This is another student blogging challenge for March 2011! In this post I will describe something that makes me proud of myself.

The thing that makes me most proud of myself out of anything if done is my project called Sleeping Buddies. In this project I started myself I sew and take pillowcases to kids in my local hospital. Some of the children are abuse victims going through the child advocacy program and others are normal children patients in the pedicatrics department.

I started this project three years ago as a 5th grader because I love helping people. It really made me feel good about myself as a person when I did community service and I am involved in the 4-H program which gives me lots of opportunities for that. In 4th grade the 4-H program wanted to take pillowcases to the kids in the hospital and we only did it once and that was the end. I wanted to keep this project going so that’s why I started Sleeping Buddies. I really like knowing I can make a difference in my community.

Last year I was recognized for this project and was named Nebraska’s Middle Level State Honoree through Prudential Spirit of Community awards. I was picked out of hundreds of applicants for the middle level in my state to take a trip to Washington D.C. to meet other honorees and to win a cash prize of $1,000. It was an amazing experience I will never forget and it really felt great to be honored for my efforts to make my community a better place.

So far I have made about 550 pillowcases and to make this project possible I must take donations of either fabric or cash. I have a website so you can visit me at http://www.wix.com/jjmoore66/sleeping-buddies#! also if you have any fabric or want to make a cash donation my contact information is listed on my website. If you have done anything great to help your community you may also want to check out the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards website at http://spirit.prudential.com/view/page/soc

This is an original cartoon created by me on ToonDoo.com.

Our challenge teacher assigned us to do a blogging game where we visit blogs by finding one off the student directory, then picking a blog from their blogroll, then picking one of that persons blog roll.

The first blog I visited was for a nice year old girl named Claire. I commented on her post about Easter and her Easter break. She said she loves chocolate and so do I so I found something in common with her so that’s why I commented on her post.

The second blog was for a guy named Connor who is ten years old. I commented on a post about Wikipedia. Connor said he likes using Wikipedia to find all of his information. I chose this post because I don’t agree with him. Wikipedia is good for finding info for quick questions, but using it for school research projects means taking a risk on using false information since anyone can alter it.

The third blog was for a girl named Bree who lives in New Zeland! I think its really cool to read blogs for someone so far away! I commented on a post about her favorite color. She said she likes green and thats my mom’s favorite color so I thought I should post. Haha. I told her about the green things in my house and that my favorite color is red.

The fourth blog was for a girl named Caroline who wrote a post about bartering. She said her class had a barter day where they brought things to trade with eachother. I think that would be kinda cool!

The fifth blog I visited was for a girl named Anabel. She wrote a post about Great Danes. I decided to comment because I love dogs and Great Danes are good loyal dogs. I also really like larger dogs so I liked this post.

Well theres my challenge!

It seems like all I ever hear about are the bad things going on around me. What’s wrong with the world these days? Everyone is killing eachother and hurting eachother. Why is there so much hate in the world? There’s no reason to treat eachother with disrespect and be so hurtful.

In my school I keep hearing about fights and drama. I don’t get why some people get a thrill out of hurting others. People just need to learn to embrace their differences! If you don’t like someone just stay away from them. Why do we have to torment eachother and make life miserable? For some people it seems impossible to get along with people and they are always in fights. It’s easy for me… I come to school with a possitive attitude and hang out with people who appreciate me and my values. If you go up to someone who doesn’t like you or you don’t like them there are obviously going to be problems.

Even though it seems like everything is bad you have to hang on to the good things. Even in the darkest times there is always a positive side. I try to look for the good things in life no matter how small they are. I like to think about all the things I can’t imagine living without that others don’t have. It may seem like you have nothing, but there is always someone struggling and hurting much more.

Suicide has become very popular among people all over the world…. I just can’t understand how things could be so hard you could believe death is your best option. If someone you know, even someone you see in the halls at school, is stuggling you should try and help them. That could have been you….put yourself in their situation. Lets prevent sucide and love life and eachother!! <3

Hey people! For our challenge blogging assignment we had to do a post on how to do something so I’m going to explain how to make a strawberry-banana smoothie.

1.Ok so the first step of cooking something is always to wash your hands!

2.Next your going to get out all the ingredients……

1. Freshly sliced strawberries and bananas. I like to use about 1/2 cup of strawberries and about half of the banana. You can play with the amounts to get the flavor you like most.

2. About 2 heaping scoops of vanilla ice-cream. This gives the smoothie the sweet flavor. You will want to make sure its a little melted so it blends easier with the whole mixure.

3. A spoonful of sugar to add more sweet flavor to balance the tart strawberries.

4. About 1/4 cup of milk to make the smoothie drinkable instead of thick.

3. Now you need to load the blender. I like to put the fruit in first then add the icecream, milk, and sugar.

4. Blend the mixture until the fruit looks nice and chopped up and distributed throughtout the whole thing. You will want to stop the blender at least twice while blending to stir by hand and make sure the ice-cream is getting mixed with everything else.

