The Elephant House Cafe

When we went to Edinburgh we went to the Elephant House Cafe- the birthplace of Harry Potter.  This is where J.K. Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books.

While we've been away, we've started reading the Harry Potter books as a family and now Harry Potter is my favourite book so it was kind of cool to go to the place where it was written.  Also for the last few weeks, in my writing time I've been writing a chapter book called "Megaman and the Plan to Destroy the World." We also went to the Elephant Cafe so I could write some of my book in the same place J.K. Rowling did.

Here's me doing my writing...

Boodle wanted to do some writing too. 

This is a picture of the view out of the window at the cafe.  In the distance you can see Edinburgh Castle.  I wonder  where J.K. Rowling got the idea of Hogwarts from :0)

This is what I wrote while we were there... (It's a description of a machine created by an evil lord).

"There were huge cogs twirling round and round like ginormous hurricanes and tiny green lights flashing on and off every second.  Wide circular fans were spinning in action though instead of breathing air they breathed lazer beams!  Bulging steel pipes coiled up the strange machine like overgrown earthworms and were connected to a large ovoid container filled with loads of different coloured wires and a small bronze chair.  Dark clouds of steam drifted out of big chimney like tubes as if they were the souls of dead men reaching out for heaven or gods beloved warmth.  Next there were teeny orange rectangles shooting out of every corner and fat cones sticking out of the top."


And here's some graffiti from the toilets at the cafe...

Science Museum Pattern Pod

When we were in London we went to a special space at the Science Museum called the Pattern Pod.  This term my class is doing patterns for their inquiry project so I decided to share some of the stuff I've been doing on patterns as well.  The Pattern Pod was a fun place where you could just play with patterns. 

In this activity you could create your own kaleidoscope patterns and then they were projected onto a large screen for everybody to see.  This is what mine looked like. 

Even Patch is having a turn.  I think his looks like a wolf made out of dots.

Finally Isaac is having a turn too.

My baby brother also liked this little screen on the floor that showed a picture of lots of fish swimming across a bunch of rocks.  When you touched it real effects would show up.  So you would get ripple patterns in the water and splash patterns if you stepped on a fish.

This was a fun pattern activity I did where I got to make a pattern out of magnetic foam shapes.  My finished pattern looks like a bit like how an Egyptian would make patterns to look like something like a guardian.

This was a game you turned a domed platform round and round trying to get a silver ball to roll and land in the middle of a fake metal beehive.  The patterns were like the patterns you would see in honeycomb.

We also explored the sound patterns of our bodies, footprint patterns and patterns with our bodies in a room with special lights.

T-REX!!!

My teacher has asked me if I had any information for the class about Dinosaurs.  Luckily we did because we went to the Natural History Museum in London and they had a massive dinosaur exhibit.  When we went I was practicing summarising so I read all the information about T-Rex and then summarised it.

The is the giant of this blog post! 

here are some fun facts about T-Rex...

________________________________________________________________________________

• Scientists know that T-Rex had well developed optic lobes - that's the part of the brain used for seeing.  So they know T-Rexs had sharp eye-sight.

• If T-Rex tripped up when running the fall would probably have killed him.  The information at the museum didn't say why but I think it's because his face would be the first thing to hit the ground and his arms wouldn't be there to stop him.  So he would have broken his face and neck and died.

• The part of the brain that the T-Rex used for smell is called the Olfactory Bulb.  His was extremely powerful as it was as big as an orange while ours is only as big as a pea.  This meant he could sniff out dead animals or live prey from afar.

• T-Rex weighed up to 7 tonnes as an adult.  That's as heavy as 200 10 year old children.

• T-Rex lived up to a maximum of 28 years.

• T-Rex's bite was 8 times as powerful as a lion's bite.

• A joint in its jaw enabled T-Rex to open his mouth so wide that it would be able to swallow a human whole.  

• T-Rexs have left bite marks in the fossils of plant eating dinosaurs.

• His teeth were serrated like a steak knife and the strongest of any of the dinosaurs.

• T-Rex must have been a pretty messy eater because his hands couldn't even reach his mouth.

Hands-on-Homework - More Maths Week - Patterns

As I said in my last post it's Maths week at my school in New Zealand this week and I'm joining my class in doing lots of different maths activities.  One fun challenge we did this week was completing candle patterns.

