My Attempt To Be Vincent Van Gogh

 Today for Cybersmart, we were having a bit of a taster for the summer learning journey. The summer learning journey is basically a programme over the summer for blogging where they give you a cool task each day and you blog about it. Today we got to pick a picture on https://artsandculture.google.com/experiment/art-coloring-book/1QGsh6vSfAQBgQ?hl=en , I picked Roses by Vincent van Gogh. We then changed up the colours to make the image our own. I decided to make my roses yellow instead of the pale whitish colour because it's known as a happy colour, and has been scientifically proven to make people happier by looking at it. Although I would have preferred a slightly more washed-out and less intense yellow. 

Here is my work...

Roses by Vincent van Gogh

Roses by Liana

Today for Cybersmart we were using Lunapic to create pop art. First we took a picture of ourselves, making sure to have a pretty blank background so that Lunapic wouldn't put too much detail behind us, taking away from us in the foreground. Next we uploaded them to Lunapic and added filters. I think the first 2 are Sadness (which I can only explain as a filter that makes you look like a fish) and Flames (which makes me look like Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games), but I'm not sure what the bottom 2 are. Finally, using google drawings we put them into a 2x2 array and voila!

Here is my work 

After we finished this we used a website called Artnet. Here is my other work... 

Creating A Jingle Using WeVideo

This week for cybersmart Room 4 were creating jingles or a sort of short video promoting a brand or something. First we came up with brand ideas, I came up with Gumboot Industries which was a sort of inside joke between some of my friends a while ago. Next, using google drawings, we created text boxes with writing in it to show off our company. After downloading them as PNGs we imported them to we video and started animating them to move in as when wanted them to appear. I'm pretty happy with my finished product, but there is still room for improvement.
Here is my work...

Seven Wonders Of The World

Recently my reading group 'The Four Chickens' have done an inquiry on the seven wonders of the modern world. We have all contributed into this slide deck of information. I did the work on the Colosseum and Petra. And yes, we are aware that the Hanging Gardens Of Babylon is a wonder of the ancient world, but one of us Four Chickens put a lot of time and effort into it, so we kept it.  I quite enjoyed learning about all of these extraordinary aspects of the world as we know it.
Here is our work on the seven wonders of the modern world...

 

If I Were A Volcano

Lately Room 4's focus has been on mountains and volcano's because our camp is going to be in the central plateau. Mrs Bennett set us the task doing a piece of writing based on a poem called 'If I Were A Storm' by Katie Bloom, but because of our focus, we changed it to 'If I Were A Volcano'. We partially followed the template, using stuff like personification and lots of description. But we were also given free rein to use our poetic license so we could create something that we liked.
Here is my finished product...

If I Were A Volcano

If I were a volcano,

I would glower down upon the buildings, cities, and seas that stretch to the horizon.

I would thunder my portent out for all the lands to hear.

I would spit and splutter my molten saliva onto the shrieking citizens.

I would ravage the earth that trembles at my feet.

I would relish the fiery balls I let fly into the marble pillars below.

I would wreak havoc and destroy as much as I could, before my fury dissipates,

And I fall into my guilty slumber.

I would let the lava cascade down my rocky figure and demolish everything that lies in my path.

Preserving the terror in layers of ash for centuries to come.

Then I would become dormant, resting in the once halcyon plains of Pompeii. 

 

-Liana

Making Music Using Soundtrap

Lately for cybersmart we have been working on making our own music. This time we used Soundtrap. But first we chose an image to try and make our music match e.g if it was a cheetah it would be fast music, if it was a book it might be calming music. I chose a picture of a playful puppy. My aim was to make the music kind of fun and playful at the start then at the end to kind of slow it down a bit to replicate the puppy starting to get tired. That was my aim at least. It was very hard for a start to get my head around soundtrap because there was just so much going on everywhere and I had no idea where to start. So in the end I basically used at least 75% of my time trying desperately to figure out how to use the website. I've discovered that it's not very likely I'll get a job in the music industry because I'm not particularly good at it. I don't think I ended up fully achieving my goal. But after downloading it and adding it to my slide with the photo on it I was happy enough with my results. To play and stop my music click on the speaker symbol on the slides and click the pause/play button.

Here is my music...

