Social Studies: Current Events

There were two big things that happened in the news last week. One was an incident and one was an accident.

An accident is something bad that happens but it's nobodies fault.

The accident last week was in Berkeley. People had a party on a balcony, but it broke. The balcony came apart and the people fell down to the ground and died. Six people died. 

Synonyms for incident are event or occurrence. 

The incident last week was that a white man in South Carolina shot and killed nine black people in a church. Our friend sold cupcakes to help support the church after the incident. 

The incident and the accident have something in common. In both, people died. I feel bad that people died in both places.

Boy Pumpkins and Girl Pumpkins

This is a male pumpkin flower. You can tell because it just has a long thin stem straight to the flower.

This is a female pumpkin flower. You can tell because it has a baby pumpkin at the base of the flower. The baby pumpkin is attached to a thick stem. Hopefully this baby pumpkin will grow in to a big, orange pumpkin.

Female pumpkin flowers have to be fertilized with the pollen of male pumpkin flowers. Sometimes bees take the pollen from the male to the female. Sometimes my mom does it. She brushes the pollen from the boy flower on to the girl flower.

This is our biggest pumpkin so far. It is around the same size as a lemon. To grow bigger pumpkins need water and sunlight. Right now it is really cold in El Cerrito and windy. I hope the sun comes out so the plants can grow. My mom also gives pumpkins fertilizer from a bag. It is kind of like vitamins for pumpkins.

Growing potatoes in a bag

These are pieces of potatoes from a grocery store. When we bought them they did not look like this. They looked like potatoes without the eyes sticking out. Eyes are the things that are sticking out and they grow when the potatoes have been sitting around awhile.

When you potatoes with eyes growing out in soil, you can grow new potatoes. We put these potatoes in soil. We put them in a bag my mom bought from the Dollar Store.

We covered the potatoes with a little more soil. We also watered.

The potatoes will start to sprout leaves. I know this because we have another potato plant growing in a bag in the backyard. When you put more soil in the bag, and give it water and sun, it will continue to grow. The potatoes grow inside the dirt. Potatoes are root vegetables.

I like growing because we can mashed potatoes or french fries or just eat carrots and potatoes.