I decided to clean out some of the art hanging in the house from the kiddos. Here is one of Nathan's recent drawings..

Final product from Creative Writing class

Well, this was an interesting experience. I can say it was good for Nathan and I can also say that I now am extremely unsure of these after school class taught at Carl Sandburg lol. It was the most expensive class offered and somehow it's the only class I have had to do a ton of work for. I had no idea what the writing specifics were. The first few weeks, no matter how many times I asked, the teacher just kept saying the story was 16 pages. Well there is a lot of room for interpretation there. In the end she didn't care if it was one sentence on each of the 16 pages or more, but it took many parents peppering her with questions on specifics to find this out. So poor Nathan was doing a bunch of unnecessary writing that he didn't really want to do to make the story longer until we had clarification. I had to do all of the printing at home and all of the binding. Then I had to bring food for the author night. That wouldn't be such a big deal if most of the parents weren't wondering what exactly the $180 was for that we spent for this class if we had to do so much at home? The last class I signed up for at the school was $150. They spent an hour with friends after school playing Legos and I did nothing at all but pick Nathan up when it was over. End rant. Here is Nathan's awesome book.

 

 

 

THe most awesomest choice time ever (school writing prompt)

If I were to be in charge of Choice Time, I would make a money machine (maybe) and have ice cream, dunk the teacher with ice cold water, and of course bring a device to school! You would also get to be as loud as you wanted. Also, I would bring a DJ to do some music. You could bring in a beach chair and pull your shirt off and bring board games too. No tv or xbox 360 or xbox 1. You would be allowed to bring in stuffed animals and beds too. Parents would have to pay the teacher if they needed to come in.. Well, enjoy Choice Time! Bye!

Nathan

Short break...

More stories to come soon... I gave Nathan a week off for a good report card and then his teacher assigned the kids their first research project. Because he put so much work into that, I will post it in place of a story. His next big assignment is for the after school creative writing class he is taking at school. By the end of that class, he will have written a 16 page story with illustrations that is an expansion of one of the blog stories we posted. It's been pretty hard for him to do that much writing so in the meantime he gets a break from mom's weekly short story assignments ;)

Ode to Gideon

Nathan had a good report card this week so I let him off the hook on his weekly story with one exception. He had to write something for his cousin Gideon's birthday. Here is the story he came up with, no editing done as it was so cute :)

The Skittles go missing

One day, in Seattle, Washington, the Seahawks were losing to the 49ers. The score was Sea 6 SF 10. Pete Carroll was holding onto Marshawn Lynch's skittles. He put the pack of skittles down on a nearby bench. A minute later, it was gone. Pete knew he was in trouble. Marshawn's skittles were completely gone.
Pete said, "I need to find these before Marshawn finds out and tackles me and I lose my job!" he started searching frantically. He walked into the locker room and as he passed the white board, he stumbled over a portal. Leading to the portal was a trail of skittles. "I think I should go in there. I might find the skittle thief," Pete said and he jogged into the portal. He started spinning around and around and when he stopped, he realized he wasn't in the locker room anymore.

Things started spinning around and around again and Pete saw 4 things were coming at him. Through the portal came Joe Montana, Tavaris Jackson, Robert Turbin, and Frank Gore. "Huh, why are you here," Pete asked. "We were looking for you," said Robert Turbin.
"Marshawn's skittle have gone missing and I don't want to lose my job. You're going to have to help me," Pete said. "We need to find them before it's too late."

"Too late," said a voice. Everyone turned around to see a strange figure with weird looking zombies wandering near her. "I am the Football Eater and I hate football," said the Football Eater. "If you want your skittle back, you have to beat me at a football game."

"We accept your challenge," Pete said. While everyone prepared for the game, Pete noticed the skittle were unguarded under an oak tree. He decided he should go for it. He grabbed them and put them in his back pack before the Football Eater returned. Five minutes later the Football Eater returned with her crew.

Everyone gets their players on the field and the game starts. The Football Eater punts the ball to the other team. The other team caught the ball and started running and didn't stop until they were through the portal. They knew the Football Eater would try and follow them to get the skittles back so they searched for a way to close the portal.

Pete accidentally bumped into some coffee and it spilled on the portal. It closed!! Pete ran as fast as he could to Marshawn with the skittles. Marshawn made a touch down and the Seahawks won.

But it wasn't over. Far away, in the employee lunch room, a man was reading a newspaper. He looked up and saw a swirly thing. "I'm going to get my revenge on Pete Carroll wa ha ha ha ha ha!" shouted the Football Eater.

The Survivalists made it into the school newspaper!

The Survivalists and the Angry Cats

In the deep woods of the Twilight Forest, the hydra was just waking up after the night past. The hydra had retired from the Ender Crew (the team that guards the Ender Aisle) because he was promoted to his final rank (which is rank 100). The hydra grabbed a skeleton friend and shoved it in one of his massive heads. Then he heard an angry meow.

The hydra turned around to see an angry herd of cats.

The hydra had a radar for calling for help and he noticed that he was close to the Survivalist's portal. The radar started beeping. The angry pack of cats stopped. They looked up in horror. The hydra was much bigger then they had thought he would be. After awhile, they got braver and their diamond swords started swaying in the air.

