Lost Colony of Roanoke

Roanoke was one of the longest unsolved mysteries in American History.  It was island off the coast of what is now North Carolina in the New World, that the Queen of England, Elizabeth, wanted to colonize.  Two groups of colonists vanished and I have a theory about why.

There was a group of  100 men led to Roanoke by Ralph Lane, whose attitude towards the natives was one of enemies.  They started building a fort surrounded by little cabins for the people to live in.  They should have been planting crops.  As winter came, they needed food so they sent some ships back to England to get supplies that they needed to survive the winter.  While the people were gone trying to get food, Sir Francis Drake sailed by and the people left went with him back home to England.  Soon after, the supply ship came back and they found that none of the people were there.  Fifteen people from the supply ship stayed behind in search of the colonists. 

Years later, John White led a second group of colonists, this time 150 men, women, and children, back to Roanoke.  When they arrived they found nothing but human bones of the15 people left behind.  Of the three tribes on the island one tribe was friendly, the Croaton.  The Croaton told the English that another tribe had killed the 15 men.  The English were enraged and they went to the neighboring island where the other tribe lived.  When they arrived, the Croaton were already there to help, but the English made the mistake of killing the Croaton that were there trying to help them because they didn't realize who they were.  This did not help their relationship with the Croaton.

Soon John White's daughter had a daughter named Virginian Dare.  John White left for England again to get more supplies.  He was in a hurry to get back because he now had a grandchild  in Roanoke.  While he was there, a war started between the Spanish and the English and the English needed all of their ships to fight so he couldn't get a ship to go back to Roanoke.  It took White two years to get back.  When he arrived, he didn't find anyone there.  He and some other sailors started looking for all of them.  He saw smoke and was hoping it was from the settlement, but it was just from a wildfire.  He went to where the fort had been and it was completely gone.  The people with him couldn't find the cross, the symbol that the colonists agreed to carve if they were in trouble.  He went to where he had put his family heirlooms and he couldn't find them.  They were all gone and all that was there was a book without a cover and torn up maps.  He tried going to the place that the Croaton lived but there was a storm whose wind blew them back towards England.

There are two theories about what happened to the colonists.  Some people reported seeing a settlement on the mainland and others reported seeing fair skinned Croatons, leaving them to believe that the colonists merged with the Croaton.  I believe that they were killed too fast to carve the distress symbol and the Croaton killed them because the colonists had killed some of their people in the big mistake.

As you now know, many groups of people tried to build a colony at Roanoke and there are several theories about what happened to them.  No one knows for sure what happened to the people.  From this we can learn to always bring the supplies we need when we go someplace and that we need to be nice to the natives of new places we visit. 

My Bio Poem

Hannah Jane
Happy, loving, snuggle bug
Lover of horses, dogs, and cats
who is able to be a friend
who feels happy because it is a good day
who wonders if I will make a new friend
who fears being alone
who would like to be an astronaut
who dreams everything wonderful.

In Charge of Celebrations

I read a story today called I am in Charge of Celebrations.  It was a poem, actually.  The girl kept a notebook for writing down things she wanted to celebrate and in one summer she had 108 differet celebrations.  I was supposed to write about something I wanted to celebrate.  Here is wat I wrote.

The arches are amazing.  I took a hike to the Delicate Arch.  I was dazzled by how big it was.  Campared to the arch a person looks like a ant.

The Renaissance

             I’ve been studying the Renaissance and I thought it would be nice if I could share a little bit about it.  The Renaissance started in Northern Italy in the mid 1400’s.  It represented a new era in history.  The art, philosophy and exploration was much different in the Renaissance from the Middle Ages.

            The Art changed a lot from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.  In the Middle Ages, art was focused on religious scenes, but during the Renaissance it shifted to scenes of every day life.  Painting in the Renaissance used more colors and shading to make it look more three dimensional.  Music moved from unison to having more harmony.  I’ll bet it felt really amazing to hear harmony for the first time after the Middle Ages had only one pitch at a time.  Architecture in the Middle Ages was intimidating and symmetrical, but in the Renaissance it didn’t have to be symmetrical and it was more inviting.  The Renaissance time changed art forever.

            Philosophy in the Renaissance was quite different as well.  In the Renaissance, people stopped thinking about religion so much and some people called themselves Humanists.  Humanists are people who study the problems facing mankind.  In this time people focused more on making their current daily life like enjoyable than on studying religion and focusing on getting to heaven.  They admired the ancient Greeks and Romans so they would copy their politics and loved their literature.  The Renaissance way of philosophy inspires philosophers today to think the Renaissance way.

