Ms. Norkus
Movement is a fine art that you can choose in 7th and 8th grade. In 5th and 6th grade, fine arts is a rotation between Theater, Art, Computer Science, Band, Chorus, and Movement. The Movement teacher is Ms. Norkus.
In Movement, you choreograph dances to show to your class. We also do different warm-ups, one of them being Walk Abouts which is where we go outside, stretch, and play at the playground for a little while.
Right now in Movement, we’re working on our final projects. Final projects are a dance that we work on with a group or just a partner. We have to use at least 10 movements that we’ve learned throughout the trimester like an arabesque or grapevine.
Movement is really fun! I also can’t wait for my next fine art rotation, Band.

In Language Arts, we had to design our dream world! This is how I imagine mine.
My planet is in the Milky Way and it is called Shnoopia. The sunset and sunrise colors can change; one day the sunset could be a purple to blue gradient for example. The clouds are made of cotton candy.
There are meadows and forests like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. You can go on clouds and float around on them and even though they are made of cotton candy; they aren’t sticky. There are also floating islands where people can live and play. There is no pollution and the temperature is 75˚F. Plus, there are no bugs.
Candy is not bad for you. There are also no bad germs or sicknesses. People have wings so they can fly around. There are animals from Earth and mythical creatures like dragons and unicorns. Plus, the animals and people get along well. The people are nice and care for each other, the planet, and the animals. People’s clothes are made out of dyed animal furs. People make dye out of different flowers and berries.
In terms of currency, there is no money but people do trade things. Specific people are better at making clothes and they get their food from trading clothes for it.
As for food and water, people are more like hunters and gatherers. They hunt for their food and they gather berries and other fruits and vegetables. The water on the planet’s flavor changes depending on what the person drinking likes. There are no farms and people don’t own any animals.
That is what my dream planet is like. You should make one too!

Photos were taken by teachers
On Friday, the 6th graders at my school went to the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.
The two areas I wrote about on a reflection worksheet were an exhibit called “RACE: Are We So Different” and the Nature Research Center.
I learned that on March 23, 2003, there were meteoroids that fell in Chicago. Another thing I learned was that the most recent meteorite seen falling in NC was in 1874 and it was called “Castalia”.
In the exhibit “RACE: Are We So Different”, one of the posters I looked at was called “Dolo Swope”. I was wondering why they had made the poster so colorful. Another poster was a picture of a person and had a yellow outline on some of the picture. I don’t know what it was called but I was wondering why they had outlined the photo in yellow.
We also went to a dinosaur exhibit, a water exhibit, and other animal exhibits.
The museum was overall really fun and there was even a live sloth!

Image from Libby
My book that I just finished last weekend was Warriors Super Edition: Bramblestar’s Storm by Erin Hunter. It was about wild cats that live in clans. Warriors is a series and Warriors Super Edition: Bramblestar’s Storm is about specifically Bramblestar’s view when there was a storm and the clans’ territories were flooded. Warriors Super Edition: Bramblestar’s Storm was a window for me. Warriors Super Edition: Bramblestar’s Storm by Erin Hunter is a fictional story. I chose this book because I love the Warriors series and I finished it so now I’m reading the super edition books.
Warriors Super Edition: Bramblestar’s Storm is a window for me because I’m not a cat, I don’t live in ThunderClan or any one of the Clans, and my home has never been flooded. I don’t choose window books on purpose because I just choose books I want to read. I do usually end up reading window books because I like fictional books.Â

Hello, Universe
Wonder Struck
Starlight
Twilight


For Language Arts, we had to work on a project about a story from the book Wisdom Tales from Around the World. I was in a group of three with me, Elena, and Louise. We did a Scratch project about a story called Feeding His Clothes, it is a Sufi story from the Middle East. Here is Our Scratch Project. The story is about a man named Mulla Nasrudin, that tried to get into a banquet but wasn’t let in because his clothes were ratty. He got some nicer clothes and he was able to go and before he ate, he put food on his clothes. I think the moral is don’t judge people on what they look like.
What we did is split up the jobs, Elena put in the facts like the story and moral, Louise made the buttons, and I did the coding.
This project was really fun and I enjoyed doing it.


Two of my favorite series are Warriors also known as Warrior Cats by Erin Hunter, and Wings of Fire by Tui T. Sutherland. I recommend them to the people who like animals and adventures. There is some violence in them but they’re still really good books.
Warriors is about groups of cats, clans, that live together and follow the Warrior Code. The clans are ThunderClan, RiverClan (my personal favorite), WindClan, ShadowClan, and SkyClan. The Warriors series is really really long with different arcs, if you do read them make sure you get the books from the right arc! There is also super edition books and they’re about specific cats. Erin Hunter is a pseudonym which is a fake name an author or authors could use. Erin Hunter is a group of people under one name, the people are Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry, Tui Sutherland, Gillian Philip, Inbali Iserles and Victoria Holmes. Currently there is more books coming in the Warriors series, Erin Hunter is making another arc called The Starless Clan, the newest book, Sky the second book in The Starless Clan arc was released November 1st 2022.
Now for Wings of Fire (WOF), WOF is a series about dragons that live in tribes. The tribes are IceWings, SkyWings, SeaWings, MudWings, SandWings, NightWings, RainWings, LeafWings, SilkWings, and HiveWings. This series written by Tui T. Sutherland who also was a part in writing Warriors (look above 👆). Correct me if I’m wrong, but WOF book 16 is coming out on the 27th of December 2022. I think it’s called The Beginning of the End. I’m exited to see what it’s going to be about!
Thank you so much for reading, I hope you read and enjoy these series!

