Sabotaged

Sabotaged  by Margaret Peterson Haddix is about two kids named Johah and Katherine that travel in time to try to return Virginia Dare back into pre-colonial times.  They encounter many obstacles along the way, but in the end, Virginia is returned to the right time and saves Virginia’s grandfather.  This book is one of a series involving time travel and historical events.

One of the messages that I got from this book was that “blood is thicker than water” and that people will go to great lengths to keep a family member safe, even if they don’t really know them.  Virginia Dare’s grandfather was John White, the founder of the Roanoke colony.  She didn’t actually know him, but since she had time traveled, she knew that he would be in serious danger while looking for the lost colony at Roanoke.  She convinced Jonah and Katherine to help her.   She would do anything to save her grandfather, including jumping into a river during a hurricane to pull him out of the water and actually delivering him to Roanoke safely.  

This book really made me think about whether I would put myself in danger to help someone that I didn’t know.  I would like to think that I would, but if I’m being really honest, I don’t know that I would jump in a raging river during a hurricane for a stranger, even if it was a family member.  I am very close to my family, even my extended family, and I know for sure that I would do anything in the world to save them.  I am pretty sure that I would do the same thing for my best friends. I know I would help a stranger if I didn’t think I was risking my life.  But I wonder what I would do about someone I didn’t know.

I loved this book because it involves history and mystery.  I have already started the next book in the series, Torn.  You can read about that next week!

Reading Log

Sabotaged, Margaret Peterson Haddix
   7/23-1.5 hours      7/24- 2 hours      7/25-2.5 hours

In Defense of School Sports: A Runner's Manifesto

In Defense of  School Sports: A Runner’s Manifesto

           

            Scientists have discovered many things about your body and the effects that exercise has on it.  Exercise helps increase brain power, lessens the stress level in your body, and creates happy feelings and a good mood.  Being part of a sports team gives a sense of community and friendship in addition to the health benefits of exercise.  All of these things increase a person’s quality of life.

            Exercise boosts brainpower by stimulating new brain cells to grow.   When a person exercises, the heart pumps harder and blood flow to the brain increases.  This makes new brain cells grow.  The more a person exercises, the more brain cells that grow.  Studies have also shown that the brain cells in couch potatoes actually die.   Exercising regularly can cause a person to be able to focus more in school and while doing homework, which increases academic performance.  It also helps a student think better and more clearly and helps increase memory.  Exercise can also reduce stress in a person because it decreases a hormone that causes high stress in a person.  It also increases endorphins, which are chemicals that cause mood changes, especially feelings of extreme happiness.  This is why runners sometimes get a “runner’s high” when they push themselves really hard. 

            Being a part of a sports team after school is an important part of a student’s life.  It provides a sense of community by being around other people with similar interests.  Being part of a team allows a person to make friends with people of all different ages.  The hard workers on teams make good role models for the younger members.  A team can also give a person a feeling of belonging to a group.  At a big high school, it is important to be part of a group to have this sense of community.  Sometimes students get overwhelmed with academic work and think that it is more important to do well in school than to be a part of a team.  I think it is more important to be well rounded, healthy, have a good group of friends, AND do well in school, and I think that they all work together.

           

           

To help get you started on running, you could join a running group or exercise center.  The best way to start is to begin by doing shorter and slower workouts and then to work your way up to the harder ones.  If you start with the hard things, you will be the first one to quit, because you would have gotten a bad experience.  It takes a while to train your mind and your body for running, but once you do that, the rest is easy. 
            

In Defense of Food

This summer, the school-wide summer reading was In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.  I had a very hard time getting into this book at the beginning, and I thought I would never finish it!  But in the end, I found that even if I didn’t really enjoy the book, I had actually learned a lot and that the book had made an impact on my life and the lives of my family.  We are trying to “eat food, not too much, and mostly plants” and live by some of the lessons in the book. 

I am a runner, and I love cross country and both indoor and outdoor track.  I have learned that to be a great athlete, I have to practice hard, stay focused on my goals, and take good care of my body.  Coaches can help me practice and stay focused, but taking good care of my body is totally up to me.  I have always known the importance of healthy eating, but some of the things that I thought were healthy are actually not, according to In Defense of Food.  I learned that my family tries to eat right, but we do have some things that we need to change, and that these changes could help me become a better athlete now and in the future by making my body stronger and healthier. 

