October 6th, 2023

We are better together

A Sunday Afternoon 

on the Island of La Grande Jatte 

Pointillism


Pointillism is a type of art created by Georges Seurat. where you paint and draw dots eventually you will make amazing art. It uses the science of your eyes blending colors if you are from afar. Georges Seurat was born December 2nd '1859, He died March 29, 1899. He created Pointillism in the 1880s starting with a Sunday afternoon in the park, the first piece of Pointillism it took one year to make. As you can see it takes a lot of patience to do pointillism, maybe even two years.

by Penn


CATAN ELECTIVE PART 3:

          A FINAL PEACE

By President Ewan

Have you ever heard of Catan? If not, go back to my last two websites. If you have, do continue reading. Anyway, last Friday was the last day of our Catan elective, and all four of our nations were finally at peace. There was no conflict at all.

Now, for some of the people reading this who like fake

wars, you might be thinking, “Booo-riiiing!”, but I assure you, this will be a good website too.

Here is the first UNC Economics and Infrastructure Report- Upper Catan Division (or, how I was doing at the game):

When we started the game, the First Catanian War was officially over, and we founded a new alliance; the UNC (United Nations of Catan), and everything got off to a peaceful start…

Hudson tried to attack us again, so we formed an alliance within an alliance, the AH Resistance Party. Now you might think this would have been the start of a war, but it wasn’t. When Hudson attacked Adam and saw that he had the ability to battle for five nights (literally; Adam had five knights), he took back the move.

The rest of the game was calm from there. I seriously expanded my nation, from a measly 3 towns in the previous game to 4 towns and 1 city in this game (and from 4 roads to 8!). My nation had a new direct connection to Bryson, Adam, and Hudson’ nations, and although Hudson attacked us once in a while, it was still fine.

The infrastructure of other nations also greatly expanded, with Adam claiming the titles of both “longest road” and “largest Arby’s.” (Oops. I stuttered. I mean, “Largest army.”) Hudson had 2 seaports and a few cities dotted here and there, and Adam could provide us with lumber at any time. 

Unfortunately, then it was time to stop the Catan elective in general. However, I’ll have a new elective description for you next week!


Thank you,

PRESIDENT EWAN I OF UPPER CATAN


AUTHOR’S NOTE


  

                         Pointillism 


Pointillism is an art technique that blends a ton of tiny dots of color to make something different.  If you look at pointillism really closely you'll realize it's a ton of different little dots of colors. Depending on the shading water, it might even have yellow in it. In Pointillism blue contains purple, yellow, and forms of green but no shades of actual blue but from far away it looks like it is blue that is how Pointillism works. It's really smart when you think about it. Rather than having to match the color to exactly what you want and then put other colors on top of that you can just do a few dots and over time it forms what you want. Though it takes much longer it comes out with a really interesting effect. I personally like it a lot. It gives a clearer and neater aspect than brush strokes. You can have more rounded edges and not brush-adapted edges. It's More detailed in that way. And from a distance, it gives a very realistic appearance. One difficulty with it though is that you have to pay attention to how big your dots are, how much color you're using, and where they're placed which takes a long time. Shading is also another thing it's where you do closer together for darker and farther apart for a lighter or it kind of brings in the white of the background making it look lighter it's a big technique but there's also more techniques like blending and where you put two dots together blending in and there's many more and you should always start with the rough draft.If you're thinking about getting an appointment start with a Sharpie. If you get really into it you might start practicing with a pencil which I do. It takes a lot longer but you get better results.People who do it as a career have a super fine tip pencil that you can't just go down to your local dollar store and buy. I honestly do not know where I could get one. Whatever you used to do, Pointillism still has a really cool effect. It's one of my favorite forms of Art. It takes a long time to do, but it's really fun. If done correctly the effect can be marvelous. As somebody put it, “show-stopping”. 


Indoor Fitness

By Daniel



At Bridges when it rains we go upstairs and do fitness and yoga. And some poses we do are warrior pose 1, 2, and 3, mountain, cat, upward and downwards dog, eagle, tree, and cow. That's all of them I know for now. We also do Mario jumps or frog jumps, frankensteins or Gusensteins, butt kickers (the butt kicking is optional) and then we meditate. Sometimes we lay down and concentrate on our arms, our legs, and our breathing, which is very important. We breathe in for 4 seconds hold for 4 seconds and we do this at least four times. But that's all I have for today. Have a good one 👍.


