America🦅🦅

So recently I went to America over the last week of the first term and the first week of the holiday. Good thing I got to have a week off of school but I did end up missing the end of term events. We left to the airport on Sunday and the plane to Auckland took off at 1pm. Once the plane landed we left our bags to get loaded onto the next plane and went to go play mini golf. After we finished there we went back to the airport to have dinner and board onto the plane and fly for the next 12 hours. The food on the plane wasn’t great but it was enough to keep me from starving. Once we landed we went through customs, claimed our bags and went on the bus to the car rental place. After a wait we ended up getting a white Ford expedition. We then drove to Hilton Honors where we would be staying for the next 7 nights. (Photo of hotel)

For the first day we just got used to staying in our new hotel but on the second day we went to a concert. The third day we went to Universal studios and on the fourth day we went on a bus tour. The fifth day we went to the Lakers game and on the sixth day we went to the Dodgers game. On the seventh day we checked out of the hotel and went to our second hotel. The second hotel is in Anaheim so that we are close to Disneyland and we went to the Mighty Ducks game. On the eighth day we dropped off the car because we won’t need it anymore and we went to Disneyland. Same thing with the ninth day but on the tenth day we went to California Park (which is an atatchment to Disneyland) which was way better than Disneyland. On the eleventh day we just had a break from everything because it had been a lot of late nights in the past 10 days. For the last day we went out for breakfast because it was my sisters birthday and we checked out of the hotel before ubering back to the airport and flew back to NZ. (Photo of second hotel)

Beneficial Bootcamp!

In Term 1 2025 we were lucky enough to get to do a boot camp to train for winter sport if you sign up.  I decided to sign up because it sounded like fun and it also helps me warm up for winter sport.

Every session is on Thursday 2:00-2:30 and 2:30-3:00. I’m in the second group and both groups have around 20 people. So far we have done 3 sessions and all of the sessions were quite fun. When you start you warm up by doing stretches whilst running a lap around the bike track. There is a lot of stretches that you do but there is a good reason for that. Once you finish the stretches the first session that I did followed with wall sitting. I ended up wall sitting for 6 mins with 3 other people before they told us to stop. After that we did running. My legs were still shaking so I wasn’t as fast, it was alright though because it was only a 480m run. That was the end of the first session surprisingly, but the next two would be a whole lot better.

The second session started with the same stretches but this time there would be harder challenges. The first objective was to plank. I only ended up planking for 50 seconds because i’m really tall so my spine bends a lot more. I find that unfair but that is just genetics. After that we did long jump. You couldn’t get a run up so I got 1.80m but that was better than most people. 1.80m is almost my height! Lastly we did hanging from a bar, once again i’m really tall so I only got 1:03. Most people got 1:30-2:00 but that is because they are really light, If your tall then the extra height is heavier than if you were short.

For the last session for the term we needed to bring our drink bottles which probably indicates we are going to do a lot of running. It will be the last session for me because I am going to miss out on the last week because i’m going overseas. Anyways we started off the session with the cone game. The teacher says a body part and you have to touch whatever body part they say. When the teacher says cone you have to grab the cone and the first person to grab the cone wins the round. The teach decided to add ‘opposite’ which when they say that you have to run to the other side and grab the other persons cone, so basically you and your partner work together to steal another duos cone. Next thing we did was running starters. You would start by falling over on your tippy toes and when they blow the whistle you run forward with your newfound momentum. We did this a couple times until we practiced run enders. You would approach the line with maximum speed and then use quick feet to slow down on the line using friction. Last thing we did for the session was run around the court like 10 times. You run the long edges and walk the short edges. Simple but hard at the same time. Some people were overtaking others and cutting corners whilst others were lazy weren’t even trying.

I’m excited for the next sessions but for now that’s all we have done. The next session is next term which is about 4 weeks away so until then i’ll be chilling. Before I go I have a question:

Have you ever done a Bootcamp before?

My Tech Classes!

So every week on a monday we have tech. Tech are lessons about life skills like cooking, sowing, robotics and wood works. We get assigned to one of the four and stick with them for the rest of the term. Every term we rotate lessons until we finished them all (the end of the year).

I got put into sewing first, honestly the sewing teacher was a bit bossy but we got to learn how to use a sewing machine and bring home a pillow! Good to learn when you get a hole in one of your clothes and don’t want to buy another one.

Next I went to cooking and learnt the basics around cooking. Every single week we got to bring home our own baking/cooking and it was pretty good!

Next I went to robotics. Suprisingly it was made mostly of legos! The legos were pretty techy though and sometimes it was hard to follow the instructions but after we had built the main frame we got to use computers to code the robot to move and do things!

Last one which is the one i’m in currently is wood works. I think wood works is really fun because you get to use machinery like saws, hammers, sand saws, ban saws etc. First you make a spatula and you smoothen it out and take it home but then you spend the rest of the time making a box. The box can have a false base, divider and lid. You can also put stickers on it and that’s what I have been doing. Unfortunetly I made it too slow and the teacher ran out of materials to have me make a false base, lid or divider.