The Great Zoo Debate/Zoo Art

This Term Room 4 have been focusing o persuasive writing. We've done a couple of pieces on things like uniforms and homework etc. But last week we had a proper focus on the zoos, doing research to back up our thoughts and learn about the positives and negatives. Once we had read several articles, we set to work on our actual writing. I decided to disagree with zoos being a thing. I actually am on the fence, because there is compelling evidence for and against zoos. But I decided that I would try to write a piece against it. We also did a piece of zoo art and  I decided to do a red panda. There is a photo of it below my writing. But anyway, here is my writing.

The Great Zoo Debate

Zoos are cruel and should be banned. This is a statement I strongly agree with. Here are some reasons why.

Reason 1
The enclosures are far too small for the animals. No matter how much zoos evolve to allow for more space, they will never be big enough, especially for large animals. We have all just come out of quarantine. A time when we were confined to our homes alone. Imaging that for your entire life! Many animals are constantly roaming over vast areas. A zoo can simply not cater for the required land.

Reason 2
Diet. It is far too costly for a zoo to fully mimic an animal's regular diet in the wild. But not only is it the food they eat, but also how they get it. Big animals aren’t able to hunt, therefore not getting normal exercise or expressing their natural instincts. They are able to do all this in the wild. Yet another thing the zoo can't accommodate.

Reason 3
Animals can get bored or lonely. Or can easily get stressed. For example, the expected lifespan of an elephant halves in captivity. This is because they are very social, and often have only 1 or 2 others in their enclosures, leading them to basically die of loneliness. The only word I can think of to explain this, is sick. We are basically killing them, for entertainment.

In conclusion they have the right to be free. They shouldn’t have to deal with confining enclosures, a diet that doesn’t fully suit them, or the general stress of zoo life. It is simply inhumane, and that is why I am obstinate that zoos have to be banned.

Red Panda

Terrific Track-Pants And Blazing Beanies

This Term, us year 8's are in sewing tech. We've been making track-pants, and today Sophia and I finished ours. To start off we sewed around the patterns, leaving a gap for putting in our pockets. After a couple of weeks and a lot of hard work, we finished off by threading the elastic through the waist band and at the ankles. I've learnt how to use a sewing machine better through the whole experience, as well as hand sewing, and am pretty happy with how it's come along. Once we completed those we went on to start making fluro beanies for our coming ski camp. We had to use really bright colours so we won't lose each other on the mount. So far it's been pretty simple because we're just cutting out the fabrics needed (a combination of fluro green, orange and some pink so bright it kind of hurts your eyes to look at). But I've always enjoyed sewing tech because it's so chill, instead of the quite quick paced cooking and woodwork. 

Make Your Own Music!

Today with Mrs Torrie we learnt how to make our own music. We used three apps: Incredibox, Digital Rythm Maker and Turn Art Into Music. For my finished result below I used incredibox.
It was really fun playing around with all the different settings and creating our own pieces of music which were all different to each others.
I think this tool could be really helpful for future animations.
I would definitely recommend giving this a go.

To listen to my music, click Here

Writing- List Of 10

Today during writing with Mrs Allan we were given a photo of people cheering.

We then had to make a list of 10 places where that could be. I had things like at a rugby match, school cross-country etc. But in the end I decided that my writing would be based around a crowd welcoming soldiers back from war. We could either make a list of phrases about what they people would be doing and saying or could make a piece of writing. I ended up choosing the writing.

Here it is... 

A deafening roar reverberates through the large crowd. Beaming faces, thank and congratulate leering ones. Grimy men traipse down the street, looking utterly defeated. Some give weak smiles in response to the shouts, others stare fixedly at their mud caked boots. Various wounds and illnesses reach most men, making them stagger and splutter. Grey clouds roll over the surrounding mountain ranges. The sea thunders against the cliffs. Gradually the vessel empties. But it still haunts the crestfallen soldiers. Perilous seas and the conditions of war aren’t readily forgotten. Bitter air slices into numb cheeks like knives. The last slouching soldiers make their way off the boat, bundled in their thick, stained coats. A boy pushes through the hundreds of people and extends his arm to the last soldier. Bloodstained bandages wrap his head and he hobbles along, shrapnel dug too deeply into his leg to be removed safely. 

“Welcome back Sir,” he breathes softly, shaking the soldiers rough hands vigorously. The corners of the soldiers' worn mouth tug feebly.

“I don’t believe I’ll ever be welcome after what I’ve seen” he replies sorrowfully. 

