A LAND OF GIANTS- KINGS CANYON, By Alexander the Explorer

          I had a great chance to visit Kings Canyon National Park, located in the Southern Sierra Nevada, east of the San Joaquin Valley. It takes almost four hours to drive there from Bay area.  Visitor activities vary by season and elevation - that varies from 1,370 to 14,494 feet. It’s called the “Land of the Giants” because here are the tallest and largest Sequoia trees.  At the beginning, I did not know that “General Sherman” was living there! The landscaping is fabulous and of great variety. The animals that live there are :gray fox, bobcat, striped and spotted skunks, black bear, wood rat, pocket gopher, white-footed mouse, California quail, scrub jay, lizards, goldfinch, acorn woodpecker, gopher snake, California king snake, striped racer, and many more. The animals that I saw were the groundhog which tried to find its way out of his log, the wood pecker- pecking on some wood in search for insects, lizards and a snake.

        The most exiting thing was the stillness and quietness of the forest and you could hear only the chirping of the birds.  Finally I got to meet with” General Sherman “which is the tallest and largest redwood tree in the world. Its height is 83.8m tall and width is 33m wide. Research shows that he is about 2,000 years old. This was my only chance to get closer to him and give him a huge hug! But you can guess how many arms did I need to embrace him all around? Good question for a math problem!  To conclude with, for me and my family this trip was the best and the beginning for exploration of more of the Sequoia National Park, too!

     Have you ever been to Kings Canyon?

     Have you ever seen “General Sherman”?

       

Video Games -By Joshua Hwang

     Video games have been around for a long time. In 2008 the  Wii  came out and everyone wanted to buy it.Soon, the Playstation 1 and DS came out. After that video games had their own world record book!

    The newest Playstation is the PSvita. The release date was December 17th 2011. It can take pictures, it has two lenses (front and back). The most popular games games on it are ,Mutant blobs Attack, Little Deviants, and Modnation Racers.The PSvita was so popular that in it's first nine weeks It sold 1.2 million units!

    An upcoming handheld gaming device is the WiiU. It is predicted to come around June 5th. The WiiU  was first revealed  at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2011. The WiiU has a touch screen as well as buttons. It also has HD resolution.There is only one problem though, it has limited memory. 

    The X-BOX Kinect has a motion sensor attached to the console,  The motion sensor allows you to gesture instead of using controllers for gaming control. Some of the most popular games on Kinect are Kinect Sports I by Microsoft, Dance Central by Microsoft and Star War by Lego.   What kind of consoles or games do you have?

    All in all, video games have been around for a very long time. From controllers to motion sensors video games are are great way of entertainment.    

 

What I Enjoyed at Outdoor School By: Michael

     Did you have fun at outdoor school? I had a lot of fun at outdoor school. I
enjoyed hiking the most because we saw a lot of critters such as newts ,slugs,
and fungus. In the forest we hiked the challenge trail we went on branches
and streams of water. A lot of people were plenty tired so I had to help a lot
of people get to the top. We saw a Golden Waxey cap mushroom on the hike.
We had a lot of fun that day while hiking. The second thing I enjoyed doing
was the solo hike. It was fun in my opinion because we can observe everything
around us alone. We can find newts without everyone saying can I hold after
you. Newts paradise was cool because there were a lot of newts in the water. I
enjoyed seeing the newts swim in the pond.

     The night hike was spectacular because we were going to hike in the night
without a flashlight so we could improve our night vision. At one point we
stopped and kite said to sit down. Then she told us a story. It went like this she
and four other people plus a tour guide went into a cave in Mexico. After she
hiked a long way I the cave they stopped on an island. They were under a whole
bunch of bats then she saw a glowing piece of rock on the island under the bats
and took a piece of it. When she had a party after she came back from Mexico
she said that the rock had been glowing so when she bit the rock it glowed like
she saw in the cave. Then her friend said I think we ate bat poo and that was
her story. Then she offered us a piece took one and then ate it.