Joshua's Blog

This is a little box where I keep my stuff – please comment if you like it!

   Jul 05

Violin Grade 1

By Joshua

I have been learning the violin since I was in year 1, and more recently I have been practising my violin for my Grade 1 exam, which I took today.

First, before the exam, I practised my violin outside the exam room with the pianist, Jean Tombs.  I played ‘Fanfare’,  ‘Wonderous love’ and ‘Dance to your Daddy’.  Then I went into the real thing!

When I went in to the exam, the lady examiner asked me to play my pieces one at a time, and then my scales, A-Major, D-Major and G-Major and she also asked me to play my arpeggios for the same key signatures.

This was followed by my sightreading and then a rhythm and singing test, during she asked me to recognise different type of playing, such as staccato, legato, forte, piano, diminuendo and crescendo.  Then it was the end!

I think I did very well, and I hope I get lot of A’s and B’s.

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   May 21

Newland’s Corner

By Joshua

On Friday we went to Newland’s corner, which is an open area on the top of a hill with lots of trees and long grass in the summer. Findlay, Morgan’s friend came to play as well, along with Luke, Savannah, Morgan and me.

Glow Worm Larva

First, we had a picnic which was very nice because we had bagels, bananas and some open and shut blackberry lollipops.

After lunch we played in a big tree, which was as big as a medium sized house.  We played a game where Morgan was a squirrel, Findlay was a jaguar, Luke was a leopard, Savannah was a butterfly and I was a monkey. The game was fighting invisible people.

Just as the game was ending, mummy called to me and said she had found a weird looking centipede, but it was a glow-worm and I asked her to ‘google’ it on her iPhone and I was right.

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   May 01

Chess Megafinals

By Joshua

On Saturday, I took part in the Chess Megafinals.  I had taken part in a chess challenge in the club at Holy Trinity school and had won three gold stickers and had been invited to the megafinals.

Chess piece

When mummy and I arrived, I had to find my table number and my opponent for my first game.  We had to play six games in total and I was quite nervous.

I enjoyed the games even though it was quite a long day – we were there from breakfast to supper – but in the end I only won 1 of my 6 games, which I was disappointed about.

I decided that I am going to practice and improve so that I can do better next time I go.

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   Feb 28

Mummy’s Back

By Joshua

This is the drawing I did for Mummy for when she came back from doing the 3-peaks this weekend.

Heart

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   Feb 20

Avatar

By Joshua

On Saturday, Mummy, Morgan and I went to the cinema to see Avatar.

Thanator

The film was about humans that had found a planet called Pandora, and they wanted the ‘unobtainium’ from the planet because it was a very precious mineral, but the Na’vi were already living on the planet and were upset at the damage they were causing to their home. The Na’vi lived in a massive tree which they called ‘home-tree’ which had a huge amount of unobtainium underneath the roots, which the humans wanted and so they shot down the tree with helicopters and massive jets with lots of missiles and people with machine guns.

I especially enjoyed the wildlife in the film because it was made-up and imaginary.

The ‘Thanator’ is black, has big ears, thick tough ‘whiskers’, he has six legs, a thick tough tail, big snapping jaws and is very, very fierce and scary. They are especially fast on land but do not like water. They seemed to be able to break through branches as thick as Daddy’s laptop screen (which is probably about 10″)

Great Leonopterynx

The ‘Great Leonopteryx’ is ruler of the skies in Pandora and it never has to ‘look up’ because it is the most fearsome creature in the toxic air of Pandora.

It has two sets of wings like a butterfly and the colours are mainly bright red and orange as a warning that it is so mighty.

Other species that live on Pandora are the Direhorse, which is like a black horse but with the mane of a zebra and a very short tail, and the Hammerhead Titanothere, which is like a rhino but with a head like a horizontal hammer.

If you are interested to see more, check this out http://www.pandorapedia.com/doku.php

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   Feb 14

Komodo Dragon

By Joshua
Chameleon Drawing

Komodo Dragon

This is my drawing of one of the komodo dragons I saw.

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   Oct 08

Marwell Zoo visit

By Joshua

We travelled down by coach to Marwell Zoo, near Winchester, Hampshire on 8th Oct 2009.

Horned CameleonHenry, my teacher, split us into groups of ten so that we could all go round with an individual adult. I went round in Henry’s group.

As we started our visit we passed the black swan and other species of waterfowl in their pond, followed by a ‘stand’ of flamboyant flamingos!

We saw lots of different types of animals on our visit round the park, including hippos, owls, Chameleons, crocodiles, piranhas, catfish, secretary birds, wallabies, kangaroos, penguins, bats and sand cats (meercats).

We also saw leaf cutting ants, which had two ‘departments’ – one of which had leaves, which were being cut up by the ants using their strong jaws and carried through a tube to another department where they store them.  There were also stronger and bigger ants protecting them, walking up and down the tube.

We continued our tour with the red pandas which were very cute and cuddly, which were in a tree, one was resting high up and the other was climbing higher still.

After we’d had our packed lunch we returned home by the coach to school.

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