5. Taste the smoothie before pouring out to make sure it’s not too sweet and not too tart. Add ingredients to taste.

6. Pour out and serve! This amount of ingredients should make about 2-4 servings.

My challenge teacher gave our class an assignment to search on itunes for apps that would be helpful if we were to receive our very own ipads for school use. I have been searching through apps so I’m going to be telling you the top 10 apps I think would be the most helpful to me.

1. I think ihomework would be a good choice because it would be nice to have all my notes in one place. It lets you organize notes by subject and you can easily add photos. These notes could be printed with the touch of a button and would save paper. It also has a planner which allows you to keep track of all events and due dates of assignments. It also lets you change font and font color to suite your needs.

2. I think i would like an wordweb dictionary on my iPad to look up words that I don’t know the meaning of or to look up how to spell long words.

3.Flashcardlet would be a good app to help me prepare for tests and quizzes.

4.I think math ref would be nice because it has mathematical formulas and notes that explain how to do certain types of problems. It would help me to answer questions at home while I’m completing homework.  It also includes a periodic table of elements for science homework.

5. Algebra touch could help me to solve my algebra problems more easily and more accurate. It allows you to drag numbers to different sides of the equation to make problems less complicated.

6. I think a graphing calculator would be nice for future use because I am in an advanced math class so I will be using one soon. I think it would be easy to have all my school stuff in one place instead of having a calculator and my ipad.

7. Pocket universe would be a good app for science because it shows all the constellations and I’m not very familiar with the stars and planets.

8.ispeakspanish would be a good app for me because I’m starting classes on the Spanish language and it translates words from English to Spanish and will also show me how to pronounce it by saying the word.

9. Geowalk HD would be good for social studies, geography, and world cultures because it has pictures and facts about people, animals, and plants of other areas of the world.

10. Body bones 3D would be a good app because it lets you rotate the human body and look at all the bones. It also includes the names to help me study.

I found this brain teaser on brainden.com and thought u would enjoy trying to figure out the answer! Good luck!!

My father told me before he died,that he placed his gold coins in the box number 8 down in our basement, and he gave me its key .He said to me:
There are nine boxes in our basement,they were numbered from 1 to 9,,,,but I changed each number according to special procedure,inorder to prevent anybody to steal my money….and now I am going to tell you this procedure…it is as…foll…o..w…s…(and he didn`t say anything more…he died  ).I went down to our basement,and I found nine boxes scattered here and there,on each box I found a number,I worte them down,,here are the numbers:
57,11,42,65,54,93,27,101,69
Now I have to use this key only once,,,but which box was number 8?
can you help me? 
if yes…tell me which number originates from number 8….and…WHY?
Note: all the boxes have the same shape,weight(may be the others were filled with stones 

ANSWER!!! The answer to this riddle is 42…Did you figure out why? When you write out the number forty two its the only one that has 8 letters! Hope you enjoyed this challenge

My digital footprint is something I haven’t thought much about until recently, but after watching a youtube video about how much of an impact it can have on your life I have given it much more thought. I realized I have signed up for a lot of websites and posted things that could trace to my exact location. Ever since I was little I have been giving out information to subscribe as a member of several websites such as Facebook, Hotmail, Gmail, Edmodo, Skype, Youtube, and of course Edublogs. When you become a member of most websites you have to give out personal information such as your name, country/address, phone number, age, gender, email address, and many others. When filling out online applications there are certain things marked with an * that don’t have to be filled out but most of the time I fill them out anyway. I guess it has never occurred to me in the past that it makes it easier to track me.

I googled my name and town to see how easy it is to find me on a simple search engine. I found that I am included on a state senators webpage, a news bulletin for the hospital in my town, notes from a city council meeting, a document for the board of equalization for my county, a press release for Nebraska Scholars academy (a summer camp I went to), a website for Prudential Spirit of Community awards, a press release from Nebraska Legislator, a 4-H website, a state quilting website, a website for my grandpa’s high-school that lists my whole family, and a link to my facebook page. I think its really scary how big my digital footprint is!!

Spent is a game I had to play for my challenge class. This game is designed to simulate the situation for low income families. It puts you through a month

through their shoes and you have to make decisions so you don’t run out of money. I made it through the whole month with money still in my account. Some of the decisions were hard like whether to pay registration on my  vehicle, how far away to live from work, what job to take, whether to buy my child name brand shoes or risk them getting made fun of.

I applied first for the office job, but my typing skills didn’t qualify so I decided to become a waitress. I lived a long way away from my job to save money on rent which raised gas prices, but that was still cheaper than living close to work. I made some hard decisions like leaving the scene of a fender bender I was involved in, and not allowing my child some of the opportunities that other children got to take part in. I hope I will never have to be in or know someone in this type of situation.