February 28, 2014 End of the month....

This morning, I worked on math. I learned about quadrilaterals. A quadrilateral is a four sided figure. A square and a rectangle are quadrilaterals. I also worked on Spanish. I did some Spanish reading/listening and listening alone and review. I can say, "La mujer lee". That means, "The woman reads." Cool, huh??

At lunch, we got out the K'nex. We made polygons. The hardest one was a pentagon. The k'nex didn't want to make that shape. It was fun! We also did fractions with the K'nex. It was easier to see the fractions when we did it that way.

Me making triangles

After lunch, we went outside. I went on the swings. We played some soccer. (I scored!) And then I stayed outside and played while Mommy picked up Lilly. I did not feel good out there. It's cold and now I'm all sniffly.

I'm swinging in the snow

running to get the ball

taking a nap

Oh and I went to fencing. I got 4 on my 2nd bout, 3 on my 1st bout and 1 on my 3rd. Not bad. Here's a picture and a video of me fencing.

I'm fencing Coach Chuck. This bout went into overtime!

me fencing Evan. Evan's good!

Home schooling, my friends, is fun. I have a lot of benefits my sister doesn't. Like nightly homework - I don't have any! And also, I get to stay home with my Mommy. And I get to work on the computer. 

That's all for now. I want to watch Digimon!

Stay tuned 'til tomorrow...

TO BE CONTINUED.......

May the force be with you.

February 25, 2014 Fencing

I went to fencing today. The coach won the first electric bout and I won the rematch!  I learned one new thing. I learned to hit the foil out of the way and then thrust. Coach made me do it a couple times.

I went to speech therapy this morning. I got to see Ms. Schweikert! Mrs Sanna is my therapy teacher. I did vocab words and I worked on how not to interrupt.

I worked on some more Spanish today. I worked on fractions. I like fractions. I finally found something in math that I understand.

I watched the turtle movie again. I wanted to see the baby turtles. The baby turtles are so cute! They can fit in my hand. Maybe I'll see one someday.

I checked on my aspirin experiment. I observed that nothing changed yet. I'm still waiting for it to do something.

I worked on a picture. I'll take a picture of my picture when it's done.

Today was kinda slow. Tomorrow I have chess and ballet so maybe I'll have something to talk about.

something to make you laugh:



That's not me and Mom....

That's all for now!!! Stay tuned 'til tomorrow.

TO BE CONTINUED...

February 24, 2014 ssssssssssssssssssssHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHuuuuuuuuuuuuu (this is me running out of ideas)

I forgot to talk about one last thing I did at camp. We had a liquid nitrogen demo! This guy took liquid nitrogen and put a red rubber ball in it. Guess what happened?? BBRREEEEkaboom! The ball broke in pieces when he dropped it on the ground. He also poured it onto the ground. A cloud of gas nitrogen flew up like fog and a cloud mixed. The temperature of liquid nitro is -346 degrees F. So when it hits the ground it boils! It's cool.....
Here's a video of a guy playing with the LN on the Ellen Show. BEWARE OF PING PONGS :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh5Y8Gb-kFU

This morning I went to physical therapy at school. I enjoyed it. I got out of the house for a bit got to see my PT teacher.

When we got home I worked on Rosetta Stone. I'm learning Spanish. "La Nina come."

Rosetta Stone has 2 meanings. The Rosetta Stone is something that the ancient Egyptians wrote on and Nefertimons (digimon)attack.

We went for a short walk outside. It was snowing out AGAIN. BBBOOOOOOOO...This winter is the worst winter we ever had.

Oh! We made a thermometer! Mom remembered the alcohol. We put is outside and the liquid in the straw decreased and when we brought it back in, the liquid when up a bit. Just like on a regular thermometer.

Update on the turtle egg issue: I worked on my illustrations on how to do it. I looked up some pictures of a turtle nest to see how we really need to design the enemy zapper. Still working on this.....Maybe we'll start putting something together this weekend..

Hey, Bubba!! ( Bubba's my favorite big brother) I got to see him this weekend. Seeing Bubba does not happen very often. It was exciting. I gave him hugs. Brad is very special to me cuz he is unique. He's cuddly and lovable once you get to know him. And he makes me laugh.

That's all I have on my mind now!

Stay tuned 'til tomorrow! Adios!
To infinity and Beyond!

TO BE CONTINUED...

February 21, 2014 Last day...

Today was the last day of camp. I had fun.

