The Origin of Halloween

Since this month is October, Halloween month, I decided to write a post about the origin of Halloween.

Halloween, also known as All Hallows' Eve and All Saints Eve, is on the last day of the Celtic calendar, more commonly known as October 31st. This is the night before the festival of Samhain, which occurred on November 1st.

The word Halloween means "hallowed evening" or "holy evening". It originates from a Scottish term for All Hallows' Eve (the evening before All Hallows' Day.) Over time, the word All Hallows' Eve formed into the word we now know today, which is Halloween.

The Celts marked this day as the end of the harvest season to the beginning of winter. They also believed that this day was a gateway to the world of the dead. On this night, people thought that the dead returned as ghosts, so they left food and wine on their doorsteps, to keep roaming spirits at bay. They wore masks when they left their house, so they would be mistaken for fellow ghosts.

Trick-or-Treating

On All Souls Day, November 2nd, the poor would go doorstep to doorstep, begging for food. They most commonly received soul cakes, as long as they promised to pray for people's dead relatives. This was called souling. In the medieval Halloween tradition of guising, young people would dress up in costume and accept offerings such as wine, gold, and food in exchange for singing, reciting poetry, and telling jokes. Later, in 19th century America, Irish and Scottish people revised these old traditions, and the result was trick-or-treating. At first, trick-or-treating was much more about the tricks than the treats. It wasn't until the 1950's that the custom took on the family-friendly vibe that it has today.

 

Witches

Now, let's talk about the witch, an iconic Halloween character. Usually, witches are dressed in all black with a pointy hat and green skin. Occasionally, witches have a wart on their nose or are seen with a black cat, bat, or spider. They are also known for their use of flying on brooms over a full moon. Though witches are not just a Halloween symbol. They have a long and interesting history.

 

Witchcraft has existed across the globe, including in Asian, African, and Native American societies. Long before the study of science, witches were blamed for storms, accidents, disease, and other bad things that happened. In medieval Europe, anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people were arrested for suspicion of witchcraft. About half of them were executed (killed). The accused witches were not just women, but men and children too.

 

Even after the witch hunts, western culture remained fascinated with witches. The fairytales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson later inspired L. Frank Baum to create his famous story, The Wizard of Oz, which featured the most famous witch in pop culture, The Wicked Witch of the West. L. Frank Baum didn't intend on making the witch's skin green, but that is how she appeared in the Technicolor film in 1939, and the image stuck. And what about the tall black pointy hats? Upper-class people in the 15th century wore similar hats, and the style later spread to commoners, usually the ones who were accused of witchcraft. The broom, a common household tool was used then for crop fertility, later became a well known symbol of witches, who were said to use their brooms to hide their wands in during the witch hunts. People also believed that witches rubbed a special oil on their brooms to make them fly across the sky and perform magic in the air.

 

 

The Pumpkin

The jack-o-lantern was named after a tale about a man named Jack. Here is the story: " ...the jack-o'-lantern actually took its name from a roguish Irishman known as Stingy Jack, who tricked the Devil into promising him that he wouldn't go to hell for his many, many sins. When Jack died, however, he found to his dismay that he had also been barred from heaven, so he went down below, banged on the gates of hell, and demanded his due from the Devil. Wouldn't you know it, though the latter did keep his promise to save Jack from going to hell, he did so by dooming him to wander the earth for all eternity with only an ember of hellfire to light his way. Thenceforth, according to the legend, Stingy Jack was known by the name of Jack O' Lantern." I don't have much more history about the pumpkin, so I must stop here for the pumpkin.

 

The Colors Orange and Black

Have you ever wondered why our Halloween colors are orange and black? Well, here is the answer. The color orange was taken from harvest season for the Celtics. This is one of the most prominent colors in the fall colors. Black was taken from death, which is usually represented by a very dark color. These two colors combined have a very symbolic meaning.

 

 

That is what I have wrote on the origin of Halloween, and I hope you found it very interesting!

 

 

What was the part that you found most interesting?

