July 13, 2013 · 7:15 pm

Ocean Adventures Camp

A camp I just did over the summer was Ocean Adventures Camp or O.A.C for short.  In this camp we went to different beaches to surf, boogie board, and snorkel as well as to learn about the ocean.  We also made different crafts. On the first day we went snorkeling at Mission Beach.  The second day we did surfing and boogie boarding at La Jolla Shores.  The third day we went to the Cove in La Jolla and snorkeled there too.

The fourth day was AWESOME!

We got to go snorkeling with LEOPARD SHARKS!  It was so cool.  I saw one with stripes all over, 12 to be exact.  Also I saw a giant sea bass, some guitar fish, round rays, and a bat ray.  Also on the fourth day we did surfing and boogie boarding, again at La Jolla Shores.  On the last day we had a sand castle building contest but there was no winner so sad face :(.  Then we did surfing and boogie boarding for the rest of the day and then at 2:00 the parents of each kid came and watched us go surfing!  My mom got some pictures of me doing it and some other photos.

this is me surfing a wave!!! XD XD XD XD XD

This is me surfing a wave!!!  XD

me and my board!

Me and my board!

me and the instructors!

Me and the instructors! The one on the far left is Kelly, the one next to him is Art, then me, then Ryan, and Casey, and finally Caitlin!

Anyway, those were the adventures I had at camp…but wait!  I almost forgot!  I got an award that said “The King Of The Waves”!  Yeah!  Hope you liked my post! 🙂

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July 2, 2013 · 11:08 pm

Thought Stem Creativity Card

I recently started going to a computer class every Sunday called Thought Stem. It is held at UCSD in the Computer Science and Engineering building next to the bear statue. So what we do there is we do different programs that use code like Arduino and Scratch. There are of course older people the watching us to make sure we are doing the code right. On my first day I earned the cards Lighting Up an LED, Put it on a Breadboard, and Resistance is Futile.

But this blog post is about the Creativity Card I started on Sunday, aka, June 30th, 2013.  To earn the Creativity Card you have to take a project and add 5 new things to it. I played around a lot with the delay on the blinking of an LED. I figured out that the shortest amount of time between blinks that I could see in a lit room was 11 ms and in a dark room it was 9.5 ms. But that wasn’t all. I also added 2 more LEDs and 2 more resistors into the circuit that originally had only 1 LED and a resistor.

These are the things I had to do to earn the Creativity Card.

These are the 5 things I did to earn the Creativity Card.

These are the 5 things I did to earn the Creativity Card.

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September 4, 2012 · 4:26 am

Legoland camp

The last week of summer vacation I went to Legoland camp. It is a camp where campers get to go to Legoland to go on rides and build things. At Legoland right now there is a new toy in the big shop. It is adult Lloyd with the green ninja spinner from the Ninjago series!!!!!!!!! YAAAAAAAY!!!! But it came out the day after buy day so I couldn’t get it. But more importantly, there is a new ride at Legoland called Pirate Reef where you get soaked down to your underwear It’s in Pirate’s Cove. Did you know that Miniland is always changing? Like for instance, the beach is now a dirt bike race and not people relaxing. You can tell that something is new by how dirty it is. If it is new it is shiny and not dirty, if it is old it is dirty and dull. The builders get bored because they don’t have anything to build so Miniland is always changing. Did you now that now they have giant Star Wars mini figures? The picture at the end is one of them.

Pirate Reef

The Green Ninja

Washington D.C. in Miniland

It is, drum roll please… bumbumbumbumbum, R2D2!

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August 21, 2012 · 11:40 pm

Garden Update 2

The garden has been growing very rapidly.  The corn is high, there a lot of tomatoes (even though the peak point of the tomatoes was when I did the first garden update), we have a lot of carrots, but most of all PUMPKINS!  In the heat the plants are thirsty and wilting.  The plant that gets the most wilty is the pumpkins, they win the honarary Wilty Award.  When the pumpkins are wilty, the big leaves are floppy instead of flat.  Summer is almost over, and we hope the pumpkins and the corn will be ready by the fall.

The zinnias are more beautiful than ever!

This is the early stage of a big pumpkin. It hasn’t turned orange yet.

Check out this one, it’s white! I call it a ghost pumpkin.

This is the pumpkin that we thought was a canteloupe, then we thought it was a watermelon, now we know it is a pumpkin.

This is basil we planted from seeds. On one of the leaves there were some eggs laid in a honeycomb structural way. We picked that leaf and brought it home and hatched the eggs. They were tiny black beetles.

Look at the corn, it’s bigger now. It is up to my waist. There are lots of tassels and a few ears of corn.

A picture of the gardens at school. One of our last summer projects will be to paint the scarecrows.

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August 8, 2012 · 11:50 pm

Around the World in 8 Minutes

You’ve heard of the book Around the World in Eighty Days?  Well this is Around the World in 8 Minutes!

Starring Sam…

Well that was fun and all, but it’s time I went home. Below is a map of all the places we visited.

