VIDEO: Cooking with Sam & Frodo

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Sam: Ethan Lehman
Frodo: Joe Schatz
Golom/Smeagol: Solomon Midwinter
Narrator: Willow Skidmore
Filmed by: Aurora J. Pass
Ad guy: Riley Adesheim Marshal

Inspired by the The Lord of the Rings as Literature taught by Elise Duval Werger

VIDEO: Good Morning Middle Earth #3 - News from Isengard

News Reporter: Willow Skidmore

King Theodin: Ethan Lehman

Script written by: Aurora Pass

Videographer: Solomon Midwinter

Inspired by the The Lord of the Rings as Literature taught by Elise Duval Werger

at Planet Homeschool

VIDEO: Good Morning Middle Earth #2

• News Reporter: Ethan Lehman
• Mr. Goblin: Nadia Sullivan-Nightengale
• Filmed by: Aurora Pass
• Script by: Willow Skidmore
• Inspired by the The Lord of the Rings as Literature taught by Elise Duval Werger at Planet Homeschool in Minneapolis

CARTOON: Cooking catastrophes

by Willow Skidmore
PHS Press staff member

Ada Lovelace

By Willow Skidmore

PHS Press staff member

Ada Lovelace (also known as Augusta Ada King) was the Countess of Lovelace and known as the first computer programmer. According to Wikipedia, she was born as Augusta Ada Byron on December 10, 1815 in London, England.

Her mother (Anna Isabella King) encouraged her interest in Logic and Mathematics because she was bitter at Lord Byron (Ada’s father) for divorcing her when Ada was just 1 month old. Lady Byron wanted to take Ada’s interest away from her father. In spite of this, Ada remained interested. Part of the reason for this was that she never met him. He died in Greece when she was 8 years old. 

 Ada was often ill and at the age of 8, she experienced headaches that blocked her eyesight. In June of 1829, she was paralyzed by measles. She was kept in bed for nearly a year, which may have extended her time of paralysis. By the year 1831, she was able to walk by using crutches. Even while ill, she continued her studies.

According to Wikipedia, on July 8, 1835, she married William King (who was the 8th baron of that name) and became Baroness King. They lived in Ockham, Surrey, UK. They had three children: Byron (b. May 12, 1836), Anne Isabella (b. September 22, 1837), and Ralph Gordon (b. July 2, 1839). After Anne’s birth, Ada was sick for awhile. In the year 1838, her husband became the Earl of Lovelace. She was considered the Countess of Lovelace for most of her married life.

According to the San Diego Supercomputer Center, Ada translated a paper written in French about her friend Charles Babbage’s work. It is from there that she gets her fame. She was called the first computer programmer because with her math she worked with Babbage to create the design of a computer. She was called his Enchantress of Numbers.

Modern day people saw Babbage’s notes and for 30 years they didn’t know who his “Enchantress of Numbers” was. Then 15 years ago, their research led to Ada’s identification. Since then, many people have written novels about her. 

Ada died at the age of 36 on November 27, 1852 from cancer. By her request, she was buried next to her father at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene Hucknall in Nottingham, England.

Ghost story: The Glowing Shadow

The Glowing Shadow

By Willow Skidmore

PHS Staff member

    It all started with a walk in the woods. Natasha had gone out to avoid having to do her chores. She and the dog Agatha went further and further into the woods until she started to feel a growing unease. “Just a bit further; then we’ll turn back,” she told herself. They came to an abandoned cabin in the woods and curiosity overcame fear. They went in. 

Natasha first noticed something strange when she saw shadows in the dark. The windows were boarded up, but she could still see lots of them as though the room was filled with sunlight. Then she noticed the shadows were doing things that the owners were not. She shifted uneasily.

         “Agatha, maybe we should go back,” she told the dog. Natasha started to hear words. She looked around the room, but there was no one else there. The words steadily rose to an eerie chant. The shadows started swirling and glowing brighter and brighter until they solidified into one creature. Ghost, Man, Beast? She couldn’t tell. Its shape changed with every shift of either Natasha or Agatha. It spoke in an echoing, clanging voice. “State your purpose!” Natasha couldn’t speak for awhile. Then she steeled herself and said, “I was just going for a walk.” The Shape rose menacingly. “A walk?! In the holy places?! Why?!” With each word it grew. “I didn’t know!” she shouted bravely. The Shape disappeared in a puff of smoke. Natasha fell into a trance.

          When she woke up she was in her bedroom with her mother calling, “Natasha, can you come mop the floor?” As soon as she could get away she went to find the cabin. Even the clearing had disappeared. She never forgot that day. She could never shake the clinging cobwebs of the past.

QUIZ: What is the Best Costume For You?

By Willow Skidmore

PHS Staff member

1.What color do you prefer?

