Monthly Archives: June 2013

My First day at King Arthurs!

King Arthur’s school is the high school near me. To help us choose our GCSE projects next year we have to go to King Arthurs for two days this week. Here are the subjects we learned today and yesterday.

Yesterday we learned:

  • Business studies. The teacher got us to design a breakfast product that would help prevent the obesity epidemic. My group design a bar with four sections and four flavours. Melon, Strawberry, Raspberry and Apple. The teacher like it but, despite ending well the lesson started off badly. “Kids are getting fatter” says the teacher. (My name is muttered at the back accompanied by lots of giggles, which is unfair. You try losing weight without the hassle of anorexia, it doesn’t happen quickly!) But I mean, well done Miss! You’ve picked the one topic that could possibly embarrass and/or ostrasize anybody, and turned it into a lesson! Bravo!
  • ICT (Computers) we learned photo shop and I learned that photoshop is designed to torture me. You copy a bit of rock, say, and try and rub out a man’s head with it. his head suddenly appears in another place, leaving a blurry mess!
  • History, where we saw a seriously gross picture of a man with trenchfoot. Yuck!
  • French, where we learned to describe movies. The teacher gave us cute stickers shaped like fish if we answered questions. I got a black spotty disco fish, yeah!
  • Geography. We learned about Dahrvi, the biggest slum in Mumbai, or in fact, India. They talked about how filthy and bad it was (quite different from the project we did in our current school, wich seemed to based on the idea that living in a slum is fun. We also watched a film, though I think the reporter in it was a bit rude. This guy who lives in the slum is guiding him around and he keeps making comments like “It’s unbelievable to think somebody lives there! The homes look like piles of rubbish! Urrgh, that’s someone’s home!” When he could be pointing at his guides house for all he knows!
  • Product Design. We had to design a machine for making sandwiches. Designed one in the shape of an elephant, (the sandwiches came out of the trunk.) There was a bag of sweets awarded to the best one. I got really close. Mine had detailed diagrams of the inside and outside of my machine. We were given ten seconds to sell it to him. Everyone was just saying “You say what you want and it does it.” He was letting people in because their designs were well drawn, then I step up and say:

“You put the raw materials in at the top and then a series of conveyer belts and chutes…” that was as far as I got. he said

“You’re amazing!” and I got through to the second round.

But then he handed it over to a vote. He picked a top three: Me, Laurel and Harry. All the girls except me voted for Laurel. All the boys voted for Harry. I voted for me. I could see them looking at each other and one of them called out

“You can’t vote for yourself!” The boys outnumbered the girls, so Harry got the sweets. I was stunned. I mean, I knew that popularity would affect the votes a bit, and, though it would be great to win, I didn’t really expect it. But still, no votes at all! I really belive that if I added a way to power it and a bit more detail and someone mad my diagrams into a model, it would actually function!

Today I learned:

  • Drama. We had to act out a freeze frame to illustrate a newspaper headline. We were given the headline ‘Schoolboy wins [blank]’ and had to fill in the last word and illustrate it with a freezeframe (when everyone stands still in positions best to illustrate what we’re acting and uses facial expressions and use of space to get our point across.) We did ‘Schoolboy wins Elephant.’ (I got the idea from a Simpsons episode.) I stood on all fours with one arm stuck straight out in front of me to be the trunk, a boy crouched behind me with his arms stuck out as ears, a boy sat on top of him as the boy riding on his elephant, and the other girl in our group mimed holding a rope to restrain the elephant. when, our classmates guessed elephant the teacher said “Let’s think a bit more deeply about this, maybe the boy has won, not an elephant, but a safari holiday to ride on one?” I said no it was an elephant. Then Sarah (the other girl) said

“No, it’s a safari holiday.” and hissed at me “That’s thinking more deeply about it!” Then the teacher said

“We’ve only got time to show one more freeze frame, so hands up who’s got something different. I don’t want another holiday or lottery win!” 😀

