Our Wearable Arts so far🥄🍰👗

This term, our school is doing Wearable Art!

If you don’t know, Wearable Art is an NZ based costume competition that originated in Nelson. The idea is to take art “Off The Wall” –  and onto the body. A costume show. Every odd year our school has its own wearable arts competition for year seven and eights. 

This year our costume themes had to be Kiwiana, special to NZ. My group decided to make a pavlova! We’ll be making a huge three tiered cardboard skirt draped in a sheet with crochet fruits on top. It’s my job to crochet kiwifruit, but I’m teaching a friend so she can make them too.

We have three more weeks to make our costumes and then one night we’ll have a big show for parents and friends and the costumes will be judged. We also have to write a speech and pick music to go with it. We’re thinking, “Slice of heaven” by Dave Dobbyn.

Here are some photos of what we’ve done so far:

Planning:

Prototype:

Cut out so far:What do you think? (More photos coming when costume is done!)

Have you played Wordle?

What is Wordle? 

A daily word game!                                                                                                                                                                Wordle is a great daily puzzle to get your brain going. The site gives you six chances to guess a five letter word, like “Tower”.

The letters change colours to show if it’s correct. Grey means that letter doesn’t belong in the word. Yellow means the letter is in the word, but in a different place, and Green means “perfect!”. 

It’s a great game to get you thinking, or to wake up in the morning. My favourite starting words are Laser, Frogs, and Magic. 

Here’s a few examples of previous games:

Many people can solve it in two guesses, even one! 

Wordle is a fun, quick game that almost everyone can enjoy.

Why don’t you give it a try?                                                                                                                                                                         (If you haven’t already!)

Simplifying Fractions

In maths lately, we have been learning to simplify fractions.

Often, when answering questions on a worksheet, you’re asked to “Give your answer in its simplest form”. 

This means, if your fraction is something like 5/10, if you know that 5 is half of 10, then you know that 5/10 is equivalent to 1/2. 

Some are a bit harder, though. You could have one like 14/21. That looks scary, until you think about it. When you work out that 14 and 21 are both divisible by 7, 14÷7=2 and 21÷7=3 , then your answer becomes 2/3. 

Some fractions, eg. 7/9 can’t be simplified any further, so that number would remain the same. 

Here’s something that might help:

 

Hope this was helpful, thanks for reading!

-Esther 🙂

🧊Geometry!🧊

My class is learning about geometry!

This term in maths, we’re focusing on 3D shapes. We’ve learned about Verticies, Edges and Faces and how to lay out the net for a shape. 

“Vertice” is the word for corner, where multiple Edges meet. For example, a cube has Eight Verticies, four on the top and four on the bottom.

“Edge” is the line where two Faces meet, the connector.

Finally, “Face” is each side of a shape, eg. a cube has Six sides and a Cone has Two.

Our task today was to create our own net for a 3D shape. A net is what the shape looks like unfolded. I chose a Triangular Prisim, and decorated it to look like a fish tank!

My net and shape looked like this…

(I think the shape looks like a tent!)

Have you ever thought about shape nets before? 

My Narrative

A couple of weeks ago, My class was given the task to write our own narratives. 

We could write about anything in the world, and I made up a story about a boy who is transformed into a tabby cat and transported to a strange planet where he explores a sunflower maze and finds a dragon. 

That sounds a bit complicated, but I can try to explain. I knew instantly that I’d want to write about a cat, because why not? The main character is a boy called Harry, who is about Eleven or Twelve and has had a rubbish day at school. He finds a piece of crumpled parchment and it somehow turns him into a cat and flings him to another planet where he meets a cat named Dandelion. The pair become great friends and embark on a quest to find the dragon. 

I spent about two weeks working on my story and had a lot of fun, although I was worried I wouldn’t finish it in time. By the time I’d finished it, I’d come up with a name: A Cloudy Tuesday. Because that’s when the story starts.

What do you think?

Learning about Fake News!

Today for Cybersmart, we’ve been learning about fake news! 

