Essays

Every week we give the kids and Essay topic to write about. This week the topic is HIV/AIDS. Before that it was Dinosaurs, Homeless Children, the Great Depression, and the Inaugeration. Anyway, Ame won the last contest, and so, without further ado, is her winning Dinosaur Essay:

Dinosaurs
By Amethyst
Jan.28, 2009

Millions of years ago, long before there were any humans, there were dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were one of the many kinds of reptiles that lived during the age of reptiles. The age of reptiles means from 63 million to 230 million years ago. Here are some of the dinosaurs that have been discovered: Allosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Pterodactyls, Stegosaurus, Triceratops’s, Tyrannosaurus, and Velociraptor.
Dinosaurs were scaly, smooth, bumpy, and some had big plates on their backs. There were several kinds of dinosaurs, some flew, some walked on two legs and some walked on four legs. Some were herbivores, some were carnivores, and some were omnivores.
Some dinosaurs would attack each other either because one dinosaur was a threat to them or because they where a threat to their babies/eggs.
Dinosaurs mysteriously disappeared 65 million years ago. Some people say that the dinosaurs died because a huge rock from space tumbled to the earth so hard that it made a really big cloud of dust. The cloud of dust was there for so long that it killed all of the plants so the herbivores had nothing to eat and eventually died. With the herbivores dead the carnivores had nothing to eat except each other so they ate each other until there was only one dinosaur left and he starved to death.

Here is Riley's Essay on the Great Depression:

The Great Depression
December 6, 2008
By Riley Smith
The Great Depression was a worldwide economic downturn or depression, starting in most places in 1929 and ending at different times in the 1930s or early 1940s for different countries. It was the largest economic depression in modern history. The Great Depression was not triggered by a sudden collapse in the stock market; the main cause for the Great Depression was the combination of the greatly unequal distribution of wealth throughout the 1920s, and the extensive stock market speculation that took place later that same decade. The imbalance of wealth created an unstable economy.
The Great Depression affected all countries although some more than others. For example, South Africa entered a huge slump because demand for their agricultural and mineral exports fell drastically. Where the Soviet Union isolated itself from the rest of the world so was hardly affected at all. In most countries The Great Depression caused the unemployment rate to soar. Over 13 million people became unemployed. I sure wouldn’t have liked to be one of those 13 million people. Home construction dropped by 80% between the years 1929 and 1932.
The Great Depression put lots of different businesses out of business. From the years 1929 to 1932 about five thousand banks went out of business. Lots of different businesses of all types went out of business during this difficult time. Industrial production fell by nearly 45% between the years of 1929 and 1932. That means that the amount of cars and home supplies and everything you use every day that were being created almost depleted by half. There have been other downturns called a “Great Depression” or so Wikipedia told me, but none have been as worldwide and lasted for so long. Today I have heard people say there might be another depression coming up so people are saving their money so that they will have some for if it actually does happen. I hope that it doesn’t actually happen though for that would royally suck.

And here is Asher's Homeless Children Essay.

Asher Smith
December 18th 2008

Homeless children are exactly that: homeless. That means that they don’t have shelter or a really warm bed to sleep in tonight or a kitchen, or a pantry full of food all of which we the Smiths/Stanchfields have.

The reasons why the children are homeless vary from child to child. A lot of the time the case is that the children have runaway from home and never went back. Or maybe their parents lost there jobs and then lost there house and eventually had to live on the streets. Other reasons include: Substance abuse, mental illness, and natural disasters. The population of homeless children in the United States of America ranges from five hundred thousand to two million! That’s a lot of homeless kids. Since the start of the U.S.A. there have been Children without a home.

Refugees for the homeless:
Out doors: things like a park or a vacant lot. Abandoned buildings, vehicles, Homeless shelters, and abandoned subway tunnels all work for places that a homeless child can spend the night. I can’t even imagine being homeless, it would just be horrible. It makes me sick to think that a child some were is going to have to sleep in this horrible snowy weather. It is so cold right now there’s no way that a child could live through the temperature it drops to here in Heber and Salt Lake City.

Homeless children are beyond unlucky. They don’t get to have a home, they don’t get to play runescape or go to school and get and education and go to college.