The swords flew towards the hydra and off one of it's heads. Then the hydra's ender goo knocked out 5 cats before it needed more ender goo. Bu the hydra wasn't worried. Because suddenly the Survivalists came out of the Nether and into the Twilight Forest.

Then, the Survivalists pulled out some flint and steel and surrounded the angry cats. That created a black hole that took the cats back to their home. The angry gang of cats were gone and the hydra now had 11 heads and a wither spawner so he could eat the wither with all of his meals. The Survivalists started working on one really big castle! If you were wondering why the angry cats came then this is why! They didn't want any creature who used to be in the Ender Crew to come to the Twilight Forest. it was hard for them because the hydra was who they were dealing with. Then the hydra started begging for pets from Dr. Johnson. Things got really happy. But this was not the end. This was only the beginning.......

The Survivalists (A Minecraft Story)

The Survivalists, a Minecraft Story.

By Nathan Adams

One day in a city called Monster Minecraft, Boxer Steve went to his hot tub to turn on the nice hot water. But he got obsidian and cobblestone instead! He wondered why for a few moments until he remembered that lava and water made obsidian and cobblestone. Then he wondered where lava was coming from. So he picked up his phone and yelled "Where are you Survivalists?"

Suddenly, the Survivalists rushed into Boxer Steve's hot tub room and broke down his cool iron door. "Hey you!" Boxer Steve yelled. Boxer Steve had a habit of yelling.

Boxer Steve told them about the obsidian and cobblestone and said "check it out, people!"

They rushed out the door as fast as they could. Boxer Steve came with so he could find out what was going on too. At the entrance of the big factory they found a picture of King Creeper's head on a blacked out gate.

It took awhile for them to break the gate. But when they did they found creepers were plugging up all of the water. And the creepers had hands! They didn't normally have hands. They snuck inside and found factory workers in cages near King Creeper. They thought, why does he want the factory?

But then they overheard him threatening the factory workers. He was trying to take over the town! Oh no! We've got to get out of here and stop him! The survivalists decided to make creeper costumes to trick King Creeper into coming to the Monster Mayhem stadium where they could fight for the town.




When the King Creeper got there, the survivalists threw off their costumes and the King Creeper knew he had been tricked. The survivalists that had been hiding in the corners jumped out and defeated King Creeper and he was sent off to one of the 15 ender jails.

The End

Joe and Bob stories

One day, Joe and Bob were walking down the street talking about football practice, when Toko jumped out of nowhere.
"Toko, what are you doing?" said Bob. "There's a tornado coming!" screamed Toko. When Toko had jumped in front of Joe and Bob, the bushes flew everywhere, kind of like the tornado had already arrived. So Joe, Bob, and Toko gathered their friends; Carter Plasma, Barney, and John and ran for Bob's house where he had an underground panic room to keep them safe. Bob had a special sort of house. Most of it was underground except for the elevator that led you downstairs.

Meanwhile, a robber wanted to rob the school that Joe, Bob, Toko and their friends went to. He had not been warned about the tornado. He decided to go into classrooms to look for hidden student money but he didn't find any. Not even in the principle's office! Not only was there no money anywhere, there were no students anywhere either! Suddenly, he heard a really loud noise. Like a train rumbling past the school, He ran to the window almost as fast as a cheetah and there he saw a biggest funnel cloud he had ever seen and it was landing in front of the forest that surrounded the town.

The robber's special training said to wait until the danger was closer and then make a dash for it. He hid under a desk for 10 minutes. Then he ran for the back door. As he ran, classrooms began splitting and headed toward the TORNADO! The robber got to the back door just as the principle flew into the tornado. The robber jumped out the back door just as the last of the school flew into the TORNADO!The robber hit the cement with a THUD! The tornado had just finished and the cops came to arrest the robber only to find that he was Cal Jefferson. Cal Jefferson was wanted for stealing money from all over the world. He was arrested and everybody started coming out of their homes. The cops discovered later that Cal Jefferson had created the tornado with a weather machine. Isn't it good that he was caught by the cops?

Everything bad was over.

Miner's Shack

At school, Nathan was given an assignment to imagine what it would be like to open his own restaurant.
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I've been dreaming about opening a Minecraft themed restaurant. The best place for my restaurant is at an abandoned mine! My restaurant is called MINER'S SHACK. All of my friends will work there. My restaurant is open 20 hours a day and the booths are in dim rooms with 4 torches on the walls. Next, my restaurant is made of square rocks and diamond gems. There are lots of rock and minerals like gold and talc. There are stone stairs to get to the large booth room. The booth room contains the most minerals in the entire restaurant. You should bring a shovel so you can dig for secret rooms!

Now, let's talk about food because you must be hungry. We will have bacon burgers, cheese sandwiches, pepperoni pizza, and the best (my favorite) is CHEESE CAKE. Next, I will be adding cheese stuffed bread sticks. I will have a kids' menu and a parents' menu. The parents' menu is special because it has 3 columns of food. If this sounds delicious to you, I hope you will come to the MINER'S SHACK!