Friday, 28 May 2021

Toolkits 2021!

 Toolkits 2021!

Bonjour everyone! For this amazing post I will be talking about the student led toolkits that happened on the 20th of may. For this years toolkits we went to the Owairaka School! Some of the people were presenters and the others were just going to test some of the apps. We had 3 sessions, non presenters had those 3 sessions to look around but presenters only have 2 sessions to look around because they have to present at least once. We also had to have buddys so my friend, Ayana went with me and we chose the same tookits! I wasn't one of the presenters but I did have 3 sessions. The 1st was Book Creator which was my favourite, 2nd was making a book using Google Slide and the last was Coding with Minecraft. 

Book creator was probaly the most fun for me. Book creator is an app/site which you can use to make a book or even a comic! For a regular book you can add text, change the background,import photos and even draw. But for comics you can choose different kinds of panels which you can upload photos in, there is big comic stickers,different kind of comic backgrounds but my favourite is the different kinds of text boxs. This is a good website/app to make books!












Next was making a book using a google slide, I chose this because I like making books but It was boring for me. I also thought It would have some kind of special trick for making a book. I couldn't think of a story to make but eventually got one. All we had to do was make a new google slide, add a title, add some text and importing free images from a site called Pixabay. There was also A site called Pobble 365 were we could get Ideas from. I kind of liked this toolkit!





The last was Coding with Minecraft! The code with minecraft we had to go to this site called hour of code and find the minecraft coding games. There were different types of minigames like aquatic voyage, designing, and learning to code. I made it through 3 of the minigames guickly then got halfway through the main coding. This was a fun session of coding!


After our 3 sessions we had some people from Fusion come in to talk to us about cyber saftey and how they became interns. They also talked about how they became techinicians and being technicians like them if we wanted! I want to be a technician when I grow up! Toolkits is my 2nd favourite thing so far. Blog you later everyone.

Tuesday, 18 May 2021

Spark Arena Trip!

 Spark Arena Trip!

Hello Fishies! For this amazing and fun post I will be talking about the year 6s Spark Arena trip. The year 6s went on the bus to the Spark Arena for free! The CEO of spark arena, Brendon Hines organized this very expensive trip for us. Royal Road school and Lincoln Heights School also came with one of their classes/years. We had 3 exhibitions set up, one was for the public and the other 2 were set up just for the schools. The 3 exhibitions names was the Happy place, Van gogh and sounds fun also we had 30 minutes at each exhibitons. Theres one more exciting thing, we had the famous Suzy Cato there as well!

The first exhibition we went to was the happy place! In the happy place we started off by diving into a ballpit! The ballpit was taller than most students by an inch and only 4 people got to go down at a time. The ballpit was also hard to get out but really fun! Next we had 3 small boxes to take pictures in! One of them had chains every where, the next had a tub with rubber duckies on the walls. The last one had glittering silver walls on it as if your a popstar. They also had 3 other big rooms! One was an room with a unicorn, another was an upside down room and the last one was a chocolate chip cookie with the chocolate chips being doors. There was another room that we had to wait for, the room had lots of pretty flowers in it. My most favourite and last room was the room with a dome. The dome had confetti in it and we all jumped around and played while the wind from underneath!


Sounds fun was the next exhibition we went to. In the room we got to play with different kind of instruments like trumpets, trumbones, eletric drums and stuff like that. There was also stuff like keyboards and drum pads to play on. I would say it was like 4 stations. The Keyboard/drum pads station had a tablet and keyboards/drum pads set up so you can take lessons on how to make music using keyboards/drum pads. They had a station where you learn to use trumpets and trombones. Apparently they use thing small tubes that go into the trumpet/trombones to make sounds! 2nd to last station was the station with the electric drums. People learnt how to make music with the electric drums but I didn't go on it so I don't know much. The last station was the station where you got to play with some drum pads and keyboards while making music at the same time. That was really fun!



The finale exhibition was the Van gogh exhibition. If you don't know who Van gogh is he is a famous dutch artist who painted the famous starry night. There were 3 rooms in the exhibition, one of the rooms was the main one where his art was displayed with information about it for you to see. The other room was a giant black room that displayed the art on many screens, there was even a moving picture connected to all the screens! The prettiest room was the sunflower room. The sunflower room was tiny and had lots of artificial sunflowers everywhere with mirrors as walls! We didn't get to stay in it because it was just a walk through space.



 

The people there made us a packed lunch which included a sandwich, apple juice, an apple and a chip pack. There was a vegetarian sandwich for those who are halal or can't eat meat. I think that was the best trip so far! I hope we get another chance like this. Blog you later fishies!

Friday, 14 May 2021

Swimming at cameron pools!

 Swimming at Cameron Pools!

Bonjour Fishies! For this post I will be talking about the Cameron pools swimming lessons we are having. In this term we are having swimming lessons every tuesdays and thursdays from week 1 - 5. Only year 3 - 6 students get to go to cameron pools. The middle school swim in the nans pool and we seniors swim in the big pool where its deeper. For the seniors we have been split into 3 groups and we have 3 instructors. The instructors names are Jasmine, Alisha and Britany. My instructor is Jasmine!  

We started off by going over the basics like how to float, backstroke, freestyle and more like those using flutterboards. After going over the basics we started going into more advanced stuff like breathing while swimming, swimming on one side, swimming on your tummy then turning and so you get the idea. We also do dolphin dives but thats only at the end of swimming time. My favourite swimming technique is the one where you have to swim on your tummy then turn on your back beacause I think it's fun. I wish we could have more swimming days. 

Blog you later!