We started out our day by doing solar printing, part 1. Solar printing is where you put a special kind of paper, put objects on it and then go somewhere else for awhile. The special paper was solar paper. Solar paper is paper that reacts to light. If you do any solar printing, you need water to stop the chemical process. The paper has to be colored side down. Here's a pic of it looks like at the end. You can put any kind of shape on the paper, including like the picture below.




Ok, Sorry everyone. William lost interest tonight. I think these early mornings just turckered him out.

So, in true William fashion -

That's all for now.

TO BE CONTINUED

February 20, 2014 Snowball fight!!!!

Once upon a time, in a far away galaxy, there was war...again. 

Today we worked on our oxidation artwork. We used the slabs from yesterday with the copper and iron paint on them. We used iron pellets (I don't remember the name). We put liquid onto our slab and then put the pellets on the liquid. Voila! It was like magic! RUST!!! It only worked on the copper on mine for some reason. The copper turned green! It's called patina. 

Today we made Persia ink! We used iron chloride and 1 ml of water  and we used potassium and 2 ml of water. Then we mixed the 2 together in a separate bucket. And we made blue Persian ink . We painted with it. I made Flamedramon, Halsemon, Digmon.(These are characters from Digimon) 

My clay pot is still in the kiln. What's a kiln? A kiln is a type of oven that can heat pottery up to like 2000 fahrenheit! 

We went back outside today! Well, the enemy won again! They destroyed most of my fort! Those kids are so annoying! 

I love my big sister Meggie! Today we watched Doctor Who. See ya, Matt Smith - Hello, New Doctor! I'm gonna miss the 11th - or was he the 12th......

Sock Fight!!!

Today was fun. Like any other day. 

I'm gonna go eat my snack now.

Stay tuned 'til tomorrow!

TO BE CONTINUED...

February 19, 2014 WAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!

Once upon a time, in a far away galaxy, there was war...

Today at science camp I, William Benz - William Carl Benz, in fact - did a painting with mixed acids and bases, went outside for war, ate lunch, (I'm not going to talk about lunch) and put iron paint and copper paint on slabs.

Those two things are like when I put iron paint and copper paint on the slabs, guess what?? Guess what happens?!? It looked like the black was on the copper and the copper was on the black . Kinda looks like this, but a little different, but still close. I have not idea why I did this.


Painting with acids and bases was pretty cool. There was a chemical background on our paper, I don't remember what it was. When our background dried, we used 2 acids and 3 bases. The acids made a yellow color and the bases turned a dark color. One acid and base was 1 ph and 14 ph, the most powerful acid and base ph. These are highly reactive - big KABOOM if you add them together. An acid at a ph 1 is hydrochloric acid - VERY dangerous. It could probably eat the tissue of your eye! OUCH!!! A base of 14 is lye. This can hurt you too! But baking soda can't and it's a base. It just depends on the ph.

We went outside for war. And this is where the first line of the blog comes in. I gave my teacher Miss Susie Jedi training. The enemy was ranking up. There were spies of the rebels everywhere. And scouts of the enemy everywhere. We all had to retreat. I went to plan B and surrendered, got thrown in jail, broke out. Plan B backfired. I have a secret plan and a trick up my sleeve for those guys the next time.  I threw snowballs at the enemy. And Ryan and Miss Susie wouldn't stop fighting the enemy. She was a good Jedi, a good Padawan too.


Stay tuned 'til tomorrow.

TO BE CONTINUED.....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjMNNpIksaI
(star wars theme...)

February 18, 2014 It's Daddy's Birthday!!!!

Happy Birthday, Daddy!!! I hope you had a nice day!

I went to the museum again! Today we learned about suminagashi. It's a type of Japanese painting using ink and soap. (ink and soap, ink and soap, paper) It was fun. Mine looked pretty. I think I'll be able to bring it home. I'll take a picture of it if I do. Here is an example:



We also did  chromatography. This is where you put line at the bottom of a paper, put it in water and watch the color go up the paper. You make the line with a marker. It showed me the different chemicals that are in marker. Mine showed bluish-greenish. This was fun too!

We got to go to the In Motion studio at the museum. It's a place where you have to go down the hall, go through the nano section, go straight, go through another hall, turn right, turn right again and you're there! You can put balls in tubes and they'll float. There is air shooting up the tubes and the balls float. You can build your own car and race it. You can make a crash dummy video. I did the ball thing and other things too.

I went to our place in space. It has not changed at all. We did everything in that room. Apparently, it's the only room on the 4th floor.

We learned about polar molecules. A polar molecule is a molecule with an unequal number of electrons.

Fencing was fun. Coach won both bouts. Both bouts were 4 to 4. Coach used his skills to beat me.


