Last day at piano

It's our last day EVER at Enrich. Anyway I still practiced piano today. I've learnt so much since I started learning piano. I started about 7 weeks ago but I've only had about 7 days to practice at Enrich. The songs that I've learnt how to play are not the whole song but they are: Ode to joy, Merrily we roll along, Lightly row, Marianne, When the saints go marching and a waltz. I really enjoy learning the piano and I hope that I can continue next year somewhere else. Here is the music for one of the songs that I've learnt.

Data Logging

Yay It's finished. Today I finished the temperature sensor programming today. Then I thought that I should try it and Alex helped me. We got a cup of water straight out of the tap and then pressed the button to start the data logging. I didn't think that It would be very hot, but it was about from 15-25 degrees celsius. I tried it on my arm and it got to about 31 degrees. Next week I'm going to try making a speed logging one. I'm not too sure what it does though.

How hot is the water?

light sensor

Temperature sensor

Robots are so difficult to program. I've carried on programing the NXT Lego mindstorm. I've tried it two years ago so I sort of have an idea on how to use them but I still use the guides on the app that we use to program them. There are lots of different sensors that you have to make to put on the Rem bot. I made one which was the light sensor. Which I then programmed it to follow a black line. It took about five minutes, then you just click the download button and it downloads to the NXT. I don't think that we've used the temperature sensor on the robots before so I thought that I would try it. I've started to program the robot to tell me how hot a cup of water is. (I think) I Haven't finished because it has about 83 steps to follow, but I will finish it next week.

Digital Citizenship

This afternoon we were put into groups and then went off to talk about digital citizenship. It's about realising the implications when you are using Facebook, Twitter and Flicker. First Nicola gave us a sheet that had the names of all of a person's friends and had lots of connecting lines to show that somehow they all connected. After we had talked about that we were given another two sheets that asked us questions like how often do we use technology at home and do our parents know what we're doing on the computer. Once we had filled out the sheet Nicola called us over to her to watch a video. It was talking about how everybody knew the girl's name just from the internet. The video above is the last video that we watched. It talks about your digital dossier which starts just before you're born and then just grows and grows.

Paper Chairs

Make a chair out of paper? That sounds quite hard, doesn't it? It is as hard as it sounds. We had about five newspapers to use and 45 minutes to make the chair. We used the idea of using triangles. It had three legs and a triangle base and it looked like a slice of pizza without the toppings. It had to hold one of the wooden frogs. I didn't think that we would be able to do it because of time but when Darryn said that we have another five minutes, I changed my mind. In the end we did get finished. When Darryn put the frog on, we weren't sure if it would hold but we had made a strong design and it did. Although we didn't win I'm pleased with how it turned out.

It's Moving!!!

Today we got our robot actually working. Now it moves backwards and when the touch sensor is touched it will move forward and then it turns around four times and move forward a little bit more and then say hello and display ‘What’s your name’. We’re still working on it because there are still some other things that we want to add to it, but at least we get to play around with it a to get to know how to use the Mindstorms a bit more. Next term we want to add a program that will make it say words that we tell it to.

Piano lessons at Enrich

I started learning how to play the piano. I asked Nicola to teach me and she gave me this book to teach myself, with her overseeing the process. I thought that it would be quite hard but I went quite fast through them. I learnt that the note C is always to the left of pair of black keys. It said to think of your fingers as numbers. So C would be 1, D would be 2 right up to G. I was practicing and practicing and once I thought that I was quite good at the piece of music I went and got Nicola and she would say if it was good enough or if I needed to practice a little bit more. I can't wait until next week to have another go but I will still practice at home.

Robots are taking over!

Today I went to a workshop with Darryn about robotics. We made Lego Mindstorms. From now on I'm going to make sure that I clean them up once I'm done with them because Me and Darryn got the great job of packing them up because there were the remains of old robots, random pieces everywhere and pieces in the wrong boxes. I like making things tidy so I didn't really bother me. Once that was done we went onto the patterns workshops after lunch. Max J, Max N and I were in a group together because we have all used the mindstorms before, but we still had to make the REM bot and then we can add other attachments to it. All that we got done was the Rem bot so next time we will start programming it on the computer.

What happened in 2000?

When did YouTube launch? 

At the patterns in time workshop today we had to construct a timeline from 2000-2006. We were given lots of big events that have happened over those 7 years, like the launch of YouTube and Twitter. I only knew like two or three of the 35 total, but together with the rest of the group, we got about 11 right at the beginning. Once Katie had told us what ones we got wrong we were allowed to go and research the rest on the Internet. It seemed like 2004 was the year that had the most things going on. It was really interesting to see what has happened over all of those years, and to talk about the similarities and differences, and the patterns that occurred.

One, Two, Three, Four...

