iDrive

Today my class did iDrive. There are many options of activity; like play dough, role play, sandpit, and cards. iDrive is about learning to collaborate and have fun with others. It's also about perseverance, and problem solving.
This week I did Creative Playground. Hayley and I built an obstacle course. To complete our obstacle course we have to climb on top of a barrel, then walk across a beam. Then we climbed across two more barrels, and then walked across another beam. Then we walked across a bridge like ladder, and climbed on top of a rolling thing that you can stand on. Then we rolled ourselves to the barrel on the other end. There were many problems we had to solve, like when something was too heavy for us to lift. We solved this by using some of the other equipment to move the bigger things.
Here are some photos.

My Term 2 Art

Last term for our art we did lino prints. We each chose a topic, and I chose houses. Here is the process of this art project.

First of all we had a look at houses on Google Images for ideas. This is the picture that my art was based on.  

After we chose our photo, we drew our house design on a piece of newsprint. When we had done that, we transferred it onto a piece of good paper. Once we had done that, we got a piece of lino, and placed our good drawing on it. then we rubbed a 6B pencil over the paper, and when we took off the paper, the drawing had been transferred onto the lino. We then went over the lines to make them more clear. 

Then we got to the hardest part - carving. We carved all our lines, which took a long time, and required many plasters. I cut myself once, but not badly. After the long achievement of carving, we got up to the intricate process of inking. To do this, we rolled ink over our piece of lino, and then pressed it into a piece of paper. We did this twice, on two separate pieces of paper. Afterwards, I chose my favourite one and then picked my next colour. I did this three times, until I had four different colours on my print.

                                               Here is the finished product:

My Trip To Taupo

It took nearly three hours to arrive at Taupo. On the way to our hotel room my family and I stopped off at the Huka Prawn Park. I caught two prawns, my Dad caught one, my Mum caught one and my brother caught two. My brother and Dad went and got the prawns cooked so we could eat them. Meanwhile, my sister and I went and found some foot baths. The water was really hot and it ran through the seat which made it really comfortable and warm.
The prawns tasted really smooth and sweet. My Dad and I were the only ones that liked them.
We went through what was called "Shawn's Walk" (it was called Shawn's Walk because the prawn park's mascot is "Shawn The Prawn") which had some very easy obstacle courses, that mainly consisted of walking across something that wobbles. There were also three buckets connected to pulleys in the water. You put the bucket in the water, waited for it to sink, and then pulled to try to get it up. There were three buckets, each different in size, called Baby Bear (being the smallest), Mother Bear, and Father Bear. I could pull up Mother Bear and Baby Bear, but not Father bear, probably because it weighed 120 kilograms. Then there were see-saw like things that you stood on, and they were connected to buckets that were placed beneath water pipes, and the water pipes open when you pulled the lever. There were holes in the buckets, so that when water started coming out of one hole, then it would reveal to you your weight. When the see-saw pulled you up, you will know it has reached your weight.
There was also a place called "The Gauntlet" which was where there were lots of buckets above, full of water. Each one had their time to tip and drop on you. You had to jump across rocks that were in a pool. I figured out the pattern and made through, and so did my Dad. But my brother wasn't so lucky. He panicked and ended up just running in the water, instead of on the rocks.
After the prawn park, we went to our hotel room. It was upstairs, and it had two bedrooms. Unfortunately for me I had to share a room with my brother and sister. :(

The next day we decided to have a look at the lake and the town. We found some binoculars that we put a $2 coin into, and then we could use them. The three mountains, Ruapehu, Narahui, and Tongarero looked really cool through the binoculars.
We went on a mini train and the driver did heaps of funny things. After the train ride we went on the playground. My favourite part of that is this thing that you sit on and then it starts violently spinning around. This usually makes me sick.
We then went to a place called Debretts. There were heaps of hot pools and hydroslides. All I really did was go down the hydroslides. There were two hydroslides called the "racing slides". One of them was blue and it went really fast. The other one was orange and when you went down it was pitch black and fast.
The other hydroslide was a really big uncovered one, with a small pool at the end.
After that we went to McDonalds to get a drink, and I got a strawberry thickshake, which tasted really good.
After McDonalds, my Dad, brother, sister and I went to play mini putt. My sister didn't play though. I lost unfortunately because I am terrible at mini putt.
After mini putt we all went back to the hotel room and rested for a couple of hours before we went to Cobb n Co for dinner. There were lots of different meal options, but out of them all, I chose nachos, because I really like Mexican food. The nachos tasted really good. I had a traffic light drink that tasted weird after all the colours mixed! For dessert I got pavlova, my favourite.
That night I went to bed really early, because I was very tired after a big day of hydrosliding.

The next day we were to go to the snow! It took an hour and a half to get to Mt Ruapehu from Taupo, but the wait was worthwhile! When we arrived at the snow we put on our gloves, sunglasses, hats, and sunscreen. We then took the shuttle bus down to the chairlift, which we took down to Happy Valley. We found a cool slope that we climbed up, and then tobogganed down for all of five hours. We built slides, and at the bottom of one of them was a smooth rock that we used as a jump. Here is a photo of me doing a DANGEROUS thing, going down on my stomach.

After the fun day of snow, we bought butter chicken, lamb korma, and naan bread for dinner. Then we went back to our hotel room to eat it. 

I went to bed early that night too! Such a big day.

The next day was the day we were to go home. But before we did, we decided to have a look at the Huka Falls. Here is a picture.

The Huka Falls are really amazing. The speed of the water makes it impossible to have any water vehicle in it.

After the Huka Falls, we went to Mind Junction. First of all we did a maze, which was really hard. My Dad, brother, sister and I had a race - boys versus girls. Unfortunately the boys won because my sister fell over. Here is a picture of the maze. It reminds me slightly of the maze we made at school. 

After the maze we did a shooting simulator, which was a playstation game with a gun that you shot targets with. Then we went off and did more mini putt which I came fourth in, beating my younger sister by just three points.

After Mind Junction we went to Burger King for lunch, where I ordered a double cheeseburger stunner, which had a double cheeseburger, chips, a drink, and an ice cream sundae.

Then we went home. HOME!!!!!!!!

iDrive

This week I did iDrive. Hayley and I did chalk graffiti and we wrote ICARE. Here are some photos: