Pogo Passion Blog

pogo sticks

Pogo sticks are fun and springy toys that people can jump on. Not like a trampoline though!

pogo sticks jump with you. 

Some people can do tricks like grinding and flipping.They have REALLY springy pogo sticks. 

Some times they are used for transportation. Its really hard to bounce forward though. A grind uses the bottom of the things that you stand on. You can  do a still grind too.  You jump up onto a corner, balance there, and then jump off. Some basics are that you might jump into the air, and take one or two hands or feet off, and then quickly put them back again before you hit the ground. Another one is that you could push the top or bottom of the pogo stick forwards and to the the sides. sometimes you can combine the two together. Like taking a hand off and pushing the pogo stick to the side. But remember, these tricks can only be done well on the REALLY springy pogo sticks. The pros make up there own tricks. Like jumping off a wall, back flipping off, while pushing the bottom of the pogo stick forward. The trick I recommend to try first is one where you go up into the air, and quickly turn it so the handles are pointing away and into you. Try to land on the ground same as normal. The new trick of 2014 is jumping off walls.

The hardest thing to decide is where to do it. But don't worry! The answer is right here! You can basically do it anywhere, if it's a nice dry day. If it isn't, you will end up like this.

not good.
I'm sorry I wasn't any help there!

In a city there are lots of places you can do it. There are lots of poles and staircases that you can do it on. There are lots of vines that you can bounce onto, swing around on then catch another pogo stick.

He is grinding. You see how he's using the bottom of the things that you stand on? This a message for beginners: DO NOT TRY AT HOME!!!

Another one NOT TO DO AT HOME it one I call THE SCREWDRIVER!!! 

If you can do it,........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Then good for you. 

bye!

The Bermuda triangle -. Term 3 Week 10.

The Bermuda triangle is a very suspicious and eerie place that stretches from Miami Florida, to porter Rico, to Bermuda island. There are some bone rattling stories out there about this section. Here are a few. There is a plane boat flying over the Bermuda triangle with five different pilots taking turns flying for one hour each. Soon, they meet a yellow haze in front of them. They go in one side and out the other. They are inside a yellow tornado! Suddenly, all the compasses and speedometers flicker and die with them in the air. They can't get out, so they are just flying round in circles. An hour passes. And another, and another. Once they switch pilots for the last time, the tornado fades away. The pilot turns to see what they were flying through, and see's nothing. Just clear sky. So, the question is, is this real, or is it a hoax? Most likely real, I say.

Jack Marsden-Mayer

Jack Marsden-Mayer

Jack Marsden-Mayer is a famous driftwood artist known all around the world for his amazing art with lots of little details made to stand out.

 He usually makes animals like eagles and emus. Sometimes he makes Dino's or dragons! He comes from Manchester and moved to New Zealand in 2008. Since then, he has been making driftwood sculptures, sometimes bigger than himself!

 He went to the Gordonstoun International school where he studied sculpture. Then he spent a lot of time travelling and ended up in New Zealand. At the moment he is living in a small village in the center of the north island in Raurimu part of the Ruapehu district.

 Currently he is working on a sculpture called "Forgotten world" in a prehistoric sculpture park at the Wades Landing Lodge. 

The sculpture will include a 5 by 7 meter fire breathing dragon with most of the New Zealand native animals.They will be in a park that has the most prehistoric plants planted there. 

Some of the hard wood driftwood that he uses are as old as the Taupo eruption. He joins them together with a galvanized tech roofing screws. Sometimes he makes the weight of  the body is too heavy for the legs, so he has to use a galvanized steel bar to help them to stand up.

If you want a sculpture, you have to look it up to see what kind of things he makes. Just type up "driftwood" in the search bar of google and go to images. You have to look after it too. You have to tighten the screws and oil the joints as required. You might find that the screws are wearing out, the screws have a rough life of about 20-25 years. (Depending on the condition). They will take different times to build depending on how big it is. Also, he might do some things wrong and it will take a longer time. It took him nearly 6 weeks to finish the Raurimu Rex! That is what Jack Marsden-Mayer does. 

