Rainbow's End 🎫

Yesterday the year eights went to Rainbow's End for Y8 graduation, we were given other choices like paintball but decided to stick with Rainbow's End and I'd say we chose the right thing. 

Our first ride was the stratosfear, at first it wasn't that bad until we were upside down and starting swinging faster and faster. On the fear fall Limiteti, Kotipi and I were in the middle of praying when "BOOM" it dropped....We screamed our lungs off and acted like nothing happened when we got off. I was excited to go on the invader but my plan for that ride got cancelled since it wasn't open. The two most enjoyable rides we went on probably have to be the scorpion karts and power surge, power surge kept twisting and turning while scorpion karts had me feeling like I was the best driver in the world. 🏎️

Overall it was a great day and I'm ready for our last trip on Friday before I leave for college. 😁

New Teacher !!!

Recently our teacher went on leave for the rest of the year, so we were given another to substitute in his place. She has taught quite a few times here at our school, but hasn't been permanent since last year before she had an accident. This is her!

Mrs. Mitchell (our new teacher) has helped us to work on the areas we are struggling in and reflect to see what we can do better, she is funny at times and will reward us once in a while when we work hard. 

Sign Language Week

This week we are celebrating sign language. This event was initially supposed to be around the beginning of May but changed so that it would be scheduled around the same time America would celebrate in their country. This week helps to spread awareness for all the deaf people in our country, also it's promoting the language. 

NZSL is one of the three official languages we have in New Zealand. More than 2,000 kiwi's around the country use sign language daily to communicate with a deaf family member or friend.

Harbour Bridge Incident

 On Friday an incident with a truck happened on the harbour bridge. The roadwork people closed two lanes from both sides so now it's not running as normal, it will take about 4 weeks minimum to get the bridge back to normal and running smoothly once again.When the accident occurred two trucks crashed side and blocked the lanes, one driver jumped out and went into somebody else's car. 

The NZTA has recommended that people who usually cross the harbour bridge rather work from home if possible so that not everyone is stuck and qued up. Luckily no one was hurt..

Week #3 Of Tech

This week I made my vision of a cross come to life. From planning, to cutting, to creating the actual piece, I was slowly becoming closer to the end. In only the time of 3 weeks I was almost finished with my pewter pendent.

I had to draw my design onto a small piece of wood and use a professional woodcutter to cut the mold out. I could do it perfectly so Mr Grundy had to clean up some of the sides. I was using my hand to guide the wood piece but it was hard to focus because my hands were moving and I was worried.

Once I finally got my pewter metal out the mold I had to file the edges and make them as smooth as I can, next week I'll start sanding and hopefully if I'm quick enough I can make another one.

Turbo Touch

This afternoon Room 1 & 7 had another turbo touch lesson. Coach Chris first went over the rules just incase we forgot about them during lockdown. We then split into three teams and headed straight into our game football touch.

In football touch you have to try and tap the opposing team with the ball, except if you do have the ball you can't move. The game really made us focus on working together and thinking smart. How could we touch them? How do I not get touched?

I was definitely puffed out after going up against the green team because everybody in their team only went after me. At first I was doing good until I got tired and just let them touch me. It felt like a full on workout just running around.

Artificial Reef Being Made

Currently there is an artificial reef being made in the Marlborough Sounds. The Marlborough Sounds is at the northern end of our South Island, most of it basically is just sea valleys. According to Maori mythology they claim the sounds you can hear are the waka's that sunk of Aoraki.


This week they had to remove quite a lot of mussel shells from the shores. Their idea for this reef is to help save the marine life as well as become multi-millionaires. 

10 Years Since Christchurch Earthquake

It has been 10 years since the earthquake in Christchurch happened. A decade ago on the 4th of September an earthquake with a 7.1 magnitude hit in a town called Darfield. The shaking of the earthquake was so strong that the whole of the South Island managed to feel it. 

An earthquake happens when the tectonic plates of the earth's crust crash into one another. The earth's crust is the last layer, when the crust moves it becomes fractured. 

Delaying Elections

It has been discussed that the elections have been rescheduled 4 weeks back. This decision was made because Jacinda's attention is  dealing with COVID-19.