Do you know how they measured time a long time ago without clocks? I'm not too sure but we had to make our own one minute timers only using 3 cups, Blu Tac, 2 Pins, Tape, a Straw and 2 skewers. Most of us used the idea of an egg timer. I used the straw with tiny holes in it. The water slowly dripped but it didn't go for the amount of time that it was meant to. I got up to four minutes and then we decided to stop timing it because it was going for too long. I was kind of disappointed because I wanted it to work, but you can't always get it right the first time. Next time I know what I could do better, one of them would be not putting holes where they don't need to be.

Say Cheese!

Say Cheese! In the performance group today we took photos of ourselves and laminated them so that we can make our wall look nicer then just... red.

When we re-arranged the room that wall looked so blank. So Nicola's brilliant idea was to fill it with pictures of all of the us. It sounds easy enough to take a photo of yourself and print it, but it can't be too close but not too far away. Not too dark but not really bright so I had to take like 30 pictures before I got one that I was happy with. These photos are our publicity shots.

Once we had done that we set up some lamps lighting them so now it looks quite nice with the lights and photos.

Behaviour

Did you know behaviour patterns can be changed. We talked about how our behaviour can be changed by things like a sticker chart and pocket money. We watched two video clips and the first one was about a cat named Harry. He jumps onto the fly screen and puts claw marks in it. There was a man that came and put a sheet of perspects over the door  so that the cat couldn't grip onto the door. To stop him jumping him onto the bench he put a little mat down that shocks him. So eventually he will stop doing that which means that he changed that cats behaviour. It's not only cat behaviour. Our behaviour can be changed too. Like having pocket money if we clean our room we will get into a habit of keeping our room tidy and we will get money.  I learnt that behaviour patterns can change.

Geometry

Which way is North? I learnt how to use a compass. Darryn showed us a couple of maps. They were both old and newer ones. We noticed that the older ones didn't have a grid on them and there was hardly any bush too. 

On the newer map we used the compasses to find which way was North. Once we had done that Darryn told us about the orange lines. If they were close together that meant that it was steep. We were given some spots and had to say what the easiest way to get down. It was a lot harder to use a compass than I thought that it would be.

Once you get to know how to use the compass it is actually quite easy.

Crash!!!

Have you ever seen a plane crash? I did. You film the room and then it will have a plane crash right in front of you. It is a special effects app. Lots of people like it and were playing with it all the way through morning tea.

I put beams across the river hoping it wouldn't break and... Crash!!! It split into three different pieces. Darryn was teaching us about some of the apps on the iPads. The first app was called Simple Physics. You have to build a structure that will not break even if it is used as a ramp for a boulder of a dam for a river. It is very hard but fun and challenging.

The final app was Pic Collage. You can cut out pictures and add text to it. I had a play around with a chicken. By holding down on one of the pictures of text, you can switch the placement from having the chicken on the top to at the back. Next week I'm going to play around with that a little more so that I get to know how to use it better. 

The caped man...

I always dreamed of being a super hero. That is the first line to the monologue that I'm doing in performance. Instead of singing today, Nicola grabbed some sheets of paper and told us what they were.

Nicola read them all out individually and once she had read all of them we had to pick one that we wanted to learn. Mine was about a boy who wanted to become a super hero, but didn't work out how he wanted it to.

I didn't realise that we had to have a costume too. Nicola's idea was to wear our underwear on the outside like in superman and batman, but Nicola went and looked in the box of clothes and found a cape.

Then we had to practice our words lots and lots of times. We went through our words about 10 times in 45 minutes. By week 6 we should know it really well.

Checkmate

The Pawn moved, then a Queen and a Bishop. Were you were able to work that out it was scholars? I didn't go to Luke's chess workshop, I played chess instead because I wanted to play chess to see if I could move up a little more on the leaderboard, but I didn't move at all. Then Luke did the workshop again  so I chose to go to it. 

He taught us about Scholars, opening moves and I asked about stalemate because I wasn't to sure how that works. I'm still not to sure, but it shouldn't matter too much. (I hope) 

There were two different kinds Scholars There's knight scholars and bishop scholars. I prefer the Bishop scholars. It's just because I can remember that better. I hope that I can stay at fifth on the leaderboard or higher.

Dunedin, here I come?

Finally! I won a game of chess. Today I played leaderboard chess against Jake. We both chose to use a chess clock. I quite like using a chess clock because I usually win. I'm not quite sure how but it just seems to happen.

I didn't think that I would beat him but as I actually used a strategy. Maybe that's how because I just move pieces most of the time and don't plan my moves.

Near the end of the first game Jake had one piece left and I had two and then his time ran out. It is not very often that I get someone into checkmate but it has happened. I win by their time running out usually. I think it was about the same ending on the second game.

Now that I've won,  I'm fifth on the leader board. I'm trying to stay in the top six so that I get to go to the chess tournament which is in Dunedin because it's our last chance to go while we're at primary school.

