Daniel's Blog

Thursday morning we got up early to get everything ready for our big day…. I was waking on the soft sand with a soccer ball at my feet. We were about to play beach soccer.

The game started off as a a 2 on 2 game: Greyson and Me vs Andrew and Ethan. Then more people joined. It became 3 on 3 and so on. Eventually most of the boys in the class were playing soccer. My dad started playing too, and the game became really fun.

The ball was kicked every were as we all passed, intercepted, shot, and scored goals. I found it a lot harder to score with a lot of players because the ball was intercepted more easily.

That is my favorite camp memory of grade six.

Edited by: Ethan and Jack

My school has a Lego Mindstorm robotics club. It takes place after school on Monday until 4:00.

At robotics club we have groups of 4 people. Each group works together to complete challenges that are made and we freely do our own programing. An example of a challenge is making the robot go around a chair. To be able to do any challenge you first have create a program on the computer. Next you have to use a USB cord to download the program onto the Mindstorm from the computer. Now you can test the program that you created. If it doesn’t work, fix the part of the program that does not work.

Every few weeks we take apart the bot and build a new one to program and try out. A bot that my team built was a multi-bot. Our group decided it because we wanted a bot with a ball shooter. It also had tracks and a bumper on the front of it. If the bumper bangs into a wall or object, the touch sensor will respond and the bot will turn around and go in a different direction. Another thing that the bot has is an ultrasonic sensor. These sensors calculate the distance of objects with ultrasonic sound that reflects off objects and back to the sensor. The sensor calculates the distance of the object with the time it took to reflect back to the sensor. After it reflects back the sensor, the robots controller gets the information and shows the distance on the controller screen.

At the last day of robotics we did a simple challenge. It was to go around the maze then push a toy car to the opposite side of the mat. my team was either the only one or one of the 2 teams to complete the maze without hitting anything and getting the car to the end.

Edited by: Max and Ethan

Imagine the  nice breeze of fresh air blowing into your face.  That is the sensation of  sailing on a small catamaran sailboat called a Hobie-cat. Catamarans are boats with two hulls that the boat floats on. Near the front of the catamaran is a mast that holds up the sail. At the back of each hull is a rudder, 2 rudders in total. And a tiller bar is connected to both rudders. This makes the rudders both turn spontaneously and in the same direction. To steer you hold the tiller bar and push or pull it.

Our class started sailing on the last week of March and we finished our sailing the 2nd week of May. In the summer I’m going to take more sailing training and get my 2nd cat card. Cat cards (catamaran cards) are a card that proves you are able to care for small Catamarans and use them.

My favorite job to do on the boat is to steer. It is fun because I get to have control of where the Hobie-cat goes, especially if it is quiet windy so we go fast! One of the sailing days we went sailing even thou the wind was guesting at 17 nots. For the first hour of the lesson we did wind testing to check the direction of the wind and the speed. When we finished the wind testing, the 2 instructors brought out 2 boats for us to ride on. It was so windy that the instructors had to control the boat with us riding on them. The water splashed on our faces through the trampoline with such force that our faces were stinging. Even through the pain it was my favorite part of sailing.

Edited by: Liam and Darion

Have you learned something out of school? Well, of course you did. Kayaking is something I learned out of school.

Kayaking Near Goose Spit

Paddling takes practice and you need to learn how to do it properly. Paddling properly makes you go faster and uses less energy; also with less drag of the paddles on the water. Drag is when the paddle is motionless and submerged in the water while the kayak is moving, or when you paddle slower than the speed the kayak is going. That causes resistance and slows down the kayak.

My mom and dad taught me how to kayak when I was in grade 5. They showed me how to hold the paddle properly, and how to paddle. My family and I do a lot of kayaking in the summer. One of our most favorite places to kayak is around Goose Spit. On the tip of the beach is a really sandy spot that we kayak to. Other places we kayaked around were: Comox Lake, Grey Lake, and Wolf Lake.

Have you ever kayaked before?

Picture By: Shari