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July 31, 2012 · 3:11 am

Update on the School Gardens

This is an update on the school gardens. Right now our tomatoes are huge, and the biggest is as tall as me.

We finally figured out what the mystery plants were. THEY WERE ZINNIAS! We put in a picture of what our zinnias look like.

The corn we had planted is almost A FOOT tall.

We also found a caterpillar on the cosmos. It has really cool stripes.

We also planted some pumpkins, and here is a picture of a baby one.

I will probably have my next update up when school starts in September.

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July 22, 2012 · 8:06 pm

My Birthday Party

On July 15th I had my birthday party at our neighborhood pool.  It was my party and my sister’s party.  I invited a bunch of friends, including J.D., Matthew, Trevor, Sammy, Megan, Ian, Sierra, and Kellen.  We ate pizza, Pirate’s Booty, Veggie Sticks, corn chips, strawberries, grapes, and cake and ice cream.  I spent pretty much the whole party in the pool.

Thanks for coming to my party (everyone who came), and thank you for the gifts.  I hope you enjoy reading my post.

-Sam

Me and my friends in the pool.

This is our Phineas and Ferb cake. Doofenschmirtz has a Sprinklerinator and he sprinkled the Tri-Cake Area with it, while Phineas and Ferb built giant candles.

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July 20, 2012 · 4:47 am

Fun stuff I Did With My Cousin

My cousin who lives in Pennsylvania came to San Diego for 4 days.  First we went to the beach for two days.  We went boogie boarding at La Jolla Shores beach.  Most of the boogie boarders were going on the small waves, but my cousin and I were going really far out and did the big ones.  We also went body surfing.  When doing boogie boarding you use a board, but body surfing is when you just swim in a wave and keep up with it.  It is really complicated, and only just before we had to leave the beach did I get it.

My cousin and I are boogie boarding at the beach.

The third day we went to the Birch Aquarium.  My favorite part was the tide pools, where you get feel sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and other stuff.  My cousin and I spent an hour doing this water table/boat thing, where you have to divert water in different directions and a motor in the middle lets it run.

Help, we are being eaten by a shark!

On the last day we went to the Science Center in Balboa Park, where they have a Tinkering Studio.  And what we did was make a marble roller coaster.  The wall is full of holes that you can put little sticks into that hold things (My mom says it is called a peg board).  There also is a shelf full of things you can use to make your marble roller coaster.  Once you put in a part, you have to test it to make sure it works.  If it doesn’t work you have to adjust it so that the marble has to fall on to the next piece of track you put on the wall.  Below is a picture of me working on the marble roller coaster and a link to a video of it working.

Here are some pictures of me and my cousin putting up our marble roller coaster.

Here is a link to a video of us testing our marble roller coaster.  Paste it into your browser to watch.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/55193357/Marble.MOV

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July 8, 2012 · 8:02 pm

Taking Care of the School Gardens

My school has 7 garden boxes put in by the K Kids (K is for Kiwanis, or Kumeyaay, we aren’t sure actually).   What we’ve planted in the past is artichokes, lettuce, peas, carrots, radishes, corn, arugula, mustard greens, cantaloupe, sunflowers, and lots of other flowers (that I don’t have time to list).  At the end of the school year we planted awesome, giant tomato plants, so we have to go to the school over summer and water.

Last Friday we went to school and planted more corn, some pumpkins, scallions, basil, soybeans, and some lupine.  Before we planted we put in some fresh soil, we turned over the soil (we moved the soil around with a shovel), we fertilized, and we watered the holes.  Some of the pumpkins we planted from seeds, and some were already plants that we moved.  The pumpkins are two different kinds, one white and one orange.  Gardening is really fun, especially because I get to pick tomatoes.  The rest of my post will be pictures we took last Friday.

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July 5, 2012 · 1:51 am

The Pier

We went down to La Jolla to do a program at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.  When we got to the SIO we first got to have a tour of the SIO campus.  I saw Vaughn Hall again where the ice core lab is.  After the tour we got to go on the pier.

The first thing I did when we got to the end of the pier was the shark table.  I got to hold a real Megalodon tooth and a great white tooth.  Megalodon were ancient sharks that were so big that they could swallow you whole.  Megalodon means “big tooth.”

My favorite activity I did all night was the mussel clumps.  The Mussel Clumps is where you divide up mussels looking for small creatures like crabs or flat worms.

Me digging through mussels.

The creatures

When we left they gave us bioluminescence bags filled with phytoplankton that at night glows when you shake it. I think that the dark blue in the next picture is bioluminescent phytoplankton.

There is a camera on the SIO Pier.  It scans the area and moves about every minute.  It is live and it scans the beach and the waves.  Here is the link to the SIO Pier cam, if you want to see it for yourself (http://sio.ucsd.edu/piercam/).  I thought it was super funny because you could see people and they don’t know you are watching.

It was really fun and the next is on August 30th so you should go if you can make it.

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