LAST POST FOR 2012!!!

That's right, this is the LAST post for 2012! It's kind of creepy how fast time goes. 
In case you think this is going to be a REALLY cool blog post that is COMPLETELY different to all the other blog posts I've done, sorry to disappointment you, but you're wrong. 
This is going to be an ordinary blog post, OK? But it's also going to be sort of like a summary of my year. I'm going to go over my Pluses, Minuses and Interestings. 
P                                                            
Chess                                                                                                              
Computers                                                                                                                                                  
Wilson Games                                                                        
Sausages                                                                  
Making new friends                                                 
Not having to do boring old normal school              
Having a different school curriculum 
Rebuses/Riddles
Pictures Alana sends us in the email
Key Competency
Blogging 
Physics
M
Passion Time
Must-Dos and Picks
Technology Challenges
Alana leaving to Aussie :( Wah
I
Sea Shepherds
ipads
Dinoscope

Well, bye for this year, but I'll be at Enrich NEXT year as well, and I will DEFINITELY do more blog posts then! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Meow

Meow, bark, squeak, caw, neigh, oink, baa!
No, no, don't worry, you haven't entered the blog of a cow, but you have entered a post about Animal Rights. 
Today at Enrich I went to Katie, one of the teachers, to do a workshop on Animal Rights. We started by pondering a snippet of text about animal cruelty. OK, I can't remember every tiny detail, but it went something like this:
A boy is walking his dog when he hears menacing noises behind a high wall. He discovers that the noises are coming from another boy and his dog called Viking. Viking is growling and barking at the boy. The first boy says "Hey, what's the matter with your dog," and the second boy replied, "Oh, he's just acting stupid 'cos he's hurt himself." The first boy looks at an injury on Viking's leg, which is smoking slightly and blackened with bits of horrible dark red. It's a nasty burn. "We were just playing around." Continues the second boy. "What, with fire?" The first boy asks. "Well, really, I was trying to teach Viking to do a trick." The second boy admits. "You know that show on TV where dogs do tricks? Well, the prize if two hundred dollars, and I was really hoping we'd win, but Viking's tricks are lousy, so I tried to make him jump through a flaming hoop, but he won't do it, he burnt himself, stupid thing, he won't do it for a raw steak, or when I refused to feed him for two days, he's lucky he isn't chucked out already for being so stubborn, the useless thing."
The first boy says, "You can't do that," then the two boys have an argument about animal rights. 
So then we made a list of human rights and a list of animal rights. And guess what? The rights were sometimes the same. Both humans an animals have the right to eat, drink, sleep, and have shelter. Animals have the right to not be abused - that was on everybody's list. 
Then we looked at things that were animal tested and how it wasn't really fair that animals had to suffer. We then looked at alternatives, and also watched a couple of clips out of Babe. (I love that movie). So, next time you pick up something off the shelf, you might want to check if it's been animal tested. Would this make you put it back? Everybody will think differently about this. If you like, comment on this post telling me how you would act if you saw that something was being animal tested. 
Bye for now!

Thinker's Keys

Ever heard of the Thinker's Key's? No? Neither had I until we went over it today at Enrich!
We had a Thinker's Key's rotation, and I only got to do two stations, and it was Ridiculous statements like what if we all had the same time zone the whole world I mean and brainstorming and the thing Destiny and I had to brainstorm was how to encourage people to use public transport - 
OOOPS! I haven't even told you what the Thinker's Keys are yet!
OK, so the Thinker's Keys are ways of thinking outside the box. Betcha you've heard of that from nagging, over-ethusiastic teachers, eh?! 'Remember, you need to think outside the BOX, darling!' Sound familiar? Well, it's not a bad thing. Actually, it's a really good thing! It's good to challenge yourself and think outside the box. 
We had a rotation with three stations, Ridiculous Key, Brainstorming Key, and Variations Key. I only went to Brainstorming and Ridiculous Keys. 
First I went to Ridiculous Key. Katie, one of the teachers, put on a clown hat and nose and started acting RIDICULOUS!!! No, no, no, before you start thinking she's mental, she's not. That's not what happened at all! What really happened was that Katie read out some ridiculous statements, and we had to see the positives of that. For example, one of them was, 'What if you could get your driver's license at age six?' We had to find the positives in that. Wilson said that you could show off in your ferrari as you pulled up at school! That would be pretty cool! AJ said you could rev up your car at one in the morning and tick off the neighbors. That'd be cool as well. Somebody said something about your parents drinking, and you could give 'em a ride home! Not so cool if your parents start smooching and acting like drunken idiots in the back seat! But then, somebody else said, you could threaten to chuck them out of the car. You could also put the volume on the stereo up to a hundred and just yell over the sounds of an electric guitar, trying to be heard by your parents who are clapping their hands over their ears, 'Hey, my car, my rules!' How positive!
Next we went to brainstorming. After my last, ah, little joke, you probably won't believe me if I said that Darryn's brain was in a glass dome with lightning sizzling it, so I won't bother trying to trick you. What we did was that first we did a group brainstorm, which is pouring your thoughts out through your brain, down your arm and out the other side of the pen onto the paper. Then we split into pairs and did a brainstorm in pairs. It was really cool! 
Sadly we didn't get to do the Variations Key, but I'm sure it was awesome!

