The Marrama Mirror Reflecting Student and Staff Success January 2012 Merida Fraguada Volume 2 Principal Table of Colorado on Tour: Garden of the Gods, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, The Denver Zoo, Elitch Gardens 1-3 Contents Marrama: A Happening Place: 3-9 Where in the World 11-12 Colorado on Tour Colorado is a wonderful place to live with many exciting places to visit. In this feature, Colorado on Tour, our staff reporters will write about their favorite places to visit. Come along and get excited about the many places and experiences waiting for you in your own backyard! Garden of the Gods Not Your Normal Garden By: Irish May A. Avorque Do you like to go to new places, love nature, or like the outdoors? If so, I know a great place you should visit. Garden of the Gods! It is a wonderful place to visit in the summer. May 1 through October 31 is open 5am to 11pm. You can even go in the winter! It is open 9am to 5pm in the winter months. Not interested yet? Well I know what will get you off your feet and ask your parents right now to drive you there. Fun Activities! Horseback riding, biking, guided walks, rock climbing, hiking, and having picnics are activities you may do at Garden of the Gods. Do you have a dog? If you do you may bring your dog, but you will need to have a 6-foot leash. The areas where dogs can run unleashed are south of Gateway Road, west of 30th Street, and east of Rock Ledge Ranch Historic Site. Do you really want to go but your parents say they have no money? Well you don’t need to pay because it’s FREE! This place is educational too. You could learn while having fun. If you’re interested but you need more information, go to http://www.Gardenofgods.com. Red Rocks Amphitheater Rocks! By Leslie Andrade The Morrison CO park was finished in 1941, and opened June 15 of that year. However, performers had been performing there since the early 1900’s. The first opera singer to perform there had to ride a burro to get to the amphitheater. The amphitheater looks like a large red rock pile but it is more than that. Ship Rock and Creation Rock make up the rock formation but underneath the seating area inside the visitor’s center there’s a lot to see and do. One whole wall is covered in posters of Shakyra, the Beetles, Manna, and many, many, more musicians that performed here. They also have a hall of fame which has little interactive kiosks to let you see people who have played there and learn about them. There are some posters and guitars signed by artists and much more. Red Rocks was on TV recently as the start and finish on the show The Amazing Race. If shopping in the visitors center isn’t for you, hiking and cycling is possible on the nature trails around the amphitheater. There is also the Ship Rock Grille for a unique dining experience. Parking there is free with lots of room. Admission is free for all. They are open from May – September 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and October – April is 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The park is not open Christmas or Thanksgiving. Hope to see you there. Just Lion Around? See the Denver Zoo By Alexis Alvarez Have you been to the Denver Zoo lately? You may have noticed construction going on there. Next year the new Toyota Elephant Passage will open. Recently they moved the Asian elephants, pictured here, into their new habitat. They moved the animals in big crates and used a crane to lift them into the new exhibit. How cool was that! The Denver Zoo was built in 1896 and has many different habitats to visit including Northern Shores where polar bears live, Wolfpack Woods featuring wolves, Monkey Island built in 1936 home of Capuchin monkeys and various birds, Sheep Mountain home to Rocky Mountain Big Horn Sheep and Dall’s sheep., Bear Mountain currently home to grizzly bears and Asiatic black bears, an indoor Tropical Discovery where fresh-water and marine fish and exotic turtles swim, and Predator Ridge which houses the lion shown in the picture as well as African wild dogs. Denver Zoo's Pioneer Train will take you to the different stops or you can walk through the 80 acre zoo. It’s open year round, 10am-5pm during winter months. There is an admission fee to visit but the money is used to help save animals all over the world. They even have special programs for kids during school breaks and summer vacation and classes on animals and how to care for them. So come have some fun and save animals at the same time. See you at the zoo! The Best Place on Earth to Play—Elitch Gardens By Brooklyn Johnson Every summer Elitch’s has lots of crowds including families, couples, and and single people that just want to have some fun. This amusement park has the most colorful, terrific, fantastic rides and rollercoasters. For example, a colorful ride would be the Troika. A terrific rollercoaster would be Twister, even though it’s jerky and made of wood. A fantastic rollercoaster would be the Boomerang. The scariest rollercoaster is the Half Pipe. The least scary is the Matinee Marina. One of the thrill rides is XLR8R (exhilerator). One of the family rides is the Teacup. The Cactus Coaster is one of the kids rides. The oldest ride is Twister, built in 1964. Ghost Blasters is the newest ride which opened in 2008. Elitch’s has a lot of restaurants. The food court includes Big Boulder Pizza, Subway, Panda Express, Starbucks, The Market, and Finger Lickin Chickin. Devour one of Amy’s funnel cakes or one of Molly Shipwreck’s soft serve ice cream cones. Have an icee because there are six flavors to choose from. The concerts this year included Mike Posner, Thousand Foot Krutch and Hawk Nelson, Los Tucanes de Tiguana, Los Horoscopes de Durango, Third Day, Anberlin, Big Time Rush, and Miranda Cosgrove. Concerts are free with the purchase of a ticket or season pass. Fright Fest is a BIG part of the year. The admission to Fright Fest includes six shows, four haunted houses named Blood Bath, Grind House, Face Your Fears, and Brutal Planet, and a pet costume parade. Come to Fright Fest. Come for the rides. Come for the food and fun. Just come! Marrama: A Happening Place This section of the paper highlights the many interesting events that take place in our school. Sometimes there are family events to report on and other times stories will be about programs that come to our school. Our goal is to inform families about the important things that make our school a special place. Bowling Brings Big Smiles By Alara Levson This year Mr. Ziska’s classroom and Mrs. Parks classroom took a trip to go bowling. The trip took place on October 27th. When I talked to Mr. Ziska he commented that the students really enjoyed bowling and the paras and teachers did as well. Mr. Ziska has taken his students bowling every year for the past ten years and he plans on going again next year. The sponsor for this event is Special Olympics. It’s important for both the kids and people around them to realize that special kids can enjoy the same activities everyone else does. The kids bowled two ways. They bowled by rolling the ball and then they did it with a bowling server. The bowling server is a little ramp that helps them push the bowling ball and point it the direction they want. The kids don’t have special balls. They use regular bowling balls and wear bowling shoes also. Mr. Ziska didn’t bowl this year but his kids made up for it. It was a great outing for both classrooms. Space Robots Out of This World! By: Irish Avorque On December 2nd, 2011 the 4th and 5th graders who are in the GT program went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Mrs. Gilmore wanted to give the students a challenge beyond their normal curriculum. That’s why she did this. This class was something she had never done before. Most of the cost was covered by a museum grant so each student only had to pay $5 for the program. There was a lot of preparation for the trip. The museum had to approve the date, the bus had to be reserved, permission slips sent home and chaperones approved. The chaperones were Mrs. Weikle and Ms. Grace. This might seem easy to prepare, but it’s not. Mrs. Gilmore had to reserve the program to build the robots. First, we went to the T-Rex exhibit. There were figures of dinosaurs such as a Velociraptor, a Triceratops, and a T-Rex named Sue. These figures moved, roared, and talked. A student commented,” They look so realistic!” Another activity we did is making robots. A lot of students exclaimed, “Making a robot was the best part!” Each group had to build a robot that would do something in space. My group made a robot that tried to find unknown life on Jupiter’s moon Europa. Other groups designed robots to collect samples from Uranus and complete mining tasks on asteroids. “The robotics lab teaches kids about the role of robots in space and gives them a chance to work in teams to accomplish a goal of their own choosing.