  • Art. We were painting vegetables in the style of some artist. We only had bright tellytubby colours and black ink. This may have been great for the artists, one of whom was painting vegetables freshly picked from her garden, but these vegetables looked like they’d been through a washing machine, bumped around and wet through, a few times before being left to naturally dry on a washing line. I picked the saddest carrot. It was a daunting task, but by mixing sunny orange with fern green to give the appearance of browning leaves, and using all the colours at my disposal (sunny orange, strawberry pink, fern green, royal purple) and drawing it as accurately as possible I think I managed to portray the limpness and depressing features of that carrot. If I managed that then I am pleased.
  • German. We did discussions about our last birthdays. The teacher taught us to say the names of loads of presents I didn’t get for my birthday. I didn’t understand most of them. Who really, when asked what they want says “Mum, Dad, I’d like a scarf (einen shaul) for my birthday”?!! I had to ask her to translate projector, DVD and book. I can’t belive she’d miss that stuff out. OK so not many girls get projectors for their birthdays (though it’s so cool, like a cinema on your sofa!) but I’m certain everyone gets DVDs, if not books! Yet instead she had several different types of clothes! Honestly!
  • Food Tech. This woman gave us each a haribo. After asking us for detailed descriptions of a bacon sandwich (hard because I’m a vegetarian, and I’ve never even had a facon  sandwich. Then she made us look at our sweets. Then she made us sniff our sweets. Then (and I promise  you I am not joking) she made us put the sweet to our ear and listen to it ❗ (Sour Haribos when rubbed between the fingers, make a scratchy rustling sound.) I didn’t like them because they had no flavour and were simply sourness shaped like a cherry and coloured green and red.
  • Textiles. (I was late for this. I was in the library at the other side of the school, and was kept behind with some last minute book borrowing. By the time I got to my tutor base, there was nobody there. I asked a teacher, who took me to the reception where my tutor teacher was looking for me. Probably terrified she’d lost a kid!) We had to make bubbles. We got bubble wrap and printed it onto fabric with paint; then we got circle stickers, stuck them on the fabric, painted over them and peeled them off leaving blank patches; then we used blobs of paint to make tiny circles, and then cork ends and glue lids to make hollow and filled in circles.
  • Music. We had to use different African drums, that were actually made in Africa. The boys kept mucking about though. Honestly, it makes you want to move to an all girls school! Some started messing about trying to grab my book. I went to the back of the line (which was round the corner, so I got told of because the teacher said I couldn’t have heard her, even though I was  at the front while she was talking.) They followed me. Harry reached for my book and I slapped his hand away. This only made him do it again, only this time he got his friends to watch. I just stared at him and let all my anger out through my eyes. They all faked defensive moves and one said, in a conversational tone:

“You want to kill Harry, don’t you?”

“How could you tell?” I asked nonchalantly.

Bye 🙂

My book is publishing!!!!

😀 I’m so excited, by 8am tomorrow my book will be published!!! I’ve always planned for this moment, my plans work better in my current school so it’s good that I published before I moved to Yorkshire. Here is what I shall hopefully accomplish by tomorrow:

  1. Bring my kindle to school instead of a book (In all the events I have described here, I have actually been holding a book. And by here I mean this entire blog. It’s good for reading and almost a comfort thing, I feel empty without a book in my hand!)
  2. Mention that I have published my book, a lot.
  3. When all the scoffers come round to scoff and say “Where is it then? You haven’t published a book!” I’ll show them my newly published ebook!

Everyone will congratulate me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That’s not nearly enough exclamation marks to express my happiness!!! And when I do get to Yorkshire on my first day I can do it  all over again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My goal of publishing a book is finally achieved!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is a simple graph:

Levels of Happiness

Average: 🙂

Evil (and getting what you want): 😈

Incredibly lucky: 😀

Me (after publishing book) :mrgreen:

CSI Woodlouse!

We did an experiment using woodlice, we made a wet habitat and a dry habitat and a wet,dark habitat and a dry, dark habitat and saw which one the woodlice scurried to after three minutes, the teacher said that if they died or we were cruel to them she’d call our parents, which got me wondering. What if they died of old age (they only live five minutes!) or killed each other (they kept fighting!) how would we prove we didn’t crush them for fun?

CSI WOODLOUSE!!!

SCENE ONE:

Sargent: We have a suspected case of murder. Two woodlice! (Points to crushed bodies) Suspects: Two kids. Cause of death: Crushing!

Officer: Some people make me sick! :-p

SCENE TWO:

Policeman: Did you kill the woodlice? (shouts) DID YOU?!!

Girl: (stuttering) n-n-no! They d-died of old age.

Policeman: Are you protecting someone? Do you by any chance know the real killers of woodlice two and one? You boy, who killed them?

Boy: No-one.

SCENE THREE:

Doctor: We will now begin the autopsy. (studies body) there are feeler-prints on the shell of one of the victims.

(Chief hurries over to do the fingerprints.)

Doctor: (dissecting the corpse) Oh god! This could blow our whole case wide open!

SCENE FOUR:

Chief: I have gathered all the suspects and everyone the force to reveal, the culprit is:

Woodlouse number three!

