The abstract painting

The painting is a book, but no words are in sight

The book is a mystery taking flight

The painting is abstract, so I will never really have your insight

The colours are expressions, feelings to be shown

Swirling and twirling, an everlasting flow

The Tiger

His fur is soft and sleek, as fine as silk for the queen

His eyes were like the brightest star of the night

He stayed close to the longer grass, his body camouflaged as if nonbeing 

The sun, setting in the distance, made his fur glow like fire

And he roared, oh so loud, daring anyone to deny his might

My Stealthy Getaway

"Oh no," I sighed. I'd spilt Coke on my new pink t-shirt. "Great", I thought. I was at the zoo on a class trip. Right now our class was listening to the guide talking about the baby giraffe. "I'll have to go wash out my t-shirt in the girl's bathrooms. Just behind Mrs Bernhardt was a building site. The teacher couldn't hear me because one of the builders was drilling holes. So I quietly slipped away.... Unfortunately, the monkeys In the cage next to me started screaming. So I guess my escape wasn't exactly as stealthy as planned. 

World Peace Day

It's world peace day today! Today I'm taking it as my responsibility (as part of the army) to any conflict that occurs. 

I walked down the street. I heard shouts in the distance, so I ran down to see what was going on. There was a bunch of boys circled around someone. "Hey," I shouted. They looked at me. I could see  a red haired boy with smashed glasses lying on the ground. "It's World Peace Day," I told them. "Now clear off before I call the police." The boys scattered. I helped the boy up. "Smile," I said. "They won't bother you anymore".

Up In The Clouds

I stumbled on an old twig. There was a glowing leaf next to it. The old lady that said she could teleport people to a magic forest in the clouds hadn't been kidding. "I'll prove you wrong," she'd said. Then I found myself  flying into the sky, landing here. On the twig. So I guessed I'd just have to wait until she teleported me back to that street.There were hundreds of thousands of floating, glowing leaves swirling around me. "Well," I said. "Might as well make the most of it."

 So I danced and twirled in the glowing leaves.

Image credit: Nomiyama Kei.

Adopting a hippo

Monday 22 August

I am so excited to start looking after the baby hippo! When Dad got Mom to agree that it would be okay if I looked after the hippo for a three day trial I was literally jumping up and down with glee. I decided that if I was going to persuade Mom to keep George (that's what I named him) I was going to have to learn how to look after him. Dad cleaned out the pool for George to stay in. Since I'd told Mom that I'd train him to stay out of the house, I had thought that that would be a fine place to start. George was lying underneath the big oak tree in the garden. I called to him, hoping he would come into the house and then I would attempt to push him back out. George did not budge. At least if he wasn't going to move it was unlikely that he was going to go wandering anywhere.

Tuesday 23 August

Today I thought I would try and figure out what kind of food George likes to eat. I got Dad to drive me to the shops and I used some of pocket money to buy seven different types of meat. I didn't buy more than that because I didn't want him to get full and not try all the varieties. I took out a bucket and poured all the meat into it. Then I went over to George and tossed him a piece of smoked ham, but as soon as it touched his tongue he spat it out. The same thing happened with the next five pieces of meat. Then I threw him a lamb chop, irritated that I'd spent all that money for nothing. George gulped it down greedily, opening his mouth for more. I gave a shout of victory and, even better, my dad braaid the rest for dinner!

Wednesday 24 August

I was determined to have another successful day today. I thought I would let the neighbours feed George. Betty and Veronica both absolutely adore animals and I was pretty sure they would love George.

I brought the girls into the backyard where George was wading up and down the length of the pool. "Oh he's gorgeous," Veronica had exclaimed. "Wait 'till you see this," I'd told her. I'd tossed George the lamb chop that I hadn't braaid the day before and he chewed it up gratefully. The two girls stared at me, then the hippo and then me again. At that point I knew that I'd had another successful day and even if there were a few more things to work on, I have definitely passed the trials.

Freestyle

I was so nervous! I was swimming a freestyle heat and everyone expects me to win. I had to win. I badly wanted to get into the finals. Then the whistle blew! I splashed and kicked with all my might. I was coming second! But I badly wanted to win. I surged forward. I could see the finish line, then all of a sudden I felt a pain in my side. It was getting worse. I stopped swimming, tears streaming down. Maybe I wasn't going to win this year, but I was definitely going to try again in another four.

