December 8th, 2023

                                                    We are better together

Putting the last piece in the puzzle

Reasons Why Ms. Pritchard Should Buy Me A Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090


Growth Mindset

 In our class growth mindset we do conversation starters. We are learning how to talk to people we don’t know that well. We switch partners and the questions are kid-friendly and really nice. Some examples are: If you could travel anywhere, where would you go? I said Disneyland. Another example was, If you could have a pet, what would it be? I said a lizard and my partner said a lion.  Then you talk about the question with your partner. You're given the questions on cards by a teacher. I was with Ms Quinter and she read the question and I did also. I think it's really fun! 

By Alana 


Chess Elective

By Daniel


One of the many electives during these 3 weeks is chess. Chess is a game of strategy and thinking of multiple moves ahead. In this elective we have two versions of chess. Regular games where you get zero hints so you're on your own. The second version of chess we have is No Stress Chess. In this game, the game tells you how each piece moves. Every piece moves differently. Pawns can move up two spaces on their first move. Knight moves in L shaped pattern and can jump over other pieces. Kings can move all around them in one square. If the Knight and Bishop are not in the way they can perform a move called Castling. Castling is a defensive move where the Rook and the King swap places, that way the king is defended. Unfortunately, that's all I have for now, have an amazing day. 👍



Art Class on the Side 

By Tessa

Hi guys, it's Tessa from Flamingo South to give you Art on the sidelines. This week, the teachers made a shocking decision to split the art classes up. There's the group I'm in, called Sketching Class that is “on the sidelines.” Mr. Keenan taught this class. We were learning how to sketch. We all drew something in our sketchbooks. I sketched a flamingo that is on Mr Keenan's board. We learned that sketching is hard. I'll give you an example: say you draw a circle hard, pressing down on the paper, that’s not sketching. What you want to do is lightly do it not be pressing in at all. Try doing a light pencil sketch of a circle. There might be some fizz, but that's fine. Just keep refining the circle. In the third step, you erase some of that fizz and then refine it again and there you go. You've got a circle sketch. We got new sketchbooks and new pencils. We only get to use those pencils in Sketching classes and the next class is on Thursday. I can't wait. 


By The Way: 

Remember to do your Art at home. Maybe you can sketch something with this new information.


On the sidelines is Art News. That's Tessa, signing off from Flamingo South.       


Mission: Electives

By secret agent: Theo and Dimension Defender Austin


The time has come again. electives have begun. We chose our electives from chess to paper airplanes. We got it all (not really) if that is not your thing then we also have tickets to ride, metal art, and card making. In this article, we are only writing about the 1st two. 


Theo’s part: I chose a paper airplane workshop, and it was chaotic. First, an airplane got stuck in the ceiling, and second, people threw it at each other. Last, we have a throwing line, but almost always guess what they don’t. It was also really fun, like how we got to make airplanes out of colored paper, so I named my planes after video game characters. The people in the electives are great. I hope we will have a less chaotic elective next time. Note from Austin: paper airplanes are cool ✈️


Austin’s part: I chose chess. We learned the history of chess and played chess. My game in chess took up the whole time, and it was still in the late game. The primary goal in chess is to capture or checkmate the king. Chess originated when someone died in a war. Maybe next time I can finish a chess match. Note from Theo: I have played online chess, and I was pretty good.


Tune in next week, and thanks for reading. 



Electives 

By Madelyn 

      

In electives, we are doing something different. We are doing 3 weeks instead of four weeks of electives. Options for electives are Card Making, Ticket to Ride, Paper Airplane Making, Chess, and Metal Art. I'm in the Card Making Elective with Mrs. Quinter. The elective is making cards for people who are struggling to stay in their home. It is a good choice if you like doing art or helping people. The teacher who teaches the other electives are Mrs. Jex with Ticket to Ride, Mr. E is teaching Paper Airplane Making. Mr. Keenan is teaching Chess, and Mrs. Pritchard is doing Metal Art, which is also an art class. I told you a little about Card Making earlier but we'll go into some details now. The cards have jokes and heart-felt pieces of writing on them. We also are drawing some beautiful decorations. For our options we have, decorating, we use stickers, gems, and fun colored paper. In all, I think that Mrs. Quinter’s elective is very fun. This is Madelyn signing off.