(Woodlouse number three tries to run off, but is caught and handcuffed)

Woodlouse number three: (Manically shouting) HOW DID YOU KNOW!??

Chief: Easy, you thought you could get away with it, but you left one vital clue.

A leg was found in the shell of the victims, it must have stuck there while he was being crushed, and as you can see Woodlouse number three only has: FIVE LEGS!

(Camera zooms in on woodlouse number three’s space where a leg should be)

Chief: Take him away

(Woodlouse number three is taken away!)

Bye!

PS No woodlice were harmed in the experiment our teacher assured us that outside the lab the woodlice are kept in a tank full of bark and grass and mud and whatever else woodlice eat.

Bye again!

Fourth and Fifth day of WOW week

  • Chepstow trip. The journey there was something I really remember! There were multi-coloured traffic cones! I was looking out the window at all the traffic cones (there were a lot of road-works) they were all orange, but then, out of nowhere, came a line of blue traffic cones! And yellow traffic cones! On the way back, I was sitting back thinking about how nothing on the traffic cone front could surprise me now … When suddenly out of the blue, came a green traffic cone!!!!
  • We wandered around the castle talking to historical re-enactors from the university. The student with us kept talking about starting a revolt, but we never did.
  • The play. We performed it twice, once to year sixes/sevens, once for our parents. We were supposed to perform for years ones/twos, but the school messed up and got the wrong group. Dad was supposed to go to the second performance, but the school messed up and said the play was at 3:30, which happens to be home time!
  • The play went great!

WOW week three

Third day of the WOW week.

  • We had to do a play, each group did a scene from George and the Dragon. I play a werewolf, which is admittedly quite fun! But we had to do read through after read through, followed by a rehearsal of the actual play and another whole-play rehearsal consisting of just the narrators and no-one else. We had two hours to learn out parts. Tomorrow we perform to a class of year ones/receptions and on Friday we perform in front of our parents, can’t wait! 🙂
  • I had to go to the dentist to get a filling. Last time I went they said I wasn’t brushing my gums enough, now I’ve got an ulcer from brushing them too much, so you see I was suspicious about dental care before I got there. First they checked my teeth and gums, then they dried them and put gel on my tooth to make it numb, I got some on my tongue and was terrified that it would go all limp, because I thought it was anaesthetic. The stuff didn’t make my mouth go numb, it burned, like someone had lit a match inside my cheek, the dentists kept saying “Yes it does feel a bit funny and numb doesn’t it? No, it’s burning me!  Then they stuck a needle in my mouth, it hurt, the gel was obviously defective. Half my face went limp! 😦 They dabbed some more gel on and began drilling into my tooth, suddenly I felt a dash of white hot pain and told them to stop. They continued the drilling with a chisel so it didn’t hurt, then inserted the filling. They had to grind it down twice to get the right size, and it still feels a bit funny.
  • I arrived back at lunchtime and went about the rest of my school day with half a face. It didn’t really show, but it felt like someone had tied a knot in my cheek, it was like that ’till just after home-time, here are the disadvantages of having half your mouth asleep:
  1. I had trouble pronouncing certain letters. For some unexplained reason my fs sounded like ps, my ps sounded like bs and my bs sounded like ps. Actually this is a lie. I have rounded these sounds to the nearest whole letter. The problem was, the main discussion point at lunchtime was who was who in the play, since the groups were kept separate. And I, as I told my classmates, was playing a “Were-wulp.”
  2. I had trouble eating. Normally I, like everyone else, bites down on my food with my canines and incisors, tears a chunk away and grinds it into a pulp through a process of moving it from one side of my mouth to another while my molars move up and down. Oh you lucky fools, you can only imagine what it’s like to eat under anaesthetic. You should haave seen the way I mangled those sandwiches (you couldn’t call it eating!) I was told not to eat on the numb side of my mouth, incase I chewed off a chunk of cheek without noticing since I could feel nothing. So I shoved my food into the small area of lip that could feel and chewed. Problem was, my tongue automatically moved food across my mouth, but once it was over it was like it had vanished because I could feel nothing! The result of this strange eating process was I started to get a few funny looks fro my class-mates! 😦
  3. I had problems drinking. This was an unforeseen problem. I have one of those water bottles where you stick the nozzle in your mouth and water pours down, but because I couldn’t feel the water would trickle over my lips, which hadn’t closed around the bottle, I had to position it on the very edge of my mouth.
  4. It was uncomfy and as I started to recover, painful. I have three theories on as to why my jaw is bruised.