I'm tired now. I'm going to bed. Tomorrow we get to go outside.

That's all for now! Stay tuned 'til tomorrow.

TO BE CONTINUED...

February 17, 2014

Today at science camp, I did tie-dye. I made clay pots.

 I had fun watching fire! The fire was different colors. Some of the flames were really cool! The colors were blue, orange, green-blue, purple-blue. The counselor made these by using different compound such as sodium chloride and copper chloride. The the counselor mixed all the chemicals together to make a VERY cool flame! The color was all the colors above colliding.

The tie-dye had chemicals in it. We used long eye droppers to drop all the liquid into the cloth. I observed that I had a soupy brown liquid at the bottom of mine. I have no idea what the chemicals were in there.

The clay pots - I don't know what they were made of. I have no idea why we made them either. I'll let you know when I find out.

There were 13 kids, 2 counselors and one me! (I'm one of the 13 kids) All the kids had different personalities. And some wouldn't stop yelling USA, USA, USA!. That bugged me.


Saturday we saw my good friend Punkin the Clown! We saw her at Hunter's Day of Hope. It's a place where the parents of a kid that died at age 7 raise money to fight the disease he died from. Punkin was making balloons! She had a LONG line! Momma got over excited when we finally saw her. (EYE_ROLL) They had games and free food and bounce houses and all the fun stuff. I caused a traffic jam on one of the bounce houses. OOPS. I got stuck trying to get over a wall. We had to get out on the other side. But, is was ok.

Here are some pictures:

Punkin making balloons

This is us! I'm the one on Punkin's left

This is Jim and Jill Kelly (Hunter's dad and mom) and all the kids on stage

Oh, by the way, Jim Kelly was a football player. And Hunter's Hope was at Buffalo Bills field house. IT WAS TALL AND BIG! (feint) 

That's all for now. Stay tuned 'til tomorrow!

TO BE CONTINUED...

February 14, 2014 - Turtle, Turtle

Happy Valentine's Day! I got a cactus for my desk and 2 small boxes of candy. I'm still a boy even though I got candy.

I did nothing much today.

We did an experiment. We used aspirin and placed in water in a glass jar. We covered it and put it in a dark place. We are going to observe it everyday and write down our observations. It's supposed to turn into crystals. We'll let you know our observations.

Today we joined the Great Backyard Bird Count. We didn't put in our observations yet because we didn't get many birds. Mom said they'll come at dusk.

Look at this link. It's a map of how many people are doing the bird count. So far there are there are 12, 145 people from across the world. The most people are in the U.S.A. I'm hoping to see a hawk.

http://ebird.org/ebird/gbbc/livesubs?siteLanguage=en

We were going to make a thermometer but Mom forgot to buy alcohol. We'll need to do it next week.

OH! I'm going to science camp next week! It's at the Buffalo Museum of Science. It's about the art of chemistry. I do not know what I'm going to do.

We watched a movie about loggerhead turtles. We watched it because I want to save the baby turtles to raise their population. I want to invent an invisible electric fence that will only shock the predator's of baby turtles but not the babies. I have to do a LOT of research. I feel so strongly about this because only 1 in a 1000 survive the first few minutes of their lives.

That's pretty much all I have on my mind right now.

Stay tuned 'til Monday!

TO BE CONTINUED...

February 12, 2014 ABCDEFG...

I recited the alphabet. Why is it called an alphabet? We're going to go look it up....here it is!

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/alphabet.html

The word ALPHABET comes from the the first 2 letters from the Greek alphabet!

Me in my coat with my robe on. I wanted to be extra warm this morning because we had to drop off Lilly to school.

Last night, fencing was fun! I won a bout against my coach. I won fair and square! Because in electric fencing, he doesn't let me win. 

Today I started area. I like it better than math sentences. I worked on figuring out the area of squares. It was pretty ok.

We went to chess today! Both games were a draw. My opponent took my queen even though he was in check mate. You know why it was a draw? Because we both only had our kings left and we couldn't capture each other. It happened in both games! He was a good chess player.  

Hey, guess what? My chess teacher has a soccer/chess camp during the summer! That's cool! Mom's going to find out more about it. 

After chess we went to a store called Orchard Fresh. It has everything! It has pizza! It has salads! It has speciality cheeses! IT HAD AN ICE CREAM (gelato - Orchard Parkians don't eat ice cream - editor's note) BAR!!! It was AWESOME!!! You should go there. It even has a little place to buy different chocolate. I'll go back sometime. 