Plant Biology

Today I did a little bit of science with Darryn. The type of science we did was called plant biology, which is pretty stupid, because biology is the study of living things. As in, things that aren't dead. The flowers we studied were dead. See what I mean?
First we looked at what was the purpose of a flower. Bede said that their job was to look pretty. Yeah, Bede, that's right... not really... no...
I guessed that their job was to produce oxygen, which they do. But that wasn't right either. Well, at least I was closer than Bede!
The actual job of a flower is to reproduce other flowers. You see, when a bird, butterfly or bee or something like that (also called vectors) gets in a flower and collects nectar, they then leave and put the nectar they collected elsewhere, which helps to make other flowers.
Next, Darryn started murdering the flower. DARRYN THE KILLER! DO NOT APPROACH! Just kidding! The flower was already dead. What I meant was that he started pulling the dead flower apart. He then looked at it under a Dinoscope. Some close-ups were gross, some were pretty, some were just weird. Then he let us do the same. Here are some of the pictures I took with my Dinoscope:

Sea Shepherds

Today we had a man called Grant come in and talk to us about his job, which is helping to stop the Japanese from killing whales. He is part of a company called Sea Shepherds, who have been doing this for over thirty years.
First Grant showed us a video about Sea Shepherds, which included the head and the founder talking about the company, the number of whales saved each year, clips of them out in boats, pictures of whales and seals. You should have seen the weather. Shudder. 
Then he showed us a slideshow with more pictures, such as ones of the founder with Tim Shadbolt (that picture was in the paper) and pictures of the ships belonging to Sea Shepherds. The slideshow also had snippets of information about laws and loopholes and other countries such as Japan. Actually, Japan was quite a big part of the whole thing, as they kill wales for money, and Sea Shepherds are trying to stop them, so they're sort of enemies. However, Grant also talked about how once a Japanese crew member went overboard, and the Sea Shepherds sent out one of their helicopters to help look  for the crew members. The Sea Shepherds hoped that Japan would do the same for them.

This is the Sea Shepherd logo - Grant had it on his jersey

It was all very interesting, but some of it, like things to do with the laws and rules and loopholes and that sort of thing were confusing, but then we are just Years Three, Four, Five and Six! 

We Were Awesome!

NOT! Alright, imagine this. A game where a small amount of people stand in a circle, one person holding an easy-to-catch ball. The person throws the ball to any person in the circle, excluding the person directly beside them. Then the person sits down. The first group to have everybody sitting down wins. 
How simple. 
The original game was to have one big group instead of two little ones and have nine objects instead of one. Four green beanbags, four orange beanbags and the ball. We also had to catch them in a a certain sequence - green, orange, green, orange, ball, and vice versa. But we had to modify it to make it simpler because we were so terrible! AND GUESS WHAT? The actual point of the game wasn't the catching, it as remembering the sequence!    All over the place, people were mucking up. Standing with their hands in their pockets staring vaguely at a  computer and getting hit in the face as a result. People screaming other people's names like lunatics and not being able to hear because everybody starts doing the same as a result. People forgetting to sit down and catching the ball twice in a row which ends the game as a result. And people DROPPING DROPPING DROPPING and ending the game as a result.
(Whining): Well, you try it then, smarty-pants! 
Seriously. Try it, and put a comment on this post telling me your result! (Still whining)
P.S: Trick or treat!