Candle Patterns

Last week was Mum's birthday and we had some leftover candles.  So for Maths this week we also played a game where Mum would make patterns out of the candles from her cake and we would have to finish them.

So here's the first pattern challenge - and the simplest.  All I had to do for this was just copy what Mum had done before.

And here's my finished version - pink, blue, yellow, yellow...

Here's the second challenge. 

This one was a little bit harder, though not too hard.
It went candle, candle holder, candle, candle holder.....

The next one looked really easy.  The pattern so far is one candle, two candles, four candles.

 

First I tried adding - five candles, six candles, eight candles because I thought the pattern went number, next number, skip a number.  But I was INCORRECT!

I said "I can't do it then. It's too hard."  But then I decided I was going to be resilient and keep trying!  Then I worked out why I was incorrect.  I needed to use my two times tables.

Here is my correct answer - it goes 1, 2, 4, 8, 16.  Each number is 2 x the number that goes before it.

Do you want to know something interesting?  I felt bad when I got it incorrect and it seemed really hard.  But at the end once I had completed it I felt better than I had when I had completed the easy ones.  Next time I'll try and remember that the hardest ones feel better at the end.

Challenge 4

This one was quite tricky but I completed it.  The pattern was that all of the candles had holders under them and the holder always had to be the same colour as the candle that was before it.

The final challenge was the hardest of all - not because the pattern was hard, but because I had to light lots of candles. This was quite scarey for me because I don't like fire.  In our family we say that brave doesn't mean not scared of something it means feeling scared but doing it anyway.  So I took some breaths to help me calm down and I tried my best.

So here I am feeling scared, but doing it anyway.  As I kept trying my feelings slowly changed.  By the end I was actually liking lighting the candles and I even asked Mum if I could do some more!

My baby brother loved the candles!

In this picture I looked so astonished that I did it.  I felt very proud.

This maths activity turned out to be very fun AND I learned that even when things get tricky I should keep trying them because at the end I feel good.  (In my class we call this resilience!!)

Hands-On-Homework - Maths Week

This week is Maths week at school and our Hands-on-Homework was to find some fun maths activities to do.

Minute to Win It

This is a fun suggestion that my teacher posted on Edmodo.  It's a webpage that gives you lots of ideas of things you can do.  The goal is that you have to keep doing them for one minute.  

The first one I tried was keeping two balloons in the air for one minute.

Here I am ready to go...

And here is a video of my first attempt...

Science Centre - Minute to Win It

That day I also went to the Science centre.  They were having a summer of Sport Science so I tried it out.  I decided to use some of these activities as Minute to Win It games.

In this one I had to balance on a wobbly platform.

In this one I had to jump from side to side over a small yellow barrier.  

Mathtastic Lunchtime

We went out for lunch one day and the activity sheet they gave us had a number code on it that you had to figure out which symbol meant which number and then add it up.  For example planet + rocket = ?  It was quite fun.

Dough Patterns

Mum made silky dough for Patchy and Izzy to play with.  Our focus for this term is patterns, so I decided to see if I could make some patterns in the dough.  Can you guess what I made them with?

Angular Momentum Maths

This week I started to get a bit curious about the way one of the pieces of equipment at the playground works.  So we've been learning lots and lots about this special principle called the Conservation of Angular Momentum.   I'm going to do a blog post about everything I've learned about Angular Momentum later.  But here is a photo of me working out how it works by using my times tables.  Angular momentum =  m (mass) x v (velocity or speed) x r (radius - or how far away from the centre of the circle you are forming your body stretches).  

(Mum probably should have moved her empty coca cola bottles out of the photo.)

I LOVE DOING MATHS!

Hands on Homework - Cockney Rhyming Slang

My hands-on-homework was to find lots of different ways to say hello in lots of different languages.  But when we found Cockney Rhyming Slang I wanted to find out more.  So we spent our time learning about that.

This is a video my brother Isaac and I made where we're having a short conversation in Cockney Rhyming Slang.

Cockney Rhyming Slang is a language that isn't really even a language.  It's a code where you take words that rhyme with the word you're talking about and say that instead.    Though it's not that easy - you can't just choose any rhyme there is a proper way of saying lots of English words in Cockney Rhyming Slang.

