The Monarch Butterfly

Advent

Tessellating Patterns

WALHT: Design and create tessellations to explore transformations.

I designed and created the below tessellating patterns by...

First Pattern

1. Create a rectangle on paint
2. Draw a curvy line on the top of the rectangle
3. Copy the curved line and paste it at the bottom of the rectangle
4. Draw a curvy line on the right side of the rectangle then copy it to the left
5. Erase the rectangle and it’ll leave you with your shape
6. Colour your shape and copy and paste it so it’s symmetrical to make the pattern

Second Pattern

1. Draw a triangle
2. Colour the triangle
3. Copy and paste it so it makes a pattern
4. In the remaining spaces add the same triangle and rotate it 180 degrees

First Pattern  Second Pattern

Angry Flamingos

The Man

One morning Patrick raced out of his mum’s car running into his classroom late. This man told Patrick he was late. Of course he knew that but his teacher didn’t tell him that. He was wearing a tattered hat with creepy crawlies, a gigantic bow tie, he had auburn frizzy hair, green orbs and was very, very pale.

Patrick was standing at the door gazing at the man.
“Good Morning Patrick” He was still gazing until the man clicked his fingers in front of Patricks face. “You better hurry” he said as he handed Patrick some armour. When Patrick looked up the man vanished.

Patrick questioned his classmates on what was going on but they just stared at him blankly. He stared back at them and decided to put on the armour given to him by the man. When the bell rang to go to the next class Patrick received a peck on the shoulder. There he was standing face to face with an angry flamingo. One of Patrick’s classmates hit the flamingo in the head with a school book leaving it to fall on the ground and disappear. All of the students were trying to kill the angry flamingos with school supplies like rulers, books and staple guns.

When Patrick walked through the hallway no one was in sight except an 8’5 angry flamingo. This angry flamingo wore a crown on her head and tried to peck Patrick until he bled to death. Patrick then remembered why that man said you’re the one. He was the one to kill the angriest flamingo of them all. He got scissors out of his suit and trimmed off the flamingos feathers. By doing this the flamingo became shorter and shorter until she was the size of an ant. Before you knew it the flamingo was dead from Patrick stepping on the tiny flamingo.

Out of nowhere the students and the man from earlier on came back to school. They celebrated and enjoyed themselves at a tea party. Behind one of the bookshelves a baby angry flamingo was eyeing on Patrick ready to attack.

Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis is the way of how plants make energy. The things absorbed by the plant are water, sun and carbon dioxide. The plant then uses the things its absorbed by making the energy for itself which is glucose/sugar. Oxygen is produced by the plant in this course which is then turned into the air we breathe.

Highly Recommended Movie (Three Words)

I recommend "Three Words" by Room 3 at Saint Pius X School because it has a nice meaning behind the movie. It was very simple but it was also very good. The students from Room 3 had three or two pieces of paper that said something with only three words. Some of these three words were Learn Create Share and We Use Netbooks. I have 3 words for this movie which are Highly Recommended Movie. 

The Weta

My Article on the Weta:

Physical Features
The Weta’s appearance looks a bit like a grasshopper, katydid or cricket. They are very large compared to other insects. Their legs are quite big but most of the time they’re spiny. A lot of these creatures are wingless and all of them can’t fly. The colours on a Weta are usually shades of brown and black.

Their Environment
Weta’s can cope with more than one kind of temperature that’s why their environments aren’t in one area. These different areas include caves, forests, grassland and shrub lands. Most Weta’s live up in the north island of New Zealand.

A Weta’s Diet
These creatures like to eat during the nighttime since they’re nocturnal. They munch on leaves hanging on trees. Tusked Weta’s like to eat earthworms and beetles. Weta’s also eat plants and other insects which makes them omnivores.

Types
There are five different types of Weta which include the tree Weta, cave Weta, giant Weta, tusked Weta and the ground Weta. But if we’re talking about how many species are there that would be 70 and 16 at risk.

Breeding and Evolution
Their eggs are laid during the colder months in autumn and winter and they hatch during the spring time. Each Weta has an amount of how many years they live for but the cave Weta has seven. A tree Weta has at least one or two years before it’s developed into adulthood. During this period of time it would have shed its skin at least ten times. This is also part of the evolution of a Weta.

Sewing with Bernina

In Edgewater’s sewing room in Block C, Room 8 were with their partners in front of Bernina.