He limps along the winding street and vanishes. But the boy was sure he saw a thick tear winding its way down his bristly cheeks before he was swallowed by the darkness.

 -Liana

Fungi Slow Writing

To incorporate our study on fungi, lately we did some slow writing on fungi. We chose one photo that had been taken from around the school of our abundance of fungi. Then using our creative juices we constructed a piece of writing. There was a structure we all followed to help enrichen our writing using  thing like similes, metaphors, questions etc.
Here is my writing...

The Science Of Yeast

A recent focus for Room 4 has been fungi. A form of fungi is yeast. So on Wednesday we did a science experiment on which temperature of water works best to activate yeast. We discovered that around 39 degrees Celsius is optimal. So today with Mrs Torrie we learnt how to make GIF's to show our learning on how yeast is activated. Using slides we made a short presentation based on our experiment. We then used TallTweets to turn it into a GIF.
Here is my work...

Genius Hour- Roman Mythology

Over the past 2 weeks for Genius Hour I have been focusing on Roman mythology to follow up my study on Greek mythology. I have found this very fascinating. I have learnt the 12 Olympians (the 12 main gods) names, powers and how they all link in as a family. When I did Greek mythology I learnt a lot more as it turned into a form of passion project for me. For example I learnt about many of the minor gods and some of the monsters. But I still find Roman mythology very interesting.
Here is the poster I created on the 12 Olympians...

Venn Diagram- Changing Times

Lately for Room 4's focus on  'the changing times' we made venn diagrams based on the way we are growing up contrasting to how our parents or grandparents grew up. For example I've grown up on a farm and my mother grew up in the city. I think this was a very effective way of showing the differences and similarities between the starts of our lives.
Here is my venn diagram comparing some aspects of my life to my mothers...

My Animation- Car Crash In Cartoonsville

Here is my animation that I finished today.
I really enjoyed coming up with the idea for the animation and creating it,
although it took quite a bit of patience with all the slides.

Skipping

As a focus for this term for P.E  with Mrs Allan, we are doing skipping. We are all at completely different levels, with some just learning how to skip, and others trying to attempt double dutch (and failing dismally so far). I feel I'm doing ok with it, and today have learnt how to time it so I can jump in and out while the rope is going instead of having to stop the rope. This also ties into our decade study, as when quite a few of our parents were young, they would spend their lunch times skipping. Where as these days we do a variety of things during our lunchtimes, I for example play sport. Do you ever skip? I look forwards to progressing this term and by the end will hopefully be starting to double dutch and if not will be a confident skipper.

My Animation: The Crash Of Cartoonsville

Today with Mrs Torrie we made animations. We had free rein to make it about whatever we wanted. I made mine about a car crash, bombing aeroplane and a crazy alligator. Right now it is a work in progress and I will be updating it to include my animation soon.
Have a great day,
...
-Liana

My Favourite Bubble Moments

Today to reflect on our recent lockdown, we did a quick activity on google drawings for 'Our Favourite Bubble Moments'. We all tried to make them effective, using boarders, nice fonts, backgrounds etc.  I enjoyed remembering all the way back to the start of lockdown and to some of my favourite moments.
Here is my work...

 

Usain Bolt

Today for writing Mrs Allan we were focusing on Usain Bolt or Yohan Blake. We could write either an interview, commentate over a video of them running in the Olympics, a newspaper article about them, or a creative writing piece. I chose to write a creative writing piece because obviously I'm boring. Here is my writing...

I take a deep breath. The crowd is a blur. A deafening roar erupts around me. Cameras blink in bright flashes. A shake out my arms and legs. All my training leading to this one race, which will last for less than 20 seconds. I picture my family and friends at home. This is for them. The night air is still warm and humid. The camera man comes over and takes a close up of my face. Everyone shouts unheard encouragement. I wave a couple of times to thank the people. My head is in the game.

Crouching I position my hands behind the line and await the start. “Set” the voice echoes around the stadium. Instant silence.  I concentrate on my arching back. “CRACK” the starting blocks smack together. Quick as a strike of lightning I launch myself forwards. Legs like a windmill. I breath in rattling breaths as I bolt along the track. I extend my legs and raise my head. Arms pumping madly. Blake stretches ahead of me and I grit my teeth as I push myself. I no longer feel my legs, I only see the line. I gain on Blake and am just in front of him. The line nears and I struggle to maintain my pace. But I do. I pass the line and sprint a couple more metres before slowing. I had won. I become aware of the racket of the crowd. A smile stretches across my face as I sit, breathing hard. “Gold Medal To Usain Bolt!!”

