Meet John James Audubon

Shane F.

Famous Ornithologist

Do you know who drew and illustrated books about birds? If you guessed John James Audubon, you are correct. He was born on April 26, 1785, in Santo Domingo. When he was four, he moved from Santo Domingo to France. His real name was Fougere Audubon. His father was a French sea captain and a merchant. When he was about eight he discovered a love for birds, so he started painting pictures of them. Before he was 14, he already had hundreds of bird drawings. Sometimes he burned them if he didn’t think they were good enough. He was not a good student and often didn’t go to school. In fact, when he was 14 his father sent him away to study, but he hated it there. A year later, he went back to his home in France. When he was 17, he went to Paris to study art. He was so unhappy he left. When he left Paris, he changed his name to Jean Jacques Audubon.

In 1803, he was sent to the United States to make something of himself at his father farm called Mill Grove. He changed his name to John James Audubon, which was an English word for his French name. He never stopped painting pictures of birds.

In 1804, when he was 19 years old, he met a men named William Bakewell and fell in love with his daughter Lucy who he later married. Before he could marry her, he needed to get a job and make money. About a year later, he opened up a store to make money. Years later he got an idea to make a book about birds. He failed at making money and even went to prison because he could not pay his bills. He realized he needed to paint all the time. After many years, he finally got part of his book made, and he called it The Birds of America. Soon, his pictures were in the famous Academy of Natural Sciences and the Royal Institute in Liverpool. He was even made a Fellow of the Royal Society, witch meant he was one of the greatest scientists of the world. Lucy and John moved to England and he wrote more books.
In 1838, The Birds of America book was finally finished. It had 435 pages and 1,065 pictures of birds. He moved back to the United States in 1839. He wrote more books about birds and other animals. He had two sons and he died in 1851, when he was 65 years old. A society was named after him called the Audubon Society. They helped conserve and restore things in nature, especially birds and other wildlife. If he did not draw birds, make books about birds, and discover birds they may not be so popular today.




Here is a link to the local San Fernando Valley Audubon Society.

What birds do you see in your backyard?

See a Turkey Vulture and a Salamander

By James, Shane F., and Sean

Thursday, we had Ms. C. from the Wildlife Experience program. She will be visiting us five times before school is out and will share animals from North America. This is a complement to our science unit on Animal Adaptations.

We learned that a fly has a compound eye. That means it sees many of the same images at one time. Above is a picture of a fly's compound eye.

They are difficult to swat because they really see you coming.

She told us that snakes are reptiles, and that they shed their skin as they grow.

Here is the turkey vulture, the only bird in North America that can smell. It can smell something two miles away. It eats dead things off the ground. If you look closely at its right wing, you will notice it is deformed. He was injured when he got hit by a car. Luckily, someone called the Wildlife Experience group and they saved him. Its predators are bobcats and red tailed hawks. Because he had a hurt wing, he could not fly away and a predator could have killed him and eaten him.

The salamander is an amphibian that has holes on its body so it can breathe in water and on land. Interestingly enough, the salamander had tiger strips that were yellow and black. These beautiful stripes give it the name the tiger salamander. The tiger salamander had a long, lizard-like tail that the class got to stroke. The Wildlife Experience was fun and great for learning about animals from North America.

Have you ever seen these animals in the wild?

Do you know anything else about turkey vultures or salamanders?

If so, please comment!

A New Shiny Penny!

By Shane F., Sean, Behyan, and Matthew

A few months ago Shane F. and Matthew published a post called the “New One Dollar Coin”. In one of the comments, Mrs. Harding mentioned that a new penny is coming!

Here are some interesting facts about the new penny.

The U.S. Mint made the new penny to honor Lincoln’s 200th birthday. The penny has been around for one hundred years. The U.S. Mint revealed the penny on September 22. It still has the same face, but a different reverse, or back.

The reverse of the penny has four different pictures, so try to collect all four!

On the reverse of one coin is Lincoln's log cabin.

Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809, in a county in Kentucky. He lived in a log cabin from the time he was two-and-a-half until he was nearly eight years old. The cabin and his birth date are shown on the reverse of this coin.

On the reverse of another penny is Lincoln cutting wood

In this image, young Abe is taking a pause from rail splitting and is reading a book. He did not go to school, but he learned by reading books. He was perfect at plowing and using an axe in the woods. He used the axe and rail splitter for cutting wood. This coin tells a lot about his former years in Indiana.