The animal band play-how I (Liam), felt. Term 3 week 8.

The animal band item-how I felt...

We were in the classroom and we were doing our 2nd-last rehearsal. I was imagining that I was Liam, the king of basketball... And I was just about to score when... "HEE-HAW HEE-HAW BOW-WOW BOW-WOW MEEEOW,MEEEOW COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOO COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOOOOO!!!" I said "Oh my gosh its my turn!!!" (I just said that inside my head so nobody heard me). But then I said "Heeeeelp! Whats that terrible noise!?!?!?" (Now that I really said). After the rehearsal finished we took some photos of our costumes. I was a robber. My mask was a super stand-out kind of mask! It had a really pale skin colour so that just added to it. It had really big eye holes because it had two little foam eyes looking down at the HUGE nose (when I say huge I mean HUGE), and still needed space for the real eyes. But that just makes it look like I had four eyes. Anyway, I had a foam hat joined onto the mask, with a brim poking straight out. The shadow of it covered my eyes so it must have looked like the real eyes were the ones made out of foam. Also, it only covered half of my face so that meant that I could have done any expression with my mouth which was kind of weird. 

Here is a picture of my mask.

As you can see, it is crack up. So after the photos we all headed for the theater. We got in our places and we did another rehearsal. I was looking at the back of the stage to see if my mum would turn up nearly all the way to my part, but after a while I gave up. I listened to the play and saw it was nearly my part. Then, "HELP! Whats that terrible noise!?!?" After my part I looked again to see if my mum turned up... Aaaand, no she hadn't. After the last minute rehearsal was over, I checked again. And guess what, she was! (And so was my little sister), I waved and lifted my mask, and she waved back! So then I checked how many kids had turned up, and by now there was a lot. I was one of the three robbers to sit at the table, and I was sitting in the middle. This is what it looked like.

I am in the middle.       ^                          

 And out of all the masks mine was the funniest. So I was the one to stand out the most in the whole class. Now think of a number. Times it by three. Divide it by four. Now forget all about it and think of six-hundred people. That is a lot. And, that is how many people I stood out to. But that was alright, because in my old school in china I had to stand out to about four times as much (a third of the school), and when I had to stand out to all of the school sometimes doing a Christmas play. I was not nervous. This is kind of embarrassing but I had to wear  eye shadow in front of maybe a thousand people once!!! Then someone said through a microphone "Now Room 12 will do there item called "The Animal band"." And the play begun... With six hundred people staring at me, I could do nothing but imagine what I looked like. In my my mind I looked hilarious. So I tried not to but I just couldn't stop me smile! I must have look like a... a... a......................................... Cartoon character gone all wrong! But the thought of that just made me smile harder! I said to myself (in my head), "DO.NOT.LAUGH." But I couldn't so I tried harder and all I let out was a squeak "Meeep...." Then I felt all better. Then it came again. "Meep" Then I really felt better. So I waited.... And waited..... And waited................ Until it came up to my part. "HELP!!! Whats that terrible noise!?!?"  And then my part was all over. I was kind of feeling stage frighty. But then it ended, and after the play they put on now watch me whip, now watch me nae nae. 

^

Now watch me whip, now watch me nae nae, now watch me whip, whip, now watch me nae nae!!!

Persuasive Writing - Term 3 Week 5

WALT persuade other students to agree with our opinion.  This the purpose for my writing.

Success Criteria:

1. I plan for a writing task
2. I write a variety of sentence lengths with different sentence starters
3. Give reasons with detail - use specific words
4. I write most topic and high frequency words correctly.
5. I use capital letters, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks correctly.
6. Use persuasive language

ALIENS ARE REAL

I strongly believe that Aliens are real.  There are three main reasons to support my argument.

There is no reason they should not be able to live without air.

