Sarah's Blog

During the ‘lead yourself into the future’ activity, all the year 6’s,including Donvale kids, gathered around inside a hall and did all sorts of fun activities in groups. The activities are mostly physical activities. My favourites were cup stacking and newspaper towers. 

Cup stacking was an extremely fun activity as we had to cooperate to do it. We were given cups and string to make the highest tower possible, without touching the cups. At first, it was hard to do, but later my group found a strategy to stack the cups. This activity was a challenging and a fun activity, that needed both collaboration and perseverance to do it. 

Newspaper towers was also one of my favourite activities, as it also included collaboration. The whole group had to collaborate to make the highest tower with just newspaper and tape. Many groups first started making the tower tall, instead of thinking about the foundation. Unfortunately, my group did not win, but we all improved in our cooperation skills. 

Overall, this day was really fun, and I can not wait to do it again!  

Away in an iced land with glaciers and frozen seas, there lives a huge carnivore. It has fur as soft and yellow-tinted as the icy snow, and has a strong body taller than a man. Away in this land, the polar bear lives.

The polar bear is a gigantic, fluffy animal that has a diet mostly made of seals. These seals include the ringed and bearded seals, which are the most common types of seals polar bears eat. They also eat harp and hooded seals if they are at the right location. They sometimes eat berries, grasses, reindeer, bird’s eggs, ducks, geese, lemmings, seaweed, walrus, certain whales, and very rarely, other polar bears. The polar bear’s physical appearance includes a head that is long and narrow, and a long neck and body. The polar bear has short and furry ears, and yellowish fur that blends into the snow. Its fur helps it camouflage in the snow when it is hunting seals. The adult male bear weighs 300 pounds, while the female polar bear weighs 330-550 pounds.(150-250kg) Both polar bear genders are taller that humans. The male is 2.3 to 2.6 metres tall and the female is usually 2 metres tall.

There are many adaptations of the polar bear. A structural adaption is that the polar bear has hollow fur. The fur can hold air inside, which helps the bear with hunting under water. Another structural adaption is that the  polar bear has a layer of black skin under it’s fur. This black skin absorbs the sun’s heat, which makes the bear warm. A behavioural adaptation is that the polar bear waits at seal holes and waits for the seal to come out of the hole. Another behavioural adaptation is that the polar bear, during Winter, digs dens to keep warm. The polar bear is a strong swimmer, so it has the ability to swim in cold waters. 

The lights go out.

I silently creep up the stairs, increasing excitement every second. The eight weeks work was finally paying back…

Our play, Hanging onto the Bottom of the World (HOTBOTW), was a play about Australian history. The play had people playing characters accurate in Australian history, like someone playing ‘Captain Cook’ and someone playing ‘Governor Arthur Phillip’. There were also other characters that were from the future, like the Bruce and Eddie, our commentators for the ‘making of Australia’. In the play, I played a soldier accompanying Captain Cook poo and Governor Phillip. A PLA I had to use was courage, because I had to practice a lot to really ‘step inside’ my character. But with a lot of practice, I could finally do it.

Our director of the play was Ms. Quodling, a teacher who gave us our roles and taught us a lot of useful things about the production. We also got help from Tim, a drama person from middle school. Other people, like Mrs Ingles (a teacher), and liv. They all helped our play be interesting a more funny.

During the production, we used a lot of props. During practice, I used a wooden gun, but that was soon changed to a gun made out of toilet-rolls. There were also other props, such as apples, camp chairs, sunglasses, hats, a gold nugget, edible sandwiches, and a lot more!

After such a long time of practice, we had finally performed the production in high standard. I couldn’t believe that just 8 weeks ago, our production was something new to us and now, we know our lines extremely well.

Have you been in a production before?

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Every year, my family and I celebrate a number of celebrations. We celebrate all the common festivals like Christmas and Birthdays, but we also celebrate festivals from the Chinese  cultures, which my parents always did. These include:

Chinese New Year: Chinese New Year day usually lasts for about 15 days. The beginning of this special event starts on the 1st of January. On these few days, a family gathers for a feast and gives ‘red packets’, which are red sachets of money, usually decorated with gold pictures. Cultural Chinese people also make houses clean to ‘chase away bad spirits’. In China, lots of people make loud noises and hang red lanterns on houses.

Mid-Autumn Festival: This festival starts on the 1st of October.   On this day, people celebrate the end of the Autumn harvest. Cultural people also know a legend to this event. It is about a beautiful woman in China, who’s husband has earned a elixir for  being a hero.(Shooting the 10 suns.)He gave the elixir to Chang E. (the woman)One day, a robber wanted to steal the elixir, and left with no choice, Chang E had to drink the elixir. She immediately floated to the moon, the nearest planet to Earth.

