By Chashanjot and Rumaise

Let’s Trade!

By Chashanjot and Rumaise

Brian’s Winter

By Harjeev and Javon

Whoa! A boy marooned in the Canadian wilderness all by himself. People who haven’t read the book should because it is one of the best books we have ever read. Award winning author Gary Paulsen wrote this incredible series. At the beginning of the year,Ms. Bright read us the first book in the series which is called Hatchet. It is about a 13 year- old boy who survived a deadly plane crash and is stranded in the Canadian wilderness with no one there. We liked it so much that we read the sequel as a novel study. It is called Brian’s Winter and in this book Brian is still trapped in the wilderness, but he also has to face a Canadian winter. Along the way he meets a skunk called Betty, wolves, an aboriginal family called the Smallhorns, a bear and a pilot. At the end he survived and lived happily ever after.

The String’s Winter Performance

by Radhika and Stephanie

“F-E-D, F-E-D,” we tuned our instruments as we stared in fright at the audience.

We waited for Ms. Armin (strings teacher) to give us the signal to begin our performance as the openers in the Winter Concert. We were all thinking about Mrs. Boudakova and how proud she would be if we did an almost perfect job (because no one’s perfect) just like she wanted. With that as our goal, the strings started playing.

First we played Hot Cross Buns, which was surprisingly very familiar to our audience and they were singing along. But unfortunately for Sidoney (one of our bass players) this didn’t help. She said, “My least favourite part of the performance would be when the kids sang along—they messed me up!” On the other hand, Nithi (one of our violin players) said the opposite of Sidoney, “My favourite part was when all the little kids sang along as we played.”

Then as we finished the first song, we swiftly switched to Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and after that we played Mary Had a Little Lamb, followed by Old McDonald. Our last two songs were Jolly Old Saint Nicolas and a Christmas favourite, Jingle Bells.

We know that the band had a similar experience and they also did an amazing job.

We were very happy and proud of our first instrumental performance and were flattered by how much the audience enjoyed our performance.

Let’s Go Band!

By Dane, Kuljit, and Sammy

On the first day of music class we got to pick which class of instruments we want to play. In Band we split up into three groups: Woodwinds, Brass, and Lower Brass. There are nine brass players and twelve on woodwinds instruments in our band class.

We learned how to put our instrument together, which took a bit time to learn, before we learned the notes, songs, and positions. Then we learned some really cool songs, but it took a lot of effort to learn them. In the fourth week, we took home our instruments and everyone was happy.

Later on, we got to learn some famous songs like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, This Old Man, Good Night Ladies, Jingle Bells, Old Macdonald, Lightly Row and Baa Baa Black Sheep. Now we are getting to be very, very good at playing our instruments.

By the way, if you’re wondering why we named our article “Let’s Go Band,” it is because it is a famous song which was originally called “Let’s Go Blue.” You will often hear this at a Maple Leaf game. (We think it’s the best song ever!)

They Shoot! They Score!

By Harteek

Can’t skate? It’s alright. You can still play indoor hockey, which is what we are doing in gym. If you plan on being a good player, you need to practice. What I mean is that you cannot wake up one morning and just score ten goals. It takes a lot of training. All you need is a partner, two hockey sticks and one puck, and then you can practise shooting, passing and deking. As Stephanie says, “It is a very energetic sport.” The best part is you don’t have to play in a bone-shattering cold arena. There is also safety. You won’t be crushed into boards. Chasanjot knows that you can get hurt in indoor hockey, but just not as much as outdoor hockey. The sticks are not allowed to be over the knees. That means there is no chance of getting poked in your eye with a stick. Also, there’s absolutely no getting into brawls. At the end of all our games, we line up and shake hands with our opponents. This is how we are playing floor hockey in our own gym.

DAREarts

By Katherine

Grades 4, 5 and 6 are going to a program called DAREarts. In this program, they encourage students to become better leaders, and have lots of responsibility. We learn how to take actions and much more.

We go on trips and learn so much about them. So far we’ve gone to Canada’s National Ballet School, and the Enoch Turner School house.

At the Ballet school, we learned that all the students that go their, live their. We also learned that all they learn about is ballet. At lunch time we got to talk to them and even had lunch with them, it was really exciting! We got to ask them so many questions. One of the questions we asked them was if they enjoyed staying their and they replied that they enjoy staying their but they do get homesick.

The Enoch Turner School house is the oldest school in Canada to have free education in the 1800’s! It’s not a school anymore because it’s sort of a museum now. It is a very small school and only has one classroom!

My perspective on DAREarts is that it’s very educational. So far I’ve learned about taking actions, challenges, and becoming a leader. I think that DAREarts helpful to me and others.

Creating Mandelas

By Bill and Deshayne

When we painted our mandela we followed steps. The first step is to get a small square of paper and a big square of paper. The second step is to draw a design on the small square. The third step is to put the small square in a corner under the big square and to trace it. Then you rotate the small square and keep tracing until you have a symmetrical design on the big paper. Last but not least, the painting! When you are doing the painting you can choose whatever colour scheme you would like, but you have to cover all the paper. Finally, you outline with black finetip.

The Mandela really inspired Bill because of all the colours that were used. Looking at his friends art gave him the idea of drawing diamonds because diamonds are blue or white and those are his favourite colours. He liked looking at the mandelas because they created emotions like happiness. Deshayne liked doing the mandelas because he likes painting.

Science-rific Projects

By Nithi and Sweida

In science we started learning the wonders of space. Fist we picked a topic while negotiating about what we wanted to pick and how to do it. After we picked a topic (finally) we gather information form the books. The internet, videos it took a looong time we gathered some interesting facts and took some bits and bits of and put it on a graphic organizer. Meanwhile we wrote our script and got some constructive criticism from Ms. Bright. Here are some amazing ideas on how to present: game shows, books and videos. Stephanie learned that a fail star doesn’t have enough gas to live so it becomes a brown dwarf. On the other hand Chashanjot learned some amazing facts about Jupiter, she learned that the core of Jupiter is very hot and Jupiter itself is very cold. Here is what the teacher learned about our performances. Ms. Bright learned how creative our class. After that hard process we started building our scientific projects and then we presented.

Movie Making – The Solar Eclipse

By Janela

For my science project I did a video about the solar eclipse. I did my video with two different takes. For example, I would do all the questions first when I was wearing a purple sweater. One of my questions was, “Why can you go blind by looking at a solar eclipse?” Then I would change outfits and answer the questions. Next I would edit by putting scenes where they should be and getting rid of what I didn’t need. To help me out I used Live Movie Maker on the netbook. The amazing part is everything came out great. I was happy to do a movie and show everyone.