Camp Bentzon 2009 Rocked!!!

One of my favourite things to do is go camping.  That was what the year 6 students did.

For the last (about) 6 years Pt England has been sending their year 6 students of to Kawau Island. Its filled with tall spiky trees, wekas and even wallabies.  There were even some very steep hills that we had to run on every morning.  It was exhausting for everyone, but ever since Mr Jacobsen has been going nobody has ever beaten him on the run until now.  He announced at breakfast that Jacob beat him every time we ran.  That was quite amazing really that a student beat a teacher!!
Anyway the best thing I liked at camp (besides the activities) was the food.  We had our own chef/cook, his name was Mr Coop and his son Steve helped him.  I thought that he made the best dishes I'd ever tasted, I especially liked his bread that he made every morning at 4:00.  DELICIOUS!!! 

There were some awesome activities there like kayaking, ab-sailing, raft building, sailing, orienteering, confidence course-(con course) and I don't think this was an activity, but we got to bomb off the wharf. Well I didn't but my friends did, they said it was awesome!!

One of my favourite activities at camp was going on Mr Malloy's yacht. It was an awesome experience to be on a 40ft yacht.  But the thing that made the ride fun and a bit dangerous was Nathaniel steering the boat.  He made the yacht (nearly) tip over so much that every time that yacht hit something we could feel the water splash onto us.  But I liked it anyway because I like to get wet.

Camp Bentzon (I think) has got to be one of the best camps I have ever been to!!!! 

The Toy shop on Zip Zap Avenue!!!

Pt England's time to shine is coming up soon. Their going to be performing "The Toy Shop on Zip Zap Avenue", our own school production.

There are a lot of rolls so that means a lot of practice is involved. I'm certain that everybody who's in the production can't wait until the 3 big nights. So I guess that's talking about me because I'm in the production.

So during this week the cast and crew have been pulled out of class now and then to have a blocking practice which is like the real thing but without the costumes, make-up and music. Tomorrow on Friday we're having another blocking practice but this time we're having it with the music. Its close to the real thing but then again there's no costumes or make-up.

I've been in 2 previous productions each with a different name and subject or topic. So I have a taste of what performing feels like. Sometimes I'm a confident person and sometimes I'm a nervous person. But I definitely know that I won't be nervous because I don't have any lead parts!!

With a bit more practice I know that The Toy Shop on Zip Zap Avenue is going to be a great hit at our school!!

Thanks to:http://actioncollector.com/images/UltimateSoldierSamples.jpg and http://www.teddybearexpert.com/images/teddy-bears.jpg for the photos

The Kerikeri Wordle

This is another Wordle and this time its about my trip up North to Kerikeri.  Again it shows the words I've used the least and the most and this time one of my biggest words is "got" which is quite embarrassing really because I should be using words like "brought or received" instead of "got"!!  Also if you haven't noticed one of  my least used words is "amazed".  That's a shame because "amazing" is an interesting word.  But hey you can always learn from your mistakes!!

My Trip to KeriKeri

My mum is in the ASB Community Trust and they always have meetings. But what I dislike about going to these meetings is that sometimes the meetings are always a long way away.

I don't like long distant travel because I get car-sick and I feel really woozy and I just don't really like the feeling. Anyway besides the car-sick I really enjoyed the trip there and back. I saw lots of grass, cows, goats, a cute pony, trees, roads, cars and forests. I also saw some dead possums which was quite gross!

We stopped for an ice cream at Kawakawa and after about 4 hours we finally arrived. To be honest KeriKeri kind of reminded me of Otahuhu because there was lots of shops and they were on the sides of the road. There were shops that I'd never seen before like this shop called ''Shoe Style", and by the name of the shop I can easily tell that the shop sells shoes.

We stayed in a Motel called KeriKeri Court Motel. As soon as I got in I went straight to the fridge because I wanted to see if they had these little containers of milk that I like so much. Luckily for me they did. I drank nearly half of the supply that they had in the fridge , that's how much I like it!! My mum had run over to the receptionist to ask for a DVD player because my sister had brought along a few DVDs to watch. That was smart of her, it was smart of her because she knows that Motels and Hotels don't have Sky and so we watched some of her DVDs.

For dinner we had a barbecue and the grill for the meat was next to a pool so my sister and I were very keen to go for a swim. My parents weren't quite sure about it though because the weather was absolutely freezing. Well actually it was absolutely freezing to them. But finally I convinced them to let us go for a swim.

We got into the pool and boy did we judge it!! I was so cold I completely froze as if I was about to be pounced on by a hungry tiger or lion!! I soon started to move around and started to unfreeze. It didn't really feel so cold anymore. It got late so out we got from the pool and guess what...it was even colder when we stepped out of the pool. We soon got used to it and went in to eat our food with some other ASB Community Trust members.

The next day it so happened that we were in KeriKeri for Fathers Day so my dad decided he wanted to go and visit a store called the "Stone Store". This was a fascinating place it was also a very historic place full of many historic objects. I was so amazed to be looking at old fashioned clothing,some pipes and even old padlocks that still worked. One of the ladies escorted us into the gift shop where on these shelves were some old packaging for New Zealand products like Weet Bix, Chelsea's Sugar, Edmonds Custard. I also saw an old shopping bag for the "4 Square" shop. We had left the Stone Store with a bar of chocolate, a post card, a bowl and my dad bought himself some Kerikeri organic tea(manuka mint) which he is yet to taste.