 

Do you have any information on the origin of Halloween?

 

What are you dressing up as for Halloween?

 



 





Wildlife Experience!

As part of our animal adaptation science unit, Beverly Critcher (Ms. C)  from Wildlife Experience brought wild animals to Mrs. Yollis' class for careful scientific observation.

 

 

Wildlife Experience is a non-profit wildlife education organization that brings native and exotic animals to schools and teaches children about the importance of our natural world. Here is Ms. C., the owner of Wildlife Experience.

 

 

In order for students to understand the animals adaptations, Ms. C needed to give us the definition of behavioral adaptations and physical adaptations.

 

Art by me, Keira

 

 

Here is an animal adaptation post from Mr. Mannell in NSW, Australia:

 

Animal Adaptations by Mr. Mannell 

 

 

Here are a few photos and facts about the animals that were brought into our classroom.

 

 

Fact:  Human hands have an opposable thumb. The thumb can work with the other four fingers to grasp and pick up items. 

 

 

 

Not all animals have that ability. Here two students tried to tie a bow without using their thumbs, only their four fingers.

 

 

What did you notice? Challenge yourself to do a task without your thumbs!

 

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Now for the animals! 

 

 

Meet George the Giant Millipede!

 

 

This is George the giant millipede. As you can see, George has many legs and antennae. His legs are not fully grown yet, and he is waiting to get his total of three-hundred legs. Right now he has only two-hundred sixty legs.

 

If you ever see a long creature with many legs, and you don't know if it is a centipede or a millipede, stay away from it because centipedes have poison. If you touch a centipede and think it is a millipede, you are doomed unless you disinfect it.

 

 

What did you notice about the giant millipede?

 

 

 

Meet Rose the Tarantula!

 

 

 

Rose is a rose-haired tarantula and is very hairy. She is an arachnid, which means she has four legs on each side of her body, which equals eight legs in all.

 

 

 

 

There are little spinnerets on the back of the tarantula's body. The spinnerets are what the silk comes out of, and the spider uses the silk to make its web. Sometimes a spider's web can be very pretty when it has dew on it and you can see it clearly.

 

 

What did you notice about the tarantula?

 

 

Meet Beth the Ball Python!

 

 

 

 

Beth has a very interesting texture on her, as she should. To me, it feels like a bunch of smooth bumps that are crowded on one body.

 

Beth also has a very interesting pattern. They look like a bunch of spots on her back and then, when the back turns into her belly, the spots become stripes. You can spot that on the stomach the dark shade of green turns into a cream color and that is where the spots turn into stripes.

 

As you may know, Beth can constrict. That is why you should never hold a snake around your neck because they may be able to constrict you and you will suffocate. Believe it or not, this is how they get their prey. They squeeze their victim to death and then eat it. Beth can eat something up to ten times the size of her head. Watch out, rats and mice!

 

 

What do you notice about the ball python?

 

 

Meet Stacy the Salamander!

 



 



Salamanders are amphibians, which means that they can survive on land and water. However, you do need to stay moisturized if you are an amphibian so your skin does not dry up.

If you are looking in a pond, and you see a tadpole, you may not be able to tell if it is a frog or a salamander. Salamanders grow up just the same as frogs, except for one thing. They are born, then they are tadpoles, next they grow their tails, except that they keep their tails unlike frogs, who lose their tails. Then they become a fully grown salamander.

We got to touch Stacy, and to me she felt slimy. Even though she was slimy, she still felt very smooth.

Notice the pattern on her back. She is called a Tiger-Eyed Salamander for that pattern. Doesn't it look like a tiger pattern, a little bit?

Here you can see her crawling back into her log, safe and sound. There is moist dirt in her tub so she does not dry up and die.

What are some things that you noticed about the salamander?

 

 

 

Meet Oswald the Opossum!