My Draak

Baie mense het mooi troeteldiere, Maar ek dink nie hulle het 'n draak nie. My troeteldier is 'n scary soek draak. Alhoewel, Sparky is heeltemal skadaloos. Sparky se asbsolute gunsteling ding om te doen is boom-klim. Sy skerp naels grawe in die groot boom. Sparky het twee horings op sy kop. Sy horings is rooi en hy het dodelike spykers, maar Sparky sal niemand met sy skerp spykers seer maak nie. Die kleure op Sparky se uitgestrekte vlerk is asemrowende. Sparky blaas oranje vuur en het vuurvaste spykers. My ontsagwekkende draak se stert wieg lings en regs. Sy maag is groot, maar hy is gulsig en hy eet baie. Sparky waggel om 'n groot boom en glimlag. Hy begin om die boom te klim. Ek hou van Sparky omdat hy die beste troeteldier in die hele werêld is.

Op elf jaar oud...

Hi, ek wil vertel jou oor my. My gusteling kleur is blou- soos die lug. Ek hou van die liedjie Superheroes. Ek baie van tempura garnale. My beste maat se naam is Gabi. Ek speel die klavier vir 'n stokperdjie. Ek speel netbal by die skool. The Great Australian Bake-Off is my gunsteling TV- program. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was die lekkerste boek wat ek nog gelees het.  Ek wil graag eendag 'n reis-journalis wil wees. Ek het regtig respek my vriende, my familie en my onderwyser.

Ek wil 'n reis blog begin. Ek sal reis na verskillende lande. Dan wil ek blog oor my toer. Ek wil 'n kundige pianis wees. Ek sal baie op my klavier oefen leer on te verbeter. Ek wil in staat wees om maklik 'n doel in netbal te skiet. Ek sal 'n netbal en hoepel kry en oefen om doele te - oefen maak perfek! Ek wil leerom Hindi te praat. Hindi is Hindu mense se hooftaal.

Grandparents' Presents: Always the Best

It's Christmas and my grandparents are down. They always get me about 3 million gifts, so I decided to start opening them before anyone els woke. There was a row of presents in front of the tree. I ripped open the first present. It was a huge packet of chips. The next present was a brilliant, red toy helicopter. It came with a remote control and everything too! I ran into the garden and tried it out. I watched it fly across the sky with ease. Sweet, I thought. I lie on the grass watching the red  helicopter with wonder. 

A Day Living in the Informal Settlements

It's always good to have a positive outlook on life, but I really think that you can't get any worse than how my life is now.

I have one brother and a Mom and Dad. I'm really lucky because 40% of the people in South Africa only have one parent. I'm really worried that I'm going to become one of them though. Yo see, my dad is in the hospital because he has HIV. HIV and TB is really common in the townships, which is where I live. Our home, an informal settlement, is really tiny. So personal space isn't really an option. We have one area where we sleep, a dining room and a kitchen. We're really lucky because there's a tap right outside our 'house'. This morning there was no food in our cupboard, except for two sandwiches which we took for lunch. Fortunately, my brother and I got to school early. There are 65 children in our class. Today, we were learning a new maths subject but I didn't understand it properly. I put my hand up and waited for the teacher. She didn't even see me because I was sitting at the back. Plus, there were a lot of other kids that needed help. This made me quite annoyed. I want to get a good job when I get older, so that I won't ever get hungry and i will get a proper house. Well, I guess I'll have to learn on my own and hope for the best.

 Unfortunately, it was really muddy everywhere because it had rained last night. I didn't want to get dirty so I sat with two of my friends on one of the benches. We talked about how we could get jobs and how we should help around our community. I think that there is always hope for a better life. Our home isn't the best place in the world, but it's still ours, so we're going to try to make the best of it. 

What a day

  Hannah and the time machine went flying through the air! She called into her headphones.'Dr Smith can you hear me?' 

'Yes! Are you alright?' 

'Yes, the time machine just started spinning really fast and landed in the middle of this huge, open moor!'

 'Aright Hannah, listen. Somehow the connection between the 2 wires in my experiment was lost, and your trip to 1915 was cut short. I just have to re-attach them and you'll be back on your way.' He fumbled with the wires. 'Alright,' he said. 'Ready?' 

Ready,' Hannah said. And she was off! This time the machine was spinning, getting faster on every turn. 

