Celebrations
Christmas is almost here. I celebrate it but some cultures don’t. All around the world people celebrate different holidays with different traditions.
I celebrate Christmas, Easter, Halloween and Chinese New Year. Each of the celebrations have their own traditions that they follow and I’m going to explain what I do to celebrate each holiday.
Christmas. I usually spend this time with dads side of the family. But last year I went to my neighbors house and this year I’m going to visit my mums side of the family.
Easter. I usually spend this with my dad because my mum works. During this day my dad hides chocolate eggs called easter eggs. Even if i was with my mum she would just eat all the easter eggs while she was hiding them. During this time the main thing we do is eat lots and lots and lots of chocolate.
Halloween. On halloween I dress up as something scary and go to peoples houses to collect lollies(If they put decorations up). I always collect lots of candy and eat it all pretty quickly. Last halloween I dressed up as a vampire and painted my face white and put fake blood all over myself.
Chinese New Year. This one is celebrated by my school because we learn chinese. In chinese lessons this year we made moon cakes and leaerned about the tradition of the celebration.
What holidays do you celebrate?
Book chat Running Wild
Earlier this year I read Running Wild for book chat. (book chat is where you read a book and discuss about it with people who also read the book). It is in the animal genre and was written my Michael Morpurgo.
Is is a book about a boy called Will who goes on a holiday (more of an escape after his father dies) to Indonesia with his mum. At the start it seems to be exactly what they need to put things behind them. He goes for a ride on on a elephant called Oona along the beach. The elephant starts acting weird and shy. A tsunami comes and destroys everything but the elephant is quick and enough and immediately runs away quick enough for both of them to survive. But when the tsunami ends Oona doesn’t go back she just keeps running. She runs to far away to get back to where they were so they gets lost. With nothing to sustain him but a bottle of water he carried with him, Will must learn to survive deep in the jungle. Luckily, he’s not completely alone. He’s got Oona and all the other animals in the jungle wether friendly or feisty.
It is interesting and always kept me wanting to read more. There are lots of twists and turns. It also is very sad. So don’t read the book if you get very emotional.
What is one of your favourite books? Write in the comments about the book.
Penguin Adaptations
Penguins are tough. The can survive in the polar environment of Antarctica. But some penguins live in, Victoria Australia, South Africa, South America and New Zealand. Antarctic penguins spend a lot of time in the water because to them the water seems warmer than the below zero temperature in Antarctica.
Emperor penguins can dive up to 530m below sea level. Emperor penguins weigh 38kg so that might help them dive so deep. Adelie penguins on the other hand weigh 5kg. When Emperor penguins dive they have to hold their breath 20 minutes so they can dive deep. A penguins wings are not for flying but swimming. They can swim at 13k per hour. But at short bursts they can swim at 40k per hour. They are classified as flightless birds.
Like other birds penguins have feathers. A penguins feathers are used to form a waterproof layer to keep them warm and dry. When a penguin is born they have soft and fluffy feathers so they do not keep them warm or dry. That would be the parents job. 3/4 of a penguins insulation is their tightly packed feathers. They also have a layer of blubber (fat) to keep them warm and have food reserve for if they can’t find food.
When a penguin mates it’s for life. Soon they will lay eggs in the winter so the penguin chicks are ready to help catch food in Summer. When a parent goes to find food for the chick the chick is told to stay in the same place. When the parent gets back they can only recognize each other by the sounds they make. So if the chick is not where the parent left it leaves the chick will be in danger. But when they call out to each other they can only hear if they are in a 10m radius. So it would be hard for them to reunite.
A penguin eats a variate of sea life like fish, (mainly fish) also squid, crabs, shrimp and krill. For a small animal a penguin eats a lot. In one dive a large penguin can collect 30 fish. Penguins will eat lots of food from their blubber so in the winter when they don’t catch as much food they still have fat to burn. They will also collect lots of food for their chicks.
There are many types of penguin. There is estimated to be between 16-20 species. Species vary in the way they look like some are black and white while some also have an orange beak. Surprisingly to many people penguins don’t have gills. So they had to adapt so now emperor penguins can hold their breath for 20 minutes.
This term for our science unit we were researching animal adaptations. We had to research an animal and write a blog post about their animals adaptations. Most adaptations are to survive like a penguin learns to hold their breath and to dive deep.
What animal would you do a project like this on?
