Visit Lake Tahoe

Chloe visited Lake Tahoe with her family. She created a beautiful travel blog of her trip. Learn about Lake Tahoe through her pictures and information!

Behind me is Emerald Bay located on the south side of Lake Tahoe.
Emerald Bay State Park is located around Emerald Bay; a National Landmark at Lake Tahoe. Emerald Bay is one of Lake Tahoe's most photographed and popular locations. This is a very beautiful place to visit.

This is a view from the gondola coming down from the Heavenly ski school. The view is of south shore Lake Tahoe. My mom was really terrified while taking this picture because she does not like heights.

Lake Tahoe is the second deepest lake in the United States, with a maximum depth of 1,645 feet, trailing only Oregon's Crater Lake at 1,949 feet. Tahoe is also the 16th deepest lake in the world, and the fifth deepest in average depth. It is about 22 miles long and 12 miles wide. It has 72 miles of shoreline and a surface area of 191 square miles.

This is my dad and me on the top of Heavenly ski slopes. He is a great skier, and he is very advanced. We went up so that he could teach me to be a great skier just like him. We skied on both the California side as well as the Nevada side. It is really fun to ski with my awesome dad!

Above is a picture of an area called Sandy Harbor which is located in the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.
The sand is from years of erosion of sandstone and granite rock.



Native People


The area around Lake Tahoe was originally inhabited by the Washoe tribe of Native Americans. Lake Tahoe was the center and heart of Washoe Indian territory, including the upper valleys of the Walker, Carson, and Truckee Rivers. The English name for Lake Tahoe derives from the Washo dá’aw, "lake".

President Obama's Inauguration

Today in Mrs. Yollis' class we watched Barack Obama's historic inauguration. We followed the ceremony on T.V. and on the U. S. links on Mrs. Yollis' Website.

Here are some of the comments and observations from the students...

Lexi: I cheered when President Obama came out!

Clementine: I loved when he said "...still river of peace..." in his speech.

Matthew: I liked the transforming schools part because some school aren't really as great as others, and he said he would transform that.

Emily: I liked when he said, "Yes, we can." It makes me feel like we can accomplish a lot of things.

Shane J: I liked when he said, "we can do and we will do," because whatever you want to do...you can do it, if you put your mind to it.

Bethany: I liked when he said "We the people..." because it made me feel like we have plenty of freedom.

Kyle: When he said "still water of peace..." it made my mind open.

James: When he said, "Starting today, we must pick ourselves up..." means that we can do things that we have never done before.

Shane F: When he said, "Yes we can." That felt very strong and powerful and it made me think that if you try, you can do it.

Taylor G: I liked when he said, "...challenges will be met," because it made me feel stronger.

Behyan: I like when he said "timeless words" when he was talking about George Washington.

Sean: When he said, "We are all free." I liked that because some African-Americans used to not be free, and now everyone is free.

Garrison: I loved his inauguration speech because it was really heart-soaring.

Jonah: I enjoyed when he said "...for the world has changed and we must change with it."

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We read about President Obama in our Weekly Reader.

Mrs. Levenson brought in a coloring sheet with the oath and the flag on it.

After the ceremony, the class wrote letters to President Obama. Many included advice for the President and quotes they enjoyed from his speech.

We invite people to leave comments about the Inauguration! Tell us about what you liked or learned!


For example, Sean taught us that Obama automatically became President at 12:00, even if he wasn't sworn in. That happened!

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In the comment section, Bethany shared great information about the five flags that were hanging in front of the Capitol. Here is a link to an interactive site where you can see the flags and stars for yourself!

Navigate through the site to the Capitol hot spot:
The Capitol

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The class was talking about how many people attended the ceremony. Here are some satellite photos. Can you see the people gathered around the giant T.V. screens?


Does anyone know how many people attended the event?

Circling the Sun

By Lexi

Mrs. Yollis’ class was talking about how the Earth orbits, or goes around, the sun while spinning itself!


That topic interested me, so I made a model at home to help inform the class about how this system works. I researched using books and the Science links on Mrs. Yollis’ Website.



Here is what I have learned. The sun is approximately 4 billion years old and is a star made of gas. In fact, it is made up of 70% hydrogen and 28% helium. The Earth is one of eight planets that make up the Solar System. It takes a year, or 365 days, for the Earth to travel around the sun.

On my model, the Earth is colored blue and green. Blue stands for the oceans, and the green is for the continents. There are seven continents on our planet: North America, South America, Asia, Europe, Antarctica, Africa, and Australia. I made the sun small so it looks far away.

I love the solar system, and I hope you do too!

Mr. Mann Hits a High Note

By Clementine

About a month ago, the setting for one of our stories was Italy. Mrs. Yollis played some Italian opera in class. Mr. Mann, an opera expert, came to our class and taught us about the opera, La Boheme. It’s a story about four friends who were very poor and lived in Paris. One of them met a girl and fell in love with her. But she got sick and died. Mr. Mann played music from the opera for us and brought pictures of a few scenes.


Some of the songs were happy songs like when everyone was out at a parade. Some of the songs were beautiful, mushy, love songs. There were very depressing songs too at the end when the girl died. All of the songs helped tell the story and set the mood of the opera.



I interviewed Mr. Mann over the phone after the lecture and asked him a couple of questions.

C – “What did you think about coming in to lecture to our class?”

MM – “I was looking forward to it and I enjoyed it very much.”

C – “ How did you think the kids behaved?”

MM – “ I thought I would only talk for 15 minutes, but I went much longer because everyone was paying such good attention. They were so smart and so wonderful. This was my first time speaking to children and it was a treat.”

C – “Have you gone to a lot of operas?’

MM – “Yes, I have.”

C - “What was your favorite?”

MM – “La Boheme – the one I talked about.”

C – “ Is there really a fat lady with a hat with horns on it that sings in an opera?”

MM – “Sometimes.”

Thanks for reading!

Multiplication Property Games

By Shane F., Sean, and Matthew

In our multiplication unit we have been playing games to help us learn the properties of multiplication.

Order Property of Multiplication Game

A few weeks ago, Mrs. Yollis made two yellow factor cards, and she picked two people to be "factors". The "factors" chose a number from her box of digits.

Next, they hid their number under their yellow factor card.

When Mrs. Yollis yelled, "Name the product!" the two factors revealed the factors to the class.

The class wrote down the multiplication sentence with the correct product.

Students with the correct product could then be chosen to be part of the game.

We learned that if you switch the order of the factors, the product stays the same.

8 x 9 = 9 x 8

Grouping Property of Multiplication Game

Today, we learned to multiply three factors! Mrs. Yollis made another yellow factor card and a set of cardboard parentheses. We learned a new game for this property.

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Three students were chosen to be the "factors". They hid a number under their factor card. One at a time the numbers were shown. When all three factors were revealed, Mrs. Yollis allowed one person to be the grouper. (An organizer, not the fish!)

That grouper came up and grouped two of the factors with the parentheses. The class wrote the newly grouped factors in a number sentence on their white boards and solved the equation.

Students with the correct product could become a new "factor" or the grouper.

We learned that it doesn't matter how you group the factors.

(1 x 2) x 5 = 1 x (2 x 5)

The product will always be the same.
We also learned that grouping certain factors together made it easier to come up with the product.

Perhaps you would like to play the games too!