This year the 6th grade, after Camp Cheerio got canceled, got to go to Camp Hanes instead. This is my experience there.
When I got onto the bus Jennifer, Isabella, Emily, and I had taken the seats on the back of the bus. After everyone was seated, we had started eating and trading candy with Chris, Beck and some other people in the back. After we had taken a break from eating candy so we didn’t run out, Isabella, Jennifer, and I had started to play this car game. What you did is you picked a color. For example, I did red at first and you count how many red cars there are, and whoever has the highest number of cars wins. The first round Isabella won, she chose the color blue. I had gotten second place with the color red, and Jennifer was third with the color yellow. After that round, we played another game and I got first with the color blue. After a while, Mr. Harris played Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. By the end of the bus ride we had watched almost all of the movie. When we got to Camp Hanes there was a counselor that gave us instructions when we were in the bus, like where to put our bags and things like that. After we had put our bags in the gymnasium, we went into another room and the counselors introduced themselves to us. After that, we played some games then we got told what cabin we were in. I was with Jennifer, Isabella, and Emily, Anya, Emily, Madeline, Quinn, Jade, Emilia, Ms. Ellis, and Ms. Salas in cabin eight. After we were told our cabin, we went to our cabins to put our things away, to be told what group we were in, and what our activities for the day were. I was in group six with Emily and some other people, and the activities we did for the first day were canoeing then archery then rock climbing then team building games.
The activities we did were pretty fun. The first activity, canoeing, was okay. We learned how to get into the canoe and how to paddle, things like that. Then my group and I got to go in the canoes with a partner or two and go canoeing. After that we did archery. In archery we took turns with the bow and arrow and while you waited you could play this game with a metal ring that you try to throw and hook in up on a hook attached to the wall. After archery we did rock climbing. The rock climbing walls were auto belays which basically is a machine that automatically belays you. On top of the climbing walls was this net like thing they call a sky hammock. What you do to get to it is either you can use the pixie sticks which are like wooden bars placed in random angles in like a netted in area, or you can do these mini climbing walls that lead up to the sky hammock. The last activity we did was team building games. For team building games we did multiple different games. One of the games we did was we had to stay in a circle and we had to pass a stuffed dog around and we had to get it around as fast as possible. Another one of the games was everyone was in a circle with a rope that couldn’t go above your n. Another game we did was there were two groups and each group chose one person to be the one blindfolded, your group had to direct you to a pool noodle that the counselor was holding and moving around a bit. After the person got the pool noodle they had to hit the other blindfolded person.
I’m really grateful that we got to go! It was a really fun experience and the food was good. I’m also really happy that I got to be in a cabin with all of my friends. I’m really proud that I tried to walk on the sky hammock without holding onto anything. Thank you to all the counselors!

During the summer, I read a book called Finding Someplace by Denise Lewis Patrick. The book is about a girl named Reesie, who lived in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. During the book, Reesie had to leave her house in a hurry. She only had a backpack to put things in, she brought her notebook and some pens, toiletries, some important papers, and some other things.
After I read the book I decided to make my own backpack! If this happened to me I would bring:
- Food that won’t spoil
- Water in a Plastic Water Bottle
- Sterilization Tablets
- A crank flashlight and a battery flashlight
- Batteries
- A phone
- Charger/Solar Powered Charger/Charging Bank
- Jacket/Sweatshirt
- Change of Clothes in a Ziploc Bag
- Cash
- Small First Aid Kit
- Matches
I would bring food and water so I can eat and drink, sterilization tablets to clean water if I need to. I would also bring a crank flashlight so if my battery flashlight doesn’t work anymore I can use it, a battery flashlight so I can see in the dark, batteries so I can use my flashlight if it runs out of power, a phone so I can contact people, a charger/solar powered charger/charging bank so I can charge the phone if it runs out of battery, a jacket/sweatshirt so I don’t get cold. A change of clothes in a Ziploc bag so if I get wet I can change my clothes, cash so I can buy food or something I need, a small first aid kit so I can take care of myself, and matches so I can start a fire if I need to. This is what I would bring if a hurricane hit and I needed to pack things in a bag.
I’m going to tell you about Christmas’s in San Diego. As you might know (if you’ve read “Christmas in Melbourne”) that for Christmas I alternate and go to my mom’s mom house which is in San Diego and my dad’s parents house which is in Melbourne.
When we have Christmas with my mom’s side of the family my mom’s sister and brother in law come to my grandma’s house and we all stay there for Christmas and New Years. We do lots of things. I like to paint paintings with acrylic paints, sometimes we have a picnic in my grandma’s front yard, and we always go to some playgrounds and beaches.
There is this one playground that we always go to thats bye a beach. It’s called Mission Bay Park. It’s really fun because it’s really big and it has a lot of things to play with.
Also when we go to San Diego we go to the beach a lot and we go body boarding and its really fun. I have a body board. On the body board it has an ocean design with dolphins and fish.
On Christmas day we usually wake up and have breakfast, sometimes it’s pancakes usually waffles though and then we can open presents. We don’t do a lot on Christmas but it’s still really fun to visit my grandparents, cousins, friends, aunts, and uncles.
Here are some picturse
This is me and my brother max jumping off of a turtle at Mission Bay Park    when we were little.

This is me, Max, and my other brother Christian jumping off turtles. (More recently).

This is the Christmas tree and me standing by the Christmas tree.