Toonalook
Our second camp for year five camp was Toonallook. Toonallook is our school camp in the gipsland lakes, Victoria. Toonallook is four hours away from my school so my class spent half a day on the bus. We went for four days and three nights.
On the first day half the class did bike riding and half the class did kyaking. I did bike riding. After lunch we were introduced to the game Kingball. (a version of four square). After dinner we played a game called the shoe game. (It was about throwing shoes).
On the second day in the morning we went on a water police boat and explored the rest other half the class did kyaking and half the class did bike riding, so I did kyaking. In the afternoon we went to a park and did a water colour lesson. On the second night we went on expo. (camping in proper tents). There were three people in each tent but there were an odd amout of girls so I had 2 people in my tent so there was lots of extra space. Sleeping in a tent wasn’t that bad, it was quite comfortable in the tents.
On the third day we went on a speed boat to a nearby town called Painesville. My group went fishing in the morning. For lunch we went to an island and it was someone’s birthday so we got cake. In the afternoon we went for a bike ride and spotted 24 koalas. On the last night we continued our water colour session but people were tired and homesick so we went to bed early.
On the last morning we did the Toona challenge. That is where you get a photo and you have to figure out where it is and look for a 2 letter combination.
Hard road ahead
The 1850s, an unfair corrupt place. People would get punished for the smallest things. Money was everything. If you didn’t have it, you’d be left for dead and treated like dirt. Many people would bribe police officers to ignore their criminal activity. The government were unfair and made people pay for licenses. Licenses were 30 shillings and in those days that was a lot of money. Businesses thrived in the harsh conditions because there were limited places to get things and people could charge as much as they want. There was a big difference between rich and poor. The poor had barely enough money to survive and the rich had enough to buy what they please. Many of the poor were Chinese. Chinese were treated even worse than the European people. There was a riot between the Chinese and European people. The governments solution was to ban the Chinese from landing in Victoria so the Chinese solution was to land in Robe and walk 500km to Ballarat.
This term my class have been learning about the gold rush and Eureka stockade. We went to Sovereign hill for camp. We also made a diorama of the Sovreign hill. We did it be making one building with a partner and putting them all together to make a huge diorama. We learned so much about life on the diggings in the 1850s. We went in the mines and Sovreign hill and learned about what happened in them like the welcome nugget being foung and racism about the chinese.
What do you know about the 1850s?
Camp
Not long ago I went to Sovereign hill for camp. We went fo 3 days and 2 nights. 2 of those days we participated in the school program (we went to school and were treated like children from the 1850s)
On the first day when we arrived we went to the museum M.A.D.E. We learned about mining licenses and how a lot of miners couldn’t afford them. I learned a lot like how girls go first (I think girls should still go first) and girls got married at the age of 15. In the school program we had to line up in our height order.
While we were doing the schools program we did handwriting with a pen and ink. People who are left handed had to write with their right hand. This is because people think the left hand is the devils hand .
On the second night we went to a light show called Aura. The light show was in three parts the first was about how the world was made and how gold was created. The second part was about indigenous people and how they knew how to find gold but they thought it was useless. The third part was about the lead up to the Eureka stockade.
On the third day we went gold panning. I didn’t find gold but a few people in my class did. We were aloud to bring $25 dollars to spend and a lot of people went to the lolly store and bought raspberry drops
Book Week
Last week was book week. For book week we had to evaluate the short listed books in library.
In library we had to evaluate 6 information books. They were called, Our birds, The happiness box, Make believe, Waves, Sorry day, Bouncing back.
The short listed books
The book that had the best scores in my evaluation was the happiness box. My favourite book was make believe though.
I don’t really read information books. The only information books I read are cooking books. A good information book includes pictures, valid information and interesting text that makes you want to read it.
CCL
Not long ago there was a festival called C**** Celebrates Literature (CCL). CCL is a literature festival that happens at my school. There were activities set around the school to do with our buddies. The year 5s were planning CCL and I was apart of it but I was away from school and missed a lot so my group fired me.
My favourite thing was spending time with my buddy. At the start of the lunchtime buddies read poems to each other. We mostly walked around the school looking at the activities and we also did a treasure hunt that was hard. CCL was a little bit boring.
Authors also came to the school before CCL to talk but I was away for that. Mark Wilson spoke to the year 5s.
What do you like about literature?
Market Print Adds
For the Year 5 Market we made print adds to advertise our stalls.
My groups print add