We’re learning about evaluating media and identifying whether images are fake or not. We were given a slide to complete about this topic. Each slide had a funny image and we had to choose if we thought it was real or not. There were some really funny scenarios like holding a selfie stick out of an airplane window, or a video of hippos that were the size of mice. Obviously, these were fake. After the slide, we had to create our own funny photo, by taking a picture and giving it a silly background! I put photos of my cats, Poppy and Oreo in space. This task was to practice evaluating media and noticing when it was misinformation or disinformation. I had a really fun time creating this, 

Here’s what it looks like:
Can you guess if it’s real or fake? 

Kawa of Care Challenge!

Today we were given a quest to complete! 

We had to answer questions and complete the quest about what the Kawa of Care means and how to follow it. 

Our goal was to earn the title Kawa of Care Champion! There were some questions about where to charge your chromebook, who is involved in the Kawa of Care, and what not to share online. The catch was: if you made a mistake, you had to start from the beginning. 

I enjoyed answering the questions because it was a good reminder of the rules and it was pretty quick to move through. My favourite question was “How Many Hands Do You Carry Your Chromebook With?” Because one option was “Three hands” which I thought was funny. Luckily, I didn’t make any mistakes, and I earned the Kawa of Care Champion!

Here’s what it looked like:

Do you think you could have completed the quest? 

🏖My summer holidays!🏖

For a week of my summer holidays, my family went to Hanmer Springs!

Over the week of New Years, my parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, Nana and I went to a holiday park in Hanmer.  In total, we were eighteen people!

We stayed in a holiday park just outside of the town. Between us, we had three one-room cabins, a large tent and a large grass area with a volleyball net. There wasn’t heaps of space, but we had an amazing time. We made up ball games, read to the younger kids and sat together in the evening, reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Three days we went to the Hot Pools – twice we stayed for the entire day. All us kids loved the lazy river, and we spent a lot of time in the kids pool and on the slides, too. We went to all sorts of places in town, from playgrounds to random shops, to the Hot Pools cafe. There was an amazing walk decorated with carved animal statues – my favourite was the group of larger than life fantails in a tree. 

It was the longest trip I’ve been on in years, extremely tiring, and absolutely amazing. I’m so glad that I got to spend an entire week with my cousins!

Here are some photos of our trip:

What was your holidays like? Have you ever been to Hanmer Springs?

🗺My Treasure Map!🗺

Today’s SLJ activity was about Treasure maps! 

There were two video options on how to draw a treasure map. For my first try, I chose the harder one. I wasn’t happy with my map, though, so I decided to start over. This time I tried the easier one. I liked the shape of this one much better, so I carefully started over. 

I drew an island in the middle, with a compass, pirate ship and sea monster surrounding it. The video showed a cave and a pair of palm trees, so I added those; then I drew a sandcastle on the shore. I drew an anchor by the ship, a path that would lead to the X, and then I was ready for colour. 

After outlining the border and the compass in black, I used coloured pencils to colour the rest. I enjoyed the little details like the crab and the waves. When everything else was done, I used a red pain pen to draw the X as a finishing touch. 

Here’s my Treasure Map!

I really liked this activity, because I got to be creative and blend with the coloured pencils. What details would you have added around the map?

🪸Submarines!🌊

Today’s Summer Learning Journey activity was about submarines! 

The activity was to read an article on submarines, and draw a picture of one – either digitally or by hand – with three facts from the article. 

I used the step-by-step instructions to draw the submarine, by hand, then I added a background. I wanted to do it on paper so that I could be more creative with the background. I drew some tropical fish, a jellyfish and some rocks with seaweed. When my drawing was done, I read through the article and chose three facts: 

1.) The first submarine was made way back in 1620!

2.) Submarines use sonar to detect targets and enemy submarines.

3.) Military submarines can usually carry over 100 people!

Reading the article was really interesting, because I didn’t really know anything about submarines before today. 

Once I’d written down my facts, I started to colour in my work. I used felt pens, and coloured pencils for the background. I made the submarine yellow and orange, and I realised when I was done that it looked like a goldfish!😁

Here’s my submarine:

(Sorry you can’t read the writing in the photo.)

Do you know anything about submarines? What would you have chosen – digital or paper?