Pointillism


A long time ago the art was, for lack of a better term, more refined. Judges at the time were like dark gloomy paintings. Then George Seurat came along and decided that he would like to try some other form of Art Called Pointillism.He started experimenting with the technique. and this is where science comes into play. It all started with fixing tapestries which is the type of carpet with designs that you hang from your wall. while repairing he started thinking about how I perceived color and he realized that the tapestry had many different colors that weren't the right color but together made the right color. He applied it to paint and added tiny dots of paint rather than mixing paint. His theory made a very bright elaborate painting. Using complementary colors.Primary colors such as red Blue and yellow.  using those colors you can make complementary colors which are anything between those colors.  on top of that divisionism which is a lot to say. divisionism the process of using the eye to accept one color into a different color. Pointillism is used in everyday objects. such as billboards,  and printed pieces of paper are tiny little dots of color together. History of Steuart. He went to a very high-class Art School. The school's name was Ecole des Beaux. One of the best art schools in the country.Arguably the best. He's been years just perfecting black and white sketches. I love sketching but I'm not that good. One of his first official paintings. Bathers at  Asnieres.There's much more to Seurat's history. it would take a long time to go over everything. and we need time for editing. We only have two days. Overall pointillism is a very unique form of Art that many like. and stands out from the rest. Thank you for taking the time to read all of this.


Written By Adam and Sampson

Edited by Sampson and Adam 

Initial research by. The flamingo classroom.

 additional research by Sampson 


Reading

by Mati


In Reading we are reading about the Brink’s robbery. The people involved names’ were Joseph “Big Joe” McGinnis and Tony “Fats” Pino. It was named the heist of the century because the plan took two years. They hired eleven men and one of them was a professional locksmith. There were five locks for five nights. The locksmith made a key for each lock so it would be easier to get in. Finally it was the day seven of the men went in. There were five guards counting money in a cage. The seven men put their guns through the cage. The guards didn't fight, and the men got over a MILLION dollars. They got away and the men divided the cash. For six years the police could not get the men. One of the men was not happy with his share and the men were scared. They tried to kill him so he reported the men to the police. He was sent free and the men went to jail.


All Summer in a Day in 3 Days

By Riley


Hello, today's subject is All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury. This is an amazing story and we read it in Reading class. It might just be the best story we have read in reading class yet. Except of course for another book that I'll explain at the end of this website. It's called Redwall and we've just started it. In this story it has been raining non-stop for 7 years. The story also does a good job at describing this part “It had been raining for 7 years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to another with rain.” Remember this is the intro. Also, this isn't normal rain, it is crushing rain. The story describes the sheer power of the rain by saying “a thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again.” I think you can already see what I mean by this being an amazing story. It is also still just introducing the characters and the environment. Not counting that they live on Venus. 

When the main character is introduced, the story gets interesting. Margot is the main character, and it introduced her with this sentence, “Margot stood apart from them, from these children who could never remember a time when there wasn't rain and rain and rain. They were all 9 years old, and if there had been a day, 7 years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned World, they could not recall.” As you can tell the story is getting interesting. Another quote is, “All day yesterday they had read in class about the sun. About how like a lemon it was, and how hot. And they had written small stories or essays or poems about it. This next bit is Margot's poem, “I think the sun is a flower that blooms for just one hour.” This is as far as I'm going to go but I might do a website at the very end of the story. But I would prefer to just let you guys read it. I think you will enjoy it. This is where we ended the first day, but we continued working on it for 2 days afterwards. Anyway, thank you this is All Summer in a Day. Oh, and as promised at the beginning of the article we are going to listen to Mr. Keenan read aloud Redwall. It is good but it is about rodents and a peaceful Abbey that might be about to be attacked by a pirate. I don't know we haven't gotten there yet but that's what I'm assuming. Yeah not good! Anyway now is where this article ends.