 

 

As you may know, opossums can play dead and let out an odor that is horrible smelling, but did you know that they do this without thinking about it? Well, they do. For instance, if an opossum was just cruising along and then it saw a fox looking for food, and the fox sees it, comes at it, the opossum's first defense is to run. Since they do not run very fast, and the fox is catching up to it, the next thing they would do is show its fifty razor sharp teeth with saliva drooling out of its mouth. If that does not work, then they get so scared that a chemical releases in its brain and puts it to sleep. Then two sacks in its body lets out the odor that makes it smell dead. Of course, no animal wants to eat something that is dead, so the fox walks away looking for something else to eat. Once the opossum's ears can hear the animal walking away, and it calms down a few minutes later, then it wakes up and minds its business again. Surprisingly, as I told you before, the opossum has no way of knowing when it begins to play dead and when it wakes up.

Opossums are marsupials, which means they carry their babies in their pouch, like kangaroos and koalas. Since the joeys of the opossum are as small as a dime, they can carry about twenty of them in their pouch. When the babies grow older, but not old enough to live on their own, the mother has to carry them on her back, as shown above. Of course this is not a real opossum, but a stuffed one.

What are some things that you noticed about the opossum?

 

 

Meet Digger the Skunk!

 

 

 

This is Digger, a spectacular skunk. Normally, skunks would spray in the face of danger, but this particular skunk had its skunk sacks removed so it can not spray anybody when it goes to teach classes about skunks.

 

Digger is a striped skunk, the most common skunk. I have skunks in my backyard, and they are all striped skunks. My dog, Cooper, always gets sprayed by skunks and the best way to get the odor off of him is bathe him in vinegar.

 

What did you notice about the striped skunk?

 

 

Meet Bo the Bard Owl!

This is the only bird that Ms. C brought to our class, so all the students were amazed at the owl. I was enchanted as well. Bo is probably my third favorite animal that Ms. C brought us.

You can see that Ms. C is wearing a glove to protect her hand, and that glove has a rope on it, and the rope has a soft leather strap on it. Since Bo was the victim of a car crash, he cannot fly. So if he tries to fly away to somewhere else in the room, the soft leather strap holds onto him to keep him safe. If he did not have that strap, and he tried to fly, he would fall right to the ground.

Have you ever heard that owls can turn their head all the way around? Well that's not true. Owls can only turn their head 2/3 of the way around. Since owls cannot turn their eyes like us, they need to look around them somehow, so that is why they have a special bone in their neck that allows them to turn 2/3 of the way around.

 

What did you notice about the Bard Owl?

 

 



 

 

Meet Fred, the Fennec Fox from Africa!

 

 

As you can see, Fred is a very cute fox. He is probably my second favorite out of all the animals that Ms. C brought us. He lives in Africa so he has to blend in with the landscape. That is why he is an orange-brownish color. Also, since the ground is so hot there, he has little pads on his paws so that he can walk without burning his paws.

His ears are perked up in this photo, so this means that he hears something. He has to have very keen hearing because, in Africa, what if a predator is stalking around just waiting to eat him and he doesn't hear the predator? If he has good hearing, then he can hear the footsteps of the predator and quickly escape.

Here is a baby fennec fox, and it is white instead of the color that Fred is. This means that it is still growing up and it is waiting for its orange-brownish fur.

If you can see, the feet have the little pads on the bottom. These are the pads that I talked about in the first paragraph about fennec foxes. They are just developing, so when the animal gets bigger the pads will too.

Here is another picture of a fennec fox with its ears up, except this fennec fox is a baby. Look at that small face and those huge ears!

 

What did you notice about the fennec fox?

 

 

Meet Honey the Hedgehog!

 

 

This is Honey the hedgehog. I would have to say that Honey is my favorite out of all the animals Ms. C brought us. She is just so cute! Look at that face!

 

Okay. Back to work. When hedgehogs are in danger, they curl up in a ball and start to bounce. If a predator was above it, and the hedgehog started to bounce, the quills would poke the predator and the predator would be hurt and that would give the hedgehog a chance to escape. When Ms. C was holding her, she started doing this and it was so cute to us humans, but to another animal it would be danger.

 

 

What did you notice about the hedgehog?