All or Nothing

Today we played the same game as last week, called All Or Nothing. It's one of those things that sounds really confusing if somebody tries (and fails) to explain it to you, but when you do it, it's actually fun and easy. 
All Or Nothing is exactly like that, so you'll probably get bored of this blog post pretty easily. But, go away, get some glue... waiting, waiting... right, got your glue? Good. Now open the lid - no, clockwise,  dingbat, not anti-clockwise... good, now squirt glue on your eyes - don't grizzle like that, you'll thank me later - then put your eyeballs up against the screen. Come on, it's not that hard. A million dollars is yours if you successfully glue your eyes to the computer screen! Right, done it?
JUST KIDDING! 
Forget the million dollars, and read carefully. Oh, that's right - you don't have a choice! Ha-ha! Now, I'm going to tell you how to play All or Nothing...

Alright, so a big group is split up into two or more reasonably even teams (we played with three.) 
Then, each group lines up in a line, side by side. One you've done that, put four hoops in a vertical line in front of each team. Right, once you've done that, place a little rubbish tin in the first hoop, the hoop closest to the first person in line. Each person first in line must be holding a small, soft object - E.G: A mini beanbag. 
OK, you're all set for your game. 
The first person in line, the one holding the beanbag, must aim to through the beanbag in the rubbish tin, which is in the first hoop. If they fail, then they must run back and hand the beanbag to the next person in line. If they succeed, then they must move the rubbish tin into the second hoop, stand behind the second hoop with the beanbag, and throw the beanbag to the next person in line. If they catch it, then the person who caught it must try to get the beanbag in the rubbish tin which is now inside the second hoop. If they drop it, then they must move the rubbish tin back to the first hoop. 
The game carries on like this until somebody has gotten the beanbag in the rubbish tin which is in the fourth hoop, stands behind the fourth hoop and throws it to the next person in line. If they catch it, they WIN!!! (Victory dance!) But, if the person drops it, then the rubbish tin is moved back to the first hoop, as you already know. 
This game will frustrate and agonise you - a very good way of entertaining yourself!                                                                                                                                                           





                                                                                                                                                                                     

Sustainability

What is sustainability anyway? Yes, it's the name of my blog post, but what does it actually mean? Here's the dictionary definition:
Able to be maintained at a certain rate or level.
Which, basically means, the ability to sustain something or keep something going. Now, why exactly am I rabbiting on about the ability to keep something going in the middle of a blog post at Enrich, a school for the gifted, in Invercargill, New Zealand? Well, before you think I'm mad, today, as part of looking at the topic of environment, we looked at four kinds of sustainability's - social sustainability, economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, and cultural sustainability.
Ha-ha, you have no idea what I'm talking (or typing) about, do you!? Well, economic sustainability is all to do with money. We had a big, long, complicated talk, mostly between Darryn, one of the teachers, and Hutch, one of the students, about Greece and how they're going into a riot because they have gone bankrupt. That just proves that when you're going broke, don't trot down to the shops and buy yourself a nice red-and-white polka-dot bow tie that costs an arm and a leg. That's how everything that's going on in Greece has happened - they have spent more money than they could afford. To put it in human language, economic sustainability is the sustainability of your money. Oh, by the way, or more information on the riot in Greece, click on this link:
http://rt.com/news/greece-strike-demonstration-athens-011/
Now, what is environment sustainability? I'll tell you what it is - that's if you haven't already become bored of this blog post and gone to watch the grass grow.
Environment sustainability is keeping the environment the same, as it should be, not changing it to make it worse. We actually didn't do much on environment sustainability. Leave that to the hippies.
The next one we did was social sustainability. Which quite simply means mostly "relationships" and being friends and sustaining that and - oh, well, you can sort of tell what it's about from what it's called, sustaining social relationships between cultures and countries, and even best friends.
And, last of all, we did culture sustainability, which means respecting other's cultures, not offending other's cultures, etc., etc. 
Have you noticed something that I would never noticed if Hutch hadn't pointed it out? That's right - all these kinds of sustainability's are linked in some way! I'll leave you to ponder how they're linked - maybe I'll fill you in on my next blog post. Tell you what. If you think you know how they're linked, then post a comment on this post telling me what you think, then in my next post I'll tell you who was right, if anybody actually got it right, and if I actually got any answers. And remember to check out that link about the Greece riots. 

