Click Click Cheese!

Yay!!! Today was our first week of passion projects!! This year I am entering a static image into the MADE Awards. For those of you who don't know what the MADE Awards are, I will explain. It is a contest that is on every year, and you can enter all types of photos, documentaries and that kind of thing. If you want to check out what people have done over the years then you can go to www.madeawards.com and see for yourself.

This week I typed up some photography tips,  and some good ideas of good things to take a photo of. Here are some hints on how to take a great photo.....

A plain background is good so your object stands out more.
On sunny days turn your flash on so the sunlight doesn't effect your photo too badly.
On cloudy days turn your flash on full mode (if it has one).
To make your photos come to life a bit more,  aim your camera slightly off-centre to the main part of the photo.
Don't like the sunlight?  Then take your photos in the morning or the evening.

Hope that helped you a bit. It helped me a lot because I hope to go to Queens Park soon and take some photos using them tips.

I think and hope my MADE awards project will work out!!

Check Mate!

Boom Madison's rook planted itself right in front of my kings face. Unfortunately, I couldn't take it because her Queen would kill me. So my brain ticked away while I was playing chess with Madison trying to think of a plan. All I had left on the board was a king and a pawn, and Madison had a queen, her king, her rook, her bishops, and some of her pawns.

There goes my pawn I mumbled to myself. This game wasn't going great and the worst part about it was that I was higher then her on the leader board, but not anymore. In the end Madison got me in check mate and that was the end of chess.

Even though Madison bet me I think I still have enough skill to bet you maybe Jason....

Titanic!!

"Go SCAMPER"!!! Said Katie. I grabbed Madison (my buddy) and we went off to do our SCAMPER on Titanic. Before I tell you anything else you are probably wondering what SCAMPER is?? To SCAMPER you choose a main project and do these things to it.....

S stands for substitute so you have to change something on your project. C stands for combine so you combine your project with something else. A stands for alter so you change something that you don't like in your project and make it something that you do like. M stands for mega/mini so you would change something big in your project to something small and something small in your project to something big. P stands for put to other uses so you would use your project as something else. E stands for eliminate so you would take away something from your project. R stands for reverse which means you put the thing in other order.

Anyway Madison and I are doing Titanic as you already know and we have done............

Substitute= Change the rats running down the hallway on the boat when its just started to sink, into ice cubs to make the water colder. 
Combine=  When the ice hits the boat lego bricks from the Lego movie come and patch it up, but seeing the water is so strong they get knocked down and the boat still sinks. 
Alter= When Rose slips she is so close to the water but she's just holding on to a ladder, that Jack comes down and saves Rose before she slips.
Mega/mini= change the hole in the boat to make it a bigger hole so they don;t have as much time to get everyone on to a life boat.
Put to other uses= The steam things make hot air come out and keep the boats surroundings warm and possibly melt the ice. 
E=eliminate= At the start of the movie when the are at the pub we have eliminated the parson punching the other person. 
R=reverse  Rose is late getting on the boat and by the time the get to the boat it has already gone, so the boat has to go back and get them seeing they are so important.

So this is how Madison and I have improved the movie Titanic!!

End of term one :(

Man has this term gone fast!! It is the last day of Enrich for the term and I'm quite excited about the holidays but really excited about coming back to Enrich for term two!!

The day started normally we did the roll and when Katie called out our name we had to say what we were excited for in the holidays!! I pondered and when Katie finally got to my name (we were over time because so many people were excited about lots of things). Anyway I said about how excited I was about going camping in Mavora with my family, then going up to my Nana's and Poppa's house in Te Anau!!

I could actually hear my brain ticking because now we were doing brain training and it was hard!! We watched this video all about how to get your brain ticking and then we went on this really cool website with lots of activities to make your brain smarter. The website is www.gamesforthebrain.com.

I can't wait for the easter holidays but I also can't wait for term two!!

Pieces everywhere!!

Yay!! I say because at Enrich today I went to a brain booster all about chess!! What we did is Jenni and the group set up a chess game and went over the simple rules. E.g how many points the pieces were worth, some good moves to start off with. While we were doing it someone said its a good thing to do scholars!! I had no idea what that was, but I found out it is a way to get your opponent in check in four moves!!

When we had done that we got a buddy and played a game of chess. I was with Mia. In the game there were pieces everywhere and I think Mia and I just wanted to kill as many pieces as we wanted to. So we never got to finish the game but we counted up the points we had so far. I got seven points and Mia got ten points so Mia won!!

Today I have learnt new moves in chess that will be very handy. I am also more confident in chess so watch out Jason!!

Royals!!

"And we'll never be Royals" sings the fantastic Lorde!! But you may ask what am I talking about?? 

Well At Enrich today we rotated around three stations and the one I quite liked was one about Scholarly Habits with Nicola!! We got a sheet with all the scholarly habits on it. Some examples of them are excellence, saving ideas and curiosity there are 8 more as well. Anyway we watched a video about Lorde's music teacher talking all about Ella (Ella is Lorde's real name incase you don't know). 

As we watched the video we ticked of the scholarly habits that Lorde used. She used all 11 of them!! I will give you an example of one. Academic Humility: Lorde used this because when she was younger she got a lead role in a play and she didn't go and brag in front of the others in the play, but she played her role really well by being confident and loud and she probably just wanted to make the play the best it could be!!
 
Then after doing that we had to tick off our own Scholarly habits of what we did and we had to give an example, mine was. Goal Setting: I used goal setting at the start of every year and one of my goals is to go on the X-Factor when I am 14!! 

This lesson really helped me to learn my Scholarly Habits and I found it really interesting!!

Open Questions!!

Do you ask open or closed questions?? To be able to answer that you might want to know what they are.....    This morning at Enrich we have been learning about open and closed questions, a closed question is when the answer is one word and a open question is when the answer can be long.

So we had to buddy up with someone I budded up with Rhylee and what we had to do is ask them 10 open questions!! So it was like an interview to find out more about your class mates.

My favourite question was
Lucy: Describe a time when you felt like you would burst into tears you were so happy??
Rhylee: When my parents told me we were going to Fiji in four days!!

So I learned two things today. More about Rhylee and how to write open questions!!

So I'll see you on my next blog.