Air may be nothing to them. They might not need air! They might not know what it is! Because we can’t live without air does not mean that they can’t. They don’t have to be so much like us, we arent the only form of life! They might be just like us but upside down! They will use their head to walk and legs to eat and drink if they are like that!

We don’t know all the planets

Our solar system isn’t in the only galaxy. There are loads more! We know a lot of them, but not all!  Space goes on forever, maybe they live in a galaxy heaps and heaps of miles away.

They might not need planets at all

There is no proof that aliens can’t just float around in the space in space, because when people ask “do aliens exist”, they have to see aliens having contact with earth to start believing that they do. That is why people send off rovers to find alien life form. The aliens move from the planet, we can’t catch them any more. When we try to send rovers out of the solar system, the aliens crash them. They must be worried that we will find them. They must have seen we are smarter than they think, so they don’t live on any planet. Just float in space. They thought that we were not smart because we call their UFO’s UFO’s! (Unidentified flying objects). Because we call them unidentified, they think we can’t find them. But we can! They think they are a step ahead, but them and us are even. When they find that out, they will live in the UFO, that is in space, not on any planet. Even if we don’t know what they are.

Therefore I believe Aliens are real.  

 

Country life is better than City life - Term Three Week 4

WALT persuade other students to agree with our opinion.  This the purpose for my writing.

Success Criteria:

1. I plan for a writing task
2. I write a variety of sentence lengths with different sentence starters
3. Give reasons with detail - use specific words
4. I write most topic and high frequency words correctly.
5. I use capital letters, fullstops, question marks and exclamation marks correctly.
6. Use persuasive language

Country life is better than city life.

I strongly believe that country life is better than city life because of the following…

You can have more fun

You can have more fun because you have lots of places to go that you don’t know about. If you turn left and go on for 20 yards you’ll get to big save or mighta ten mega store cause in the city you know where everything is. 
In the country you might bump into four new lambs born the day before.You can go somewhere new every day. You usually are by the beach and the beach is lots of fun!

You can have more pets.

You can usually have more pets because there is less pollution to kill them from the factories that the city's have more of. The pollution  is even bad for us. Furthermore, it is a better environment for the animals because there are a lot of places to grow plants and grass. You could even have a farm, its such good environment!

Moooooore… sunshine!!!

Evidence shows that if you concentrated you would notice lots of tall buildings that are blocking the sunshine. For example, the country has less skyscrapers so nothing can block the sun. There are less pollution/grey sky from the cars and factories that cities have more of to block it as well.

Therefore, I believe country life is better than city life. BA BAAAAA!!!

Skimming Reading Strategy-Term 3 week 2

I can decide if a book has useful information I need, or whether I want to read it for pleasure

These are some things I can do to skim read:

1. Flick through the pages looking for key words.

2. Read the title.

3. Look at the pictures.

4. Read the blurb.

About me - Term 3 Week 2

Hi my name is Liam, I am new at Parkvale School.  I have come from China, I have been in China for five years.  My mum's friend got a really good job teaching as a boss of a school and there was a space for my mum to go.  She was a teacher for a year 2 class, then after the 2nd year she moved down to nursery.  The children in nursery are the four year olds.  She taught there for one year and then went back to year 2 for another 2 years.  
The differences between my school in China and Parkvale is that it has a different name of course - DCSZ (Dulwich College - Suzhou, China).  In my old school we have 3 big buildings, one for senior school, one for junior school and a building for the youngest is called Ducks.  In my old school the football field is made of astro turf and not grass.  There are two playgrounds and they don't have the same equipment as here.  In China the playground has a big slide, some climbing nets and some monkey bars.  The playgrounds are a similar size.  
In China I didn't take a school lunch everyday, we used to have Chinese type meals like noodles with little bits of vegetables and meat.  I liked my home lunches better because I didn't like the school lunches as much.  
The best thing I like about Parkvale is that there isn't a big hallway to walk through to get to the outside.  I like the school lunches that my mum gives me and I love the chromebook and the fact that I have a blog!