-Liana

What Is In My Room-Writing Poem

Today Mrs Bennett gave us some ideas for what to write about. I chose the 'What's In My Room' idea, and because I seem to be addicted to writing in poems these days, I of course wrote in a poem. And because poems sound much better when rhyming in my opinion, I chose to make the challenge harder for myself (because it's me and why not) and rhyme.
So here is my poem...

What Is In My Room

If you were to go into my room for a peek,

Past the door with a very loud ‘CREAK’,

Perhaps half the things you would not understand,

But to me, all the items are very grand.

Step in, and you would see,

Many books that cause me glee,

To pore over with much of my time,

Because in my mind, not reading is a crime.

Go in further and more books than you guessed!

Because over books, I am obsessed,

Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Percy Jackson and Divergent,

Those are some in many to give you a hint.

Pictures of animals, pets and friends,

A desk littered with pencils and pens,

Drawings and sketches from some of the stories,

Of different genres and odd categories.

A comfy bed, to give a good sleep,

And a big window to watch my beautiful sheep, 

A drawer crowded with arts and crafts,

And birthday cards filled with many laughs.

A nice, white, functional ceiling,

Because having rain on your head isn’t appealing,

Although in winter there are sometimes rats,

Who wont stop scratching, the little brats.

There is not need to critique,

My obsession with the ancient Greek,

As shown all around my room,

Because that information I happily consume.

Oh and remember to never overlook,

My piles and piles of beautiful books,

I know I’ve already touched on this subject,

But books in my eyes are the definition of perfect.

You see this is what makes us all unique,

Maybe you wouldn’t like my door that creaks,

Or in winter, the ceiling rats that squeak.

Perhaps you’d even think me a freak,

My books a bit weird, so to speak,

Or find my belongings mild and bleak,

But this is what you’d find wrapped in all it’s mystique,

This is what you’d find if you gave my room a peek.

Pet Photos

For about the last month my mum gave a challenge to keep me busy. This was to photograph my pets and attempt to capture their personality in these photos.
Here are my photos...

These are the ones I got of Gus, he was quite hard to photograph because he just wouldn't stay still and was too busy barking at possum in a tree. So these are just passing photos, I was mainly focusing on photographing my sheep.

This is my lamb Addison (but usually just Addie), I think she is just the chillest lamb I have ever had. She never runs when Gus tries to chase her unlike my other sheep and I think the first photo captures just how she was relaxing quite well. She loves big bear hugs and has a particular spot on her back that she loves being scratched on.

This is my lamb Teddy. He is my cheeky little chap and is ALWAYS hungry. He still nibbles on my fingers even though he's about 7-8 months old. He's also the only lamb that can scare Gus because he sometimes starts chasing him, trying to nibble on his tail and ears, which concerns Gus quite a bit. Teddy is also the son of my sheep Dave who I call my 'model lamb' because as a lamb you just couldn't do any wrong when photographing him. I will put a photo of him below Teddy's as a comparison.

This is my sheep Lulu, she won champion lamb in 2017, and is still the biggest sweetheart. It's quite funny because she acts as the mother figure to all my little orphan lambs, and they follow her everywhere. Unfortunately in the first 2 photos one of her eyes are squinting because she had some problems with one eye, so I came back to take photos a bit later once it had healed up. But even with a healed eye she is a bit camera shy I have found.

This is one of Lulu's daughters Amelia, whose side profile, which I didn't get a photo of, is a carbon copy of her mums. Amelia is quite a brave little girl and was named after Amelia Earhart. She was named after her because when she was about 30 minutes old she went adventuring and somehow got through a fence and fell down a bank onto the side of the road. Luckily we found her because Lulu was quite distressed and was baaing her lungs out trying to find her while looking after Amelia's little sister Gracie. So she was attempting the first female solo flight across the road. She then later got stuck in a hay feeder when it flipped over.  

This is Lulu's other daughter and Amelia's twin, Gracie. Gracie is the sassy lamb and started doing that thing that sheep do when they stomp their foot as a challenge to me when she was only 2 days old. Nowadays she even challenges the motorbike and dads working dogs. Despite this she is a sweet girl and looks VERY much like her mother when she was her age from all aspects, perhaps apart from her ears, as Lulus were very floppy. 

