Days 117, 118

Day 117, 118

February 14, 15 2012

Valentine’s Crafts: homemade cards for friends and family

Sophie and Lily also spent Tuesday afternoon with Emma preparing a lovely Valentine's meal and cake for Kevin and I. It was a very sweet, special night. Emma said both girls were a lot of help and really enjoyed doing something special for their parents on Valentine's Day.

LA Book: 2 pages

Math: 2 + pages

Sophie Blog: What do you think about the new Math Weather & American History workbooks?

I think working with the new math books is really interesting because I’m learning about weather and history while doing all sorts of difficult math problems. I enjoy it a lot and I think it will help me in some of my history and science work as well a lot on my math.

Latin: Chapter 6

Movie Synopsis: *tectonic occurrence & soil faction

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1397514/

Journey 2 The Mysterious Island movie: We went to see Journey 2 the Mysterious Island yesterday as a geology field trip. I really enjoyed this movie and it taught me a couple of facts about geology, such as when tectonic plates slip slightly away from each other, volcanoes erupt, this happened during the movie.

Volcanoes erupt when tectonic plates slide against each other, usually, when they slide away from each other

Telling Room Writing Contest:

The Telling Room http://tellingroom.org/ is pleased to announce our 2012 Statewide Writing Contest, co-sponsored by Maine Magazine, Longfellow Books, Maine Writing Project and Southern Maine Writing Project. The contest is open to young writers between the ages of 10-18.

This year's theme is "Searching for Maine, Searching for Me," and can be interpreted as Fiction, Non-Fiction or Poetry. Winners will be selected in each category and excerpts of their work will appear in Maine Magazine.

Furthermore, one Grand Prize winner will walk away with $200 cash and a $200 gift card to Longfellow Books!

Contest Rules

• All submissions should be related to the 2012 theme:

“Searching for Maine, Searching for Me .”

• Entrants must be in grades 6-12 during the 2011-12 school

year, or, if home-schooled, between the ages of 10 and 18.

• Poems can be 40 lines or less, in any form. Nonfiction and

fiction stories should be 750 words or less.

• Send your submission to submissions@tellingroom.or​g.

Attach your story as a .doc or .rtf file or paste it into the body

of the email.

• Include this information with your submission: Name, Age,

School, Email Address, Phone Number, Parents Names,

Mailing Address.

• The deadline for submission is March 7, 2012

Telling Room Writing Feb. 15, 2012 Draft One

“Searching for Maine, Searching for Me”

Growing up in Maine, with dreams of one day being a professional figure skater and entertaining people all around the world with her smile and charisma, Sophie Aileen Calderwood will have a long journey ahead of her.

Sophie Calderwood started skating when she was two years old in Brunswick, Maine. She was in her first show when she was only 7 months. She knew that this was her dream, becoming a wonderful figure skater, but Sophie did not know how many hard years of achievements and failures would be ahead. Sophie’s grandmother Jean Calderwood would bring Sophie to skating lessons every Saturday when she would be in Coach Jillian’s class. Sophie liked being in the classes with Jillian, but she most enjoyed her private lessons with Coach Linda, on Wednesday mornings. Coach Linda Despres would teach Sophie all of her basic skills that she needed to know to pass her levels. But that still took a couple of years.

Sophie’s mom, Corrie was very supportive of her skating but did not push her on being better than the other kids like most parents do. And Sophie’s dad, who was a wonderful hockey player himself, did not push her either.

Sophie entered her first competition when she was about 3 and a half years old. She won her first medal that day, first place. Sophie enjoyed the competitions but it wasn’t her favorite part of figure skating, now that was the shows. Sophie loved to perform and she found that the figure skating shows were the perfect place to do so. Sophie would love her solo numbers where she would get to act out and skate to the music showing her ability, and she loved all the group numbers were she could skate with her friends.

Growing up as a figure skater in Maine was hard because you didn’t have all of the training that you would have in other states, it was hard to get known. But Sophie proved this theory wrong when she competed in over 75 different competitions so far winning 64 medals! This showed other skaters in Maine and in Brunswick that they could try to get somewhere and it didn’t really matter where you were from.

When Sophie was six, her and her parents, and her new born baby sister Lily, would travel to Colorado Springs for the State games. State Games are kind of like a mini Olympics, which you would have to qualify for and then compete against the other qualifiers for the prizes. Sophie competed in four events here. Winning fourth place in her freestyle program, sixth in compulsories, fourth in spins, and first in Showcase, the theatrical program! Sophie was so excited because in each of these groups there were over 20 people.

Sophie worked super hard to get all of her jumps from then on. Sophie landed her axel, one and a half rotations in the air, in 2009. This is a really hard jump to land and Sophie was ecstatic when she got it. She then worked super hard, and when she turned eleven, got all of her double jumps. This shows that she has been working hard and it shows that she loves the sport.

This past summer, Sophie auditioned and got in to Annie at Maine State Music Theater. She played the role of Duffy, and this really changed her life. Sophie met her best friends here, and had some serious thoughts about which one she liked better, skating or theater. Sophie thought about this for a long time and still couldn’t make up her mind.

In November the past year, Sophie’s Grandfather Andrew Bernier passed away. This was Sophie’s first loss and it was really hard for Sophie because she had a great connection with Andrew. Andrew always loved watching Sophie skate and so Sophie made up her mind. Sophie would mix her two favorite things together and have a dream of performing on Disney on Ice when she gets older. But from now on, Sophie would keep working as hard as she could on figure skating to hopefully pursue her dream.

I’m sure you are wondering who I am now because I haven’t really told you much about myself, well actually I have. I am eleven years old and I am a figure skater in Maine and I love it. I am Sophie Calderwood and I have found who I am in Maine.

Written by,

Sophie Calderwood