Cockney Rhyming Slang was invented in the 19th century.  Cockneys were people who were born within the sound of the bells of the church of St Mary-le-Bow.  That means that you could hear the bells from that church where they were born.  

People believe that it was made up by traders and thieves so they could disguise their language when they were plotting something.  They could talk about it in front of Policemen and the policemen wouldn't even understand a word that they were saying.

Finn's Fun Fast Facts #2 - What is a Dinosaur?

When we were at the Natural History Museum I learned something about dinosaurs that really surprised me.

Sustainability Hunt - The Energy Exhibition

Because my class was learning about Sustainability this term at school, Mum set up a Sustainabilty Hunt for me.  When we were out and about we would try and find things to do with sustainability.

We went to the Science Museum in London and asked if there was anything we could see that would be good for our Sustainability Hunt.  The lady there suggested we should go to the Energy Centre.  So we did.

Future Energy Source Ideas

The first thing we saw were some ideas people have had about energy sources in the future.

Hydrogen

One idea was making hydrogen with a wind-powered back pack.  They used the example of a little girl called Lucy Jones.  On her birthday she got a special back pack with a little hydrogen tank on the back.  She could wear the backpack around using the wind to make hydrogen.  Then the family could use the hydrogen for energy at home.

If they made more hydrogen than their family needed they would start to make a family business  and sell it.

Poo Power

The next idea was a little icky and sticky!  The idea was to use poo for energy.  There are 3 ways you can use poo for energy.  You can burn it to make electricity, you can use it as fertilizer to grow crops and even the gasses it gives off can be used as fuel.

This is a special lunchbox Lucy Jones would use to bring her poo home from school so the family can use it for power.  If she went to a friend's house, she would give her poo to the Mum in a giftbag as a present when she left to say thank you for having her.

This sounds really gross, but actually in rural China, long ago poo was used for fertilizer on the crops.  Even today sometimes poo is used as a thank you gift by guests who come for dinner.  The idea behind that is so they can return the nutrients from the food back to the soil. 

Also people living in Denmark can put their poo out for the bin men and they collect it to use as compost.

Minster of Energy

In this computer game the Prime Minister made me the Minister of Energy.  I was in charge of a country's energy.  I had to choose what kind of power stations and where to put them to make enough power for everyone to live.  I had to choose between lots of different energy sources such as wind, waves, solar, hydro (water), gas, nuclear and oil and coal.  I was in charge for several years.  On my first turn the Prime Minister told me that I was very rubbish and fired me!  Luckily I learnt about resilience in our class so I gave it a few more tries until I got to keep my job.

I learnt that:

• The gas, oil and coal gave lots of electricity but they also polluted the air and so people weren't happy with them.
• Nuclear gave the highest energy but the people were very unhappy about it.  This is because in the past terrible accidents have happened that have made people very sick and done lots of damage to the environment.
• Even using renewable sources like waves could still damage the environment.
• You really need to think about where to put things like solar power because sometimes it's not that sunny in places.

Energy Ninjas

The next game I played was called Energy Ninjas.  They were looking at ways to reduce CO2 emissions because they damage the environment.

Here are some ways to reduce CO2 emissions...

• You can put devices on chimneys to filter the gases.
• Wear more clothes and turn down heating.
• Buy more electric cars.
• Burn less wood
• Use trains instead of planes 

Using Less Energy

This was a fun activity where you got answer a question by choosing the best picture.  To choose the picture you had to turn a big wheel until the picture showed on the screen.  The questions were things like "which of these transports uses less power?"  or "which food uses the smallest amount of energy to get from where it's grown to your lunchbox?"

I loved learning about energy and I'm going to try to help our family at home to make better choices about energy.

More Scratch

A couple of weeks ago it was my little cousin Hannah's birthday.  She was turning 3 years old.  When she did I made this Scratch project for her.

If you read the instructions carefully you will see that you have to make noise to make things happen.

If you click on the "See Inside" button you can see how I put the pieces of code together.  If you click each character (sprite) you can see their instructions.