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Teeth!

 

Teeth can tell a lot about what an animal eats.

 

Canine Teeth= Meat eaters

Canine teeth are sharp and are used for devouring meat.

 

Molars= Plant eaters

Molars are flat and are used for crushing plants.

 

Incisors= Meat and Plant eaters

Incisors are used for cutting and gnawing. 

 

 

 

Here are some different types of diets:

 

Carnivore: Meat eater

 

Herbivore: Plant eater

 

Omnivore: Meat and Plant eater

 

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Human Teeth: Nice smile, Mr. Bones!

 

 

 

 

Porcupine Teeth: Look at the molars on the sides.

 

 

 

 

Bobcat Teeth: Look at those canines! They stick out from the sides!

 

 

Bobcat Teeth: Here's an even better shot of those canines! Look at the size of them!

 

 

 

 

Turtle Jaws

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Visual Notes!

 

Some students took visual notes, which are notes but in picture form. Here are some examples of visual notes by Heather:

 

 

 

Striped Skunk and Tarantula notes

 

 

 

Giant Millipede, Hedgehog, and Bard Owl notes

 

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All photos were taken by Mrs. Yollis.

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Do you ever take any visual notes?

 

What was the most interesting set of teeth to you?

 

What was your favorite animal that Ms. C brought to show us?

 

Search up some facts about these animals on World Book Online!

 

 

 

Family Blogging Month Winners' Free Post!

Way back in November 2013, me, Keira, Heather and Shayna got to choose a free post since we won Family Blogging Month. We decided to work together to make one post, so this is what we wrote:

We are Heather, Keira, and Shayna. Last November, we won Family Blogging Month! When we won Family Blogging Month, we got to write a guest post. All of us decided to make a voiceover of this phenomenal dog obedience video Mrs. Yollis took. Then we wrote a story to accompany the video. This is the story that we created:

Long ago, when dogs didn't exist on Earth, people were very glum and bored. They didn't have any entertainment and people would just stay in their houses all day. One fateful day, there was a meteor crash. The rock landed right on top of a little neighborhood called Storm Cloud. Instead of destroying the town, the meteor exploded with tiny eggs.

The neighbors heard the loud, "BOOOM!" They peeked out their windows. They were frightened to see that their plants, pools, and all of their belongings were transformed into spotted eggs. There were red eggs, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, black, and brown eggs.

The people dashed out of their houses and shouted, "HELP! HELP! THE INVADERS HAVE ARRIVED! EVACUATE THIS INSTANT!" Somebody heard this little boy mutter, "Awww... I just knew that this would happen SOME day! But, obviously, no one would listen!"

He picked up a knife and started scraping a yellow egg. It was pretty stable, but he got part of the egg chipped off. He was having lots of fun playing with the lovely egg.

Suddenly, his elder sister, Olivia, came up to him and shouted, "Oliver! What have you done now, you fool?"

"I-I-I didn't do anything!" he sputtered. "I'm totally innocent!"

Olivia looked down at the knife. "Then what is this?" she questioned as she held the knife. "What have you done with this knife... And this poor egg?"

"Oh, nothing. I was just scraping peanut butter on the egg so that the egg could eat all of the vitamins!"

Olivia eyed the chippings on the egg and exclaimed, "No you haven't! I have proof! This scraped egg explains why you have "spread peanut butter" on the egg. You actually used the knife to chip off the parts of the egg so that you could see what was in it. Stop lying, Oliver!" Olivia picked up the egg and left Oliver all alone.

"Hmph! That bossy old Olivia never minds her own business. If only I could prove that I am smarter!" He thought and thought for over a hour. Then something popped into Oliver's mind! "Ah ha!" he exclaimed. "I can find out what is in that egg! I'll wait until the egg hatches, and there might be a DOG inside it!"

