School Stuff

Lots of my time i spend in school, which I actually like. I like learning and trying new things. Most of the time school is fun, even a homework can be fun sometimes if you do it creatively.

DIGITAL LEADER

A few days ago, I did a post about my Scratch game (click here to see it). Well, the reason I developed that particular game is for my application for a Digital Leader position at school.

A Digital Leader position is something new in our school. It is actually a job (unpaid unfortunately) for children in Year 5 and 6. But fortunately, a Digital Leader can do a lot of exciting things like helping teachers with IT (Information Technology) lessons, running parent workshop and helping kids with IT problems. I had to apply for this job and explain why I will be a good Digital Leader, and looks like I did well because I got the JOB!!! HOORAY!

I will now be going to regular training sessions with my IT teacher and will even go to a Technology Fair at the end of the year. I will also be given a badge, so that the school knows who is the ‘Go To’ person for all things related to Computing. Let me know if you have any questions about programming!                                                                                                                 

Does your school have Digital Leaders?
×
                                                                   

My Scratch Game

About two years ago we started having programming lessons in school. That’s is how I found out about Scratch. I spent extra time at home practicing and learning about Scratch, and became good at it. I do enjoy programming in Scratch because it is easy to work with, more like a little puzzle. It is not a real programming language, but a good fun for kids like me. I made this game as part of my application to become school’s Digital Leader job. (click here to find out about Digital Leaders). You can play my game here.

Have you ever used Scratch?

Egypt map homework

In my school we get homework once a week, every week. But we also get something called Monthly Homework. These are more creative tasks and so we get the whole month to plan and do it. I thought you might like to see what things I have been working on.
Here is something that I created when we were studying Ancient Egypt. It is a 3D map of river Nile, actually just the delta of Nile – where the river spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. I guess you can figure out that the orange is dry sandy land, blue is water and green is the fertile agricultural land. I first created pyramids from think paper and glued them to cardboard. To create the 3D surface, I soaked tissue in liquid glue, squashed it and placed it on the cardboard as well. The whole thing was drying for at least 2 days, after which I was able to paint it. I wish sand dunes were bigger but I doubt the glue would have ever dried if there were any more tissues.

Egypt map
River Nile map

Stringo

For my monthly home work this time we were asked to create a new musical instrument. The teacher said we should be able to change the pitch and volume of the sound. So after some research I came up with this design. Let me introduce you to THE STRINGO! The best homemade musical instrument designed and build by The Martin 😊

 I used a shoe box (cut our a hole in the centre), two wooden sticks and several rubber strings.Plus sticky paper to decorate the box.

To change the pitch you have to move the wooden sticks outwards or inwards, and to change the volume you simply have to hit the strings hard. Simple! And sounds like real music!

Handmade musical instrument
Handmade musical instrument – The Stringo