one below) in the enemy's flesh. Triceratops was a dinosaur protected by its horns from T-Rex.  

Welcome to My Blog

I will be posting some research and artwork that I am doing for homeschool. I hope you enjoy following by blog.