Christmas Vacation - Ben Dominick

To start this off, I will talk about my christmas vacation. I will start this basically at the 24th, as I didn’t do much before. I woke up on the 24th, and both my brother can cousin came up. We generally go crazy when all three of us are together. Anyways, the day started with awful christmas music. I could’ve sworn, that if I head “All I want for christmas” one more time, I would’ve gone crazy. Anyway, the day was normal, up until 5:00 pm. My mom came into the kitchen, and said “ I want to go see this christmas display, but dad doesn’t want to”, but I gratefully insisted “You should, it is almost christmas”, at the end of our neighborhood, a car was there, I looked at it and was curiously surprised. When my parents stopped, I thought something was wrong, until they said “That’s your car!”. I got out, and drove it home At about 12:00 christmas day, we decided to wrestle. I took out my brother VIA rear naked choke, but I lost to my cousin, who just got out of infantry. It took him 15 minutes, but he got me in a chokehold. A few days later to New years (call me boring, all I did was drive in between the days) We just stayed home and ate ham bone soup. Other than driving, my break was boring. To summarize in one sentence “It was exciting, but not much went on”.

A fellow student Tyler H. Went to Mexico, where he went to an underground river. in his words “It was like a cave, but also a river”. Upon his trip, he had gone to the beach as well, where he swam, made a sandcastle (which apparently was unconventional, as he referred to the castle as  “kind of a castle, but more like a butt”). The trip lasted 8 days total but he took a plane, and he thought it was one of the best trips he had ever taken. Tyler, received one present, but it was a great one, the trip itself, and time with the family. Thank you Tyler H. for letting me interview you.

Some kids like Connor Robbins took road trips. Connor’s trip consisted of his family driving down to Louisiana. There, Connor went shooting, camped, and almost went hunting.  Connor received more gifts than the last, he received camo clothing (including boots, and shirts.) and two types of tool boxes. when asked, “How would you summarize your trip in one sentence”, and the reply was, “Fun, yet disappointing”.

My last interview was with Sean M. Sean stayed home, unlike the other two interviewees, saying “I kept thinking about the warm, sunny beaches.” He had no family over other than his immediate family, but he said it was “nice and quiet”, which we all know isn’t always the case. For christmas, he was quoted saying “I got a cool graphics card for my computer, (as he turned his head at a weird angle), I like it.” He also got a sopranos headphone set, which is for instruments. Describing his vacation in one word, he said “underwhelming”, and when asked, to describe his vacation in one sentence, he said “It was very underwhelming”. “Would you change anything about it? I asked, and he replied “‘nah, it was kind’a lame, just… Meh”.

Thanks again to all my interviewees, I appreciate it, now after interviewing 3 people, I think about this “People tend to overestimate christmas, and expect it to last forever.”

Winton Train Guest Speaker - Elly Evans

Thomans Graumann with
Christina Classen and her 2 children,
Jordan and Issac.

Yesterday morning we had the joy of being able to listen to Thomas Graumann about his survival of the Holocaust. Thomas was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia. He grew up with his mom, dad, younger brother and later his step dad. His family was jewish but they didn’t practice, they only lit the candles at Honoka. When Hitler started his wrath against the Jewish people, Jews were forcibly converted, expelled from more than 
80 cities, and killed.

Hitler’s Plan

• Identify the Jews 
• Isolate them 
• Emigrate them 
• Finally Exterminate the Jews

Jews were killed by shooting, hanging, CO, CO2, and Zyklon B.On November 10th, 1938 when Thomas and his mother were going to a play they saw horrible things happening in the streets. Buildings were being burned, businesses were looted and people were killed. People know this night as “Kristallnacht.” Thomas then spoke about the day that his mother put him on the Winton train that would take him to Scotland. His brother was ill and was going to wait for the train that would come next month. 

When that day came for the next train they found out that there wouldn’t be a train because the borders were sealed. Thomas was safely in Scotland, learning English by then with a good christian family. He started to become a follower of Jesus Christ and taught people to read and write. Thomas was 3rd to last on the final train. His number was 652. He is thankful every day that he could be on that train. 

Thomas has been happily married for 52 years, with his two adopted children and his 10 grandchildren. “I was saved.” Thomas spoke these words as he spoke about how all the remaining family that stayed in Czechoslovakia had been killed in the concentration camps. “If you think a dead Jew is better than a living Jew placed in a Christian home. That’s your problem not mine.” One of Thomas’s favorite quotes is one by Winston Churchill, “Never, Never, Never give up!”

As the last projectile flew, the crowd grew silent. Could it set a new record, or would it be doomed to splat on the ground? It splatted on the ground. However, with 6 teams competing the team of: Matthew Bowden, Logan Linder, Noah Smith, Samuel Beggs, and their team name: "Vulgar and Inappropriate" won, with a stunning distance of 93 feet! All the teams had lots of fun that day, and got to see Mr. Buch bend a piece of solid rebar (Not on purpose). In the future we hope to have more competitions that pit one team's engineering skills against another's. Thank you to all teams and parents who helped with building and getting supplies.

An Upper Classmen's Perspective - John Paul Kreft

I support Mosaic 100%. Having spent time in Mosaic for nearly 4 months I can say what I've seen has impressed me. Granted, in the beginning many students took their opportunity for granted but as time went on, things got better and better. I think what the teachers have done for these students is amazing. 

Allowing a student to apply their knowledge to the real world is invaluable and quite frankly, something I wish I had when I was a freshman. There are a few sophomores in Mosaic who have already completed the majority of their school year and we're only 4 months in, That's pretty impressive. Many people outside Mosaic are under the impression that they kids here do not do anything, but I've seen first hand the exact opposite.

JP Kreft is a senior in the LGC academy whose plans are to attend CU Bolder and study business and marketing.

Introducing the Badges Program - Amanda Kerr

A popular saying among the Mosaic staff is "Work, don't be a jerk". We want students to be using their time in Mosaic to change the world, create something useful or to pursue their interests or passions. Sometimes in order for this to happen, we need to spend some time discovering just what we are interested in or in cultivating skills.

To that end we have introduced the idea of "Purposeful Play" with the creation of the Maker Badges Program. Students were given a rough run down of what the program entails and its purpose and already several student have hopped on board to start adding to their portfolio and earning badges.

Ready, set...FIRE!

Catapult and trebuchet launch will be on Tuesday morning on the athletic field. We begin setting up at 8am and will launch 2 official goes for each of the 5 teams (one or two others might still represent) with 15min reset time in between rounds. Winners will announced in the distance category and recognition for design. Feel free to stop by, tho launches will be recorded so check back here for updates on Wednesday. Good luck to all of our hard learning teams.

Buch's Special Game - Elly Evans

Every Friday during 4th period we all are involved in some team building activity. It’s important for us to start the week on Monday as a Mosaic group and for us to end as a group at the end of Friday. 

Today we have a surprise from Mr. Buch. He has prepared a game where there are two groups and each person  in the circle is handed a picture. The pictures consist of random things or people like Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, The President and Mario as well as things like hand cuffs, fire, lotion, the Hollywood sign, a tractor, and a building made out of a shipping crate. 

Each person keeps their picture to themselves. Then we go around and each person speaks for one minute and includes their picture into a group story.