Wachner Place Keynote

Today we presented our Keynotes about Wachner Place to the rest of the class - Kady, Miro, John, AJ and I - and we got to see the other group's presentations as well. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. "Why on earth would somebody want to do an entire Keynote on stinking Wachner Place?" Very understandable, thinking that. So why are we spending precious time perfecting and fiddling and putting effort into a Keynote about Wachner Place??? The answer is simple. Because we have to.

Well, yes, we have to, but we also want to put the Wachner into Wachner place. We want to make Wachner Place exciting, so that instead of having to say, "Oh, we don't have to go to Wachner Place, do we?", you can say, "Can we go to Wachner Place? I want to play with the Tilting Ball Maze and sketch the brand new gardens and play with the giant chess board and look at the murals and the mosaics and everything!" 

Next week we are going down into the Council Chambers to present our proposal to the council. Eek. Yeah you might not think that that's so scary. But look at it this way. Scary adults plus wimpy kids plus stuttering words plus silly Keynotes equals...

EEK.

But everything will be so much better once we practice hard. We won't be wimpy kids anymore, we'll be confident kids who know exactly what they're doing. And we won't be stuttering anymore, we'll be talking loudly and clearly. And they won't be silly Keynotes anymore, they'll be flawless Keynotes with no mistakes and awesome colours and creative fonts and settings and bold titles and much more. But OK, so you can't take away the fact that they're scary adults! ; - p   

Air Pollution

Ah. Sniff, sniff. Breathe, breathe. The air is sweet, here in New Zealand!

But if you said that in Iran, the most polluted city in the world, you would most likely be considered crazy. The air in Iran is literally yellow. Yuck. 

How do I know? Today at Enrich, we watched a video clip of The 10 Most Polluted Cities In The World. I would NOT like to live in any of the countries featured in the video! Why not? Oh, the towns were full of garbage, the people in the cities had to cover their mouths with cloths, etc, etc! That's all!

What caused this problem? US. No, not the United States. Us. As in, we. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. "What did I do? I'm as innocent as a sack of potatoes!" Well, you didn't do it personally. But you know those really big factories that pollute the air? Well, we create/build factories there, because these countries don't have as strict laws against air pollution.

Just think how bad this is for the environment!

The worst bit is, we live in this. Yes, that's right. The air from all those disgusting countries doesn't just waft around doing nothing. It travels. All our countries are inside a bubble. We live in that disgusting air pollution!!!!

Wachner Place AGAIN!

My morning was pretty good today. Woke up, yawned, snapped at my little brother to stop shaking me to wake me up and watched him scurry away from me in terror, had breakfast, arrived at Enrich, watched Darryn and Clara play a mental edge game, doing bunny-ears behind Darryn a few times, played Chess with Hannah and got steamrollered, and then my glorious day was punctured by a very unpleasant sight.
WACHNER PLACE.
Looking even more boring than ever before, and wet with rain and sludge and cold, the dreary eyeful wasn't too attractive. We slouched around taking measurements of the gardens, counting the little pillars and measuring walls as we were asked.
There were, let me think, two at the front, two more, I think there might have been one more, about five little gardens full of cigarettes, Pepsi Max cans and other horrible bits of rubbish like torn and wet newspaper. The only plants in sight were drooping, prickly roses - well, no roses attached to the stalks, actually. 
Our group's job was to enhance the garden. Not now - first we had to figure out the price and ask the council if we could do it and everything. 
All in all, not the world's greatest amusement park, unless you're a loony who thinks looking at a big blank space and droopy roses is some bizarre form of entertainment. I really hope the council gives us permission to enhance the garden, because it's pretty boring now.

More Writing

SO. I am 99.9% positive that you don't want to hear me rabbiting on about Creative Writing, but it's my blog, so I can do whatever appeals to me, and at this moment I want to rabbit on about Creative Writing, which I have complete authority to do, so I shall now do so.
Sorry about that. I got a bit carried away. Well, anyway, today we did more Creative Writing.  I liked our warm-up best of all. We used Story Cubes. Some of you will know what Story Cubes are, but for those who haven't the faintest idea what I'm yakking on about, they are sort of dice. You take a handful of them and roll them. On each side of each dice there is a picture. Yes, just a random picture. Shooting stars. castles, faces, arrows, cell-phones, apples, turtles, hot-air balloons and much more.
We buddied up and took it in turns to roll a handful of dice. Whatever pictures came up, we had to arrange them into a way they made sense and then tell a story to our buddy. For example, say I rolled:
An apple
A cellphone
A face
A compass
A bee
A hot-air balloon
And a castle.
I would arrange the dice and tell a story that would go something like this...

