Cultural Kete - Whakanuia Nga Ahurea

For a week and a 1/2, we have been working on a kete about our cultures. I did Indian culture because I'm Indian/Fijian. I enjoyed this because kete means when we have to create something and I enjoy making things. I made a paper hanging mobile. First I traced 5 of my hands onto paper, then I cut them out after I drew henna designs on the back and some facts about henna on the front, next laminated the hands, then I tied a string onto each of the hands after I cut a big circle out of paper and punched holes and tied the other end of the strings. I tied the strings on top of the paper but it kept on folding, so I put cardboard on top over the paper. I went into the next classroom and hung it up with more string on a light.

A World Without Wheels

This term for hurumanu 1 we have been doing a topic that is about inventions that changed the world. Our main invention this term we have been focusing on is Wheels. A few weeks ago I wrote a story about me inventing something that has something with wheels. I wrote another story about a world without wheels. This is what this blog is about. My teacher told me that I have to make the story better by putting paragraphs after someone speaks, or something new happens or when it's a new day. My favourite part was writing the story because I like writing stories. 

Here is my story:

Why did wheels get abandoned? That question came to my head when I was at home eating chicken nuggets because I was hungry. My birthday is coming up in 2 weeks. I know what I exactly want. That year is 2025, and I was turning 15. I was excited because I knew my wish would come true. 

I was staring outside looking at my flowers when suddenly the flowers died. I was shocked. I looked back out, and there was black fog covering everything. The fog was killing all life outside and I quickly closed the windows. 

I was about to watch a movie. I made popcorn and got ready for the movie. I started watching the movie. The movie seemed very familiar but I just carried on watching the movie until the end. When the movie finished I realized that that movie was about my past life and I might be already dead. I went to sleep after. 

I was having a dream about me being an artist and someone came up to me and asked for a portrait of himself. He was very suspicious because his left eye was glass. After I painted his portrait I turned it into stone.

Then I woke up because of my alarm. I was scared but my fear went away, I looked outside and the black fog was gone. I got up and got ready for school, my dad dropped me off in his float hover car. 

I told my friends what had happened last night, and they said that there wasn’t any black fog at their houses. I thought that they think I’m crazy. 

I went to period 4 and I was thinking about going to McDonald’s at lunch, so I asked my friends if they wanted to come, 

“No,” they replied. I went to McDonald’s, I walked ½ an hour to buy lunch. I got into McDonald’s and ordered my lunch. 

After I got my lunch I started walking back. I saw a tunnel that I had  never seen before. I went into the tunnel and I reached the other side of the tunnel. I saw a place with black fog, just like at my house, I got scared. I turned around and tried to go back the same way but there were iron doors, I couldn’t open the doors. I was stuck in this awful place. It was weird because this black fog didn’t kill me. 

I saw this small house, I went inside and I saw an old lady that looked like a granny. She was happy because I was the first person she saw after 50 years.

I asked her, “What are you doing here?” 

She said she had been stuck there for 50 years. I saw a sign on the wall saying, “Want to get to the centre of the earth? Go to Stone Mountain.”

I also saw wheels hanging on the walls. They reminded me of when we had wheels in 2021. I felt hotter and hotter every minute, so I was lucky I brought my bag with me, I got the temperature checker out of my bag and checked it. The temperature was 50°C! I watched a movie a few years ago about Brendan Fraser and going to the centre of the Earth. That movie is called “The Journey To The Centre Of The Earth.” It was interesting then and that is what the temperature reminded me of. 

I went back to the doors and they opened, I was relieved and ran back to school and it was already 3:30. I was shocked it felt like I’ve only been in that tunnel for 10 minutes.

I went and knocked on my friends’ door and I told them about me going into that mysterious tunnel, and also told her about that sign about going to Stone Mountain. I asked her if she wants to come with me, she said 

“it seems dangerous so no”. 

I felt sad because she will never let me down, but then she added 

“but I don’t want you to be alone, and I can never let you down!” 