Bernina is the sewing machine we used for our sewing lessons with Mrs Scott and Ms Barrot. The item we had to make was a money purse. We first designed our money purse on paper then we practiced our designs on scrap pieces of fabric. I wanted my money purse to have decorative stitches on the lines so it looked very simple. The fabric we used for our money purses was coloured felt. We all decorated our purses with decorative stitches and we closed it up with functional stitches. At the end of our lesson our teacher Mrs Dines hurried and struggled with Mrs Scott to close up our purses with domes.

Thanks to Mrs Scott and Ms Barrot at Edgewater I now know how to use a Bernina sewing machine.

Under Southern Skies Presentation

My Holidays

Learning Intention: To use the features of a recount to share a personal experience


By the time I’d finished swimming at the wave pools on Monday, my hands looked like prunes because they were so wrinkled.

Around half past one in the afternoon Mica, Cheska and I were waiting at Cheska’s house for Chaim and her mum to pick us up. We saw them in their dark blue car coming into the driveway. We hastily grabbed our bags loaded with towels and rushed through the front door ready to go to the wave pools.  Once we arrived we walked to the dressing rooms and put our bathing suits on. We put our bags on the bench and hopped in the pool. It was kind of crowded because of the school holidays.

I climbed step by step by step on the stairs walking my way up to the water slide by myself because Cheska, Chaim and Mica were all too scared. When the green light went go I pushed myself down the slide. Near the end I got stuck and two girls behind me collided and we flipped over at the end of the slide.

After swimming in waves and chlorine we all went back to the changing rooms and changed out of our bathing suits. Chaim’s mum dropped me back home and my hands were back to normal.

Swimming is essential

Made on http://www.wordle.net/
Learning Intention: To use the features of explanation writing to inform our audience.   

Swimming isn’t just a great sport, it’s also an important skill to know. The number of children drowning in New Zealand has increased over in years. One reason why kids like us, drown is because they don’t know how to swim.

If you know how to swim you have a higher chance of surviving if you get caught in a rip or a dangerous disaster that includes water like floods. You would have a higher chance of surviving because with your ability to swim and your water safe knowledge you would know what to do in a situation like this.

Swimming is also a great way to keep fit because you’re working out your whole body. Maybe in a few generations we’ll be living in an underwater world. If you don’t know how to swim, you should learn now because you’re not only saving yourself you could be saving the life of someone else.

The Mary Celeste

The Mystery of the brigantine, The Mary Celeste

Learning Intention: Read forwards and backwards across the text to connect information

The mystery of the brigantine (a two masted sailing ship), the Mary Celeste may  perhaps never be solved. There are many theories on this case that have been presented over time.  After researching several of  these, I believe the  information  presented in the Court Enquiry provided  the strongest evidence  because it  included eyewitness testimony, and proof to support their  theory about what happened back in 1872.

On December, 4, 1872 the Mary Celeste was found in seaworthy condition in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, without any crew floating 600 miles off Gibraltar. The ships paper, it’s chronometer and everyone on board were the only things missing on the Mary Celeste. They had all inexplicably and completely vanished. Records presented in the Court  Inquiry from Autumn of 1872, showed that the Mary Celeste was sailing to Europe with a cargo of 1700 barrels of alcohol below her decks. The Captain, Benjamin Briggs was accompanied by his wife Sarah, their two year old daughter Sophia Matilda and the crew of seven men.

The Mary Celeste was observed by another ship The Dei Gratia. When her crew boarded the vessel under full sail its wheel was creaking and cabin doors were slamming open. Their reports at the inquiry included statements of  finding weapons with stains that looked like blood. According to Oliver Deveau (the Chief Mate of the ‘Dei Gratia’) the likelihood of these weapons being used for violence was very remote, as no other blood was found on the ship.  Stains underwent scientific testing which verified that they were iron nitrate not real blood.

Stormy weather recorded at the time of the time the crew of the Mary Celeste disappeared link to the most likely theory, that suggests that the the crew including the captain and his family possibly abandoned ship  in a small lifeboat for fear that the ship was sinking.  Again this is qualified by the fact that the only dry clothing  found on the ship was found  in a watertight seaman’s chest. Everything else was wet.   In the event of a captain abandoning his ship, it is likely that he would have taken ship’s records  and his chronometer.

My Digital Footprint

We've been learning about personal and private information online.  We have been learning to decide what personal information  is safe to share online.

My name is Angela and I’m an 11 year old student at Saint Patrick’s school. I’m from Room 8 and my teacher’s name is Mrs Dines. I’m a year 7 and enjoy maths and reading at school. I like to read different kinds of novels and books. My favourite books are Flipped and The Hunger Games trilogy. In my spare time I like to play the guitar, fangirl and listen to music like The Youth Parade and One Direction. I hope you enjoy reading my learning journey on my blog. ♥