Here is some group shots which I took of them all...

And photographic proof that Teddy chases Gus,

Oh, and also a random lamb that got in with my sheep that I've named Michael.

Photo Competition

These last couple of weeks Mrs Allan gave us a challenge of taking Autumn related photos. This was so popular that it then morphed into a photo competition, using any photos. I entered using this photo...

It was quite funny that I ended up using this one, because I'd been taking quite calculated photos up till then, making sure the camera was on the right setting,  holding it very steady, and looking through the lens to make sure that it lined up properly. With this one I legitimately stuck my hand into blackberry bush, tried not to get caught on too many thorns, snapped a couple of very uncalculated shots, and then stifled a scream when I lost balance and fell into the blackberry bush, right into a very thorny spot. It took me about 30 quite painful seconds to get untangled, but don't worry, eventually I got all the thorns out with only a some bleeding. All that for this one photo. And yes I would say that it was worth it. Plus I got some pretty cool scratches up my arms, legs and back.

My classmate Violet won the competition with a gorgeous picture of her dog and cat.
To see all the amazing entries then Click Here.

Random Word- Writing

For writing today Mrs Allan shared us a challenge to do a 'random words' piece of writing. I highly recommend this fun and quick writing challenge. We had to choose a book, pick a number between 1 and the number of pages were in the book, and turn to that page. Then pick a number for the line to go to. And finally pick a number for which word in that line to choose. I chose one of the books I'm currently reading- Little Women by L.M Alcott, page 119, line 10, word 12, and got ornament. We also had to pick 2 or more language features from the the following list to include...

I am still apparently on the whole 'slightly somber' writing theme at the moment so please excuse the fact that it's a bit dark. I blame the fact that all my favourite characters are dying in the books I'm reading. It's also find that for me, the best writing is ones using raw emotions as it makes it realistic to a certain extent.  So here is my writing...

Random Words Writing

What is left of the living room makes my nose tingle from the mixture of ash and lingering dust. The right side of the room is a smouldering mess. Instinctively I stride to the fireplace to search for clues. Singed ornamental books lie on the shelf, forgotten photographs capture families which have long since been broken by time and tragedies. My full eyes spill tears like falling rain as the memories flood back to me. I will find her, if it's the last thing I do.

Kowhaiwhai Patterns

Today our teacher Mrs Allan challenged us to make kowhaiwhai patterns as shown below

A kowhaiwhai pattern is basically a simple Maori design repeated using translation, rotation or reflection, using the colours red, black and white. The koru is typically white. Here are my attempts at a more simple design...

I did have a better design but because I am so good at this, I forgot to put the red in, so it had to be redone. I would also like to share a bit of humour with you. You see because my computer's language is set to English, it doesn't register Maori properly. So when I wrote 'kowhaiwhai', it's for some reason wanting to change it to 'wheelchair'. Which I found quite funny for some reason.

Tech From Home-Invention Test

Yesterday Mrs Bennett gave us the task of an invention test which is often seen in Master Chef. You get given ingredients to cook with and have to make a dish out of it. Of course because none of us are professionals we were given 4 ingredients and had to pick two of them to include in the baking. These four ingredients were...

• Eggs
• Fruit
• Cheese
• Chocolate

I figured that most people would use the chocolate, so I set out to make something savoury using the cheese and eggs. But as I was going through my mothers recipe book in the savoury section, there was a misplaced recipe for swirly biscuits, which just so happened to use eggs and chocolate. Call it what you want, I call it fate. So of course my resolution to make something healthier got thrown out the window and died. Swirly biscuits have long been a favourite in my family, and my cousin is practically in love with them. But without a further a do here is the recipe I used and a picture of my creation...