 

  1. I was constantly (gently) hitting myself, emboldened and confused by lack of pain.
  2. My muscles had relaxed, perhaps they had been pulling on my jaw.
  3. It hurt a lot were the needle went in.

Bye!

WOW week 2

Second day of WOW week:

  • I had illuminated letter drawing in the morning. First we had some stuff on Chaplor Castle which we visit on Thursday, then break, then actually drawing the letters . I  finished before everyone else and was therefore allowed to paint the background of my illuminated letter in crimson ink! (An illuminated letter is those big fancy capitals at the beginning of pages in those old fashioned books!)
  • This boy, Harry kept annoying me. First he teased me, then I pushed him and we both got in trouble. Then he stood in front of me reading a book. At first I thought it was an imitation of me, but no, on closer inspection the book was mine! He did this once more and maybe I hit him over the head with it while snatching it back. Then the swine snitched on me! I was told to apologise, and I did “I’m very sorry… THEIF!!!” were my exact words!
  • We did stained glass window making, I damaged a table with a permanent marker that I discovered could go through paper (I didn’t have a pencil to do my design and there was this whole pile of what looked like whiteboard pens on the table… 😳 🙂 )  I discovered that the most intricate griffin on paper can become the  brown-blob-monster when drawn on clear plastic and drowned in glue and tissue paper!
  • I went outside (shocking I know!) and momentarily blinded by the sunlight (I’d just come from a dark classroom with all the lights off and most of the windows covered) I did what I always do in these situations. You see I heard fro a tour guide at big pit http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/bigpit/ that when the pit-ponies had their two weeks holiday they too would have been blinded by the light (only literally!) do the men would blindfold them and remove the blindfold a bit at a time.  Unfortunately I must have done this too fast because I was still blinded and had to stand covering my eyes with my hand for a few seconds. Then Mr Theivingswine and his mates came over and decided I was crying because he’d nicked my book, idiots! 👿

Bye!

WOW week

Today was the start of our WOW week. It’s a thing they planned where we all get taught history by university students for a week. Today my group learnt ‘Medieval life’ and how to paint frescoes.

  • The medieval life workshop was all about researching. They had this skeleton and we had to find out who he was and how he died (He was a student who answered back! Only joking, the story they gave us was he was  craftsman who died of old age at the ripe old age of thirty-five. In reality he was a fish who died of old age, got compressed against loads of other fish and became oil. He was then placed into a mould shaped like a human skeleton and had chemicals added to him to make him hard plastic.) They taught us how to play with a teetotal (a big dice on a stick that only goes up to four they’d play lots of different games with it. If you can dream it, they’ve probably been playing it for over a hundred years!) and I learned that medieval peasants used to get souvenir badges when they went on pilgrimage’s (kinda like I ♥ NY T-shirts only nicer.
  • Frescoe painting was basically doodling on canvas. We wrote our team name in the middle and did little pictures around it. One of my little pictures happened to look like it would get in the way of the massive castle that had to border our title. But the team ran out of time before they could finnish it. I had the idea of painting a few random bricks next to the unfinished bit. So instead of an unfinished castle we get a fallen apart castle. But just when I was about to paint them in Stew pulled the canvas away and said “No.” just “No” like I was his dog or something and I was about to track pawprints over the painting! “You’ve messed it up once, don’t mess it up again!” he said. But my team members agreed with me. Unfortunately, thanks to Stew I could no longer paint them, so I used pencil.
  • I had another fight with the boy who shall henceforth be known as Shrimp Boy (or SB) we have them all the time now. One time he hit me with his tennis racket, today we just pushed each other around. Annoyingly, whenever we do this Shrimp Boy keeps saying how rubbish at pushing him I am. He’s generally right because I always hold back because, well I don’t think ‘Killed Shrimp Boy’ is a great thing to have on your résumé! So now I’m thinking of some good comebacks it helps that SB is very predictable. Like this:

Today’s conversation (As I remember it.)

SB: You’re a cow!

ME: You’re a shrimp!

SB: I’d rather be a shrimp than a fatty like you! Sitting on my butt eating crisps and reading! Yum Yum! (Actually I get lots of excersize, I do press-ups everynight! Still SB’s so small a pin would seem fat compared to him!)

(We push each other for a bit.)

SB: Watch out you might see a Gruffallo (Your guess is as good as mine…)

Next time:

SB: You’re a cow!

ME: At least if I was a cow I could trample annoying little weeds like you!

  • I finished my book, Dad’s gonna proofread it!

Bye!

PS Mum’s gone away for two weeks and for some reason hasn’t been skyping us! 😦