12/6/23

Personal Hygiene: Growth Mindset

We learned about how to take care of ourselves. Washing ourselves every other day at least.  We learned about washing your hands regularly especially after you use the restroom, we learned how to clean our hair and body in the shower properly so that we won't smell STINKY!!! We watched a video on how to keep ourselves clean. We learned about universe thinking (thinking about other people) and how we can help them with their personal hygiene. Ms. Pritchard, Mr. Keenan, and Ms Hofeld are going to help us out by telling us if we need to take a shower or be cleaner in any way.


How did we learn this?

Once a week on Tuesdays, we have Growth Mindset; this week, we watched a video on BrainPOP about Personal Hygiene. What information did we get from this video, you might be wondering? We learned that we should always take good care of ourselves. We both know it is hard for some people to keep clean, but the best thing to do is at least try.  Hope these words help to keep clean and help have a chance to try. 


by Pachi and Sam S.



Art class (Drawing class)

By Abby 


Everybody loves art class right? Imagine if you could split it! But in the flamingo art class the teachers have split it into two groups. One group is with Mrs. Pritchard and Flamingo North, the other class is with Mr. Keenan in Flamingo South. The drawing class is with Mr. Keenan. We have to learn about shading and how to hold a pencil. We try different pencil grips and try not to hold the pencil so hard that it will bleed onto the next sheet of paper or rip the sheep off. In Mrs. Pritchard's class in Flamingo North they are working on wax resist, I think. I am not 100% sure of what they're doing. What I know is that they did something with wax and paints because we have a lot of art supplies in the art sink right now. Right now they are doing canvas painting. They had to paint what they drew on the canvas. And the reason they draw on the canvas is that if you just start painting random things like a soccer ball or something and you don't like it and you want to erase it, you can't do that because it's already painted and probably quickly drying. And I know what it's like if you paint it and then you want to erase it because you have to start all over and it is not fun at all. Now for the drawing class because that's all the information I can get about Flamingo North. 

Here is what we have recently learned about how to draw in Mr. Keenan’s art class. We have learned how to start a draft and make it so it's not so dark and hard so it isn't easy to erase. We have to learn how to be very light and not so hard on the pencil. Then we had to do several drawings of the same shapes. The shape that we all had to do was a circle. The first one has to be very light, then the second one was darker and then the third one was darker and then the last one was very dark. When we kept having to go a little darker and then a little darker, that is called refining. Then when we're at the very last one we had to do all the erasing and other stuff, that is called defining. You don't have to go really hard on the eraser that is on the pencil. Just go really light and that way you have it for the next session of drawing class. 

Next, we had to look for an item that could be put on the table that we were sitting at. Before you can do that you have to ask Mr. Keenan if it's okay. If it is like a duck or something he might say yes. If it is a knife or something or other, he might say no. He might be concerned about your fingers! After the item is approved, you have to draw on it in the notebook Mr. Keenan gave you.

 Whoops! I forgot to mention about the notebooks! Mr. Keenan gave us notebooks that we could sketch in. He's taking care of them when we don't have art classes on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays. He said that there was no random doodling in it and that we had to follow the rules, or the notebook would have to be confiscated! But if you were, say, ripping up the notebook and tearing the pages on purpose, etc. then it would probably be confiscated for maybe several days. It just depends on your behavior because there is a phrase that Mr. Keenan AND Mrs. Pritchard like to use and that phrase is: Your behavior tells us what we CAN and CAN'T do. Yeah, so back to the item thing. We could test it by drawing out and testing out the different types of pencil grips. We could also draw the item that you chose big and small. We also can draw at a different angle. You can also practice shading. Shading is when you can make it look like a 3D illusion or make it look as if it's hovering in the air. I'm not very good at shading but I'm currently practicing shading at home. Some people are really good at it and some people need improvement on it. But it does not matter on your level of skill set. 