This has only been announced because people kept questioning her about the elections and she needed to clear it up. She didn't make this choice herself but talked to all the other parties, everyone else  agreed that it should be pushed back so when people vote they can safely.

Lockdown #2

Having to go back into lockdown for the second time this year isn't really fun, but I fully understand that it's for our safety. As a country if we would like to go back to when we were clear of the disease disappeared, you should get tested if you show any symptoms of corona and immediately quarantine yourself. 

It truly is sad to see lives being taken away because of the Coronavirus, so the best thing we can do is keep social distancing and always wash your hands! Stay safe and make sure to protect yourself :)

Volleyball 2020!!!

Yesterday some students went and represented our school in volleyball. Our tournament was held inside the Barfoot & Thompson Stadium at Selwyn College. The fact that we won more games than we lost without having any reserves, I'm proud of the year 7 & and 8's.

Our volleyball team manager was Sebastian's mum. She would help us during our break to practice on what needed to get better and always encourage us. I really enjoy playing volley because I get to use different skills and I forget about the things I'm worried about.

Grow Green

Recently we went back to tech, instead of working with sugar this time our experiment had to do with plants specifically leaves. We talked about the structure of a leaf, the ones we are able to eat and how they grow. 

For our experiment we each used different leaves we could find outside our classroom and then boiled them in a tube of alcohol to see the colour drain out! From one tiny leaf there was definitely a lot more pigment than I would have expected. Some of us even got the chance to find out the meaning of words like photosynthesis!

Working With Sugar

For this weeks lesson we were working with sugar, talking about the different types and getting the chance to experiment with some coke.

Apparently, we are only supposed to be consuming 5 to 6 grams of sugar but instead we decide to have more sugar and end up having about 96 grams per day. Too much sugar can give you type 2 diabetes! Type two diabetes is when you have to get insulin shots to keep your blood sugar normal. Type one is when it comes from your genes. 

During the experiment we boiled the coke in a beaker, around 15 minutes after the coke evaporated we could see the amount of sugar that we have in one cup of coke.

Alert System For White Island

A senior studying at the University of Auckland is one of some scientists who came up with this new alert system. This system was designed for White Island's volcano, only because in the last decade it has erupted numerous times and has caused major damages. About 16 hours before the volcano erupts a signal will be sent to warn everybody. Now scientists are looking to get the same system installed in Ruapehu and Tongariro.

Personally I think that installing a system to notify you when an eruption will happen is really helpful, because in that period of time citizens have hours to leave the grounds and get to a safe destination.

Bones & Skeletons x2

This week we were labeling parts of a skeleton and sketching. We had to cut out each part, glue it in our book to look exactly like the human skeleton and label using either the scientific name or common name. Before we got around to gluing the teacher had to check and see if the bones were in the right place.

After completing the first task our next instruction was to sketch one of the bones Mrs Sharma let us borrow. I was quite nervous because Mrs Sharma said that some of the bones were real but didn't tell us know which ones. Personally I'm not the best drawer so I went with the classic easy dog bone.

Bones & Skeletons

Last week in science our topic was bones and skeletons. As well as watching clips and finding out information we got to look at a fake skeleton and see all of the different bones.

I recently just found out that the longest bone is in our leg and the smallest is inside our ear. The fact that bones are actually alive and decrease as we grow makes me feel quite uncomfortable. Other than that bones are helpful because they hold our body up and make us not look sluggish.

Ruapotaka's Birthday

Last Friday we celebrated Ruapotaka's 66th birthday. Ruapotaka's birthday is actually on Sunday but we chose to celebrate on Friday. Our principal decided that since everybody couldn't cut the cake together, the oldest and youngest student should do it.

The cake was delicious, a chocolate cake covered in blue icing and sprinkles just sounds incredible. The cake was blue to match our school!!

War In Waihi

My reading group Apples read an article called "War in Waihi". The article was about the Martha Mine and the bad things that happened. 

The workers suggested since they couldn't work they wanted to go on strike, they were tired of not getting enough money. Months and months went until the new government decided to take action. Some people of the town agreed, the men work hard yet they barely get paid enough. 

Around September 1912 the war slowly started to begin, over sixty strikers were taken to prison and police would always be looking around on the streets. Then on a random day a group with police starting shooting and some men got hurt.