Swirly Biscuits

Ingredients:

125g butter, softened

2/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 1/2 cups flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

30g melted dark chocolate

1/2 tablespoon cocoa, sifted

Makes 20 biscuits

Method:

• Line 2 oven trays with baking paper.
• Cream the butter and sugar with an electric beater until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the egg and beat well.
• Fold in the vanilla essence. Sift in the flour and baking powder and mix until a soft dough forms (add a little more flour if necessary).
• Divide the dough into 2 bowls. Add the melted chocolate and cocoa to one batch and mix well.
• Place the vanilla dough between 2 sheets of baking paper. Roll out to a rectangle about 20x22cm
• Roll out the chocolate dough between 2 sheets of baking paper until it's exactly the same size and shape as the vanilla dough.
• Lift the top layer of baking paper off both dough's and place the vanilla directly on top of the chocolate. Remove the top baking paper and, using the bottom piece, roll up the dough as firmly as possible into a log shape. Place in the freezer for an hour.
•   When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 180℃. Slice the dough into 1cm rounds and place them onto the prepared oven trays. Bake for about 15 minutes until firm. Leave to cool for 2-3 minutes before transferring onto a cooling rack.

Here is a photo of my biscuits...

The Quest Drawing

About a week ago I wrote a story called 'The Quest' which I am now basing a novel off. Mrs Williams challenged me to draw a scene from that writing, so I did. I am the first to admit that it's a definitely not the best of artworks. In my defence the camera doesn't really pick up on the detail I put into it but, oh well. I realise that it is a bit bare but I tried putting trees, sheep and detail onto the hill and it just didn't really turn out that well, so I settled for how it was naturally.  Also imagine it's lovely and colourful because I am too scared of putting colour into my work because it will end up looking like a 2 year olds if I do. Anyway, here is my drawing...

Untitled Novel Writing-Introduction

So today I wrote the introduction to a novel that I am making. It is based around the writing I did a little while ago I named 'The Quest'. So I suppose here is a teaser of sorts for the novel I will be writing. If you have any ideas for titles or plots I would be happy to hear them, because I have a general idea but am partially in the dark as to where to go with this. If you would like to read 'The Quest' first here is the link right here. Without a further a do, here is my introduction...


I wake to the glistening rays of sunlight making my curtains luminescent as they struggle to withhold the intense light. Groggily I sit up, mornings aren’t my thing. My hair, wild and knotted, straightens itself as if an invisible hair brush just swept through it. I still don’t understand how it does it. I wipe the sleep out of my eyes, as I stumble my way through to the pristine kitchen. Car horns honk noisily many floors below. A still warm plate of waffles and blueberries waits for me on the long dining table. Our butler always knows how to cheer me up on a Monday.

As I contentedly munch on my breakfast, I gaze down upon the city.  Miniature figures stride purposefully on the sidewalk below. Others commute to work in the long traffic jams. I wonder what each of their stories are. After all everyone has stories. Big or small. Isn’t it interesting how you might be a chapter in someone else's and yet they might be a mere sentence in yours? I find it that way at least. Sometimes I think that I would trade everything to just have someone else’s story, no matter how big. Because my story isn’t quite so simple or straightforward. I suppose it never could be in the life of a mind reader.

ANZAC Biscuits

This week for tech Mrs Bennett sent us through a recipe for Anzac biscuits.
Here is the recipe...


Anzac biscuits

Ingredients
1 cup flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup coconut

125 grams butter
2 Tbsp golden syrup
1 Tbsp hot water
½ tsp baking soda

Method
Preheat oven to 160 degrees fan bake.
Grease and line a baking tray.
In a large bowl, sift flour, then add oats, b.sugar, and coconut.  Stir to combine.

In a small pot, melt butter over a medium heat.  Add golden syrup and water and stir well to combine.  Once heated, remove from the heat and add baking soda.  Mixture will froth.
Add wet ingredients to the dry and stir well with a wooden spoon to combine.
 Roll spoonfuls of the mixture into golf ball sized balls. Spread evenly on the tray and flatten with a fork.
Bake for approximately 15 minutes or until golden brown.

It's really quick and simple recipe which has an mouthwatering result!!

Here are some pictures of my result...

How To Make A DIY Rain Gauge In 5 Easy Steps

Today for lock down Mrs Bennett set us a challenge to make a DIY Rain Gauge and record how much water is falling averagely at your place each day, for a week. So I decided to do a 'how to' writing to show you how to make one. Of course these kinds of rain gauges aren't particularly accurate because the bottles that you use differ in size and width. But I figured I'd try it anyway.

     What you'll need

• a  plastic bottle (not including cap)
• craft knife (or scissors if you don't have one)
• sellotape 
• something to fix it in place (I used duct tape)
• and some vivids/pens to decorate (optional)

1. Remove the label from your bottle, and draw a line around your bottle about 3 to 5 cm from the top, as a vague line of where to cut. 

