Take a picture, why dontcha? It will last longer - Common & Proper Nouns

One of my favorite things to do is......... take pictures! One of my earliest memories is playing with my mom's old film camera, the kind that used the long film cartridge and had a pop-up flash on the top. When I was younger I asked for a camera, one that I did not have to share with anyone, not even my mother. I got my wish on my 8th birthday and it was perfect. It was a Fuji Polaroid camera that I took everywhere with me. I clearly recall one of the warnings my mother gave me, "Don't take pictures of just anything, make sure you really want to capture it on film." This was not her attempt at getting me to notice composition and design within the viewfinder, rather this was her way of gently reminding me to use the polaroid film sparingly because it was kind of expensive. When I began to take pictures I started to take pictures of my family. My grandmother, my uncles and cousins were all subjects in my photographic endeavors but within a few weeks I got bored of taking their portraits and looked for other things to shoot. I started to focus on the things inside my house. For instance, the lamp that had dangling colorful beads hanging from the lampshade, the flowers inside the flower pots, the shoelaces in my Nike sneakers, my brother's toy cars, basically anything that didn't move. As I grew older my interest in photography grew as well and all throughout high school and college I dabbled in photography. This time I was working with really wonderful cameras that allowed me more creativity while shooting, and I developed an interest in shooting architecture and flora. I use my Iphone and my husbands Samsung cellphone to take pictures. Smartphone cameras have come a really long way and they take wonderful high definition pictures. Everywhere I go, whether vacationing in a new country or to my friend's house to visit, I am ready to captures new images in even the most unexpected places.

Few of the pictures I have taken over the years

Vocabulary List - Nouns

Pictures                                    viewfinder                             beads                       Iphone

Film                                          family                                    flowers                     Samsung cellphone

Camera                                    grandmother                        flower pots                 country

Cartridge                                  uncles                                   shoeslaces                images

Mother                                     cousins                                 Nike sneakers

Fuji Polaroid camera               endeavors                              high school

birthday                                   portraits                                 college

warnings                                  house                                    architecture

composition design                 lamp                                       flora

Vocabulary Exercise - Nouns

Nouns are words that refer to a person, place, thing, idea and emotion. Circle the nouns in the word search puzzle below. 

Grammar Point - Nouns

Nouns are words that identify a person, place, thing, ideas and emotions. Nouns can be:

1. Common nouns and refer to the common name of things, people and places of a given class.

    Ex: shoes, car, socks, glass, hero, phone, doctors, teachers, arena, theater, soda

A useful way to identify common nouns is by placing "the" in front of the word.

2. Proper nouns and refer to the particular of things, people and places.

    Ex: a) places-Italy         b) company-Nike, Coca Cola      c) movie-Goodfellas, Bourne Identity     d) person-Matthew, Peter

Proper nouns do not usually have "the" in front of them and usually begin with a capital letter.

Proper & Common Nouns Exercise

Determine if the words are common or proper nouns.

shirt_______________                         tommy hilfiger____________

company____________                       music___________________

airplane_____________                       san diego_________________

shoe_______________                        chicken__________________

samsung____________                       pizza___________________

pencil_______________                      mc donald's______________

new york_____________                     notebook________________

fish_________________                      grade__________________

susan_______________                      father__________________

crayons______________                     furniture________________

ibm_________________                     church_________________

macy's_______________                    world war I____________    

harvard______________                     sunday________________

dancer______________                      city___________________

biology_____________                       eiffel tower_____________

holiday______________                     germany_______________

For further reading on nouns, please visit www.englishclub.com/grammar/nouns-what.htm

Scrapbooking Memories- And Adding Adjectives

Before I decided to return to school I was an avid scrapbooker. For those unfamiliar with the term scrapbooking, it is a creative way to preserve photos, ticket stubs, objects and any type of memorabilia that holds a personal memory. I tend to scrapbook pictures only, although once in a while I add an object that is tied to that memory. All of the scrapbook pages that I have done are about my family, mostly my children and their milestones.  I would imagine the page in my head before I made a single cut to my pictures or construction paper. I would look at my folder full of themed stickers and chose the most appropriate ones for the scrapbook page about to be created. I used various types of construction paper that had different textures to give the page personality and make them more interesting to look at. Scrapbooking is a very personal activity and there is no right or wrong way to do it. However elaborate you want to make it is completely up to you. For me it has become a very personal creative outlet because every page that I constructed, and I have done many, will be left for my children to look back upon and recall that time in their lives. My goal with the scrapbook album is to make certain memories come to life for them when they visit the pages, and even if they cannot remember the day itself, the scrapbook is there to help jog their memory along. I would like the scrapbook to show them how much I cherished their special days and most of all how much I cherish them.

