January 12th, 2024

Science: Mallards 

By Madelyn 

Have you ever heard of Mallards? We had a zoom meeting with Clackamas Community College about them. We had a very nice presenter who taught us about mallards. Here are some things we learned about them. Their quack sound is made by the bill. A female mallard can lay up to 1 to 13 eggs. Mallards can fly up to 55 miles per hour. They are not afraid of humans. They live in a wet climate that keeps predators away from them. Their favorite food is dragonflies at any stage of life. Mallards are in the duck family. They have a unique color. We had time to see some amazing mallards. We filled out a sheet and took notes. There are over 80 Mallard varieties. Mallards can live up to one to three years. We had so much fun learning about mallards. Tune in next time for another amazing website. That’s Madelyn, signing out!

Hot Seat

by Scarlet

I’m going to be talking about “Hot Seat” today. We learned about this fun game in Growth Mindset this week. It’s really fun. First, Ms. Pritchard calls up someone to sit in the chair. Then she puts an image on the television behind them that they can’t see. Then she calls on people to give the person in the chair hints without saying the word. For example, the first picture was a flamingo. Students gave hints like pink, us, here, bird. Ms. Pritchard said words like “Um” and “hmm” count as hints. It was difficult to not say the words for some of the clues like waterfall. That’s it, signing off for today bye!

Lunch Class

By Freddie

What is lunch class? Well, I'm going to tell you. Welcome to lunch class.

So I know what you are thinking, and you are right to think so. Lunch is not a real class. It's a time of the day when all the students retrieve the 5-star meals prepared for the students by their own personal chefs who dedicate their lives to the children. And these people are the parents! So thank you, Mom, for packing my lunch. Lunchtime is a 20-minute window before recess. Now in general you eat during lunch, but you could also talk and just hang out. Overall, there's not much to say about lunch. However, we all must know by now we all love lunch. 

Writer’s Notes

Wanna know the best lunch in the world? It’s fried chicken, chocolate milk, and nutella. 

Credits

Written by Freddie

Edited by Freddie

Edited by Mr. Keenan and a peer

Thank you for reading!

NewerER Electives

By: Austin

There are new electives with an extra option someone tried to add, but it wasn't on there. The new electives were;

1. Origami (making things with paper) with Mr. E

2. Karaoke (I was in this one) with Mrs. Quinter

3. Auction Art (for charity) with Ms. Pritchard

4. Crochet (I forgot info) with Mrs. Jex

5. Improv (again) with Mr. Keenan

I'm only talking about Karaoke for today. First, we learned the history of Karaoke and how this elective works. Then we wrote on sticky notes what songs we wanted to do (wait for mine 😉) there was a Fortnite song that I forgot the name to, other songs I forgot the name to as well, and Happy and you know it.

mine… was that last one. I didn’t do it. Instead, I said have someone else do it, and they chose, THE WHOLE CLASS. so everyone did, instead of clapping, stomping, they jumped simultaneously and it was like a mini earthquake each time. With the last part causing a cabinet to fall over. (not intended, but still. (no one was hurt because no one was in squish range of the cabinet)) next time, I’m having someone do the song Helicopter. More info on more topics soon.

Electives: Origami

By Sam L.

For electives this week, I am in Origami. It is Mr. E’s elective and so far it is very exciting. We started out by making a dog that turned out to be harder than the later Origami animals. So far we have made only animals but that may change. The dog was so hard because the instructions showed folding one way when we had to fold two ways. It also had some unfolding parts that showed like folding. With some of those, it made it quite hard to follow the instructions. But it wasn't too bad and we made some dogs. I believe next week we are doing cats. The funny part is that someone made an octopus in the same timeframe as a dog takes. The last fold of the dog wasn't actually a fold but an unfold which made it impossible to finish. So we had to spend some time on finding what it meant. I made two dogs myself and when I put them together, it looked hilarious. We also have many types of paper. We are starting with some purple paper and then going to color paper. Mr. E also has some very nice blue shiny paper. We also had small groups that we worked together in so it would be calm. Mr. E did this because electives can sometimes get noisy. Someone made a pretty good octopus that was silent. Even though we did this, it was still loud from all the questions we had! So far we have had only one day, but it was very fun. That is all I have for electives this week.

Hot Seat in Growth Mindset

By Dylan

Hot Seat is a game where people have to describe a picture to someone using only one word. The person guessing what the picture is may not look at the picture, otherwise there wouldn't be a point giving hints! Another rule is that the person giving hints may not have a part of the word in the picture in one word. For example, you can’t say “water” if the picture is a waterfall. You’re also not allowed to use hand gestures. It is definitely a very fun game to play with just about anyone. You can also be really creative with the hints. For instance, when I gave a hint and the picture was a grizzly bear I gave the hint Alaska the state of B.B.B. (Big Brown Bear.) Or for a picture of lightning, you could give the hint Pikachu. Sorry for the short website. To make up for it here's a random Mr. Keenan Quote, “I feel like there's a parrot on my shoulder that just won’t stop squawking!”