 
        2.  Cut around the line using your craft knife.

          3. Next flip the top bit upside down and using the sellotape, stick it to the top of the bottle,                  creating a funnel of sorts.

           4. Then  you can decorate your funnel to your hearts content using vivids or pens.

            5.  Finally using your duct tape (or whatever your using to fix it into it's place) stick it to a                   fence post or something similar outside, where you'll catch some rain.

And There You Have It!!

Your Very Own Rain Gauge In Only 5 Simple Steps!

And Of Course I Had Some Help On This Project With My Faithful Little Helper Gus

Natural Art Challenge

These last couple of days, Mrs Bennett challenged us to make a work of art out of natural resources such as leaves, sticks, rocks, moss, pinecones, bark, etc. A good sense of inspiration for us was a professional called Andy Goldsworthy, although I don't think any of us could make something as good as his art. Here is an example of one of his pieces...

Isn't that amazing?!

Now of course I couldn't make anything that even compares with that art. But after a couple of false starts, and quite a bit of foraging around the farm I came up with this...

P.S sorry the lighting in the images aren't of very good quality, it got dark pretty quickly at our place and was mainly destroyed by the wind over night.

Have you ever done natural art before?

If you want to see some of my classmates masterpieces you can go to the Room 4 Class Blog.

The Quest- Writing

For today's writing my insane mind seems to have taken a break from the rhyming poems and instead moved onto a form of writing which I would describe as slightly dark. It is sort of like a passage of writing that you would possibly expect to find around halfway through a  novel. Perhaps this sprouted from the fact I'm not having to do spelling sentences anymore (which in my case always seem to grow into more paragraphs or mini stories), which I always kind of fit into a wider scenario, so it kind of sounds like it could have come out of a novel. Do you think that I should create a novel sort of thing around this piece of writing?
Here is my dark and slightly depressing writing...

The Quest

I sit. Knees huddled up to my chest. my steady heartbeat a mournful song. Hot, thick tears spilling down my smooth cheeks. Tall grass tickling against my hunched back. The mountainside, a  good vantage point to spy on the entire valley. Sun sending out soft colours of orange and pink as it sets behind the opposite hill of the gully. A necklace clenched tightly in my hands. My hair hiding my face as I struggle to contain a wave of sobs. I know that it's dangerous to stay here.

A small sensible voice in my head tells me I must continue on my quest, that I must retrieve the stone of quartz. But I don't care. I don't care anymore. The world could crumble apart and I wouldn't try to stop it. For now that my best friend is gone, nothing matters. But it is the thought of her face when she told us we must get to the stone first that jolts me back to reality. After all, if perhaps she is not dead, she'll be near the quartz, in desperate need of help.

Where The Wind Goes Poem

Ok, so of late I seem to enjoy making rhyming poems. Perhaps it is because I am reading Little Women, which uses older fashioned ways of speaking, of which I think of as quite poetic, and I am slightly absorbing the old way of speaking. So in writing maybe my brain is trying to combine the older more flowery poetic way of speaking with more modern words. And for some reason when mixing that in the blender of craziness that is my brain, it seems to result in a rhyming poem (don't read to much into it, it doesn't make sense to me either). 

So I suppose here is the result of the crazy blender, in a poem...

Where The Wind Goes

When the wind is not in the clouds,

And comes down into the human crowds.

I wonder to myself "oh where does it go?"

The answer is here, there, and all over the show.

It roars in the chasms and in the rifts,

And whips into the caves on the cliffs.

It whispers gently by the seaside,

And follows you with every stride.

It tickles you in the flowery meadows,

And plays with your hair as it snows.

It whistles along the shallow creeks,

And lives in the mountains where it shrieks.

It's dense and humid in the Peruvian jungles,

And swift in Antarctica where heat it bungles.

"But what would we do without wind?" I ponder

What would we do if it did not wander?

If it would prefer to stay up in the clouds,

Away from the many human crowds.

My Dream Superpower

While I've been stuck at home, doing work for the last week of my term, I decided to write a poem for my writing, about my dream superpower. It isn't exactly what you'd expect, for it's not exactly mainstream. But perhaps that is why it is a logical one, of which the only limits are your imagination.
What would your dream superpower be?
Stay safe everyone.

Here is my poem...

