Monday, June 2, 2014

Family Blogging Month Winners!

Guest Post by Shayna, Keira, and Heather.

We are Heather, Keira, and Shayna. Last November, we won Family Blogging Month! When we won Family Blogging Month, we got to write a guest post. All of us decided to make a voiceover of this phenomenal dog obedience video Mrs. Yollis took. Then we wrote a story to accompany the video. This is the story that we created:



Long ago, when dogs didn't exist on Earth, people were very glum and bored. They didn't have any entertainment and people would just stay in their houses all day. One fateful day, there was a meteor crash. The rock landed right on top of a little neighborhood called Storm Cloud. Instead of destroying the town, the meteor exploded with tiny eggs. 

The neighbors heard the loud, "BOOOM!" They peeked out their windows. They were frightened to see that their plants, pools, and all of their belongings were transformed into spotted eggs. There were red eggs, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, black, and brown eggs. 

The people dashed out of their houses and shouted, "HELP! HELP! THE INVADERS HAVE ARRIVED! EVACUATE THIS INSTANT!" Somebody heard this little boy mutter, "Awww... I just knew that this would happen SOME day! But, obviously, no one would listen!" 

He picked up a knife and started scraping a yellow egg. It was pretty stable, but he got part of the egg chipped off. He was having lots of fun playing with the lovely egg.

Suddenly, his elder sister, Olivia, came up to him and shouted, "Oliver! What have you done now, you fool?"

"I-I-I didn't do anything!" he sputtered. "I'm totally innocent!"

Olivia looked down at the knife. "Then what is this?" she questioned as she held the knife. "What have you done with this knife... And this poor egg?"

"Oh, nothing. I was just scraping peanut butter on the egg so that the egg could eat all of the vitamins!"

Olivia eyed the chippings on the egg and exclaimed, "No you haven't! I have proof! This scraped egg explains why you have "spread peanut butter" on the egg. You actually used the knife to chip off the parts of the egg so that you could see what was in it.  Stop lying, Oliver!" Olivia picked up the egg and left Oliver all alone. 

"Oh brother! That bossy old Olivia never minds her own business. If only I could prove that I am smarter!" He thought and thought for over a hour. Then something popped into Oliver's mind! "Ah ha!" he exclaimed. "I can find out what is in that egg! I'll wait until the egg hatches, and there might be a DOG inside it!"

Meanwhile, upstairs, Olivia was studying a random black egg. "I wonder what possibly could be inside this egg. Let's get a magnifying glass to study." She walked over to a bin and grabbed out a blue box. Inside it was her favorite magnifying glass. She hurried back to her room and picked up the black egg and the yellow egg. She gently set them both down on her light blue bed covers and picked up the magnifying glass. She magnified the two eggs. In the corner of her eye, she saw a brown egg at the edge of her room. She picked it up and studied the three eggs all together. "Hmmm... I mustn't let Oliver discover what is inside these precious eggs!" Olivia thought. With that she put the three white spotted eggs in a special box under her bed. 

The next day, she got impatient. The eggs didn't have one crack on them. "I guess that I will just have to peel it open." Then she thought of a more educated idea. "I am going to put them in an incubator." She strolled across her medium-sized room and picked up a three egg incubator. She placed the three eggs inside the incubator and turned it on. "Now I will just have to wait for the three eggs to hatch." 

Downstairs, Oliver was hatching up a plan of his own. "Well... I am only eight years old, and I may not know as much as my eighteen year old sister. Okay. But I still know a lot. My plan is to smash this ugly red egg I just found outside. I will crack it on the floor. It may be all mushy and disgusting, but I don't care. I'll test this out."

He raised up the egg and smashed it to the floor. There laid the beautiful egg, now ruined. The gooey contents spread all over the sidewalk of Storm Cloud street. "Nooo!" cried Oliver, "I have not proved that there is a dog in these eggs! What shall I do now? I hope that Olivia didn't start yet!"

In her room, Olivia was hopefully studying biology. "This is the DNA of a mammal, but I'm still working on what type of mammal. Oh, I just can't hope anymore that it is a dog!" While she was studying her DNA machine, the incubator was working hard to hatch the three eggs. Olivia constantly looked over to the working egg hatcher, but no eggs had hatched. 

"This is preposterous!" She walked to the door of her room, opened the door, went out into the hall, and locked and shut the door behind her. She calmly strolled down the hall to her brother's room. She knocked on the door lightly, but there came no answer. She knocked again louder, but still no one answered. She finally pushed open the door to find her brother sobbing on the dark green covers of his bed. "Oh Oliver!" Olivia cried out to him, "What is wrong?"

"I couldn't prove to you that I was smart! I am less than smart now. I am the least smart that anyone could ever be! But you, you are so intelligent. You-you could figure out what is in those eggs in a second!"Oliver confessed.

"Oh! Have I really been that bad?" Suddenly the pair heard a loud beep.

"The incubator! The eggs are hatching! Now, Oliver, please leave me alone!"

"But you-" Oliver wailed his way out of the room. 

Olivia walked to her room and took out the eggs. The eggs were hatched, and there were little specks of dust on the floor. "I suppose that these are the animals that were inside this," she whispered thoughtfully.

Oliver was still weeping when he heard a faint noise that sounded mysterious. He had never heard this noise before. Oliver sat up and walked a little closer to his door. The noise got louder. He opened the door to find nothing. "Hmmm... What was that noise? It sounded identical to a dog's bark. But it couldn't be. I now know that dogs are NOT real. I have lost all hope in finding a dog,"Oliver confessed to himself. Oliver ran to Olivia's room and without knocking on the door, he entered. 