I was hyped up after she said that. She said

“i’m so excited, it's gonna be fun” 

“of course”

I replied. We got planning on things for the next 2 weeks. I went and knocked on my other friends and they said no because they had plans on. It was only me and my best friend going. 

Until we went on our trip we were planning. I snuck out of my house on my birthday at 6:30 in the morning, my friend was already outside my house. We drove in her hovering car up Stone Mountain. It was a 1-hour drive. We got there around 7:30. 

We got our stuff and was about to start hiking up, but we saw this tiny house. We went and knocked on the door, and a man opened the door. I passed out. It was Brendan Fraser, he is the man who starred in “A Journey To The Centre Of The Earth”. 

When I woke up I was inside the little house. My first thought was “I can’t believe it’s Brendan Fraser” just before I got interrupted “happy birthday” said Brendan, I thanked him. He gave me a cup of tea. My friend was sitting with him talking to each other about travelling to the centre of the earth. Then we planned on hiking tomorrow morning because it was already 5 pm. We were planning for tomorrow's adventure. Brendan thought of hovering up the mountain instead of walking because my friend has her float hover car.

We woke up at 7:30 and left the house at 8. We got up the mountain in ½ hour. We got out of the hovercar. We had to walk another ½ because the hovercar couldn’t hold the pressure up in the mountains. 

When we got up there we saw a cave. We went in because there was thunder and lightning. We were safe in that cave until the lighting struck us, the exit of the cave was blocked with big boulders. I turned around and saw 2 pathways. Since I watched A Journey To The Centre Of The Earth we choose the right path. My friend was in the front so she kept walking and she was about to step onto nothing and fall. But I just grabbed her. 

We got our rope and we abseiled our way down. My friend got spun around and got tangled onto my rope so Brendan cut her rope, she started screaming but she was only 1 inch off the ground. “Haha I found the ground guys,” she said, I and Brenden started laughing. We made it to the bottom of that cave. 

We saw a mining cart and found 2 more. We connected them and pumped the carts to move on the rails. We were going fast until we got split into 3 different tracks. My track was about to end so I jumped into Brendan’s cart. My friend yelled at us 

“your track ends too!” 

Brendan quickly set up the rope and threw it on the track we flew out of the cart Brendan was holding me so I didn't get hurt. Our mine cart got destroyed into the wall. My friend came to us and said 

“look there’s an exit”. 

We were relieved. 

We went through the exit and saw diamonds on the walls. I was excited. I walked in there to the diamonds and collected some we heard the platform underneath us cracking me and Brendan said 

“muscovite” 

at the same time 

“you have been watching my movies” 

Brendan said to me. I confidently said 

”yes”. 

I had a lot of diamonds in my bag. I was closing my bag when a diamond fell from my bag and cracked the muscovite underneath us and we were falling. 

We were falling for a long time, we saw drops of water in the middle of the air, and we all fell into the water. I and my friend got to the surface of the water and went to the rocks. Brendan wasn’t with us, we saw bubbles coming from the bottom but we went in and pulled him up. 

“My bag was too heavy,” 

he said. 

My friend looked at the ceiling of the cave and said 

“are those stars?” 

I said no she said that they were moving. I looked and saw that those are birds coming towards us, 

“Cyanis Rosopteryx” 

I said, 

”that’s what the birds are called”. 

There was a tunnel we went in there 

“we are in the centre of the earth” 

Brendan said. 

“This has been a fun journey,” 

my friend said. 

“I agree,” 

I responded. We were in a large air pocket surrounded by lava. We read a journal saying that it can reach up to 200°, and humans can’t survive beyond 135°. It was getting hot, it was 95°, it was 82° when we got here. We have to escape by going beyond the ocean. We got wood and started tying them together with rope. It was 100° and we had done with our boat. I and my friend got on and Brendan pushed out to sea and quickly jumped on. 

We were going for a little while until these weird fish things started flying at us. 

“They look like piranhas,” 

my friend said. I and my friend got extra wood and started whacking them like we were playing baseball. A few seconds later these big 3-headed creatures came and started eating them. I and my friend were surprised that we weren’t getting eaten. My friend turned the boat and started going right, out of the creature's way. I was controlling the kite with the ropes, but then the ropes slid and then my hands started bleeding. 