Indoor Recess and the Game that Is Surging in Popularity 

By Riley

I think it's colder and wetter, and we have had more inside recesses. The inside recess has some differences. From outside, like for inside recess, there is no running. But we play games like Uno, or at least that's what many people play. There are some new games that are becoming more popular, such as Flicky, which we will get into later. Some people prefer inside recess because it’s quieter, cold, sprinting, and other things. The inside recess is a lot warmer, and it's normally a lot calmer. 

Now I bet you're wondering, “What is this game Flicky?” It uses dominos where you make a little fort out of two structures. Each structure has to be entirely touching every other part of the structure. So say you count two separate Towers as a structure that would be cheating. It has to be an entire structure, but you can have two, so people go for different strategies. Such as building walls as one of their structures and building the fort as their other structure. This game involves a lot of strategy and skill, though sadly it is hard to play with over five players. Anyway, there are many structures such as noodles, as I like to call them. They are small structures that are tall or long and annoying to hit. Also, you have a side structure and a primary structure on the side. The structure could be solid, but the primary structure has to be hollow. If your primary structure is entirely destroyed, you are out. For every domino that you knock over on somebody else's Fort, you get points/ammo. By the end of the game you will have a pile of dominoes that you knocked off other people's forts. If you take out someone's Main Fort, you get their secondary forts, dominoes and all the dominoes they have collected. So that makes it a very viable and a minorly annoying strategy. Once you hit somebody, finish them to then get all of their dominoes. Some people aim for extremely tall walls. You can knock the bottom out and then they just fall down. They re-stack so they still count as still being together so they don't get very many points. While other people like me, it just makes what we like to call Scatterfield. Where you scatter dominoes and you make them just barely touch each other. That absorbs all the energy from incoming domino's. So then you just make a tiny structure behind it so it's impossible to hit. 

As you can probably tell, there are a bunch of different strategies in Flicky. It is slowly gaining popularity and the rules are being advanced from just trying to flick over somebody's fort, to the highly advanced game it is today. Maybe by the end of the year it will become a real international sport. Oh I have told you strategies for building but what about the strategy for flicking. Some people slide it, others flick it with their finger. What I do is I put my pointer finger on the very corner of it and pull it back. Then I flick my finger forwards which puts a lot of energy into it, while still giving me accuracy. Anyway that's the game that's been taking over inside recess. There are other games such as Uno, chess, exploding kittens, and some other games. Yeah I don't really know much about the other games.

 Anyway, sorry for the unusually small website. I didn't have all that much to write about. But I thought that this would be really interesting anyway. Thank you, bye.


Weirdly Wonderful Things

By Freddie the Mistake Maker


Hi there, how are you doing? Now you might be wondering “Freddie, what are some things that are weirdly wonderful?” Well, to that, I say: a lot of things and stuff. And also other stuff and things. Like a dog wearing a tuxedo while sitting in a donut pillow. Or a clay man that came to life.


What I'm saying is that a lot of things are weirdly wonderful but maybe the weirdest and most wonderful thing I can think of is a mistake. Now, I know you’re wondering, “What's so weirdly wonderful about a mistake?” Well in school if you make a mistake and fix it that's proof you are learning. – Quote the white board in Flamingo North. If you make a mistake and fix it, that's proof you are learning also works in the real world too. So never give up because you can do it. Just try again. Well now I will … well I don't know I want to make this longer but I can't think of anything.


OH! I have an idea! How about I tell you about our Art class yesterday. So we were split into two groups, one with Mr. Keenan and the other with Mrs. Pritchard. I was with Mr. Keenan. I didn't understand much. All I got was how to do art class. For more details look for my friend Abby's website called Art Class (Drawing Class). Well ok BYE.