In Defense of Food gave me lots of tips for making healthy choices and has caused me to make some changes in my diet.  One of my favorites is that I shouldn’t eat anything that my great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. I once ate Nature’s Valley granola bars almost every day because they were “healthy.”  My great-grandmother would have no idea what a granola bar is. She would have bought or made plain granola, but it wouldn’t have looked like a candy bar.  Another tip that Mr. Pollan gave was to avoid foods that contain ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than five in number, or that contain corn syrup.  There are lots of things in my diet that fall in this category such as Aunt Jemima pancakes, graham crackers, soda, frozen Eggo waffles, Kraft mac and cheese (a staple in my house!), box blueberry muffins, goldfish, and Pepperidge Farm cinnamon bread (we eat loaves of this in my family every week). We have also tried to shop the peripheries of the grocery store rather than the middle and to shop at the farmer’s market when we can. There are lots of other changes that we plan on making, such as having a vegetable garden, planting blueberry bushes, and eating more fruits and vegetables.

I also learned that we do at least one thing right in my family.  It has always been a priority to eat dinner together.  Mr. Pollan explains the importance of eating as a community, whether family or friends, and how it can actually contribute to healthier eating and a healthier lifestyle.  We go to great lengths in my house to eat as a family, and even with five children, two schools, and eight different sports, we usually accomplish this.  It is the only time that we are all together to talk, and it is always the highlight of everyone’s day.

Even though I know that some of the things we eat at my house are not so healthy, we still have to balance healthy eating with a lifestyle that works for my family. I found that some of Mr. Pollan’s suggestions were unrealistic for us. Both of my parents work, and sometimes we have to eat frozen waffles for breakfast rather than making them from scratch.  We may choose to eat Pepperidge Farm cinnamon bread rather than making our own homemade bread simply because there isn’t time.  But if we balance out what I learned in In Defense of Food with our family lifestyle as best as we can, my body can become healthier and stronger, and I can become a better athlete.

Today in the Life of Aimee Claire...

Today in the Life of Aimee Claire…

            Today in the life of Aimee Claire, I went to sing at the Old Jefferson Community Care Center with the EHS cross country team.  Coach Cole does this about once a week at different old folk’s homes, and sometimes he invites the team to go with him.  He plays the guitar, and we sing along with him.  None of us are particularly good singers, and we don’t know most of the songs, but we all laugh while we sing, and we make the residents smile.  We sing all different kinds of songs:  songs from long ago that the elderly know, like “Shine On Harvest Moon,” “You are my Sunshine” and “Bicycle Built for Two”; religious songs like “How Great Thou Art,” and “Amazing Grace,”; and songs that we know like “God Bless America,” “You are My Sunshine,” and “Hey, Fightin’ Tigers.”  There are different types of people there, and they all have different reactions to our singing.  Most are in wheelchairs or on walkers.  Some have family members with them, and others are alone. Some smile and sing along, others shout out, some just sit there and listen, and some don’t seem to know where they are.  Usually they smile while we sing and clap when we finish each song.  Today, one lady got mad at Coach Cole for going out of order in the songbook and yelled at him! It’s always a fun afternoon for us to get together, and it’s a good team building activity, but I think there is a more important reason for us to go.

Sometimes young people like me get so involved in our own lives, studying for tests, practicing for various athletic teams, and hanging out with our friends, that we can forget that it is important to give something back to the community.  When I go to the Community Center and see that we have made these people happy for a little while, it gives me a warm and happy feeling inside.  I personally know how important it is to bring a little joy to elderly people because I have experienced it with my grandfather, Bobo.  Six years ago, he had a stroke, and he lived in NeuroMedical Center for a while.  He had to learn to talk and walk again, and it was very difficult for him because his mind was good, but it couldn’t make his body work.  I remember how much joy young people brought to him, even those that he didn’t know.  One of the things that he loved doing was going to physical therapy.  It was very hard and painful for him, but being around young, energetic, enthusiastic people always made him smile, and he would talk about these people often.  A sing along with young people like we did today would have been the highlight of his day and brought him a little bit of joy in what was really a very difficult and frustrating situation.  He died two years ago, but every time I go with Coach Cole, I think of how happy it would have made him, and I know that we have done a good thing.