A few of the scrapbook pages I have created over the years

For more information on scrapbooking and how you can get started with the basics, visit www.paperwishes.com/scrapbooking101

Vocabulary - Adjectives
Avid: Showing a lot of interest and enthusiasm for something
Creative: Something original and imagined
Personal: Belongs to a person in particular
Single: Consisting of only one thing
Full: No empty space left over
Appropriate: Most suitable
Various: Consisting of many
Different: Not the same as others
Interesting: Catches attention and curiosity
Wrong: Not correct
Elaborate: Very detailed and carefully designed
Certain: To know for sure, something specific
Special: Better, greater, stands out


Vocabulary Exercise- Adjective Crossword Puzzle
Fill in the correct adjective according to the hint given.

Grammar Point

Adjectives are words that describe nouns (person, place or thing), they can be specific and give information. There are many adjectives that describe how something feels, tastes and looks. Adjectives can give your writing a boost because they can help the reader imagine things more clearly.

Exercise 1

Directions: Read the sentence & underline the adjective(s). Write the noun(s) it describes on the line.

1) The colorful butterfly flew around the garden, stopping at every pink and red rose to get nectar.

     ____________________

2)  Much of the day was boring, except for when we went to my favorite amusement park.

      ____________________

3) The old, rickety canoe was taken out of the shed for us to use our sweet grandmother's lake house.

      ____________________

4) Even though my younger brother annoys me until my face turns red, I cannot imagine how

     unexciting life would be without him.  ____________________

5) The new strip mall they built has a lot of great, fancy stores, but it causes heavy traffic in my

     neighborhood.  ____________________

Exercise 2

Directions: Write a paragraph (5-7 sentences) using as many adjectives to describe your favorite holiday and your reasons for liking it. 

Pruning and Weeding My Stress Away! Verbs are your friends!

One of my favorite hobbies, which I will add is a fairly recently acquired one, is gardening. This past spring for Mother's day I received potted roses. Beautiful, healthy, bring pink roses that were meant to be planted in the front of my home. I took that simple idea even further and tore all the bushes down that lined the front of my home and replaced them with plants I have always admired from afar, but never dared to grow on my own. I had a lot of help from my own mother, who is a great landscaper and flower bed designer, a skill she obtained over the years from gardening in her own backyard and caring for the most delicate flowers I have ever seen on Long Island. She helped me choose flowers that complemented each other in color and form. But most importantly she taught me how to care for my new delicate friends. She explained the importance of pruning regularly and the ever dreadful chore of weeding. At first it seemed like an overwhelming new hobby to maintain, but as the spring weeks turned into summer months, my garden started to really blossom. My roses bloomed, my stargazer lilies popped up from the ground, my bleeding heart bushes gave me the most beautiful little pink dangling flowers, and my faithful hostas began to sprout new bright green leaves. Among all my flowers, my favorite one is the Cana Lily. It's an eye catching tropical plant that can grow up to 6 feet tall in length. When I first bought them, they didn't seem like much, and really I only bought them because I needed to fill up some space along the front porch. But as the weeks got hotter and more humid, the Cana Lily became the star of the show. The bright lime green leaves are over a foot long and almost 8 inches wide, and the flower that blossoms is a vibrant orange hue that attracts what seems to be all the bumblebees in the neighborhood. I have realized over the course of these past months that gardening is second nature to me. It's about nurturing, commitment, patience and hard work, concepts that I am very familiar with being a mother to 3 children. It's my way to unwind after a long day at school and zone out to music with a water hose in hand. And even though summer isn't quite over yet, I am already envisioning how my garden will look next summer with new additions to care for.

Cana Lily plants and few of my pink roses and hostas

For more information on gardening and various plants suitable for your home visit www.gardens.org

VOCABULARY
Acquired: verb: To get, to obtain
Received: verb: To get, to obtain
Replaced:verb:  To put something instead of .....
Complemented: verb: Goes well with something else
Maintain: verb:  Keep up with something
Realized: verb: Understand clearly
Nurturing: verb: Caring
Envisioning: verb: seeing and/or planning something for the future

Skill: noun: Something you are good at
Commitment: noun: Dedicated
Addition(s): noun: Something that goes with something else, added

Overwhelm(ing): adjective: Very large, very strong
Vibrant: adjective: Bright, colorful, full of energy
Familiar: adjective: something well known

VOCABULARY EXERCISE
Answer the question with the correct word from the vocabulary list above

1) If a young man/woman plays a sport very well, they have great ____________.
2) When a mother hugs and kisses her baby, she is being __________________.
3) When you have a big exam the next morning, you may have an ____________ feeling of fear.
4) If you exercise regularly and eat good food, you can ___________ a healthy lifestyle.
5) After a rainstorm, sometimes you can see a rainbow with __________ colors.
6) When you learn a new language, you have _________ a new way to communicate.
7) In __________ learning to read, you should also learn to write correctly.
8) When you play an instrument you become very __________ with musical language.

GRAMMAR POINT

Verbs can express actions; mental actions, physical actions and/or a state of being. 
1) Write a short paragraph (5-7 sentences) about a hobby or sport that you enjoy doing. Make sure to underline all verbs (whether past, present or future-tense). 2) For all the verbs underlined in your paragraph, write the past, present and future tense of the word. 

Ex: I play basketball for a league......

      Played, play/playing, will play