Writers notes: I don't have much to say. I hope you're doing well. Yesterday I drew a chess piece, specifically a horse, so thanks for watching g'bye.


Credits and stuff


Written by Freddie the Cool


Edited by a friend


Edited by Mr. Keenan


Sorry for being so short

Thank you ( .^. )

Working on writing 

              Elephants Rampage 

                                                                      By Abiir

Hello people, Abiir’s back and today we are going to be talking about this new article in reading class called “Elephants Rampage.” So every week we have been reading different articles about racoons, rhinos, snakes and red fire ants. But finally we have read about elephants, so here’s what you need to know about this article. It all starts with this woman named Kathy Lawler and her children at “The Great American Circus”. The Lawlers rode on the circus elephant and hoped for a gentle and nice ride. It was almost 5 o'clock PM, the date that the Lawler's rode was February 1, 1992. The elephant's name was Kelly, She was a professional circus elephant, She trained for 10 years. It’s a long story but she was shot by an officer.

So there you have it folks I’m Abiir saying Peace Out!

  

Bridges Art: Wax Resist

By Ben

Bridges is a very art-abundant school, meaning everywhere you can see an amazing form of art is pridefully showing its beauty to the world. Most of these amazing pieces are made by the students of this wonderful school, who are one of the true reasons Bridges is so great. As you can see, art is very important to Bridges. So we make sure to do it every week, adding more creativity and beauty to this school. This time we are doing wax resist paintings! Wax resist is a very unique art style that combines two ordinary ones: watercolor and wax crayons. First you draw a draft with pencil and highlight the places you want to put wax. This is done so you have an idea what to draw with wax and you're not blindly putting wax on paper. After that you get a fresh canvas to apply wax to with either a white crayon, birthday candle, or normal candle. These examples each apply a different density of wax. For example the candle applies a lot of wax and is recommended, the white crayon applies a low density of wax and is not that visible afterward. After you draw the shape you want with wax, you get your watercolor setup and start painting. When you paint over the wax, it gives out a stencil effect, as the wax resists right where you put it. You can even sprinkle salt over the canvas when the paint is drying and remove it afterwards to see that it has an effect! It will have white specs peppered [or should I say salted] all around. Wax resist is truly amazing!


We must find the mushroom!

By Sampson and Adam 


As I'm sure you're fully aware, a mushroom is hidden amongst the school. As of now, only a few people have found it. For all we know, it has some devious plot. Overtake the school and sabotage the acrylic paints. We don't know. What if they're going to leave the markers open? As I'm sure you're aware, that's a joke, although there is a mushroom heading in the school. You probably saw some other website about it. But this isn't an old website. It's Adam and Simpson's website. It's been hidden a few times, and a few people such as Hudson, Desmond, and a few more people found it. It is still to be found today. I mean, after it's been, I haven't personally found anything I can use. Although after somebody found it, I learned where I was hidden, apparently in that one hour I had walked by it four times. And I hadn't noticed it. It's not the hardest thing to see, but the teachers have hidden it very well. And the majority of the time, in plain sight. Today it was hanging off of one of the art wires in the hall. The mushroom has been hidden in multiple places, but this mushroom can only be hidden on the first floor where you can see it without having to move anything; otherwise, that would be chaotic, and the teachers don't want to deal with that. Nor would I not that that's my job. However, the mushroom is still on the run and not many people have found it must be caught. preferably red-handed, but you know we don't always get what we want. Not that it has done anything. But I know it will soon. I have my sources, but wasn't myself. The mushroom challenge is really fun and everything, but he's seeming to have a good time with it. As a final conclusion, it's very fun and I wish we did it more often. Thank you for taking the time to read this. 


