Symmetrical art

In class we have been doing symmetry for math and we did some symmetrical art. We could only have up to four different colours, I only used two and there were four main fold but I made the envelope ones myself. It was really fun making these.

Tautuku Camp

When we arrived at camp we sat and had some morning tea, we then went into the cabins and chose our beds. We unpacked and made our beds, It was just a day to get settled into the camp. We also tie dyed pillow cases.I made mine Black and Green because they are my two favourite colours.

The second day we did a bit more. We had our team challenges. There was six teams of four, in my team was me, Toby, Regan and William.There were so many challenges for everyone to do, I did the Ping ping, M&M, Scavenger hunt and sandcastle competition. In the ping pong one one person bounced a ping pong ball across a table and another team member had to stand at the other end of the table and catch the ping pong ball in a cup, they had to get three in the cup, the ball was only allowed to bounce once. For the M&M one I had to stuck an M&M with a straw and carry it to the other end of the table and drop it in a cup. I was terrible at that and didn’t get any in the cup at all. The scavenger hunt and sandcastle competition were ones that the whole team had to do together. The scavenger hunt was not easy because we did not have a hairclip or a brown hair tie but Toby stole Anna’s hairclip before we left. We also didn’t have a ribbon or an ipod until near the end. I really liked doing the sandcastle competition because it was really creative and we all had lots of fun.  Our sandcastle ended up being one really big sandcastle with a moat and a fence made up of broken sticks and a smaller but still quite big with a bridge going from the top of the big one to the top of the smaller one.

Kayaking was also really fun to. We did it on the Wednesday as well. I was one of the first people to go oute were kayaking, while we were kayaking a current stated pushing us and some people started to get really scared. I ended up going to the side and swapping my kayak then going crab hunting. Later everyone came over in their kayaks and we all started kayaking on the other side of the bridge. I went back out and stupidly only had half my wetsuit done up and my hoodie on, because while i was on my knees Bryce crashed into me and I fell forward and all fell in. I then went up to the land, then went back into the water on my feet and ended up having a mud fight.

That night it was our group's turn to do Master Chef. We made chocolate brownie. The three dads that were there Steve, Grant and Dave were the judges and dressed up differently each night, on the Tuesday the wore wet suits, helmets and ties, and on the Wednesday the wore dresses, bras and wigs. We had to take our brownie out of the oven 15 minutes early because when we made the mixture it was really thick. We ended up coming third overall.

On Thursday- the third day we were there, Evan came over for Adventure Masters. Escape and invasion was something we did with him, it was by far the best thing we did at camp. The parents all got given bb guns and the kids all got safety goggles. The kids all had run and hide in the bush. We had to try to stay as still as we could and as quiet as we could. I hid with Josie the first we were hiding. Steve shot Josie the Grant just stood there and didn’t know whether he should shoot me or not, he ended up shooting me after josie told him he had to so that we could go to jail together. If you got shot you had to walk to the jail with your hands on your head and hope someone would come to let us out. My foot started to hurt from running around lots and i scratched my leg on a bush. I got shot four times but I only felt it the first time when Grant shot me. I loved doing the confidence course as well, it was all in a forest and took us an hour and a half to complete the entire course, it was big enough and high enough that we needed to use harnesses. Abseiling was awesome, I got to go first, which is what I wanted. The abseiling wall was just a cliff with a fence at the top to stop people from running out and some ropes to hook onto our carabinas. We also did some more team challenges with Evan. We did two lifting ones and two team thinking and balancing ones.

The flying fox was something we did a lot. It is about 200m long. It went down a hill then went along. It didn’t have as much backswing as the one at Berwick did, but if you don’t get off at the end then you would still go back, not very far, only a little bit up the hill.It was just something we did in our spare time.

Overall our camp at the Tautuku Outdoor Education Centre was really awesome and I would definitely do it again if I had the chance to.

My Eggsperiment - Term 3

Let’s start with the bubbles you saw forming on the shell. The bubbles are carbon dioxide. Vinegar is an acid called acetic acid, and white vinegar from the grocery store is usually about 4% acetic acid and 96% water. Eggshells are made up of calcium carbonate. The acetic acid in the vinegar reacts with the calcium carbonate in the eggshell to make calcium acetate plus water and carbon dioxide bubbles that you see on the surface of the shell.
The chemical reaction looks like this . . .


The egg looks translucent when you shine a flashlight through it because the hard outside shell is gone. The only part that remains is the thin membrane called a semipermeable membrane.

You might have noticed that the egg got a little bigger after soaking in the vinegar. Here’s what happened…Some of the water in the vinegar solution (remember that household vinegar is 96% water) traveled through the egg’s membrane in an effort to equalize the concentration of water on both sides of the membrane. This flow of water through a semipermeable membrane is called osmosis.

Should NZ host the Olympics.

                                Should New Zealand Host The Olympic Games?

I am here to persuade you that New Zealand should NOT host the Olympic Games!There are so many reasons why we shouldn’t, but to explain all of them, it would take quite a long time, so here are just a few.

To begin with, our country is too small. There would not be enough room to build all the new facilities, stadiums and arenas. Buildings, including homes will have to be demolished to make for the new Olympic arenas. Also, since we have such a small population, may not have enough builders to get it finished in 8-10 years. They would have to work long hours planning and building. They would get sore muscles and might not get a lot of time to rest them. The Olympics would have to be held in Auckland, it would not be fair, just because the other cities are too small for it.

Furthermore, New Zealand would not have enough money. There would not be enough money to build more houses, hotels and motels, not to mention all stadiums. Workers might get half way through building a stadium when they find out they won’t have enough money to finish it to high standards eg: no seating, or no lights, it would be a disaster to have to compete in unfinished conditions.

My final reason is there is not a lot of room for people to stay. Since we are such a small country there is almost no room to build more places to stay. The athletes would have to billlet at peoples homes, which could get confusing language wise, or stay in tiny little houses or hotels, that would have to suck! So many people would have to lose so much of their farmland and crops to make room for the new facilities. What would they do with their animals if there was no paddocks to keep them in, they can’t just kill them all, that just wouldn’t be fair to all the innocent sheep, cattle, pigs, dogs and many more animals.

In conclusion, we shouldn’t host the Olympics no matter what anyone thinks. New Zealand is just too small, the country doesn’t have enough money and there would be no room for the foreign people to stay. New Zealand SHOULD NOT host the Olympic Games!

By Alyssa

Mandarin Lessons

This year every second Friday we have a lady from china called Rachel come and give us Mandarin lessons. She is really good and likes to play games with us, most of the time we would have to count in Mandarin for something or tell a blindfolded person which way to go in Mandarin it is really fun right now i have 21 stamps.

pH Scale

We have been learning about pH Scale in rm7. pH stands for power of hydrogen, which is measurement hydrogen ion concentration in the substance. The total pH scale ranges from 1-14 with 7 considered to be neutral. A pH less than 7 is said to be acidic, it will be reddish pinkish. The lower it is it will be a bluey greenish colour. This is my pH scale. 

Whakapapa

We have each done a whakapapa each, they will have your dad's parents your mum's parents your parents, you and your siblings in age order, oldest to youngest. My whakapapa is:

Ko moe a David May i a Linda Ferguson 

Ka puta Craig May

Ko moe a Ian Laird i a Denice Forbes

Ka puta Gillian Laird

Ko moe a Craig May i a Gillian Laird

Ka puta Rylee, Ko ahau, Ko Caitlyn

Tena kautou, tena kautou, tena tautou katou.