I think that the most fun one is robotics but you might say otherwise. Tech is a good thing to do and I enjoy it! Things change a bit next year but it’s still tech. Anyways thank you for reading! But before you go I have a question:

What is your favourite tech class?

Andy Warhol Art!

On 27/11/24 we got to do Andy Warhol art! it was very fun and interesting to see and do so without further ado let’s get into it!

Andy Warhol art is art that repeats the exact same pattern but with different colours and backgrounds for each one. To make one you need an original image and colouring tools. You can choose to do this on paper or digital but digital is easier because you can copy and paste your original image. If you want to make one for yourself here’s how:

Step 1: Start with choosing an image, I chose a controller but you could choose something like a donut or a phone. You could trace the image you want or not, it’s up to you.

Step 2: Once you have finished making your image you need to make it again at least 3 more times to have at least 4 images. If you’re doing it digital just copy and paste but if your doing it on paper then try your best to either trace or freestyling.

Step 3: Now colour your images in different colours. Good colours to do is blue, yellow, green, red, purple and orange. don’t forget to colour the backgrounds different to the image!

All done! now you have your own piece of Andy Warhol art! Although before you go I have a question:

Have you ever made a masterpiece of art?

Digital Art Work!

This week we were allowed to make artwork online. Honestly a first for me but it was pretty easy! Here’s how I did it:

Go on a google slide and create a gradient background consisting of three of the same colour, example: cyan, blue and dark blue.

Next you choose a shape and you remove the colour, change the border colour to orange, make it 3-4 pixels wide, you copy and paste across the entire screen and there you go.

Olympic School Day!

On Wednesday 25 of September 2024 we were lucky enough for the school to host an Olympic day. Previous to this the Olympics ended a few weeks ago and inspired by the Olympics, the school wanted to have our own. Every student in the school participated and we rotated around roughly 15 events. Every group of about 20 students would carry a flag of their country (selected by their teacher) absolutely everywhere you went. My group was China and we started off with some inside games like bang and huggy bear. quick description is in bang the teacher would stand in the middle and say someones name, they would duck and either side of them they would shoot each other. The quickest to say bang lives a last standing wins it all. In huggy bear the teacher will say something like: “Huggy bear 4!”, you then have to get into a group of 4 people and any odd numbers are out, once again the last one standing wins. Then after the inside games we moved onto dodgeball, pickleball and spikeball, volleyball, txable tennis and finished off with kio rahi. Quick description of kio rahi is there are two teams as well as a barrel, a circle around that, and another one, and another one. Inside the smallest circle are three defenders, inside the bigger circle are three attackers and everybody else in the biggest circle. There are 8 posts in the biggest circle and the rest of the defenders try to tag the posts, Then they will place the ball in the bigger circle to redeem the points for every post touched. For the attackers they will try to throw the ball to the three attackers in the middle which will then try to get the ball to touch the barrel in the middle. If they succeed then they will get a point. After ten minutes the team with the most points wins. Overall it lasted the entire day and it was really fun I would do it again if I could.

Question: Have you ever played more than five sports in one day?

My Acrostic Poem!

Hello and welcome back to my blog! Today we will be talking about my acrostic poem, Let’s go!

So in week 9 term 2 we made a poem for RE and its based about nature. I chose to do an acrostic poem because its laid out in a nice way. I chose flower as my word because its decently long but not too long. I’m happy with the final result and I think it looks great! Here it is:

Have you ever made an acrostic poem?

The Groynes

Hello and welcome back to my blog! Today we will be talking about the Groynes, Lets go!

On June 18 2024 I went to the Groynes for about 2 hours. I went with 20 other classmates and it was really fun! First we went for a walk around and talked about the native trees, There were about 7 native trees we talked about and they were really interesting. One of the trees smells like mint, One you can eat the leaves and one of them spreads super fast! After the walk we learnt about the bugs in the water and we did an activity where we fish out the bugs and sort them into boxes. After that we ate morning tea and looked at the scenery and then after that we played a game. The game was about the food chain in the water so the water boatman eats the water plant and gets eaten by a bigger bug which gets eaten by ducks. I was the bigger bug and it was fun seeing the water boatman die out because of me. Thankfully I only had one predator and that predator never killed me. In the end we all ended up dying because the water boatman drank polluted water which killed the bigger bug which killed the duck which killed the water plant because of overpopulation. That’s a lesson that littering can kill an entire food chain and storm drains only make it worse. After the trip it was really muddy and dirty but I think it was worth it in the end and you should try it! If you want to see what it looked like here it is:

Coming soon…

Have you ever been to the Groynes?

Climate Change Needs To Stop!

Hello and welcome back to my blog, today we will be talking about the climate change, lets go!

Climate change is a big global problem but its the poorest areas who suffer the most. That’s why Pope Francis wrote a letter to everybody to tell them to fix the mess that we made. We treat our planet like it has unlimited recources but it doesn’t and that’s sad. There is no 2nd planet so we need to act today and stop how much we’re using

How can you help climate change today?

Marine Habitats

Hello and welcome back to my blog! Today I will be talking about my Marine Habitats, lets go!

this week we have been learning about underwater and above water habitats. We learnt alot about habitats and we even made a food chain of a doc, here it is if you want to see it:

What do you know about habitats?