When her husband went looking for her, he realised that she had floated away. On that day, every year, people will eat all of Chang E’s favourite snacks to remember her. One of the snacks include the famous mooncake.

Dragon Boat Festival: The dragon boat festival also has story connected to it. It is the story of Qu Yuan, a outrageous poet who had loved his country, China. When he saw his country ‘broken’, he fell into despair, because of his country. And one day, he drowned himself. The next day, no-one could find his body. Because the people didn’t want fish to eat his corps, they would throw sticky rice pyramids(zhong zi) to replace his body as food. People also eat these zhong zi with sugar. Inside zhong zi, people might put meat or egg yolk in it.

Photos:

Red packet:

https://chinese american family.com/red-envelopes/

Mooncake:

https://www.cheng-tsui.com/blog/mid-autumn-festival-mooncakes

Zhong zi:

The bus was full of kookaburras, chattering excitedly to birds near them. A faint sound of ‘Mr Bean’ played in the background, as the bus soared across the sandy tracks. We were almost there! I couldn’t believe we went this far already…

On the first day of Camp Toonallook, the class was a bundle of joy, waiting enthusiastically for our first activity to begin. The class was split into 2 groups, and we would switch activities when both groups were done. On that day, we went kayaking and cycling, and my group went cycling first. We cycled to a place and played a game. When we got back, after a snack of scones and cordial, we headed of to go kayaking. Fortunately, the staff who went with my group didn’t flip our kayaks over. After dinner, which was burritos and apple crumble, we played a game, which was called ‘The Shoe Game’. In The Shoe Game, there are a lot of ridiculous rules, such as “You cannot question the judge”, or “Points will be taken away if you don’t cheer”. When we played ‘The Shoe Game’, there were two teams, aka our activity groups. We all had lots of fun, and had a good night.

On the next day, after our activities, we packed our bags and set of walking for our expedition camp. At expedition, we would put up tents, had a fireplace and did stuff in the outback. There was even a portable toilet! Unfortunately, at one time, rain was pouring hardly and some people’s belongings got soaked. On the other hand, our tents were waterproof, so our sleeping bags and things inside the tent were dry. 

After a night in tents, we had breakfast and then went on a epic adventure to a island near Toonallook, which is called Ramen Island. On the island, we went cycling (again!) and koala spotting. Both activity groups saw more than 30 koalas. When going to the island, we took a fast boat that Toonallook owns. (Toona-Storm) On the way back, we took a bus. When we got back,I  couldn’t believe that camp was almost over!

On our last day, in the morning, the majority of my class woke up very early to see the sun rise. It was extremely beautiful! After going back after the sun rising, we did a Toonallook challenge, which was some obstacle courses. After morning tea, we thanked the staff and began our journey back to Melbourne.

Have you been to Toonallook, or been to a place near it?

This is my new avatar! In some ways, it is like me, but in some other ways, it isn’t.

Firstly, I chose light blue as a clothing colour because on weekends, I usually wear light blue. In real life, my eyes are brown, and my hair is blackish-brown.

On the other hand, I am still a kid, but my avatar looks like a teenager.

Is your avatar similar to your real-life person?

This term, I have been learning about fractions. The unit was extremely interesting. Here are some things I  know.

 

This term, my class have been learning about the gold rush in Ballarat, 1851. At the start of this subject, we went to Sovereign Hill camp in the early weeks of term 2. At camp, we did most of our research there, since we were in Ballarat and got to see the real buildings. We had to examine the insides of the buildings, so we could accurately decorate the insides of our buildings.

When making my diorama, me and my partner both had to bring in a shoebox. After drafting a 3d version of our diorama, we started painting things, printing things, and glueing things with hot glue guns. Our first building we made was the tent makers in Sovereign Hill.

Using the second box, we made our second building, the bowling alley, which was slightly more popular (as a real building) than the tent makers. This time, the difficulty level was harder, since the whole grade was running low on hot glue and it was a major item for lots of people. I had to use PVA glue or a glue stick instead, which was a lot harder to stick things onto, especially if your trying to stick clay onto cardboard. Me and my partner were also running out of time, but when we asked for help from others, we finished the task in time.

A PLA I had to use was resilience, because I had to be resilient when I found out I can no longer use a strong glue to stick on things.Although there were some negative things that happened throughout the subject, but it was still a very good experience. 

Have you ever made a diorama?

This term, my class has been learning about the gold rush in Ballarat, throughout the 1850s. After visiting Ballarat, we made a bird’s eye view of the museum. Here are some videos:

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Have you made a group diorama before?