Performance With Nicola

Yah! We're back at Enrich for term 2. When we started our passion projects today I ran off to go to the back of the room to do performance with Nicola. 

First she gave us this little golden fluffy material and we had to pretend that it was something else. I used it as a T-shirt that was way too small for me. We were still playing the same game but Nicola gave us this pretty big green sheet. I used it as a sling for a broken arm. 

We had another warm up activity. You had to point at someone and say you and then we slowly got louder and LOUDER until we were yelling. Then it changed a little bit because we went from loud to quiet and after that it was quiet then loud and quiet again. It was really loud at some points.

Then we started to practice one of the songs that we had last week. We went through the song so many times it's stuck in my head now and it's kind of annoying too. 

We went and got a drink and then we came back and Nicola had put some new lyrics on our books. It was "Life on Mars" by David Bowie. That song is also stuck in my head. We listened to it once and then played it again and started singing along with it and then we just got better and better so now we already know the song quite well. So by week three we should know the new song very well.

Performance

Today we started singing with Nicola. Nicola gave us a couple of singing warm-ups. Then we had to freeze while she went and got the paper with the lyrics to the songs. We were going to be singing...  Taller, Stronger, Better by Guy Sebastian and Don't Stop Me Now by Queen. 

We listened to them about three times for each song and we all slowly started to sing along with it. While we were listening to the songs we were correcting the mistakes and writing anything that we think needed to be on there. They are both quite good songs. We glued in the songs into our books so that we all have a copy of the words. I wasn't too sure if I wanted to be in the performance group but now I know I definitely do want to be in that group. I can't wait until next term.

Performance group

Today for my passion project I started to do Performance with Nicola. Last year at school I was in the drama group so I thought it would be fun to do this. We played about 3 drama games before we did our auditions. Our first game was HASH. H is for happy, A for angry, S for sad and H for happy again. For 1-5 we had to say that number in a happy voice. If it was from 5-10 it was an angry voice. From 10-15 we had to say it in a sad voice and 15-20 in a happy voice again. We had about ten minutes to plan out what we were going to do. I decided to do some acting, but I forgot about the time limit. We had to makeup something from thirty to sixty seconds long. Mine was about ten seconds long but everybody else got in.

Patterns Field Trip

Hoo-ray! Today all of us went on our first field trip for the year. We had to get into partners and my partner was Kavarn. We went because our concept curriculum for the year is 'Patterns'. We went not only to look at natural patterns, but man-made ones to, for example pillars to strengthen the buildings. I wasn't sure where we were going and then Darryn told us that the places were: the art gallery, the library, Queens Park and Countdown. We went to the library first. We looked around and then I saw a rack that had some bags on it so I took a photo and it was a pattern of order. That is the photo up the top. I really enjoyed the trip even though I was sort of tired.

Passion Project

                                              The one on top is the racing game and the one
                                              below is the four player ping pong game.

We were able to start our passion projects today. I'm making a video game on Scratch. It's going to be a two player racing game. I've made about four other games so I sort of know what I'm doing on Scratch. They were different kinds of ping pong games. My latest one was four player. The racing game that I started to make today is sort of difficult because I want it to a car around an oval track, but then it goes upside down, So I made little circles as the racers. I think it's going well but it's going to take quite a while before it's finished.

When I played chess today I was about to challenge someone and then Alex came up to me and wanted to verse me and we're not allowed to say no if they ask us unless we've already played today. We played for five minutes and then came in the chess clock. Most people hate them but I really like them because then I usually win and it continued today. Even though I was already above him on the chess leader board.

The horrendous hoop game

We ran outside excited because we were going to play a Wilson game and then... We found out that we were playing the difficult, HORRENDOUS, but fun Bullseye game. We were given two animals and two flat ones. What makes it so hard it that we have to throw them into four different hoops that are very Very VERY Far away.

Actually I'm just kidding, they are a decent distance away, they're not that far and by the way the animals are beanbags. If we got it in the hoop we would get a certain amount of points. They were two points for hoop one, four points for hoop two, six for hoop three, eight points for the fourth and last hoop. Darryn yelled go and we started to throw the beanbags. We got one in and another one and just after team one we got four in on the first round.

We went and collected them and then started round two. That round we only got three in the hoop. We were behind at least two of the other three teams then we started the third round and then all of a sudden we got twenty-two points and got the highest score out of all of the groups which was forty-eight Woo Hoo!

Second week at Enrich

Today at Enrich Darryn told us what the concept curriculum is for the year. Concept curriculum is one of the four corner stones. This year it is patterns. We had a big discussion about where we can find patterns and they're surprisingly in a lot of different places. Some of the things that I wrote down were Tessellation's, illusions and that a pattern is something that repeats. It's quite hard to think of what a pattern is.