1. White
2. Blue
3. Red
4. Black
5. Purple
6. Rainbow
7. Other

2.What accessories do you prefer?

1. Wing and a Halo
2. Horns and a Trident
3. None
4. Other

3.Which do you want your costume to be?

1. Scary
2. Peaceful
3. Dark
4. Calm
5. Sparkly
6. Other

4.Are you a morning person?

1. Yes
2. No
3. Other

5.How complicated do your like you costumes?

1. Not
2. Lots
3. Other

6.What would you like the theme to be?

1. Scary
2. Serious
3. Funny
4. Sad
5. Other

If you got mostly A’s you are an angel.

If you got mostly B’s or C’s you are a random monster.

If you got mostly Others make it up.

If you got mostly F’s you are a rainbow fairy.

If you got mostly D’s you are a secret agent.

Aurora Pass is on a Swim Team

By Willow Skidmore

PHS Press staff member

           

Aurora Pass (Photo by Emily Weinlick)

Aurora Pass (age 12) taught herself to swim. She started swimming because she loves to be in the water. She started competitive swimming because she watched the Summer Olympics and wanted to be like the swimmers that she saw.

Aurora started swimming with the Otters team last year. Her swim meets are approximately every 2 months. Her best race so far is the 50-yard Butterfly.  She practices three days a week: on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. When asked where she swims, Aurora said, “Well, I swim all over the place because of the swim meets, but I practice at the YWCA in Midtown.”

 When Aurora uses swimming tools she uses the kickboard. When doing the Butterfly she likes to use flippers, because then she can go very fast. She says that she is fastest at the Butterfly. When asked whether she does a flip turn she said, “No,” emphatically and then described how to do the Butterfly.

So first you push off as fast as possible. Then you do one dolphin kick. Then you
             push your arms forward making an S-shape. You pull your arms out of the water at the
              back. Then you put them back in the water.

  

She finished up by saying that she enjoyed speaking about swimming.

A Community Which Opens Language Barriers…

by Willow Skidmore

PHS Press staff member 

Martha’s Vineyard is an island off the coast of Massachusetts where most of the population is deaf or culturally deaf (which means hard of hearing). About.com says that the first recorded deaf person on Martha’s Vineyard was Jonathan Lambert in 1692. He and his family came from England and established the first English settlement on Martha’s Vineyard. Lambert had seven children, two of whom were deaf.

Many of the early settlers carried a gene for deafness. This gene started with Lambert’s family and two other families: The Tiltons and the Skiffes. They created Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language, which later mixed with French Sign Language to create American Sign Language. At one point, one in every four children on Martha’s Vineyard was deaf .

History Collections tells us that Alexander Graham Bell noted the large amount of deafness on Martha’s Vineyard in the late Nineteenth Century after visiting the island. Previously, people believed  that “maternal fright” was the explanation for this phenomenon. The theory of “maternal fright” was an effect on the baby from psychological stress on the mother during pregnancy. Bell thought about this and believed that the deafness was hereditary. In the Nineteenth Century in America, one in every 5,728 people was deaf, while on Martha’s Vineyard, one in every twenty-five people was deaf.  Hearing people then and now communicate using sign language while on the island. According to History Collections, that is why the people of Martha’s Vineyard do not consider themselves a “deaf community,” but “a community which opens language barriers.”

Willow Skidmore and the Orchestra

by Aurora J. Pass

PHS Press staff member

 

Willow Skidmore (photo by Paavo Downing)

Willow Skidmore, age eleven, is a student at Planet Homeschool. She plays violin in an orchestra called Sinfonia. Willow started playing violin when she was five, about six years ago. She said that what inspired her to start playing violin was hearing other Orchestras play beautiful music.

Willow’s concerts are at Orchestra Hall, and she practices at Wooddale Church. The orchestra plays on holidays and some Tuesday nights. She plays in first violin, and thinks that being in an orchestra with lots of people helps her people skills.

Willow enjoys playing violin. She said it was hard to explain playing the violin. “Playing the violin is indescribable. You just do it.”

Meet Willow Skidmore

Willow Skidmore (Photo by Emily Weinlick)

by Emily Weinlick

- Willow Skidmore

- 11 years old, 8^th grade

- City/town: St. Paul

- Favorite album: 35^th Anniversary LIVE in Poland

- Best book/blog you read this summer: Catch Your Death

- Favorite newspaper/magazine: Smithsonia

- Hobbies: Reading, writing and crafts

- Most interesting thing about yourself: I’m weird, I know it, I enjoy the fact

- What do you like most about Planet Homeschool? The classes and teachers

- Why did you join the newspaper/photography class? Because I like writing and taking pictures

- What do you like to write? Short fiction stories