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.