🍄 Find The Mushroom (FTM) 🍄

By Dimension Defender Austin and Theo thy MUSHROOM finder 😎


For the FTM (in the () in the title) the teachers hide the mushroom somewhere on the 1st floor. So far, people have found the mushroom almost every day, but last Friday (12/1/23), Ms. Hofeld hid it so well that I (Theo) thought they did not hide it at all. I agree with Theo 100% on this one. The game is called Find the Holiday Mushroom. Many people found the mushroom, including Theo. I have not seen the mushroom yet.


 Chess Elective 

By Hudson

Chess elective is back from last year! In the first week of the chess elective, we watched a video about the creation of chess and the history of chess. Halfway through the video, it started freezing a lot, so we didn't finish the other half. Then we matched up. I matched up with Freddie. 


To be continued…


Sketching 101

by Desmond and Bryson

  Sketch Class is like a secondary Art class. It teaches you how to sketch and the fundamentals of art. How to be in an art class, but it feels more like an it’s Art class than an Art class if you know what I am saying. Haha, now I will pass the mic to Bryson figuratively. First, we do need a soft sketch like a circle. We refine the sketch, and then we define it. Side note refining and refining means to improve it without erasing in art terms And defining is  erasing imperfections.


Now I am passing the mic to Desmond.

After you refine twice and define, you should have the finished product, and then you can color it if you want to. It looks cool in black and white. Now that is all you have to know about how to sketch. 

Electives 

Bye Nelson 

Hi, today I'm writing about electives. I wrote about this in the past, but I wanted to do it again since there is a new batch of electives. If you don't know what electives are, they are where you get to choose fun things to do every Friday. There have been electives like Boot Camp, Ticket to Ride, Tea Class, and many more. These are this week's batch of electives: Card Making, Ticket to Ride, Metal Art, Paper Airplane, and Chess. I will explain them all to you. Okay, let's start with Card Making. What you do in Card Making is write cards for people in need. For example, people make food boxes for other people, and the cards that you write will be put inside. It's a great way to share holiday cheer and will always cheer someone up. Then there's Ticket to Ride. I don't really know much about the elective because I've never played Ticket to Ride. So, I'm just going to skip that one. I'm sure someone else can tell you about the game. Anyway, the following elective is Metal Art. So Metal Art is where students use a heavier piece of tin to make a picture on that tin and then put wax over that. The next one is Paper Airplanes. It's pretty self-explanatory. This is the one that I chose. It's where you get to make and throw paper airplanes that are usually against the rules. It's a little chaotic, but it's super funny. The next one is Chess, Chess is a strategy game and can take so long. I don't have enough patience for that. Anyway, the chess elective is where Mr. Keenan teaches people how to play Chess. You get to have a blast and play chess with your friends. Electives are a super fun way to have fun.

 Thanks for reading.


Unbroken


This is a tragic story, one that shows the tragedy of war and the limits of the human body. Olympian Louis Zamperini joined the army in September 1941.


He joined the Army Air Corps. Louis was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He ends up crashing in the ocean. The plane they crashed in had two rafts three people live to crash Louis Mac and Phil. later it is figured out that Mac had eaten all the chocolate bars there only food supply. Mac eventually dies on their 47 day-long trip at sea. 


Once they find land, they are greeted by the Japanese, who feed them well and give them water. Then they are sent off to an island which is known in English as execution Island. That's where we are in the story right now. Ms. Hofeld’s reading class is the class that is reading the fantastic book. The story as Ms. Heather Hofeld says “It's one of the most inspiring stories I've read.”


