I haven't seen much of Aidan's writing work this year; his teacher keeps most of it until the end of the school year. Some of it has recently come home and I am impressed. We have worried about Aidan's writing grades and capability for several years; he hasn't typically enjoyed doing it and had a lot of trouble coming up with ideas for topics about which to write. The complaints have lessened in the last year, though, so I think Mrs. Abbott must be a terrific writing teacher, helping him to learn to like what he has always considered an impossible chore. Here are a few samples of Aidan's work from this year:
The Legend of the Amazon River, by Aidan
Long ago, there were these two sea snakes named Noah and Gavin. They lived in Amazon in a mud pit. The only time they ever came out of the pit was to hunt in the mud river for fish. They eventually got tired of living in a mud river, so they decided to bring in fresh water from the nearest real river. They could go out of the water for a short period of time, and they were friends with most of the villagers too, so they got buckets from the villagers to fill up with water. Gavin made a trail for the water to go in and Noah was close behind him dumping buckets of fresh water into the trail. About three and a half hours later, they were done. They gave the buckets back to the natives and swam into the brand new river. The villagers did too. Fifty years later, it is a very popular tourism spot and it gets at least 1,500,000 pepole a year. That is how they say the Amazon River was formed.
My Birthday, by Aidan
This is a time when something happy happened in my life. It was my ninth birthday and we had a really good time. I woke up at 6:25 a.m. and built my Lego train I got yesterday from my grandma, uncle and cousin. I then heard my mom coming downstairs, so I hid behid my 7 bins of Legos because she told me not to wake up before 6:45. She caught me anyway. I decided to play a video game called Pirates until my grandparents came.
They came at about 8:30 and we had bagels, bananas, bacon and scrambled eggs. That tasted really good. I then opened their present and it was the complete treasury of the Judy Blume books. After that we drove to the Gilmore Car Museum, which was about 45-55 miles away from our home. I had my picture taken next to a lot of old-style cars and a ton of them were in barns. One of the barns had at least 20 muscle cars from the 60s to the 90s.
We left the car museum at about 12:00 p.m. and drove to Jimmy John's, the sandwich place. I had my favorite sandwich in the world - a ham & cheese sandwich. After we finished our sandwiches, we all went home. We had a race to my house and my mom and I won. After everyone got home, we had a snack and it was my birthday cookie. That was good. About 3 hours later, it was time for dinner.
We were going to have Pietro's for dinner. We took 2 cars and it took us a half hour. We finally saw it come into view and we parked in front of the restaurant. When we went inside we could all haer faint Italian music. We could also smell ravioli that looked as good as mint ice cream. We all got seated, and the waiter asked us what we wanted to drink. I asked for a raspberry Italian soda. I drained it in 2 minutes. The waiter came around again, and he asked us what we wanted to eat. I got a 6" pizza and that was GOOD. After we had all eaten, we got mints and we went to our cars. We drove to my house, but as soon as we got home our grandparents left and went to their house, which is near Lansing. At 8:08, I went to bed, because that was the time I was born. That day was really fun.
I Am a Dust Speck, by Aidan Lowry
Hi. I am a dust speck, and I love making people sneeze. Oh, and I have lived over 3 weeks, which is really long for a dust speck like me. Tomorrow is Thursday, which is vacuuming day, and I've got a bad feeling about this one. That is because I overheard the people who live in this house talking about having these carpet cleaner dudes coming over, and they move a whole bunch of furniture. I live under the couch.
I can already see their truck pulling up in the driveway. I'm dead. There is now a bearded man talking to the owner of the house. I feel like hitting him over and over again until he faints, but of course I'm just a speck of dust. I can now hear the deathly roar of the vacuum cleaner. One tiny little touch of air from that vacuum, and I'm a goner.
That vacuum is only about 3 or 4 feet away from me now. He is now moving the couch where I live...and he goes around me by a millimeter!! For now, I'm alive and... Weeeeellll! I'm in the death vac and I'm alive! But, when he dumps me into the trash can, I'll be lucky to live. I mean, it's not every day some kid just tips over a trash can, right?
It is now about two hours later, and the bearded man is finally done. Problem is, in about two minutes he's gonna dump all of us into the trash can. Beardo is now taking the can full of dust specks out of the vacuum. I can already see the dreaded trash can. It's like an earthquake hit in there...Ow! I'm in the can, but I can see a kid coming toward it! Bonk! Yeah! I'm free! It feels as good as a hot summer day out here! I can already taste the atoms I'm gonna eat tonight...and then for dessert I'll have some germs. I can already smell 'em! Bye!