Meanwhile, upstairs, Olivia was studying a random black egg. "I wonder what possibly could be inside this egg. Let's get a magnifying glass to study." She walked over to a bin and grabbed out a blue box. Inside it was her favorite magnifying glass. She hurried back to her room and picked up the black egg and the yellow egg. She gently set them both down on her light blue bed covers and picked up the magnifying glass. She magnified the two eggs. In the corner of her eye, she saw a brown egg at the edge of her room. She picked it up and studied the three eggs all together. "Hmmm... I mustn't let Oliver discover what is inside these precious eggs!" Olivia thought. With that she put the three white spotted eggs in a special box under her bed.

The next day, she got impatient. The eggs didn't have one crack on them. "I guess that I will just have to peel it open." Then she thought of a more educated idea. "I am going to put them in an incubator." She strolled across her medium-sized room and picked up a three egg incubator. She placed the three eggs inside the incubator and turned it on. "Now I will just have to wait for the three eggs to hatch."

Downstairs, Oliver was hatching up a plan of his own. "Well... I am only eight years old, and I may not know as much as my eighteen year old sister. Okay. But I still know a lot. My plan is to smash this ugly red egg I just found outside. I will crack it on the floor. It may be all mushy and disgusting, but I don't care. I'll test this out."

He raised up the egg and smashed it to the floor. There laid the beautiful egg, now ruined. The gooey contents spread all over the sidewalk of Storm Cloud street. "Nooo!" cried Oliver, "I have not proved that there is a dog in these eggs! What shall I do now? I hope that Olivia didn't start yet!"

In her room, Olivia was hopefully studying biology. "This is the DNA of a mammal, but I'm still working on what type of mammal. Oh, I just can't hope anymore that it is a dog!" While she was studying her DNA machine, the incubator was working hard to hatch the three eggs. Olivia constantly looked over to the working egg hatcher, but no eggs had hatched.

"This is preposterous!" She walked to the door of her room, opened the door, went out into the hall, and locked and shut the door behind her. She calmly strolled down the hall to her brother's room. She knocked on the door lightly, but there came no answer. She knocked again louder, but still no one answered. She finally pushed open the door to find her brother sobbing on the dark green covers of his bed. "Oh Oliver!" Olivia cried out to him, "What is wrong?"

"I couldn't prove to you that I was smart! I am less than smart now. I am the least smart that anyone could ever be! But you, you are so intelligent. You-you could figure out what is in those eggs in a second!"Oliver confessed.

"Oh! Have I really been that bad?" Suddenly the pair heard a loud beep.

"The incubator! The eggs are hatching! Now, Oliver, please leave me alone!"

"But you-" Oliver wailed his way out of the room.

Olivia walked to her room and took out the eggs. The eggs were hatched, and there were little specks of dust on the floor. "I suppose that these are the animals that were inside this," she whispered thoughtfully.

Oliver was still weeping when he heard a faint noise that sounded mysterious. He had never heard this noise before. Oliver sat up and walked a little closer to his door. The noise got louder. He opened the door to find nothing. "Hmmm... What was that noise? It sounded identical to a dog's bark. But it couldn't be. I now know that dogs are NOT real. I have lost all hope in finding a dog," Oliver confessed to himself. Oliver ran to Olivia's room and without knocking on the door, he entered.

"YOU GET OUT OF HERE, OLIVER!" Olivia screamed angrily. "WHY ARE YOU EVEN IN HERE?" Olivia was especially mad because Olivia didn't want to give any credit to Oliver if she discovered what was really inside of the eggs.

"I was just trying to say hello! Why do you have to be so mean all the time? I am going outside to get another egg and to find out what is really inside those tiny eggs!" Oliver told Olivia. He slammed the door behind him.

"Olivia never appreciates anything that I do!" With that remark to himself, he went out the front door and onto the sidewalk. He turned back to look at the house, and then thought for a second. "But if I get kidnapped by a criminal, Olivia will never know and I will be gone forever. I am going back to the house."

Inside, Olivia went back to the eggs. The egg shells were still there, but the creatures were gone. "At least there are footprints! Maybe they will lead to my victory!" Olivia thought thoughtfully. She followed the footprints, which looked like paw-prints, and they lead to her closet.