Once upon a time, in a medieval castle (the castle) there was a person (the face) lying in bed. They couldn't get to sleep. The night was so hot and warm (the hot-air balloon) and somewhere a bee (the bee) was buzzing outside, which was a very annoying sound. Another annoying sound was the sound of his cellphone (the cellphone) which was lost (the compass) so he couldn't answer it. He tried anyway, groping around in the darkness. His hand grabbed something, but it wasn't his cellphone, it was an apple instead (the apple) and then the ringing stopped because he was so slow and it remained completely lost. The End.

Bit of a stupid story on my part, but it was still really fun. Then we had to go back to the list of memories we made at the back of our books at the previous Creative Writing session and choose a different memory to write about. My story wasn't sad this time - it was funny. :)

Teacher comment

I was really impressed with the quality of your writing today Izzy. The story that you wrote was really effective, your language choices were great and you certainly managed to get your audience to engage with your story and relate to how sad that moment was.
It was great to see you so motivated and into what you were doing - keep up the good work!
Darryn

Creative Writing

Today I did some Creative Writing with Darryn. It was really fun! You know the bit that cracked me up most? Our warm-up exercise. Talk about weird! Darryn gave us  all the same picture and we had to do a character profile about it. AND GUESS WHAT THE PICTURE WAS? A hobo! Just kidding! But really, it wasn't much different. We were given a dopey, idiotic-looking CLOWN! Now, I'm not ashamed to admit it - clowns give me the hibbery-jibberys. But this one? He was just weird.
We had to describe it in every way possible. How old was he? I guessed 90. (He-he-he)! Was he poor? Rich? Did he like being a clown? Or did he think every minute of it sucked? We had to develop the character in our own, unique way. He was ours to bring to life. (Actually, I'd rather prefer it if he was dead).
Then we had to write down a list of strong memories. My list was jam-packed! Then we had to choose one memory and write a short story about it. I wrote my one about the moment I found out that my dog had died. It was a sad story. :( 

To entertain you, here is a picture of the clown I was talking about. 

NOT KIDDING! Isn't he just... weird? 

Teacher comment

Wow Isabella what a great day of writing you had today! Jenni was really impressed with your blog post and I was amazed by the depth of your writing and the quality of the language you used in the afternoon writing workshop, This is obviously a real strength for you and I am looking forward to seeing what develops over the next few weeks! Keep up the great work.
Darryn

Out For A Walk

At Enrich, we did something a bit different. We went on a walk to boring-doring old Wachner Place. We got there, and it was even plainer than I remembered. Loads of concrete, a clock, Hell's Pizza, Subway, and that was about it. Oh, and there was a pretty grubby statue about Murihiku or something. So unentertaining I wanted to throw up! We had to walk around and take pictures of this fabulous scenery and decide how we could improve it. Loads of ideas were thrown around our group, which consisted of Clara, Robert, Miro, Finn, and Amy. Oh, and ME!
Ugh, there was nothing to dooo, the smell of Hell's Pizza and Subway was torturing me... not the best field trip of my life. It just looked so... so... something I can't say on this blog or I'd be in a sticky situation!
As you've probably inferred, Wachner Place was PU.

So what could we do? One of the many ideas was to put a giant chessboard and chess pieces in Wachner Place. We spent a while deciding where the best place to put this was and sketching it. We also took other pictures of very blank places, full of litter and grime and other gross things that you would crinkle your nose at. We decided to clean up a lot of places, and to put more colour in this lurrvely entertaining... thing.
We looked around for walls where we could paint murals. Painting a mural would also stop the graffiti. Speaking of graffiti, guess what our group saw? (And I'll bet ten cents that we weren't the only group). We saw a tiny, wide pillar that comes about up to an adult's waist. Loads of then around. One had that Murihiku statue perched on top, another had a drinking fountain on top of it, and one had SWEAR WORDS WRITTEN ALL OVER IT!!! And it said...

Eat ................!!!! Where the ....................... was, there is actually one of the worst swear words available, and some of you will know what it is... 
If you some ideas about what to do to Wachner Place, then write a comment telling me your ideas! It would be a tremendous help!