Improv the Best Elective on Earth 

By Riley

Hello everybody, today you will read about the best elective on Earth. It is called Improv. Improv is where you do improvised acting. To improve improv skills, we play a lot of funny games, for example statues. In statues, one person goes in front of everybody else and makes a funny pose, a random one that doesn't seem human or it can seem human but it has to be funny. One of the most important rules of improv is that the only fool is the person who refuses to be foolish. Anyway, after someone is in their pose, another person comes up and makes another strange pose. Then the third person comes up and names the statue, for example, “Strange Humanoid Trees Walking Towards a City.” 

One of the warm-up games we do is called Crazy Eights. You shake your hand slightly and count down eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. As you shake your hand, you shake it slowly and gently and a small movement. Then you go to your other hand and then your leg and then your other leg. Next you then do seven where you count down louder and you move faster and more vigorously and in bigger motions. That continues down to one until you are screaming at the top of your lungs, slapping the walls on the other side of the room with your hands, and kicking the ceiling. Yeah it warms up our body, our mind, and our vocal cords. 

We also play a game called Zip Zap Zop. The first person gets the energy and points and claps in a specific motion to send the energy to the next person and they say zip. The next person has to send it off quickly and they go zap. And it continues zip, zap, zop, zip, zap, zop, sorry the game went on too lon. Anyway, improv is an amazing elective because we get to move, we get to sit, we get to rest, and we get to be goofy. Oh and I forgot, there are two more games I want to tell you about. 

Cross the Circle is where there's somebody that says somebody else's name and starts walking towards them. For example, Mr. Keenan might say “Riley” and he'll start walking towards me. I have to say for example “Mr. Zeutzius” before he reaches me and start walking towards my side. He just has to pass it to another person and it goes around and around.

The other game is “What Are You Doing” where everyone is in a circle and someone is in the middle who does a perfectly normal action like brushing their teeth. The crowd asks “what are you doing?” and they say something silly. For example, I said “looking at my IQ test and realizing it's negative 14” and then everybody acts it out the best they can. Then I go back into the circle, somebody else goes in, and they do the IQ test action  , and then we ask them, “What are you doing?” and they say something like “swimming in an ocean of tables.” By the way these are all real examples! And it continues like that until we can't stand because we're laughing so hard. At least that's how it ended that time.

 You can probably see now why everybody loves Improv. Improv can be extremely fun and chaotic. Bye everybody and thanks for reading my website. Also, sorry Sam. Just so you know, Sam edits my massive websites. Shout out to you, Sam. *evil laugh*

Art (Really Sketch Class with Mr. Keenan) 

By Abby C. 

In Art class the teachers split art class into two different classes, one is with Ms. Pritchard in Flamingo North and the other art class is with Mr. Keenan in Flamingo South. Ms. Pritchard is the one who does painting and other fun stuff in a big group where you have to work together. I will get to Mr. Keenan's class in a moment. Ms. Pritchard's class, from what I am told, is painting and working on the positive and negative space for painting. I don't know what that means but now I'm going to talk about Mr. Keenan’s sketch class. 

In Mr. Keenan’s sketch class we get our own sketchbooks and nobody else in Flamingo North (AKA Ms. Pritchard’s art class) gets one, only the people in Mr. Keenan sketch class. These sketch pads are for when we want to sketch something or draw something that Mr. Keenan has us to do for an assignment. We have rules for our sketchbooks and if you break those rules for the sketchbook, you might need to take a break from your sketchbook. Here are the rules for our sketchbooks: 1. No doodling, 2. No ripping or breaking the sheets, 3. No scribbling because scribbling on a blank and fresh sheet of paper is a waste paper. Those are a few examples of the rules for the notebook. 

So far we have been working on how to draw 3D and how to draw things at an angle and how to look at it from a different perspective. We are also learning how to draw two dimensional. For some people sketching is really hard and they hold the pencil way too tight. But that makes the pencil tip jam into the paper and that will damage the pencil and the poor paper. And sometimes people hold the pencil the wrong way and that is okay because students here are still learning. So far we have drawn a landscape, a bug, and other 3D objects around the room or that Mr. Keenan shows on the screen. 

We also learn in Mr. Keenan’s class how to take a proper art class. In Ms. Pritchard’s class you have to practice working in a classroom with other people. Some other skills we can work on are raising your hand and not blurting out answers. We can also learn about time and place for humming or singing, since it is very distracting for other students and it can be hard for them to focus on their assignment that they are given. It is important to learn what is appropriate to say and what is not appropriate to say and what you should do instead of doodling. That's all I have for now goodbye!

Fitness

Yesterday we did fitness. We played this game, the alligator game. There was a Hula hoop that you had to jump in and make it to the other side without getting tagged.  It was so fun! And then we also do Frankenstein's slash squats/Mario jumps. Some of the boys do push-ups. Now we are going to be telling you about indoor Fitness, and that is when it's raining outside or it's damp or cold and the weather isn't that nice. For inside we do yoga. My personal favorite pose is bird dog. For the game we usually do silent ball. We pass the ball around in the circle, and you have to try to be silent, and you try to get passed to  at least one time.  We're not timed but like he times us of how fast we can go. we also do sometimes play a game where somebody stands in the middle and they pick a corner. If you're in that corner,  well, you're doomed that's called four corners.

by Braylee and Alana