Make sure you have your microphone turned on.


http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/24756046/#player

Meeting the Mammoths

In our last week in London, we went to the special Mammoth Exhibit that was on at the Natural History Museum.  We took a trip back in time...

This is a picture of me and my brother standing in front of big Mammoth tusks.  Mammoths were so big that even just their tusks were taller than me and Isaac.

MAMMOTH MYTHS

• Some people think that Mammoths are the ancestors of Elephants but they're not.  In Africa about 6 million years ago a branch of the Elephantidae Family split into 3 groups.  One branch developed over millions of years into the African Elephant.  One branch became Asian Elephants and one branch was Mammoths.  So, even though they come from the same family, elephants are not descended from Mammoths.

• Because of movies like Ice Age everybody thinks that Mammoths only lived in icy climates.  The reason why everybody thinks that is that instead of the bodies of Mammoths rotting, in icy places permafrost frozes lots of the bodies and kept them well-preserved.  So lots of the remains that we find are in icy places and they don't find much in un-icy places seeing as there is no permafrost so the bodies have just rotted away.  So the truth is that Mammoths also lived in warmer climates.

MAMMOTH HISTORY

These are some of the earliest Proboscidieans:

Moeritherium

Moeritherium looked a little like a cross between a giant rat and a very fat hippo.  It didn't have a trunk - just a large snout.  It didn't have tusks either, but two humongous teeth that were the start of tusks.  They lived like hippos and they liked to play around in the water.

Deinotherium

Deinotherium had a short trunk and two curving tusks.

Ambelodon

Ambelodon had 4 tusks.  This proboscidean had two curved upper tusks and two lower tusks which were flat like a shovel.  They are called 'Shovel Tuskers'.

Gomphotherium

Gomphotherium was about the same size as an elephant.  It had two pairs of tusks.  The top layer of tusks curved downwards whilst the bottom layer could be a metre or more long.

HANDS ON WITH MAMMOTHS

We got to learn more about Mammoths by feeling, touching and doing things that the Mammoths would have to feel, touch and do.

 



First we got to try to pick up objects using big metal mammoth trunks.  It was really hard to do it!

Next we got to turn a little handle round and watch as the Mammoth's skull bone and trunk went up and down.  It was showing you that the ligament at the back of the Mammoth's head had moved as the Mammoth developed because as the tusks got heavier the ligament couldn't hold it well.

Then we were able to see all the different layers of hair that the Mammoth had.  Some were tough and hard and some were soft and warm.  The outside layers were tough and hard to protect from the weather.  The inside layers were softer and warm.

We got to touch some ox fur which is what scientists think is the closest thing to real Mammoth hair.

We got to lift a hay bale to see how heavy it was.  Mammoths would eat up to 230kg of vegetation a day - that's about 15 of these bales.

We got to touch a bronze replica of a baby Mammoth's skull.

Pooey!!!  After that me and Izzy got to touch lots of different kinds of animal poop... well, not real animal poop, but pretty gross replicas.  After eating all that food Mammoths had pretty big poos!

We also got to fight with pretend little Mammoths with big tusks.  It was pretty fun!

LYUBA THE BABY MAMMOTH

This is a picture of the most complete Mammoth remains that's ever been found.  It even had eyelashes.  We couldn't take a photo at the Exhibition, but I found this one on the internet.  Her name is Lyuba.  She was named after the wife of the fisherman who found the remains.

From studying her body the scientists could tell all sorts of things about her.  For example, by looking at what was in her stomach they found out at that she ate lots of things like milk from her Mum, grasses, and even Mammoth dung.  They think mother mammoths gave dung to their babies to give them bacteria they needed for their digestive system to work property.  From her tusks and teeth they could tell how old she was and how long she had stayed in her mother's stomach.  They could even work out how she had died.

Isaac and I found this part really sad and I don't even really like writing about it.

BEHAVIOUR OF MAMMOTHS

We also watched a video about what scientists who studied Mammoths thought their behaviour was like.

They thought Mammoths were like Elephants in three ways...

1. They thought that male Mammoths would fight like bull elephants.
2. They thought that the Female Mammoth led the herd like a female elephant does.
3. They thought that the adult Mammoths would always protect the young ones if they sensed danger like Elephants do by making a circle around them. 

I loved learning about Mammoths!