by Penn


Reading

By Rowan

We're doing this thing called compare and contrast. In reading we had been doing articles and reading them and reviewing them. So how this would go is we read the article. Then we see what we remember happened in the short read. It would go kind of like this. Did he forget to wear gloves when he was robbing the bank or the police caught him while he was robbing it? If we're going into detail, the questions were finding the main idea, recalling facts, making inferences, using words precisely, author's approach, summarizing and paraphrasing, personal response, and self-assessment. That's how the articles would go. A lot of these article characters were criminals I don't really know why (Editor’s Note: It is a ‘true crime’ non-fiction unit.) Some of these guys could be like Machine Gun Kelly or Bonnie and Clyde and things like that. How the compare and contrast thing works is where you pick your two characters. So I don't know what that could be but out of like six picks that you could do. First you think of similarities between the two and then you think of differences. You pick the category of differences. So that could be you're picking between their heights or their style of crime or something like that, lots of things. You do that three times. Then you do a thing talking about these similarities or differences and showing proof of that and that stuff. It's a very interesting thing. I'm not done but I think it was really fun and I hope that it's kind of like writing and reading too. So I find that really educational and fun. So that is my website. 

 

Fitness

Secret Agent Tag / 

New Game

6/12/23

By Sam L.

In Fitness we sometimes do a Secret Agent Tag. Secret Agent Tag is a game that we sometimes do after we do our warm-ups and our morning race. You can only play if you took part in all the things we do before it else you get the prize without the work. Secret Agent Tag is hard to play unless you have many people and a medium-sized play area. To play secret agent tag, have two taggers and two secret agents. Our Fitness teacher, Mr. Kennan, picks these people while everybody's eyes are closed. If your eyes are open while the taggers and secret agents are being picked, you do not get to play. Mr. Keenan gives the taggers a yellow sort of shirt that they hang around their necks or put on. The secret agents and runners (or everybody else) get a five second head start until the tagger tries to tag people. If a tagger tags you, you sit down. While you are sitting, the secret agents can untag you, bringing you back into the game. If they tag the secret agents, they go to the sideline and announce that they were tagged. Once both secret agents are tagged, a countdown begins. Once the countdown ends, the taggers have to stop tagging. There are three ways for the game to end. The first is that the taggers tag both secret agents and all the runners. Another is that the secret agents are both tagged and the countdown ends before the taggers have tagged everybody. The last way for the game to end is that we need to go in. That is all I have for you on Secret Agent Tag.

The New Game is called Rock Paper Scissors Tag 2.0. It is 2.0 because last year we did a similar game. Last year's Rock Paper Scissors Tag was with half the class on each team. In it each team would choose rock, paper, or scissors. Then both teams would go to a middle and do the symbol for their choice. Whichever team won would chase the losing team to a safe zone. If you got tagged by the winning team, you would join their team. This went on intel we had to go in, or one team had everybody on it. The 2.0 version had just two people playing Rock Paper Scissors. But it had the same idea with a safe zone and the winner chasing the loser. This game was more fun but also more hectic in my opinion. That is all I have for you on Rock Paper Scissors 2.0.


Paper Airplanes 

By Dylan


Paper Airplanes is one elective that all students got to choose ff they wanted. I of course did because I think messing around with paper is cool. Just kidding, that is illegal! In the elective we were taught how to create paper airplanes and then we unprofessionally fly them. So unprofessionally in fact, that we somehow managed to get a paper airplane stuck in the ceiling. Someone threw the paper airplane and the tip got stuck in between the ceiling tiles. Another time somebody perfectly landed an airplane on Mr. E's head but then it fell off. We all got sad, because that “hat” looked quite fashionable. Another time another student and I had a paper airplane “war”. It is what it sounds like. Thankfully we were able to have a truce and thus the great paper war ended. In conclusion, this is the best elective in my opinion because it is almost like we are being tricked into learning.


Reading 3: Comparing and Contrasting

By Mati


In Reading, we have a writing project. We are writing an essay comparing and contrasting two criminals. We can choose any criminal we want but it has to be the criminals we've read about in class. We have to compare the criminals in three or more ways and contrast the criminals in three or more ways. I’m doing Machine Gun Kelly and John Dillinger. They both used guns. However, Kelly robbed people, and Dillinger robbed banks. In my opinion, Kelly was not as bad as Dillinger.