Hello, class, welcome back! I hope you all had a fun weekend. Did any of you watch the Sooners play basketball yesterday? They did not play very well.

Well, today I am going to tell you about Sinbad's second voyage. After Sinbad's first voyage, he thought that it would be a good idea to take a small vacation. After a few weeks of vacation, Sinbad had spent all of his money once again. While having tea, he overheard some men talking about a ship that was about to set sail. Sinbad introduced himself and they invited him along.

Once on the ship the crew and Sinbad sang, danced, and drank root beer. Once the ship landed at the first island, Sinbad ran to the top of the hill. There he found the sweetest oranges ever. He collected a whole sack of them.

The whistle blew and all the men ran back to the ship.

The next stop was an island that was covered with a thick jungle. Once the ship had landed, Sinbad quickly ran to the top of the hill, hoping to find more fruit. Once he reached the top, there was nothing but bare trees. Sinbad knew that there had to be something valuable on the island, so he ran further inland. Sinbad ran for hours, and then he heard the whistle blow. Sinbad ran as fast as he could. As soon as he reached the beach, he could see the ship sailing off on the horizon.

Sinbad sat down to think. After an hour or so he decided to make his way to the other side of the island and look for people or food. Sinbad walked over the mountains and through the woods.

"I thought you were going to say to grandma’s house he goes," said Sarah.

That would be funny, Sarah.

Sinbad walked for hours and hours. Just as Sinbad was getting tired, he came upon a clearing with no trees. This clearing was full of big rocks. As Sinbad entered the clearing, he noticed something sparkling near a cave at the end.  As Sinbad got closer, he could see that the sparkling rocks were actually huge diamonds.

"My mommy says, the bigger the diamond, the more my daddy loves her" said Michelle.

Sinbad gathered as many diamonds as he could carry. He was so excited that he did not even notice the big pieces of bones all around him. After he packed his bag full, he sat down to have a snack. That is when he noticed the bones. He was frightened. As he looked around, he noticed giant snake skins everywhere. The skins were as long as a train. As it got closer to dark, Sinbad could hear the snakes hissing. The snakes must be night crawlers. Night crawlers only come out at night because the light hurts their eyes. The sun was almost gone so Sinbad had to think fast. Just as the last bit of sun went down, Sinbad crawled into one of the snake skins. The rest of the snakes, slithered and hissed around the rocks. Sinbad, not wanting to be noticed did the same. He slithered around for eight hours, pretending to be a snake. When the sun came up, the rest of the snakes crawled back into the cave. Sinbad quickly grabbed his diamonds and ran. He ran for hours and finally saw smoke. He followed the smoke and found a group of sailors. Sinbad offered the sailors a few diamonds to take him off of the island.

Well, kids, story time is over. I hope you all can be here next week. We will talk about Sinbad and the giant whales.

Author's note: I retold parts of Sinbad’s first voyage and also his second voyage. I used the snake scene from the first voyage. In the original story Sinbad collected the diamonds also. The snakes still came out at night but it was because they did not want to become captured by the giant roc. The roc is a giant bird which I used in the first story and did not want to use again. Also in the original story Sinbad used the cave to hide at night from the snakes. I thought it would be funny and more entertaining for the kids if Sinbad put on the snake skin and pretended to be a snake. In the original story Sinbad ties a piece of meat to his back so that the eagles could carry him off of the island. I used this method of escape in the first story. I decided to use Sinbad offering the sailors diamonds to take him home. There were a lot of details that I left out. I really like these stories because there are so many things happening at once. This makes it fun to mix and match the stories up. Next week I am going to take a piece of the second voyage and mix it with some of the third and fourth voyages.