Then, we went to ballet. Ballet is fun 'cuz we get to do fun moves. I plan on staying in ballet for awhile. Here's a video of me from just now. Enjoy watching!

That's all for now. I want my snack. 

Stay tuned 'til tomorrow!

TO BE CONTINUED....

To infinity(which means something that never ends) and beyond!!!!!

What it's like. February 11, 2014

**Editor's note: Today William is going to talk about what it feels like to have Autism/Asperger's/NLD. I think it's important to see things through his eyes. We are doing this because of a Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/Coliniseleven. I encourage everyone to go on this kids page and wish him a happy 11th birthday. And Please read the article on him. It's eye opening.**

I have Asperger's. Having Asperger's is sorta normal for me. But my having Asperger's is a big deal for others.

The bad stuff is that I get picked on a lot by friends I didn't know I have. Having a conversation with someone my age is very, very hard. They just walk away from me. And they don't even say a word. Sometimes I felt like they included me, but sometimes I felt I was excluded. Lunch, when I sat near the boys, they would just run away. They would just tell me I was creepy. Especially my enemies.

Asperger's makes it hard for me to understand math. I just don't get it. It makes me feel aggravated. In school during math,  I wanted to scream, yell, rip my papers to pieces, break the windows and throw my math teacher out the window. I didn't, but I wanted to.

I see the world differently from you out there reading my blog. I hear a lot more noise. Big sounds give me a big headache. I cover my ears a lot when we are in loud places. Bright lights bother me because they hurt my eyes. I don't like tight clothing. I makes me feel like I'm being squeezed like a boa constrictor. When cartoons bother me, it's because my imagination thinks they are real. Sometimes I want to leave the movie theater because the movie makes me paranoid.Nighttime, I think aliens are real.

Sometimes I get angry at a lot of things. One thing I get angry at is when my favorite amusement park is closed.

That's all that really bothers me about having Asperger's.

Now for the good things.

I'm very, very smart. I love reading. I go through about 6 books a week, depending how hard they are. It took me about 4 months to read The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring. But they are big books. I also read The George series by Steven Hawkings. But, my favorite books are Geronimo Stilton.

My imagination is fun! It has everything in it. It has all of outer space including earth in it. I remember I used to invite my Mommy into my imagination.

I like hugs, A LOT. I'm a hugger. I look at the world by chemistry. Chemistry is my thing.

Asperger's is unique. It makes anybody that has it unique. It's good and bad. It has it's times. I like to stay the way I am. And sometimes, I wish I could change myself. I'll talk about that another day.

Stay tuned 'til tomorrow.

TO BE CONTINUED...
To infinity and beyond!!!!

February 10, 2013 Wet and cold

(Editor's note: Most of today was learning about life lessons. Sometimes we forget that simple things are difficult and difficult things are easy for kids like Will. We need to just reinforce - a lot.)

Today was the exact same thing as the title - cold and wet. I'M SICK OF WINTER!! I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'M SICK OF WINTER!!

Momma made me clean the snow off Dad's car. This is how it looked when I did it before:

Dad wasn't amused.

 So we went outside and I did it for a second time today. Mom made me clean the whole car! BRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!! It was freezing out! Mom is going to make me clean the cars off when it snows. I know it's good to help out, but not in the freezing cold! I'd rather take a nap, but if I had to do a chore, I'd rather make my bed.

HELP ME!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D0eIsuZC3w

This morning, Mom made me watch a lot of videos about germs. YUK.....Why did she make me watch these? Because I got Mommy and Daddy sick. Apparently I share my germs. Momma always taught me to share. But, I'm not supposed to share my germs. I don't like to use soap and I don't like warm water. Mom is now making me use hand sanitizer. Today I kept in my shirt pocket. I also learned to cover your coughs. I knew this already, but sometimes I forget.

http://news.discovery.com/human/videos/news-coughing-robot-spews-flu-germs.htm

This video shows what a human cough looks like. It is gross. I'm going to try not to cough everywhere anymore.  We're going to try to make a cough robot. I'll let you know when it's done. 

 

After I sterilized my hands, Momma let me help make dinner. I got to cut the onions. They made me cry. But, I got to use a real knife! Not a butter knife. I'm used to butter knives. Butter knives are cool. 

Me cutting onion.

Well, that's all for now. See ya later, alligator! After while, crocodile!

Stay tuned 'til tomorrow!

TO BE CONTINUED...