She tumbled onto her bed,  thinking to herself, What a day.

The Singing Inspector

Last week the singing inspector came. He had a round, red face, bright blue eyes and a mob of curly blonde hair. His name was Mr Reymond. He wore long, thick stockings and had a frown on his face. At first sight, he looked like a General, or something, that was, for some reason, really, really cross.

He took us into a big room but didn't let the smaller children or the biggest boys (like Jack Long and Paulus, who do exams and don't do singing) come as well.

Once everyone was in the big room, we did exercises like do, re, me and tata tete. Then we started singing. 

 Benny and Charles went first. Mr Reynold told them that they would stand in the front and sing for him and the rest of us. Little did he know that they couldn't even sing Blue Bells of Scotland or Minstrel Boy. Mr Reynold got really angry and almost shouted at them. "What can you sing, then?" he yelled. "We can sing Pretty Polly" Charles had said, though it sounded more like a squeak to me. "Then sing it" Mr Reymond had roared, and Benny and Charles and sung it, though it was terrible I must admit.

Then he called me. I was frightened of the horrible Mr Reynold and was scared he was going to shout at me or tell me my singing was horrible, but everyone's always said I had a good voice, so, I decided that I wouldn't let my being scared get me shouted at. I was really nervous, but I thought it best not to look at him, so singing for him wasn't actually that bad. I thought it went quite well, actually, and believe it or not he didn't say anything, which, I guess, means he didn't think mine was that bad.

Super Skype Session

Wilmington Shool was doing a Skype marathon. Our school, Elkanah House, was part of it. Since there school is in North America, our class divided into groups to tell them a bit about our country. My group told them about how we are taking action to help the animals and environment. I talked about how, as South Africans, we have licenses for catching a limited amount of fish. My two friends dressed up in  traditional Zulu outfits and they looked really pretty! I thought it was a good experience for us to do a half an hour Skype session with them because we learned a bit about there country, and they learned a bit about ours.

Our Awesome Grade 5 Camp

Looking for a cool place to go camping? (I'm not sure if they do separate families, but they did our Grade) Try High Africa. All the Grade 5's at Elkanah went there for 3 days. There was a river you could swim in and there was a whole lot of activities that we did, that you don't do every day - Like building a raft and the paddling on it, which I thought was really cool, free falling from a highish wooden pole (with a rope attached to you) I'm afraid of heights so it was definitely a good experience for me, and a 10 meter high climbing wall which was really scary! And those were just my favorites.... 

The food was really good, but my favorite meal was the one my friends and I cooked ourselves, for the poitjie competition! It was a chicken poitjie, but since I'm a Pescatarian (like Vegetarian, but I do eat seafood) I only had the vegetables and rice, but it was still lovely. The chalange was to cook the poitjie and then decorate the table using only the things you brought with you. Our group's theme was Under the Sea and we won the best table set up! I had a lot of fun with my friends at camp and I only hope next year will be just as nice.

Interesting N.S ILT

 Fennec Foxes are really cute. Especially with their giant bat-like ears and bushy tails. My partner, Biyu, and I got to learn all about them for our ILT! We even did a poster about them.The poster was navy blue and it looked really nice with the sandy, Sahara dessert backgrounds of the pictures. We used sandpaper to line the edges and little pipe cleaner worms to decorate. (That's what they eat). We made it look better than how I thought it would look. It was really fun and I had a lot of fun working on the poster with Biyu. We learned a lot about the Fennec Fox and some of the other creatures that other people in our class did. Our oral went pretty well, as well. I interviewed Biyu on the Fennec Fox and it was Quite dificult to get the same amount of sentences, but it was awesome!  We also had fun doing graphs and tables about data we got from a video we watched. This was one of the best ILT's that I've done so far! I hope that the other ILT's that we'll do this year are going to be just as fun as this one!

Partners in action!!

My first few weeks of Grade 5

I think Grade 5 is awesome! I really like the Pelican class. I have a lot of my friends in my class and we have two new kids in our class. We get to do coding and we got ice-cream on Friendship day!  Grade 5 is also really nice, since we aren't the smallest in the school. I thought writing the Extra Ordinary People English Task was cool as well. We had a lot of fun on our Beach Outing and I'm really excited for camp, the ILT and all the other fun things we're going to do this year.