ART CLASS

By Freddie


Art class. It’s a wonderful thing. We all live it. Or at least most of us love it. Personally I love art class. But if there was one thing I would change it would be the arts and crafts. I think we should have more of them. So far we are just working with markers and coloring pages. But I see so many art supplies that we haven’t used yet. But anyways I’m getting of track. In art class we study and make art. At the time of me writing this we are studying pointillism. An art form where you make colorful pieces made of small dots made usually with a fine point pen or pencil hence the name. 


And now I'm going to interview Abby.


Freddie: So Abby, what did you think about the art class? 

Abby: Here we learned about pointillism. I am a second year so I did this last year but we are doing it again this year. It was very fun. We learned if you looked at pointillism from afar your eyes will blend in the colors and it will look like there are no dots at all. It's a very cool effect.

Thank you.


We also seam to paint the color wheel alot we painted a color wheel and made it into an eye. Another time we made a monster. I thought the concept art looked like a pineapple. Speaking of fruit, remember, if life gives you lemons, ive them back. You don't know where they have been.


Getting back on track. I hope that art class will reach its full potential of fun soon.



Writer’s notes


Written by Freddie


Edited: by Mr. Keenan


Writing this was a fun challenge. Because doing what I’m doing is difficult and coming up with good content is hard. Our job is to report what it happening at school. But  hope that we would will do some creative writing soon! It is the writing topic I like most. Thank you.


Fitness

By Abby :) 

When Flamingo North and Flamingo South go outdoors for fitness, we do lots of exercises. I will explain what we do for fitness. Mr. Keenan will choose six fitness assistants. We do Frankensteins, that means kicking your leg up and sometimes you put your arm straight forward. You can also put your arm across from the leg you're kicking upward. Next are squats, you want your knees at approximately a 90° angle. You can put your hands straight forward or you can clasp them in front of your chest. That's what I do. Then we do butt kickers. Butt kickers are running in place and you try to kick your heels back. Then we do high knees which is the opposite of butt kickers. You kick your knees up to as high as your muscle flexibility can go. Sometimes you can put your hands above your waist and your knees will try to tap your hands. We also do frog jumps. That is when you squat down a wall and then you put your hands up in the air and then you jump up like a frog. You can make imitations of frog noises. Recently frog jumps replaced Mario jumps. When the old-fashioned version of Mario jumps, he jumps up like he has so much excitement. He also goes Yahoo! So our class makes an Imitation of Mario jumps noises. 

Next, Mr. Keenan will decide if we have to do laps. On one side of the parking lot will be for running, the other side will be for walking. Mr. Keenan will ask a student to set up the cones for where we may not go. Then we will do a relay game. Yesterday we did a noodle train relay. That is when Mr. Keenan pairs us up when we are in a line and then we have to run all the way to the car and go around it but we can't leave our caboose behind. The Caboose is the person at the end of the noodle or the person behind you. Another relay game is where we have to hold a cone with our hands and we cannot press it against our body because that would be cheating. It would also break our core values. The core values are Honor, Integrity, Compassion, Justice, Excellence, and Citizenship. You have to go around the cone and tap the person when you are finished with your relay then the next person will go. There are tons of other relay games but I'm just naming those two for now. 

Can we play a gigantic game if we have time? We play capture the bags or secret agent tag. Capture the bags is when we have to make it across without getting tagged. Mr Keenan will split us up into two teams.  Once we are in the capture area/end zone, we are safe. But if you get tagged, go to Mr. Keenan or another teacher for a fitness challenge.The fitness challenge will be something easy like 15 jumping jacks or squats. When you're walking back, you are safe but you have to balance the bean bag on your head. 

Secret agent tag is when we have to scatter in the parking lot and Mr. Keenan will tell you to raise your hand if you want to be a hunter. A hunter is a person who tags the other students. Next Mr. Keenan will ask people to raise their hand if they want to be a secret agent. The secret agents are the people who can get the people who have already been tagged on their feet again. But if the secret agents get tagged the other secret agents can't untag the other secret agent. I forgot to mention there are two secret agents. Secret agents cannot tag each other. Once the two secret agents are out no other people can save you if you get tagged. Then it will be the Hunter's time to tag everybody as fast as they can. Every once in while someone might get a little injured, like a scrape. But they always manage to get back up. When you are injured you go to the front desk and you'll ask for a Band-Aid if you scraped your knee. At the front desk are chairs and a bench you can sit on while your knee or arm or any other body part heals. One rule is if you sat out for the warm ups and running, you will not be able to play the game. And you don't want to miss the game because the games are really fun.  

