Caritas Challenge

On the 18th - 19th of May the Kaupeka hub joined in a worldwide challenge that is run by Caritas. We have been learning about a country that was in need of our help, to help them my hub and I decided to sleep over at school in cardboard boxes. This was very tricky because we were doing it in winter and we had to organise everything.

The start of the day was really interesting, so we all had a big breakfast and we were unable to have morning tea and afternoon tea. This was really cool because I got to feel what it was like for Timor-Leste as they don't have much food to eat in their day. After we went to mass, the teachers brought in a city missioner to talk to us about the people of Christchurch, who don't have homes and who live in their cars. I was really surprised by the amount of people who were living in their cars and who were homeless. I really felt for the people who didn't have homes because they were living in freezing temperatures in winter and they didn't have half the stuff we had for the night. Then we had a mini move it challenge for three hours, we had asked if another school wanted to join us when we did this challenge. They came to our school and joined in for three hours of exercise. This was really cool because we got to have some fun with another school. I really enjoyed this day so far because it had made me realise what it is like in different countries in the day.

What has been challenging for me during the day is the food because I usually have morning tea and afternoon tea in my day. But today we had breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was really hungry in between but I knew that this was for a good cause and I kept telling myself that I shouldn't have any food and finish the challenge properly. Since I was hungry now I was getting really anxious because I was scared about the stomach cramps that night.

The connections I have made from this experience is that Timor-Leste doesn't have very much food and water. This was a struggle for me with food but I always had to remember that they don't have very much and I was doing this for them.

From today, it made me think about them and how I could help them in long term. I thought that I could give them some money to help them and give them some cans of food. I think that this will help their families and those who need help.

At the start of this challenge I had no idea what other people in the world were going through. But as this challenge went on I learnt what people lived in and how they cooked and ate food. This challenge really spoke to me through out the day and night, it really made me think about the world and what people lived like.

Have you ever had this feeling about people in the world?

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Saturday Netball

On Saturday my team and I had a netball game. I thought that we were not going to play very well because we had just had the Caritas challenge that night and we had like no sleep. It made it even more difficult that we were versing a very hard team because we were in the top grade. We all got there early because we had to warm up before the game and wake up. We ran up and down the court a few times and we did some drills before the game. It was really annoying that one of our players was away so I had to play the whole game centre. It was really tiring the first quarter because my legs felt like jelly and I couldn't feel them. In the first quarter we did horrible and we were losing 10 - 2. In the end of the game we lost 17 - 14. It was a really good improvement and I was really proud of my team because we were all tired. I was quite happy that I played my best and in the end we had two player of the days and I think that they deserved it.

Have you ever done something when you were really tired??

Maths challenge

This Term my teachers had a new idea to put my classes into maths groups. In my group my teacher challenged us to create a mini golf hole that when you hit the ball, you would always get a hole in 1. This challenge was really interesting because I have no idea how to make a golf hole and what to do it about. So this really tested my imagination, I had no idea what to do or how to do it. So one of our partners had to go on a trip to mitre ten mega to learn about the money side of things and how to do it. My partner went to mitre ten and asked a lot of questions so that we knew what we were doing. She wrote down what they said so that she wasn't going to forget .When we finish our plans and prototype, 3 pairs will be picked and those three holes will be made. I can't wait for the end result because it is interesting to see what people end up with and how they do it.

Have your teachers ever challenge you to do something??

Cross country zones

It had been two weeks after my school had done cross country. I had come fifth in my race, so I was in zones. My teacher had got in all the people that had come in the top 6, she gathered them up and asked them who wanted to go to zones. At the moment I went yeah sure. Man I wished that I hadn't said that.

It was the day of zones and I wasn't ready, I hadn't practised at all and I wasn't up to doing it that day. We got onto the bus and started on our journey to the grounds and it was raining. I really hoped that it was going to be cancelled or postponed. But of course it didn't, we arrived and it wasn't dry anywhere but underneath the trees. So my school all huddled together underneath the trees to keep warm, me and my friends were about to race so we all started getting ready and training for it. But we didn't realise that the boys had started racing and we were training on the track, we all ended up sprinting back to our school. Man that was close, they almost banged into us when we were training. After the boys it was us, I was not ready and I wasn't up to anything. We were off, I started with a jog and I stayed a great pace the whole time. But on my last lap I was really tired so I had slowed down quite a bit, so in the last length the person behind me started sprinting. I was too tired I couldn't be bothered sprinting to the end.

When we had finished and I was walking back I saw my mum just coming in. I told her that I had already raced, she asked me what I came so I said 14th. She was really annoyed that she came at the end of my race and she had missed it all and so was I.

Today was a great experience for me and I was really proud that I didn't walk the track and I was happy that I finished it too.

Have you ever ran 3 km, if so how did you go??

Cross Country

In the first week of Term 2 my school ran cross country. I was really nervous at first because I hadn't practiced during the holidays and I wasn't sure how far I could run.

It was day one of Term two, my class was unable to practice for cross country because it was the first day and we were busy doing other education that day. So now I had two days to practice for cross country and I was not up to doing anything, our teachers got my whole class together so that we could do the training together for fitness. Since at our school our field was blocked off by other classes doing fitness so we were unable to go around there for our circuit, the teachers had to decide where we could have our fitness because I had to run 3 km this year and running around the court definitely wouldn't be enough. We then ran through the teacher car park and up the driveway as our circuit, we did about 4 laps of this. That was not far enough for the circuit that we would be doing in two days.