Murals

Today at Enrich... drone, drone, drone! I always start like that! At Enrich we did more on our new Concept Curriculum, Environments. We were put into groups of four. In my group was Destiny, Hannah, Cheanna... and me.

We were given a few sheets of pictures of things that are unique to Southland - like the water tower, Henry the Tuatara, etc, etc. And with those we had to create a mural - just a draft, sort of practicing for if we want to do a mural on one of those totally boring brick walls of Invercargill for our project for Environment. I don't think I'll do murals, but there are many other choices...

Painting with Katie May!!!

Today, we did THE coolest thing ever in the history of the entire milky way! OK, so we were given a choice out of maths tessellation's, chemistry and painting to do for this week and next week and I chose painting. Katie took us to the front whiteboard and we watched a few tutorials and clips about Claude Monet. The style of painting that we were doing was called Impressionism, which means that not every detail is perfect, and it's sort of blurry, but really colourful and interesting!
Claude Monet's most famous painting is one of a part of his garden, a beautiful bridge over a pond with lillypads. We copied this painting onto a small bit of paper. We used all the special techniques that the tutorial taught us with a flat brush, and were given different colours to use and mix together. It was actually quite hard to get that exact blurring but still an interesting look, but the cool thing about it was that you couldn't go wrong. If you did a malfunctioning experiment with one colour, then just blend it in with another colour! 

It was lots of fun and also a challenge. I wonder what we're going to do next week?... 

Tapa Cloths

Today I finished my Tapa Cloth, which is where you do designs such as shells or fish or flowers, on a piece of paper, then scrunch the paper up until it is soft and more like a cloth!
Then you dye it. No, no, you don't kill it, you paint dye on it. The other sort of dye.
ANYWAY I finished mine today. You had a choice of Kowhaiwhai panels, which are a type of traditional Maori art and Tapa cloths last week, and I chose the Tapa Cloth. Here is a picture of mine when it was finished.
Like it?
If you want to see a Kowhaiwhai panel, take a look at some other blogs including Hannah and Clara's. They might have theirs on display.

Chess with Tessa

Today I played chess with Tessa, and we used a chess clock.

You set the chess clock for five minutes on each side. There is a stop-and-start button. Press the start button. One side of the clock the seconds start ticking. Forty-nine... forty-eight... forty-seven...
There is a sort of flip button on the top. Once you have made your move, flip your side of the flip button. The other side starts ticking. Forty-nine... forty-eight... forty-seven...! 
Once a person's five minutes runs out, the other person has won!
I won, by a few minutes, but because I just move pawns real quick, not even thinking about it, so I usually end up with, like, two players left! But Tessa was better. She should have won. 

Wearable Arts Passion Time

Oh - my - gosh! The BEST thing just happened to me again. It was amazing. I did Wearable Arts for Passion Time today! I really wanted to, so I did. I worked with Destiny, Amy and Kady. We looked on Safari for dresses and ideas, and then sketched the one we liked, and then changed it ever so slightly. There is also a competition for fashion designing in Gore. They have one every year, and I'm doing it this year. 

Like I already said, it was awesome. I was totally engrossed in what we were doing. I searched my favourite colour dresses. Blue dresses, purple dresses, black dresses, gold dresses, sliver dresses. It was absolutely amazing. Amazing, awesome, cool, and fun! I am SO going to stay on Wearable Arts next week! 

Queens's Park Photography

 Today the Photography Talent Development group went to Queen's Park! It was a L-O-N-G walk! (Yeah we DID walk!). 
First we went to the band rotunda, taking pictures along the way. Next we went to the castle. I slid down the slide, as there was no other way down (The stairs were blocked) and it is FAST! Next we went to the playground. I look a picture of the eagle statue and the lion statue, looking UP. Last of all we went to the duck pond. There was a fountain going and it looked REALLY cool!

Finally we dragged ourselves back to Enrich and dived into Morning Tea!

Passion Time

Guess what? Today at Enrich we had Passion Time, between Morning Tea and Lunchtime, which was time to explore the things we are passionate about. I did writing. It was fun, but next time I want to try something different. I haven't chosen yet (Or have I?) but there are lots of thigns to pick from. Sculpting, animating, Wearable Arts, carving, Maths, (OK, so not Maths because I hate it) But it is an option if I change my mind (Fat chance!) The Wearable Arts sounds cool, and I picked up a snippet of it because I was just around the corner, hehe... I reckon the sculpting sounds cool, but I probably won't do it yet. I haven't head a lot about the carving... and NO, I'm still not doing maths! 