Still working on Challenge

Fitness

In fitness, I play games. We do some stretches. We do Frankenstein stretches. That is where you stand up and try to kick your feet up and reach for your feet. We do bottom kickers. We do high knees. We do lunges. We play four corners. Four corners is where you have four corners that you can go to. One person closes their eyes and counts to ten. Everyone else needs to pick a corner, but you can't stomp, you need to tiptoe. Mr. Keenan is very sneaky at four corners. He wins a lot. Fitness is good for you because you get your blood going and get some fresh air. I enjoy fitness classes. 


By Ethan 


Art: Pointillism 

by Nelson 

     

Hi, today I am talking about art. Unsurprisingly, we are doing art, but a special type of art. We are studying pointillism. We've done a couple of other types of art but I'll explain those later. My focus today is pointillism. You might wonder what pointillism is. It is a type of art where you make individual small dots of paint or marker. You can even use a needle to make very fine dots. Pointillism, in my eyes, is pretty cool because there's a lot of science behind it too. In one painting by Georges Seurat he used greens, yellows, and many colors to make water but almost none of them were blue! All the credit for this amazing type of art goes to Georges Seurat. He died on March 29th 1891. 

Seurat was the first to do pointillism. You might ask how that works? It's because the further away you get, your brain automatically blends the colors together. It is an amazing type of art and I hope you like reading my article about it. Thanks for reading.


Ravens 

By Tennyson


The Ravens are the 7th and 8th graders. I am an 8th grader and it is lots of work. But it is lots of fun. Ravens get to do fun stuff in science, such as science projects. We are studying Chemistry. 

 In history, you get to do projects with your friends. Right now I am learning about history from the beginning of the world and the end. For the Ravens, it is much, much quieter upstairs than it was last year. But for the 8th graders, it's not so easy because we have to do Greek mythology work. Every Monday and Wednesday the 7th graders do advanced writing while the 8th grade does mythology. But the 7th and 8th graders are all nice and we have fun up there. And if you're nervous about being a 7th or 8th grader, don't worry, it's lots of fun. 

NEW ELECTIVES!!!

By: Austin


There are new electives which are:


For the “Tea Time” elective, you taste fresh teas from around the world (and make art too). In the “Boot Camp Fitness” elective, you do a fitness class with the fitness teacher, but on Friday. In the “Line Dancing” elective, you learn how to do different dances. A popular elective, the “Quickbreads” elective, is where you learn how to bake and bake things like bread. The MOST popular elective is the “Ticket To Ride” elective, where you play “Ticket To Ride” with other kids (kids bring in different “Ticket To Ride” games for this elective). That is all for now, more info soon.


PS: writing might be themed to what it is about next time


Pointillism

By Sam S. and Rory M.



Hi, we are Sam and Rory and we are going to be telling you about the art of Pointillism. Pointillism is using markers or pens to create anything with dots. It's called pointillism because you use the point of the marker or pen. At the moment we are just starting our lesson on Pointillism so some of us are still working to get better at it. First Years are going to draw pumpkins, bats, and Halloween-themed art. Second Years can also draw Halloween-themed art, but the challenge is to draw animals. We learned about Georges Seurat and his art of Pointillism and we learned about how smaller dots are usually better for paintings because they look better and more blended in. Georges Seurat has made lots of scenery paintings. Like “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”. That one is an outdoor scenery. Sam really enjoyed looking at that one. Or “The Eiffel Tower”. That one is exquisite. Also, Sam is going to Paris in a few days and hopes to see the real Eiffel Tower. So that would be relevant.

 The science behind pointillism is quite interesting. You see if you were to look at Blue in Pointillism. From a far away angle it would look blue but if you look close up you find yellow, green, and blue. The reason this happens is that the brain when it sees all those colors really far away just thinks oh yeah that's just blue but it's really not so you actually get tricked. The guy who founded pointillism was named George Seurat in 1886 It was a big deal back then because most art styles were gloomy but his art style was full of color. There were these art galleries in which people came from around the world to share art. But again most of the paintings were dark, so they didn't accept George's colorful ones. Back then you could only really paint about religion and science wasn't really a well-respected thing, so they disliked this new style of art. 