My Dream Superpower

If  people could have any superpower they dream,

from your imagination, or fitting a theme,

many upon many would choose to fly,

go higher than the clouds, up in the sky.

Others would pick invisibility,

they could do good, or bad, with great agility.

Perhaps some would select knowledge,

to be smarter than Athena, who created the olive.

Furthermore there is witchery,

to win almost any battle, with great victory.

Or maybe to see ahead in time,

to stop, or avoid, any crime.

Possibly the power to read the mind,

to manipulate, or leave, betrayers behind.

You could choose to run with great speed,

to enter the Olympics and succeed.

However I would not choose any of these powers,

nor to be super strong, or control the hours.

I would pick the talent to change probability,

with which anything is in your capability.

Zero percent chance or breathing underwater?

Well with this power, those numbers I would slaughter.

I could change it to one hundred percent,

I would dive under, and to my health there'd be no dent.

With this ability I could do ANYTHING!

Converse with animals, or become the king.

Why only one power would you steal?

If you could simply get them ALL in a package deal!

My Life Time Of Blog Posts

Today for cyber smart we made a graph to show the number of all our blog posts from 2019-2020.
The first graph shown is the chart that I created to show the dates and numbers so it's more specific information. The second graph is the class one, which is comparing my posts to the classes blog posts over 2019 and 2020. The sum of my blog posts is 31. We used google sheets to add the data and then used that data to make a graph.

As you can see Hayley has made the most blog posts by a LONG way. She has done 121 posts from the start of last year to now. Therefore she has made 90 more blog posts than me. WOW!!
Mrs Bennett, my teacher, has done 1 more blog post than me with a total of 32.
My cousin Isabel has done 43 posts, 12 more than me.
My other cousin Blake has done 18 posts, 13 more than me.
Sophia has done 26 which is 5 less than me.
Next time I think I would find it interesting to make a graph about peoples eye colour at my school.

Here are the graphs...

My Digital Pepeha

Today Room 4 used tour builder to show parts of our pepeha (we couldn't show un-cyber smart parts of it, for example where we live). We then used screencastify to make a video so we can share it on our blogs! In my digital pepeha I included my maunga, awa, iwi, and kura.
Here is my pepeha...

Making Ice Cream!

Room 4 have tech every Wednesday, we have 3 different techs: woodwork, sewing and cooking. This term the year 8's are in cooking tech and we got to make ice cream. Just the twist was that we got to design our own flavour as long as it wasn't too crazy and had a fresh element like fruit included in it. Every week we pair with someone different to make our various foods. I made the ice cream with my classmate John. We came up with the flavour of cinnamon peach with a dash of marshmallows. I really enjoyed making this even though our arm starts to ache after a while of whisking. Afterwards we were allowed to make posters using Poster My Wall to showcase our work like it was a new flavour coming to stores. Poster my wall provides various templates which helps to make an awesome poster and I would definitely recommend using this.

Here is the poster that I created to showcase my ice cream...

Sunflower Art

Thanks to the vibrant sunflowers currently growing in our school, Room 4 decided to do some art of them. We first sketched them, then painted them and finally used dye (or just paint in some others cases) to fill in the background. The dye has gone in a bit of a circle from the dye overlapping around my sunflower because I dyed it during two different times, which is a shame. I think that we have all made some amazing art to share. In this photo you cant really see the detail in the centre, but I took care to add different textures and colours.
Here is my art...

Sunflower Poem

Currently at Matawai School there are sunflowers so Room 4 are basing some of our work on it.
We were told to make a poem using personification and metaphors.
Here is my poem

Sunflower, 

innocent sunflower,

dancing as the tendrils of air nuzzle her.

Sunflower,

shy sunflower,

following the celebrity of the sky from a distance.

Sunflower,

bright sunflower,

with golden flames engulfing the centre.

Sunflower, 

regal sunflower,

wearing a crown of petals, the queen of flowers.

Sunflower,

Innocent, shy, bright and regal,

the one who stands tall and searches for
the sunlight even on the darkest of days.

-Liana

Whanau Art

This term Room 4 made whanau art. Each koru  represents a family member. First we outlined the koru's in chalk and coloured it in with pastel. We were only allowed 2 colours for our korus and 1 for our background. Each colour for the korus were supposed to represent something, for example mine is gender and others did closeness. We then put dye over the top of it, so that the chalk lines were dyed black. Are you familiar with this technique?

Here is my art...