My friend took over but then the wood snapped off, then she went flying in a random direction. 

“NOOOO”

I screamed. We followed the direction she went in. We stopped at a beach, we think that she’s somewhere here. My friend went into a cave and she was hopping on floating rocks. I was here with Brendan searching for her. She made it to the other side of the cave. She went out, she saw spit on the ground. She looked up and dinosaur’s spit fell on her, she freaked out, she ran for her life. She made it into a small cave with no exit except the one she just came from. The dinosaur was trying to break the rocks to get her. I and Brendan were running then I heard her in the cave. We started digging with a rock, smashing at her. I made a hole I tried making it even bigger, then it was big enough that she could come out. We ran to the boat, but Brendan was going a different way. He shouted 

“that’s muscovite!” 

he kept on running until it cracked, soon it cracked and the dinosaur fell. I and my friend went to the big hole we peeked over the edge and saw Brendan hanging on the side, we helped him up. 

We saw this big skeleton we got in it and went sliding down the sand. The ground started cracking then we fell in the Creak. We were stuck in between two walls that had magnesium in them. My friend had matches in her bag, she had 3 left. The walls were wet so we had to light a little spark to create steam, so we could blast out of the creak. There was lava underneath us and it was rising fast. It was 130°. We lit the first one and tried to lit the wall but it didn’t work. We tried it the second time but lower into the creak it didn’t work. We attached me to a rope and lowered me down into the creak. I lit the last match and threw it onto the other side, it didn’t work. A second later there was a spark, and it lit Brendan and my friend quickly pulled me up. We went flying out of the mountain, and slid down the mountain into someone’s farm and house 

“me poor house”! 

He cried. I gave him a crystal I collected from the cave. He was very happy. 

“Slide again, slide as much as you want!” 

My friend’s hover car came that she controlled from her phone. I and my friend went in, Brenden said he can walk it’s not that far. That answered My question why did wheels get abandoned? It’s because we can explore without wheels, we can hover around in future cars, explore different places of the world without using planes instead we can sail our way across the ocean and experience what it feels like without using wheels.

The End

Year 7/8 Drama Term 1

This term for drama we have been doing a lot of different fun drama things. My favourite part was making our masks and doing the lights for our classmate's performances. We also made masks for the first few weeks, then we did performances with our classmates with our masks that we made and then we did scripts (Bullies script.) I really enjoyed drama, I'm looking forward to next term because we are doing musicals and melody (dancing and singing). Next term for drama I want to do dance and write ours own plays.

Indicators

Last week for science we did indicators. It was fun to experiment with the 3 different liquids. We used the test tubes for this experiment. I enjoyed this experiment because I got to learn something new about indicators. Acid turns red when you put it in Hydrochloric acid, acid is found in something like vinegar, lemons and other citrus fruits. What is an alkali? Alkali turns blue when you put it in sodium hydroxide. What is an indicator? something that indicates the level of something. The indicators we used were cranberry juice, tea and turmeric. The 3 indicators, changed colour (went darker) when we put the alkali in, when we put the water in it was the same, when we put the acid in the went clear. Why are indicators needed in science? Indicators are needed in science so we can find out the different acids and alkalis. What was hard, using the different indicators was hard. What was easy everything else was easy. I enjoyed doing this experiment because I learnt a lot. 

Thanks for reading please leave me some feedback.

Universal Indicator/Blue is alkali, green is neutral, red is acid.

Sports Heros

 Today I finished my sports heroes slideshow. We have to put 2 people (male and female) for the local heroes, international heroes and national heroes. Local heroes are the people we know that is a sports hero in this city. International heroes are people we know who play sport throughout the country. National heroes are the people we know that play sport throughout the world. I also put the photos of that person that I put on the slides. What was hard, finding people that are local, international and national sports hero. What was easy, putting all the information onto the slides. My favourite part was researching that person. I didn't have a least favourite part. 

Here are my slides: