A trip to Japan

 

Greetings from Japan!

I am writing to you to inform that I am having the most wonderful time. Summer here is like nothing you have ever seen before. The blossom trees are in bloom, I love having picnics under them. The food here is out of this world, never have I tried something as different but delicious as what they sell here! I hope that soon I can come here again and I hope that I can bring you along!

Hope you are doing ok back in Gizzy. 

See you soon.

Your friend,

Estella

The Majestic Wolfus

 

 On the news a local named Estella was out exploring the great Caribbean waterfall. She was busy taking pictures and selfies of the beautiful waterfall and the view down below, when she heard a rustle in a nearby bush. She was not scared because she had been on many many previous adventures, so she quietly tiptoed up to the bush and peeked inside. She couldn't believe her eyes, inside was a strange hybrid. It was a creature mixed between a wolf and a walrus. She scurried backwards as the weird creature moved towards her. It couldn't move very fast because it was kind of flopping around the water. Estella tripped over a loose rock as she was running, the creature approached. It lowered its head, opened its mouth and...started to lick her. She named the creature the majestic Wolfus Estellarus, named after herself. These special creatures are extremely endangered from naughty poachers, who stalk them and kill, as they are very slow movers. The message we need to send out around the world...

Don't be scared of the Wolfus Estellarus, it is extremely friendly.

By  Avie Harris & Estella Hepburn-Van Zyl

Frida's Makeover

 

This is my colouring that I did of Frida Kahlo. I used a tool called Art Colouring book where you can find famous paintings and re-colour them any way you want. I think that for my colouring I got random colours and saw if they worked or not. I am not the proudest of this one, I think that if I had more time I could have really made it look the way I wanted it to look. I found it hard to find colours that were ok for this painting but I found it easy to pick out her hair colour. I really liked this task, it was fun and different and I hope to do something like this again sometime. 

King Kitty

Behold the new ruler of northern Denmark, King Kitty. With power so big, he can rule them all if he chooses, destroying everything that is in his way to victory. King Kitty does not give any mercy and many have begged at the foot of his fluffy paws and been thrown into a dungeon. Who's side shall you support in the years to come, a side of utter power and destruction, or the side you've known your whole life. The choice is yours. 

Media and its forms

 

For Manaiakalani yesterday we had to create a poster, video etc etc, to explain the different forms of Media in whatever way you wanted to. I thought that I should list the forms of old and new Media. I really like this activity, it was a very good idea to let us choose what to make our project on. I did find it hard to make my lists the right size so that it didn't go in the pink area. I really like the final result and I look forward to your tips and feedback.

Mr Bean

This is my scratch game. Scratch is a website where you can make your own games, videos or anything else through coding. Coding is basically when you make a script for what you want your game to do. You have to find the right blocks to make it work though. The purpose of my scratch game was to teach people a little bit of  te reo maori. We could do whatever we wanted to do, we could design our own characters, choose our backgrounds and write what we wanted our custom character to say. I found it really fun and easy to code and make the game, but when it came to customizing the backgrounds and music and stuff, it got quite frustrating and time consuming. Although it was a great experience. I think that my next steps for this game is to make a voice for my character, it will give it originality and character. This game overall took me about three days so yeah. I look forward to hearing all your tips and feedback!

My intro video

Using the learning tool WeVideo, my Classmates and I have recently been making intro videos to put at the start of other videos that we make. WeVideo is a website where you can make your own videos however you want, wherever you want. If you have ever seen any particular youtuber you will notice that at the start of every video they make there is the same little clip they play. Even though my intro is very random, I really like how it turned out although it was very hard to think of the thing I would do in it. Do you think it is random or fine? Sadly, this video took me so long to make even though it was only supposed to be five seconds. I look forward to seeing all your tips and feedback!

Roland fish rises up sharp task

This is our Wevideo about one of our Sharp Reading tasks that we had to do. It was about a boy called Roland who everyone was mean to and on da when the school bully tried to be mean to him again he had enough and showed the bully who was the boss. It was fun when we made the video because I got to do it with Romie. I didn't find anything hard really.

My piskel character

This is my Piskel character that I made. We were learning to make our own characters for our own scratch videos. We haven't made the actual video yet though but I really liked making it as it was fun but a little frustrating and challenging. I found it easy to think of what character to make, a unicorn, I did find it quite hard though because I didn't actually get it to look right the first time I tried many attempts to make it look right. My character in this gif is trying to do its job every night, bring out the stars. I really liked doing this. It was a fun experience.

Holding your chromebook properly wevideo

Today we got to make another wevideo encouraging little kids to hold their devices properly. I was very fun to make and I had a lot of fun doing it since I got to do it with my friends. I think next time we could speak a little louder into the screen. But it was overall a very fun experience and I can't wait to do another one.