February 7, 2014 - I'M SICK OF COLD!!! BBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQP4UJhNn0I

This is cool! You should watch it. It's about The Atom. The atom is, well, what we're made of. Everything is pretty much made of them. Including ice! What would happen if I took all the oxygen atoms, left the hydrogen atoms and then I put all the oxygen back  - I'd make water disappear and reappear!

We watch videos about Pyotr Tchaikovsky. He was a piano player. He was a composer and wrote Swan Lake. He also wrote The Nutcracker Ballet. Neglia Ballet does it every year. Maybe next I'll be in it! Lilly was in it twice. His life was complicated.

Lilly as an angel

That's pretty much all I have on my mind right now. I'm going to go have my snack. It's italian ice - cherry flavor!

Stay tuned 'til Monday!

TO BE CONTINUED...

February 6, 2014 - Pre-K

Khanacademy.org is cool! It has chemistry on it. This morning I watched a video about the Periodic Table! Did you know that the noble gases don't like to share their electrons?? Hm, doesn't that sound like Lilly? I think Lilly is a noble gas, get it???? LOLHAHAHAHA

We went to school today. But, not to learn. I sat and read the Hobbit. My mom was there at a meeting about what she's teaching me. I got to talk to some of my old teachers. It was nice to see them. It was nice to see my principal again, too. Mr. Bebak stopped to say Hi. He used to help me in my classroom.

We had to go to the school I went to Pre-K in. I was remembering Pre-K. I liked Pre-k. We had a good time there.

Lilly got a Shining Star! I'm proud!
(not)

My lunch! It was delicious. The heart is a burger. We didn't have any buns.

Chess.....
(Lilly was cheating)

That's all I have on my mind right now.

Stay tuned 'til tomorrow!

TO BE CONTINUED.....http://www.villagegeek.com/downloads/webwavs/woodywoodpecker.wav  (sound bite)

February 5, 2014 YAWN, sorta

Yesterday I didn't go to fencing. I didn't do much of anything. I was tired and ill. I'm sorta sick and tired of school! And I'm sick and tired of the weather!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! (A loud scream)

But, I did make a hobbit hole out of my cold porcelain I made the day before! Boy, is that stuff sticky! We are waiting for it to dry. I'm going to paint it. Maybe I can make a whole diorama of the Shire. What if I made a diorama of the whole Unexpected Journey!!! HHmmm.....experiment time! We need to make papier mache! That, my friend, would be cool. .........that could go into the school science fair. (Not really, it's science fiction, not science)

Talking about the science fair, we are looking for a chemistry project. But, we aren't allowed to BLOW STUFF UP!!!!!  BBBBBBBBBBOOOOOOOOOOOO! gggRRRRRRRR.....Oh, well. We'll find something fun!

We went to chess today. I played against my mom because we were one kid short. Mom never played before. I was her teacher. Mr. V helped too. Remember, Mr. V is my chess teacher. I still like chess. It's easy!

We didn't go to ballet today. It was closed because of this STUPID snow. It took us awhile just to get home from chess!

That all I have on my mind right now and I want to EAT!

Stay tuned 'til tomorrow!

TO BE CONTINUED!

February 3, 2014 Exciting/Boring

Today was a mild day. I started out tired. I still have a cold. AACHOOO! And it got worse.

Mom moved me up to 4th GRADE!!!! Except in Math. (HAPPY DANCE!) It's pretty fun! It's more challenging. But, that's a good thing. I already got a 40 out of 40 on Word Herd - that's a quiz game show in time4learning.com. And I only got 3 wrong on a regular quiz. The quiz was in science.

And today we made cold porcelain! Cold porcelain is a polymer. A polymer is a many molecules all strung together to form really long chains.. I wonder if I can make a necklace out of molecules???

me mixing (in my lab coat)

goop

thicker goop

the final product!

 Cold porcelain is made from H2O, Cornstarch (25% amylase and 75% amylopectin

no chem name, but chem properties because it’s already a polymer), petroleum jelly (vaseline - the amount  of carbon and hydrogen atoms in each molecule is not known) and GLUE, polyvinyl acetate chem name : or chem name (C₄H₆O₂)_n. 

_{We put it on the stove over a low flame for about 9 minutes. We had to stir} 

_{constantly so it wouldn't burn. That would smell! Then we put it on wax} 

_{paper and kneaded it like bread. It's pretty cool. We don't know what we'll}

_{do with it yet. Maybe it will come alive! Maybe it will turn into a human!}

_{Maybe we cloned! Another me!!!!} 

_{Wwwwwwwwwwoooooooooowwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!}

_{Stay tuned 'til tomorrow!}

_{TO BE CONTINUED!!!!}