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...

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...

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...

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

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...

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...

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...

Lorde

This week Room 4 made a small inquiry into the famous NZ singer-songwriter Lorde as a teaser week for summer learning journey.
Our learning was to use image attribution which can be vaguely seen in small print underneath both the photos I have used.

Here is my work on Lorde...