My Hatched book summary. WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS, DO NOT READ BEFORE READING THE BOOK

                                                                           HATCHET

                                                                      By Gary Paulsen

This book was about a boy called Brian who was a survivor of a plane crash in northern Canada. He was going there to see his dad, since his mother had wanted a divorce. He had to survive and build things with only the help of a hatchet that his mother had given him before the crash, and his wits. Several serious and dramatic events occurred which included: getting stabbed by a porcupine, eating so many berries that he made himself sick, and trying to kill himself.

The pilot driving the plane had a heart attack and died while the plane was still flying to Canada. So brian had no one to talk to. He caught birds, fish, stole turtle or crocodile eggs and ate lots of raspberries. A tornado came to his "camp" and took away everything he had built, like his bow, arrows, shelter, food and his spear. Everything but, you guessed it, his hatchet.

He tried to get the survival pack in the plane because the plane's tail was sticking out of the lake. This ended up with his hatchet falling in the water and Brian trying several times to dive down and get it from the bottom of the lake. Luckily he succeeded eventually.

At the end, when he retrieved the survival pack from the plane, he had everything that you would need to survive. It contained lots of food, a knife, fishing gear, a medical pack, and an emergency transmitter. He left the emergency radar on without knowing but that was fortunate for him because a pilot saw it and rescued him. By the end he realized how lucky he was to be alive and to have a home and food whenever he wanted it. It was an absolutely fantastic book. 

My Covid-19 WeVideo

This is my covid-19 Wevideo about some of the things that happen during lockdown. I found it very fun to do because I overall like doing WeVideos and I got to do it with my mum and sister. I found it quite challenging when embedding it on my blog but I eventually figured it out. I overall loved doing this project but next time I think I will try and make it so that when one of me finishes talking she does not just disappear. I hope you enjoy it because it took me four days to make. 😀

My persuasive essay

 The lockdown has helped NZ

The lockdown has done many different things. I do believe that the lockdown really has helped New Zealanders on their journey to cope in these times. It has brought New Zealanders together, it has proved that working together and listening to our Prime Minister really makes and impact on the spread and we start to realize what is really important in life.

Firstly, it has proved that working together and listening to an amazing prime minister that we can make a huge difference to the spread of the virus. There have only been 14 real cases that are caused or linked to covid-19. This has not really happened in other countries. By listening and doing what is right we have protected more vulnerable groups like my brother, my Nana and my Grandad. Every other country in the world has also experienced the virus but NZ only has a tiny amount of deaths. So by listening and doing what is right we have decreased the number of deaths throughout the country.

Secondly, it has brought New Zealanders together in a variety of many ways. Including being kinder to each other, listening, comforting each other and most of all since we are all looking out and supporting one another, we have been brought together in ways that were not possible before the virus. We have been all working together and that has welcomed us into the fact that we are all in the same boat and we are feeling all the same things in this rough time. We have been inspired to get healthier, do more cooking, baking , gardening, etc etc, we have also started to find hobbies in things we would have never tried before. We have learned new things and have been able to give things a try because of all the time we have been given. So we really have been impossible if it were not for the spread.

Lastly, it makes everyone realize what is really important in life. We start to recognize the things we actually need and not some cool jug you found at the home depot that you will never really use. It also helps us appreciate what we have actually got when it is taken away from us. We have found love in simple items that help us a little everyday even when we don't notice them. We have become resigned to get to know what it feels like to lose someone which is extremely sad. We have really begun to really notice what we need.

So in conclusion, I do believe that

the lockdown really has helped New Zealanders on their journey to cope in these times. Even though the lockdown has been a challenging and uncertain time for all New Zealanders it has proven to lower the number of deaths throughout the country. Since we have paid attention to our prime minister we have prevented the virus from spreading rapidly.So remember New Zealand, be kind, stay safe and unite against Covid-19.

Anzac backround art

This is my ANZAC background art. I found it very fun to do. It was challenging to do the background on a new tool but I managed it. I think next time I should try to get the sunset lines more even. I am very happy of how it turned out.

My war Animation

This is my war animation about my Grandad. We had to make any war story we wanted to but it has to be about war. We could chooses to make it about someone in our family or from a war book. I found it fun and easy to make. Though it was challenging to polyline all of the tanks and soldiers and planes. You can switch from slide to slide if it is going to fast. I hope you like it.

All about me

This is my cybersmart all about me. We made it as the first blog post this year. I found it quite hard to polyline my face and such but it was quite fun also. We did this activity called cybersmart missions that Mr Forrie, our cybersmart teacher, had set up for us. I found this challenge pretty fun to do and challenging me also because I was a little rusty on remembering how to post it on here but I managed to get there. I think next time I will try harder with my polyline face to try and make it look more realistic.