The reverse of the third penny is the Illinois Capitol.

Early in his life, he took on several jobs. One of his jobs was piloting a steamboat, but the thing he admired most was politics. In September 1836, Abe got a law license. In 1834, he became a member of the Illinois General Assembly. He was elected President in 1860.

The final reverse has a picture of the U.S. Capitol.

In late 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation announcing that slaves would be free on January 1. Pictured on this coin is the unfinished U.S. Capitol building. It was being built while he was serving his term as President during the Civil War.

The pennies will come out over three month intervals in 2009.

Has you seen one of these new pennies? If you have, please write a comment.
Which reverse did you get?

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.

* * *

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!

Leonis Adobe Museum Trip

By Taylor G., Taylor S., Bethany, Shane F.,

Learning about your community is part of the third grade Social Studies curriculum. To learn more about the history of our community, all third graders visited the Leonis Adobe Museum.

Miguel Leonis and his Chumash bride, Espiritu, lived in the adobe.

At first, we gathered around the giant oak tree. Our docent told us this tree was over 600 years old!

All we could find under the oak, were acorn leaves and acorn caps. The squirrels have been busy!

Water was needed at the ranch. Here the docent explains about how water is pumped from the ground.

Here is one of the cowgirls working hard at the pump!

Later, a windmill was added. The wind provided the energy to pump up the water, and it was then stored in the water tank.

Water was needed to wash the clothes. Here is a photo of a washboard and wringer.

Water was also used for...bathing! The tub was small so it could be picked up and carried out to the garden. The bathwater was reused to water the plants.

Inside the house, the docent explained who lived in the house and what kind of a life they lived. We were surprised to see the kitchen floor was dirt!

Upstairs we got to see some sample adobe bricks and learned more about them. Adobe is made of mud, straw, and animal manure.

Upstairs there was a museum room with old books, musical instruments, and a journal. There were sample quill pens on the desk so we could see what people used to use for writing.

During our field trip to Leonis Adobe Museum, we made tortillas and butter.

The first step was to get yellow corn from the garden. Then we took all the corn off the cob. Next, we put the kernels in a bowl and mashed it into
a yellow corn powder.

Water was added to the corn meal to make a corn tortilla mix. Next, the workers rolled the batter into a ball and pressed it flat in the iron tortilla press. It was hard work keeping the ranch going!

At Leonis Adobe we saw goats, Texas long horns, and sheep. They used fur from the sheep for wool blankets, and the meat for food. The goats' milk was used for drinking and making cheese. The Texas long horns provided meat for food, fur for blankets, and
manure for planting.

Here is an anvil and whetstone used by the blacksmith.

A big part of life on the ranch was tending the animals. Here is one of the ranchers showing off his skills with the lasso!

Yeehaw!

We fed the animals hay. It tickled when they took the hay from our hands.

We learned that goats and sheep have rectangular pupils unlike ours which are circular.

At the Leonis Adobe Museum the girls made rag dolls. We could have a pink doll or a green doll. The docent gave us a long string and three little strings. With the short strings, we made two arms and a head. Finally, we knotted the long string to the doll so we could wear it as a necklace. During the 1880s, girls at Leonis Adobe used the wool from the sheep to make their dolls.

Back in the 1880s, Miguel and Espirtu did not have indoor bathrooms. They had to walk outside to an outhouse. That must have been a long, cold walk!

After a long day working at the adobe, we were treated to yummy corn tortillas and homemade butter! They were delicious!

The road in front of the Leonis Adobe was part of the trail that connected the 21 missions from San Diego to San Fransisco. It was called the "El Camino Real" or "King's Highway".


A great time was had by all, and much was learned about the history of Calabasas.

The End

Presidential Dollar Coins

By Shane F. and Matthew H.




During our unit on money, we learned about the value of each coin and each bill. Mrs. Yollis had links about money on her class website. One of the links was about the new dollar coins that are being minted.

The United States Mint is making new $1 coins. Each coin has a president on the obverse, or front, and the Statue of Liberty on the reverse. The program started in 2007 and will end in 2017. All of the presidents will be minted on a coin in the order in which they served.

The designers put information on the edge of the coins. Each coin has "E Pluribus Unum", "In God We Trust", the year of minting, and the mint mark where it was made.

To learn more about how coins are made, you can go here.