"YOU GET OUT OF HERE, OLIVER!" Olivia screamed angrily. "WHY ARE YOU EVEN IN HERE?" Olivia was especially mad because Olivia didn't want to give any credit to Oliver if she discovered what was really inside of the eggs.  

"I was just trying to say hello! Why do you have to be so mean all the time? I am going outside to get another egg and to find out what is really inside those tiny eggs!" Oliver told Olivia. He slammed the door behind him. 

"Olivia never appreciates anything that I do!" With that remark to himself, he went out the front door and onto the sidewalk. He turned back to look at the house, and then thought for a second. "But if I get kidnapped by a criminal, Olivia will never know and I will be gone forever. I am going back to the house."

Inside, Olivia went back to the eggs. The egg shells were still there, but the creatures were gone. "At least there are footprints! Maybe they will lead to my victory!" Olivia thought thoughtfully. She followed the footprints, which looked like paw-prints, and they lead to her closet. 

The door was open, so she went inside. She turned on the lights and searched everywhere. Under a pile of clothes, she saw something move. It shook again. Olivia picked up the pile of clothes, and saw that the little creatures in the eggs were dogs! One dog was tan, another black, and the last one was brown. "I can't believe it! Now I just need to figure out what type of dogs they are, and then we can keep the dogs as pets!"

Meanwhile, Oliver just entered the house. He heard Olivia's excitement coming from upstairs. "What is going on up there? I need to know, and I need to know now!" Oliver raced upstairs to find that Olivia was on her DNA type machine. She looking up what type of dog the tan one was. As soon as Oliver entered the room, he saw three dogs sitting on Olivia's light blue bed covers. "You discovered dogs? That's not fair!"

"But it is! You did nothing to figure it out!" Olivia shouted back to him, "You never wanted to take care of these creatures! You are not credited with this discovery, period! This will go in the newspaper, on the Internet, and I will become famous! To make you happier, you might be a little famous because we are siblings, but obviously, you won't be as famous as me!" 

*       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

After a few weeks, Olivia and Oliver were famous. Everybody was talking about these young celebrities. They even got to rename Storm Cloud, which they named Los Angeles. In their  spare time, they found the names that fit each of the dogs. The great dane was named Wolfie, the dachshund is now Laura, and the German shepherd is Felix. They had to train them or else they would run away, bite, and scratch. The siblings knew that the school to train pets didn't exist, so they tried to train them with human food. That did not work, so the siblings had to come up with something else.  

________________________________________________

Epilogue


After two years of disobedient dogs, they finally knew that they had to create something. They wanted a special building for the dog school. The siblings were rich because they were famous globally. 

Olivia hired an experienced dog trainer named Georgia. She also hired carpenters and working men to build the school. She decided to call it Obedience School for Dogs. The builders got to work, and to Olivia and Oliver, it felt like an instant when they were finished. 

The disobedient dogs were placed in there for free, since they were the dogs of the creators, and this is their first day of class:







Which dog would you want to be?

Have you ever trained a dog? What advice can you give?

What do you think of our story?



3 comments:

  1. Dear Mrs. Yollis,

    I want to take our video and upload it to my blog too. Can you tell me how to do that in class or in the comment section?

    Sincerely,
    Heather

    ReplyDelete
  2. Keira's Almost GrandmotherJune 3, 2014 at 5:11 PM

    Hi Keira, Heather & Shayna,

    Thank you for sharing your story that will accompany the phenomenal dog obedience video.

    I may not post often but have been a faithful follower of Mrs. Yollis' Classroom Blog for the past two semesters. Your story is a wonderful collaborative endeavor that clearly demonstrates your proficient writing and blogging skills. These are skills that will help you for many years to come.

    All three of the dogs sound interesting. Of the three, I would want to be Felix because German shepherds are intelligent, strong, and very loyal. It's been many years since I trained a dog. The one bit of advice I can give you is to be consistent.

    Will you be able to continue blogging together during the summer?

    Fondly,
    Carol,
    Keira's almost grandma

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello Heather, Keira and Shayna,

    What an astounding piece of writing in over 1,700 words. Each week I am a commenter on a student writing project based in England but with stories written by students around the world and I must say I haven't seen anything quite like your story. Well done. :)

    As you probably know, I am interested in many areas of science. Part of my science studies in university dealt with genetics and therefore including DNA. I enjoyed reading your story because it touched on the science of what makes us, us.

    I wonder if Olivia's DNA might be modified to make her nicer to Oliver?

    The other interesting inclusion was the idea of a meteor exploding and scattering tiny eggs packed with the DNA. Perhaps you know some believe the beginning of life on Earth may have started with material from space rather than evolving on Earth alone. The idea, called panspermia, suggests life is scattered throughout space carried meteoroids, asteroids, comets and planetoids. Perhaps the eggs in the meteor started their journey from a system around the star we call Sirius. Sirius is also known as the dog star.

    …enough science chatter. I enjoy stories giving me a reason to explore my imagination.

    Once I read your story, I clicked on your video and enjoyed your voice over. I think, of the three, I would probably be most like Wolfie. Wolfie seems to be very curious and enjoys interacting with others.

    I have had a number of dogs in my life and had to train them sometimes. Like working with very young children, you have to be patient because learning can take time. We don’t learn to read or play the piano well in one easy lesson.

    Keep writing. Writers need to explore and share the worlds and adventures their imaginations create.

    Ross Mannell
    Teacher (retired), N.S.W., Australia

    ReplyDelete

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