The door was open, so she went inside. She turned on the lights and searched everywhere. Under a pile of clothes, she saw something move. It shook again. Olivia picked up the pile of clothes, and saw that the little creatures in the eggs were dogs! One dog was tan, another black, and the last one was brown. "I can't believe it! Now I just need to figure out what type of dogs they are, and then we can keep the dogs as pets!"

Meanwhile, Oliver just entered the house. He heard Olivia's excitement coming from upstairs. "What is going on up there? I need to know, and I need to know now!" Oliver raced upstairs to find that Olivia was on her DNA type machine. She looking up what type of dog the tan one was. As soon as Oliver entered the room, he saw three dogs sitting on Olivia's light blue bed covers. "You discovered dogs? That's not fair!"

"But it is! You did nothing to figure it out!" Olivia shouted back to him, "You never wanted to take care of these creatures! You are not credited with this discovery, period! This will go in the newspaper, on the Internet, and I will become famous! To make you happier, you might be a little famous because we are siblings, but obviously, you won't be as famous as me!"

*      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *

After a few weeks, Olivia and Oliver were famous. Everybody was talking about these young celebrities. They even got to rename Storm Cloud, which they named Los Angeles. In their spare time, they found the names that fit each of the dogs. The great Dane was named Wolfie, the dachshund is now Laura, and the German shepherd is Felix. They had to train them or else they would run away, bite, and scratch. The siblings knew that the school to train pets didn't exist, so they tried to train them with human food. That did not work, so the siblings had to come up with something else.

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Epilogue

After two years of disobedient dogs, they finally knew that they had to create something. They wanted a special building for the dog school. The siblings were rich because they were famous globally.

Olivia hired an experienced dog trainer named Georgia. She also hired carpenters and working men to build the school. She decided to call it Obedience School for Dogs. The builders got to work, and to Olivia and Oliver, it felt like an instant when they were finished.

The disobedient dogs were placed in there for free, since they were the dogs of the creators, and this is their first day of class:

 



Video by Mrs. Yollis

 

 

I hope you all enjoyed our story and our voiceover!

 

If you were one of the dogs, which dog would you be?

 

What do you think these canines are really thinking?

 

Have you ever trained a dog (dogs) before or are training one now? If so, what tips can you give? Was it or is it hard?

 

Have you ever taken your dog (s) to an Obedience class?

 

Make up a story about your favorite canine from the video!

Adverbs

Today for homework, we were assigned to do a worksheet about adverbs. I decided that blogging about adverbs would be much more fun than doing a paper for homework. Before I start giving some examples of adverbs, I want to make sure that you know what an adverb is. If you do not, here is the definition: 


ad·verb 
/ˈadˌvərb/
noun

 a word or phrase that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, or other adverb or a word group, expressing a relation of place, time, circumstance, manner, cause, degree, etc. 

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Here are some examples of sentences that have adverbs in them: (The red stands for the adverb and the bold words stand for what needs to happen.)

•  When: Tag often needs a bath. Rosa will wash him soon. 
• Where: Rosa washes him here. She takes him upstairs. 

Here is another way you could identify adverbs: (These sentences are from our homework sheet, and
I am only going to do from number one to number eight.)

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1.  Tag played in the mud yesterday.   Answer: Yesterday-when
2. Then Rosa washed him.                  Answer: Then-when
3. She brought his tub out.                  Answer: Out-where
4. Tag stood nearby.                            Answer: Nearby-where
5. The dog ran away.                           Answer: Away-where
6. He dashed upstairs.                         Answer: Upstairs-where
7. He always runs from a bath.           Answer: Always-when
8. Rosa ran ahead of Tag.                   Answer: Ahead-where

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 I hope the blog post helped you!

What are some adverbs that you have learned in class?

Can you come up with some sentences with adverbs in them?

What is your favorite adverb?

What is your favorite sentence with an adverb in it?  