Exploration was very big in the Renaissance.   Explorers only went by decorative ships with sails.  People sent explorers farther away because they were realizing that they weren’t the only people on earth.  It benefitted a king or queen to send an explorer out because if they found some place new, then they got to claim it and you would rule more land.  It was dangerous to be an explorer because if you ran out of things and you were too far away to go back you would just die!  On Magellan’s expedition almost 300 people went out on and only 18 people got back home.    Even though it was dangerous, I think that being an explorer is cool because I like things that are dangerous.  

Now you know that the Renaissance art, philosophy, and exploration had changed a lot from the Middle Ages.  Their daily life was much better because in the Middle Ages everything was rigid, but in the Renaissance everything was more free.  Every corner that you went to during the renaissance had something exciting.  Life was beautiful.umHum

Being Sick

I don't like being sick because I feel like my body is being stepped on by a giant. I've been sick for a week. I get a fever, my stomach starts hurting, and I start coughing.

Fevers make me feel like there is a fire burning inside my head. I start to burn up. It makes me so sweaty that I have to roll up my pant legs and sleeves to try to stay cool. When I get cool, I roll them back down and lay down to go to sleep, but after a while I get hot again. I do this nineteen times before I just get under the blankets and fall asleep. When I get a fever I have to take medicine which tastes like sour milk. No one wants a fever and it never makes you happy.

A stomach ache makes me feel like there's a balloon blowing up inside my stomach. It really hurts me so much that it makes me cry. There is not medicine for it, but medicine can taste so horrible sometimes that I'm glad there's not. I hate stomach aches.

A cough sounds so horrible that it is like a sick goose is inside of me. I get a sore throat that hurts so much I could die. Coughing causes a stomach ache. Coughing keeps me up all night and then I'm grumpy in the morning and start yelling a lot, which causes me to get in trouble for being mean. Coughing is the worst thing ever.

A fever, cough, and stomach ache are not fun at all. Being sick is horrible. If you ever get sick, take your medicine every day so that you don't feel like you're stuck in a volcano while it is exploding.

5 W's report on tsunami

Last Friday a tsunami hit Japan and Western North America.  It affected people who live in those regions by flooding towns, crushing houses and apartment buildings.  There was a lot of devastation.  Some people died and some were lucky because they got the evacuation call early enough to leave.  It was caused by an earthquake underneath the Pacific Ocean.  The ground just flew up into a big mountain and the water followed it up.  When it dropped, it pushed the water out like an explosive, pushing waves into cities.  Stay tuned.

Today we read a story about the forest ponies. I will tell you about it. In elf land there were wonderful little ponies but you would be hiding in the trees. One day the wizard was so bad that the elves were so scared and the wizard left a trail of burnt ash.
Every one was so scared. The wizard was tear everything apart. Then the ponies got up and galloped closer and closer. The wizard didn’t see them but it was too late. The ponies were right there and he went away.

Love and Rain

I wrote this poem all by myself for poetry club today.  My friend Steve gave me a magnetic poetry set this weekend and I got lots of ideas from it.  Plus I don't have to worry about spelling because most of the words I want to use are already spelled out on the frige.  My poem is called Love and Rain.

Rain like sweet honey falling
from her soul with loving care
and with her nightingale
she has love for every creature.

Clara Barton

I think Clara Barton is pretty much the coolest woman who ever lived.   I am so glad I got to read about her.  Here are my favorite facts about Clara Barton.

 She was homeschooled by her brothers and sisters.

She treated injured pets and cared for her brother when he suffered from a fall from a barn. 

 She worked in a patent office like my dad but they wanted to pay her less for being a woman.  She demanded equal wage.

When the Civil War started, she wanted to help the soldiers, so she resigned her job at the Patent Office.

She got permission from the War Department to go to the front lines of the battlefield to care for the soldiers 

Next she joined the relief * effort in the war between France and Prussia. In Europe they had an organization called the International Red Cross.  Later she formed the Red Cross in America.

She was called the Angel of the Battlefield.

 

Friends are Fun Patch

I just earned the friends are fun patch .   I am so excited.   I got to make a bracelet. 

I made stationary and a curly message .  

I made a message in code.

I am going to mail it all to my friend Pablo who lives in Seattle Washington.  I think he will like it because he hasn't seen me in a long time and he won't be expecting a secret code.

Brownies

          I just joined girl scouts.   Saturday I will start selling cookies.   I got to taste cookies blind-folded to know if I could taste the difference.  We had a cookie kick-off party.  It was fun.