The next day we had some more training but we did it a bit later than the day before, so that we would be able to use our back field for it. The circuit that day was pretty much the same but we did 6 laps in total, it felt a bit more real to what we were doing the next day.

It was the day of cross country and I was ready as I would ever be even though I had only done two training sessions. The whole school walked down to the park where cross country was held, I was pretty nervous. The races started with the year 8 boys and then it was us, it all happened so quickly. We got there, we stretched and then we were getting ready to race. My teacher who ran this event was there at the starting line, telling us that she was just going to go ready.... go. Straight after she had said this we were off, I wasn't ready at all to race but it happened too quickly I couldn't say anything. After my first lap I was pretty tired and I had slowed down a lot to regain my speed at the end but by the end I was too tired I couldn't be bothered to sprint to the end. When we finished I got this card that said 5th. I was so proud of myself for coming 5th but then I realized that I had to go to zones because I came 5th. I congratulated my friends for there achievements and then we got to go and run for the year 0-4's. It was really cute to run with them, to help them when they got tired but I was really tired because I had just run my race. By the end of the day I was really shattered and I enjoyed hanging out with my friends.

Have you done cross country before, if so, how would you describe it?

Question, Hypothesis and Background research

During last Term we have been learning about Science, the teachers have been running workshops on different areas so that we could elaborate more on different topics.The students then had to decide what workshop to go to but there were guidelines such as, we had to go to a certain area one or two times within the Term.

From what we have learnt in the Term we now had to create our own science projects from the Question onward's. I had chosen to do my project with a partner, my partner and I struggled to fins a project that would suit both of us. So we came to our teacher with our problem, then our teacher came up with the idea to our project on laughing because we laugh a lot. So we all searched up laughing topics and it came up with this monkey so of coarse we started Laughing. SO our teachers helped us to create our Question. "The laughter of which age group is more contagious??"

To elaborate on this question we had to research and find out more about contagious laughing, my partner and I weren't that sure about the topic so we researched and found that human brains react better to positive sounds such as laughter and triumph rather than negative sounds like screaming and retching. After we had found this out we realized that younger people have higher voices, so our from that we created our Hypothesis. "The younger the age of the person laughing the more contagious it will be because the younger you are the higher pitched sounds you make." I have enjoyed researching about this topic and I can't wait to go further on this topic.

Have you ever done a Science project, if so what was it about??

Term 1 holidays

It is now the first day of term two, we have just had a two week holiday before going back to school. Through the holidays I have enjoyed hanging out with my mates and having a laugh. In the first week me and my friends were a bit busy throughout the week so we only hung out on Friday.

Me and my friends organised to go ice skating but we didn't realise how long it took to get there from my place until we arrived twenty minutes early. As we waited in line, we talked about how excited we were to go ice skating again, I know I was. Throughout the time waiting in line we kept asking Liana what time it was, I think that she was pretty annoyed by the end of it.

It was finally time to go in and man it was freezing, I was only wearing long pants and a t - shirt in the freezing cold climate. We grabbed our skates and we started skating. It felt really weird to be on the ice, so for the start I went slowly, behind me was Liana struggling to stand up. Me I was just laughing at her because she looked really funny wobbling around, then she fell over and that cracked me up I almost fell over. Then I started getting the hang of it and I was a pro, I felt pretty cool and then Liana fell over again, this was her third time in about ten minutes. Yet me and Anna hadn't fallen over yet, I wondered how many times she will fall over with in the next 2 hours.

We all ended up splitting up but ending back together, it had been about an hour before there was the speed skate, first of all I didn't think that I was fast but when I saw the competition it changed, I went out on the ice and I felt amazing. Everyone was looking at me and I felt free, when it was over we went back to our normal speeds and I fell over, me and my friends were holding hands before we turned and Liana fell over and I fell with her. The next activity was spin the bottle and with that we all spread out across the sides and when the bottle hit us we would get a prize unfortunately none of us got it. We skated around for 20 minutes until there was a new activity and it was a dance competition, me and Anna joined in while Liana was on the side. We did the dance to YMCA, I forgot that I was in skates when I jumped in the skates and landed smack on my bum. It really hurt, once the dance competition had finished the guy came over and gave Anna a ticket for free candy floss. The speaker came on and they told us to get off the ice but Anna didn't want to get off so she kept doing rounds of the ice.

Then we left to go buy some food for the night, we went to the super market and bought a lot of food. It was funny because we were walking around with a massive trolley with just junk food in it. We got home and we started eating but we couldn't eat too much because we were having fish 'n' chips for tea. It took a while for us to choose our movie but in the end we chose Barbie and the twelve dancing princess, it was a very emotional movie but it had a happy ending. When we finished the movie we realised that we had gone through half the food, so we ran outside and danced like the princesses in the movie. It was very dark and I think I fell on the ground more than I was standing up. After that we went back inside and we chose another movie, we watched a movie that had cheer leading in it and that inspired me and Anna to create a cheer for our school. While we created the cheer Liana was sitting on the couch just watching us.

This was one of the fun activities I a had with my friends but throughout the holidays I have more fun.

What did you do in the holidays?