I went to Panaca for a field trip all day of school. It's called "Fun Day". Panaca is a place where there is a lot of animals. At Panaca I got to feed a baby animal. It was a baby goat. There were sheep also right next to the goats. What was funny was they sounded like men were pretending to do their voice. At first I thought it was my dad doing it, but it was actually the sheep! In one of the pens with the sheep there was a big, big sheep and it had horns! It kept running into the wall. I also saw a bunch of dogs. There were all sorts of dogs. There were German Shepherds, Beagles - two different kinds of beagles - Boxers, Rotweilers and a lot of different dogs. Some people played with the dogs and some people got ice cream. And after we went to the dogs we went to see the horses. There were big horses and small horses. And then we had to go :(
~Maggie

In riding I have been working on jumping and trying to gallop and I'm working on trotting on the horse without going up and down. My favorite part of riding is when we practice jumping. When I saw that he was going to make me jump I felt nervous. And then when I did it I felt like I was flying! The hardest part of riding for me is when we're galloping because I have to stay sitting on the horse without my feet going out of the stirrups. Some days, if I had a hard time, before the class is over he lets me do whatever I want on the horse. The horse I ride most of the time is called Rioja. Sometimes she obeys really well except other times she's really tired from getting ridden and she's always slow and down. But she is a fantastic horse! I'm looking forward to jumping even higher and going into difficult things that I have to do. I think eventually I'll be able to gallop without freaking out!
~Maggie

Video - Maggie doing warmups


Video - Maggie's first attempt at galloping...with a little bit of panic!


Mom says:
Sorry for the dark pictures! Maggie's class is in the evening and the lighting is never quite right to get good shots.

The last day of school my class went on a field trip to Salitre Magico. Salitre Magico is a big amusement park. There's many rides. I went the Apocalipses. It's a big ride where you get in this car hooked to a big machine. There's two rows of seats. First you'll start to go up in the air in a circle. Then when it does two circles the car that you're in will start to flip! Me, my friend Joel, and my teacher went on it together. My teacher was too scared to go on it the second time, but Joel was asking if I wanted to come with him. I said yes. Another attraction was the Crystal Palace. You have five minutes to get through the maze of mirrors and glass. I kept hitting the glass! I got lost in it once. I did..hehe...the guy had to come in and get me. Another ride was the ferris wheel. It was the biggest ferris wheel I've seen. When I went on it it stopped me almost at the top. I could see the whole park. You should try coming to Salitre Magico if you ever come to Colombia!
~Alex

Video - Alex on Apocalipses (he is in the front row on the far left)

I had an end of the year party for the boys in my class. We did laser tag. I invited three friends and my teacher. Before we started we made sure that everyone was ready. After that, the guy in charge told us the rules. I understood most of it, but not all of it. Some of the rules were like this: you can't run or your gun will be shut off for 30 seconds; you can only shoot a base once and then keep going. Inside you had to find your way through a glow in the dark maze and find the bases. I got lost in it once. The green team won both games - that was me, my dad and my friend Andrew. My teacher was sitting in a little hiding place and kept shooting our base. Every time I came around the corner I'd scream because I'd be surprised - then she would scream! Then we'd try to shoot each other! Usually I won. My friend, Juan Pablo, got shut off five times because he kept running! We had two games, but after the first game we had lunch. Then after the second game we had cake. Oh wait, other way around!!
~Alex

I had a sleepover. I invited all of the girls in my class. Five or six people came. We watched three movies and listened to a lot of CDs and we made special books. Everyone had a good time. They said it was the best party! On the inside of the books we made, when you opened it you would think that it was just a normal book, but they they tried to open it all the way except it was glued because the inside was cut open so you could put stuff inside of it. All the girls in my class loved to do it! They worked on it for hours.
~Maggie

In writing workshop we were writing stories of different things that we thought of. Some things were made up stuff. Other things were video reviews and it was really fun to do. We were doing persuasive writing, narrative writing, poems, expository and imaginative. My favorite writing was narrative. I wrote a story called "The Horse and Its Girl." It was about a girl that went through a tunnel in her bedroom and meets a unicorn and the unicorn helps her get home. In the video below I am reading my story.
~Maggie

Video: "The Horse And Its Girl"