That's all, really. I'm sort of leaning towards the Wearable Arts, but I can't name many times where I stayed keen on the idea for more than three days, maximum! 

The Amazing Wearable Arts!

Oh - my - gosh! This morning at Enrich we went to see the most amazing thing at the Invercargill Museum. First we lined up with a buddy. My buddy was Hannah Witheford. We walked to the museum because it isn't that far from Enrich. When we got inside a man greeted us and showed us into the exhibit. Now, there is only five words to explain what we saw next: Amazing, breathtaking, different, stunning and SO cool!We walked through a dimly lit passage. On the curtains there was a projected video of all the wearable arts on stage, being worn by fantastic dancers. Then we came out into the light where we saw all the costumes in person. Were we allowed to touch them? NO, NO, NO! We actually got to feel bits of material of with the wearable arts were made from! Is that awesome, or what!? There was another small room that was very dark. It had glow in the dark dresses! My sneakers glowed, too! And, believe it or not, so did my teeth!So, I guess you can come to a correct conclusion that our field trip today was awesome! 

My Learning Wheel

Today at Enrich (The last day for Term 1!) we did a reflection wheel. We did this to look back at our first term at Enrich for 2012 and sort of sum it up. We were given a Learning Wheel with five questions: I Felt, I Used, I Learned, I Tried and I Wondered. It was a great way tO reflect, using The Learning Wheel. We had to put in lots of detail until it was right!

Hi Izzy.

I am enjoying our (almost) weekly chess games!  You are a very determined player, and you use a variety of different strategies, which shows that you you are constantly evaluating your game.  Your enthusiasm for photography was clear to see on Wednesday.  I really liked the editing you did to your photo - highlighting one single piece of lavander within the bunch.  Well done Izzy.  Katie.

Talent Development Week 8

Today in Talent Development at Enrich (I am doing Photography) we had about three quarters of an hour for a session. In Photography we went outside  to take photos and our photos had to have a theme. My theme was "Nature." I took pictures of flowers, bushes, branches, leaves, and stones. Then after that we had to pick the best photo that we took, change it and play around with it using I-photo, give it a title and email it to Katie May. (I have already done mine :) :) :)!!!) Here is the photo that I chose. It is of a lavender flower.  

Building A Pyramid.

Today at Enrich there was a task called Build a Pyramid. You had to choose workers, materials, what to feed the workers, and you had to ride a boat down the river nile. I got it done in four or five goes. It was fun and also frustrating at times. I would love to do it again!

Talent Development Taste Testers

Today at Enrich we sorted out a bit with Talent Development for 2012! We got to have half an hour at each thing, which were Art, Science and Maths. Darryn took Art, Alana took Maths and Katie took Science. First my group went to Science, then Maths, then Art. In Science we looked at Tornados and how the are created. We found out they created themselves when the cold air and the hot air meet. The tornado is basically air pressure. Next in Maths it was quite complicated! First we looked at pictures of models from Canstruction, a world wide competition where you make sculptures - out of food cans! It is all to do with how you rearrange the different coloured cans and labels. But of course we couldn't get all those cans, so we looked at Lego blocks instead. We used an app on the ipad 2's we have called Jumbo, which is a big calculator. We worked out how many Lego blocks could fit into a brick wall and the width and height of the lego block. And finally, at Art with Darryn, we did experiments with water colour paint. We found out if a bit of the paper was wet, and the water colour paint trickled down, it would stop where the paper was dry. I wonder what makes that happen? (You could comment if you know the answer). The water colour paint was really cool! Art, Science and Maths were the things you could pick for Talent Development. Just a little Taste Tester! At the moment I am choosing Art, but then my choice could always change! The Taste testers were fun and challenging. It was awesome! 

Fairytale perspectives

Today at Enrich me and my friend Clara made a twisted fairytale story using garageband, a program on the computer. First we had to search on Safari (Apple computer google internet) for images of the story. The story we did was Jack and The Beanstalk, and we did it from the giant's perspective. It was really fun! I'm pretty proud of Clara and me for completing it. I hope we do something similar sometime!

Above is a picture of a garageband podcast, which is what we did. The photo of course is not of our actual podcast. It is someone else's. But it is an example of a podcast.