 

A Memorial Post For Mika

Photo by Keira

Recently, my seven year old dog, Mika, passed away. She was almost eight when she passed. Her middle name was Mickey. She was a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, which is a breed of dog. Some of her favorite hobbies were fetching rocks on the beach, cuddling, walking, and, most of all, resting.

You could often find Mika cuddling up to Eva, my stepmom. Eva has had Mika since Mika was a puppy and Mika has always loved Eva. One result of that strong love for Eva is when Eva went away to work, Mika always whined near the garage door for a minute or two. After she was done with her sad song, she would go and cuddle up to her second favorite person, me. If you had her full attention, you could open up your legs as wide as you could and she run to you and lay down on you. Sometimes if you did that and she misunderstood you, she would sprint to you and rub her eyeball on you.

Photo by Eva

This is Mika (left) and Pokie cuddling up together on a little dog bed. Pokie was in Mika's first litter of five litters, so Pokie was her first child. Pokie was the only child in the first litter. As you can see, they look very much alike. The only way you can tell them apart is that Pokie has a white stripe down her belly. Mika was very protective over Pokie. For example, if anyone that was a stranger got too close to Pokie, Mika would bark and bark and bark until we asked her to stop barking. Pokie and Mika were always close together because they were almost always resting. I think that Mika was so protective over Pokie because they spent a lot of time together and Pokie was also her first born.

Photo by Eva

Mika could sometimes be found bathing in the sunlight that was streaming in through the windows. I don't know why she liked the sun so much, I can only guess. Maybe it was because she thought that the sun felt good, or may be it was because the sun relaxed her. In this photograph, you can see Mika sitting in the little bit of sunlight that was left in a room. If you look at her snout that is in the sun, you can see her whiskers growing off of the sides of her mouth. It kind of looks like she was posing for the picture. I think that she just wanted to be famous.



Photo by Casey (My dad)

This is a picture of Mika doing what she loves most, relaxing, being with Eva, and bathing in the sun. She had this lucky moment on Eva's lap in the car. If you look closely at Mika's face, her eyes are closed and she is probably dreaming that she is sitting in a meadow in the sunlight with Eva. Mika is probably saying, "What an amazing meadow! Just sniff those dark purple flowers all around you! They smell wonderful and they are my favorite color! Now I am going to sleep on Eva's lap. Goodbye." I think that was probably what she was barking excitedly about in her dream.

I am so sad that Mika left this world, but I know that every single moment of the day she is watching over me wanting me to celebrate her life. So, for Mika, I wrote this post to celebrate her life.

Have you ever had any pets that have passed away?

Do you have or had any pets?

What are or were your pet's favorite activities?



By the way, I did the color of Mika's fur for the first question, her favorite color for the second question, and the color of the sun for the third question.



Welcome to Keira's Big Ideas!

Photo by Casey (My dad)

Welcome to Keira's Big Ideas!

Hello! My name is Keira, and I am a third grader in Mrs. Yollis' class. My favorite hobbies are reading, writing, and singing. My favorite series of books is The Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket and The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories by Carolyn Keene. I started reading these books in third grade.  Most of my stories are realistic-fiction stories. Maybe I can write a story about a cow that will be a farmer but his crops are not growing well because he eats them all! I mostly sing in the car when music I like is on the radio. For example, if Coldplay's music was playing, I would sing along.

Photo by Casey (my dad)

I have four dogs named: Mika, Cooper, Pokie, and Rory. In case you are wondering, all of my dogs are Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. In the photo above, you see Mika (on the right) and Cooper. Believe it or not, they have parented five litters! Mika's favorite hobbies are resting, fetching rocks on the beach, and walking. Cooper occasionally chews on his bone and likes to take walks often.

Photo by Keira

The picture above is of Pokie (on the left) and Rory, two of the daughters of Mika and Cooper. Pokie often rests, but she also enjoys walking and licking others. Rory's favorite activities are fetch, walking, resting, and licking humans.

What are your favorite hobbies?

If you have a pet, what kind of animal do you have as a pet?

If you have a dog, what breed is it?

(A breed is a type of dog.)