And to pass the time we went to the farmers market where my dad also bought himself about 10
bags of KeriKeri natural oranges. I didn't want to buy anything because I was so tired and I just wanted to go to the car and have a nap.

When we left we had to go and pick my mum up from her meeting. After that I was so happy we were going home because I was feeling a bit home-sick. But there was 1 more place that my dad wanted to go to. It was Waitangi!! We didn't go to the exact spot where the ''Treaty of Waitangi'' or in Maori Te ''Tiriti o Waitangi" was signed. There was a lovely view though. I really enjoyed it!!

We then left and off we were for the long way home to Auckland all so tired and exhausted. I got car-sick on the way so I tried to get some sleep. When I woke up I found that we were in a Humongous-Ly long queue . It was like an enormous centipede. You couldn't even see the head. We then got to see why there was such a long queue, it turned out to be the traffic lights. They weren't working properly.

I was so bored that I again went to sleep. And this time when I woke up we were already on the drive way to our home sweet home!!! I was so very happy!!!

My Blog Wordle

In extension Mrs. Burt showed us a website called Wordle. Wordle is a website that can show you a bunch of words and text that you have typed up and give you an idea of what visitors see when they visit your blog. Wordle also shows you what type of words you use the most and words that you use the least of. As you can see one of the words I've used the most is "New Zealand", and one of the words I've used the least is "built".

Yes Over and Done With!!!

I was just so nervous when Mr. Burt was about to smack the starter blocks together and when he did, that was the signal for us to start. "Okay, ready, set" and as Mr. Burt was about to yell out go he smacked the starter blocks together and off the lot of us raced, like a flock of birds shooting off to a place with a warmer climate. Oh and because we were running out of time the 11 year old girls had to run with the 11 year old boys.

But luckily we weren't racing against each other. It'll just be the normal race but we'd be running with the boys.

But back to the race. My feet were as wobbly as jelly and my feet were always like this when I was nervous. SMACK went Mr Burt with the race starters (which were two blocks of wood that you smack together.) Like I said before we were like a flock of birds shooting off to a place with a warmer climate. We were told by the teachers to jog before we sprint so that we have more energy to sprint to the finish line. Not many of us did this because some of us were eager to win.

I was coming forth but unfortunately I stopped and Vaha and somebody else ran ahead of me. I wasn't really worried because if I didn't come first I didn't actually really mind. I didn't really mind because even though I didn't come first I still ran the whole race (with a few stops.)

So as I was still running and coming seventh place Destiney was coming first which wasn't quite of a surprise because she's someone who always comes first. But I was proud for her because she's my friend. She and a bunch of other people who came a place in the race are going into the inter-zones which I think is at Glenn Brae Primary.

Anyway I was near the finish when I stopped to wait for my friends so we could run with each other. So we did and we all run to the finish line. That was when I was really happy because even though I came eighth place I was so happy because I had gotten it over and done with!!!!

Even though Cross Country is over we've still got Athletics to go which I would love to do!!!!!!!

Hamish Campbell a Very Clever Person

It was on the morning of the 5th of August that we had another one of those special video conferences.  This time our special video conference was with a famous paleontologist and Geologist who's name was Hamish Campbell.

We have had a video conference with him before but that conference was based on chatting about our topic from last term which was about dinosaurs.  This time our chat was about the Fiordland earthquake.  Hamish explained to us a few interesting facts about earthquakes and about the earthquake that happened in Fiordland.  Some of the facts that he shared with us were very hard to understand because we aren't experts on earthquakes (like Hamish), but luckily Hamish is a talented person who can take difficult words and make them sound easier to understand for children like us.  

Anyway back to the facts.  He told us that there are 2 different plates covering New Zealand called "the Australian plates" (which is on the left  side of the New Zealand) and the other set of plates called "the Pacific plates" (which is obviously  on the right side of new Zealand.) Another fact was that the Fiordland earthquake was named Dusky Sound and it measured up 7.6m on the Richter scale, it is said to be the largest earthquake in the world since the 2nd largest one 80 years ago.  He also said that there was once an earthquake that hit a village in China called Tangshan and lasted for 15 seconds, unfortunately it only lasted a vast amount of seconds but killed over 200,000 people.  It was a very sad tragedy.   

What is also very sad is that Hamish told us that Joan Wiffen died.  If you don't know who Joan Wiffien is well, she was the first person in New Zealand to find a fossilized part of a dinosaur. She is famous to the extension group because we did research on her when we were learning about dinosaurs.  She is also well known to the rest of New Zealand because before she found the fossilized part of the dinosaur, it was thought that no species of the dinosaur had ever stomped around on the land we now know as Aotearoa-New Zealand.  Thanks to her we now know that dinosaurs stomped around in our part of the land.

And thanks to Hamish Campbell, Diana-Grace and Te Papa museum for setting up another awesome video conference.  Not most kids get to talk to a famous Geologist and paleontologist!!