Math

Slope Intercept

10/4/23

By Sam L.


In Math this week, we learned about Slope Intercept. We started out by learning about Y=MX+B. We first learned how to solve it, which is kinda easy once you know how to do it. All you have to do is choose what you want X to be and then multiply it by M and add D. Once done you just jot down the X and Y on the graph chart. Then we learned how to solve things that have numbers on the Y side of the equation or too many on the X side of the equation. We then learned that M is Slope and B is Intercept and how those things work together on the graph paper. Like how Slope is how far down it goes compared to how long it goes while Intercept is where it crosses the Y axis. We then did some problems on the Slope Intercept and Y=MX+B. That is all I have for you on Slope Intercept so far.



Flamingo North 

By Theo

Flamingo North is the class I'm in. It is cool because it has a dog and gerbils. The dog is called Darby, and he is cute. There are a lot of flamingos decorating the room. Our teachers are Ms Prichard and (sometimes) Ms. Hofeld (sometimes). And in October they decorate the classroom for Halloween. We also do i.e. w- more on that soon. We also get homework on the gerbil table. Sometimes we do fun art projects and we attempt to do science.


Art 

by Tessa

We made cool color monsters with the color circle and I made the looky from Rainbow Friends, a ROBLOX game that is really fun. The color of the rainbow. I love the looky they're so cute and I was wondering about the location how they were made. I am a crazy art scientist and I love art and everything waiting for my heart. Later today we were making our own eyes with the color circle, brains with drawing with colors, and everything. Art is my best subject and is fun. We have art today.


That's Tessa signing off from Flamingo South .


Things about Darby

By Theo


Pointillism

One of the first people who invented pointillism was George Seurat. Seraut was a French artist. Usually, in that time, artists had to paint by religion such as, that they had to draw and paint the god Jesus, but if you wanted to make a painting “off-topic” that would have to get approved. One time Seurat took a whole year taking his time working on a painting, but when he tried to get it approved the grumpy approver said “ It’s too colorful “ ( when I heard that I was like “What!!” ) Then, he started a new painting. That painting took TWO WHOLE YEARS, yep you read that right two whole years, then finally it was finished. 

by Pachi


Our Second Electives 

By Dylan 


Quickbreads (baking), Tea Time (making tea), Bootcamp Fitness, Ticket to Ride, and Line Dancing are the electives that people in the school will do for the next 4 weeks. I chose baking as my number one and I am excited to maybe get to make and try new foods. Of course I might not get into baking so I would be happy with making tea or Fitness. However, I am not interested in Ticket to Ride or Line Dancing. I'm hoping that by the end of this elective I will be an egg cracking pro and that I will have new recipes to share with my family. Sadly, we don't do electives until Friday. When I do my first elective, I will inform you of it. My last elective, Improv, was very fun! We got to do games like hitchhiker, roleplay, and story story die. In story, story, die we tell a story one sentence but we make up and change a few things. If we take too long or we say something that doesn't fit the story, we will “die” us in some gruesome fashion. It was strange hearing everybody get excited to “die” after Mr Keenan explained the rules. This makes me question my classmates…


Bridges Art: Pointillism

By Ben 


Here at Bridges we love doing art. Every week we work on an art project and they always turn out great. This week we are working on pointillism and learning about its origin. Pointillism was first invented in the 1880’s by Georges Seurat. Seurat’s new art style was condemned because at the time there were strict rules on what to paint and what not to paint. Seurat protested against these rules and won. Now at Bridges we are learning about his style and how to do it. Pointillism is making art with tiny dots [instead of lines] that blend together making the finished artwork look amazing. We are still new to this concept and I can't wait to do more.



Justice deal       

BY Penn


A Justice deal (I'll call them JD) is just as it sounds, a deal you make with a counselor.  You go to the counseling room and right outside there he/she will find a paper slip named a Request a counselor card.  They will put it in an inbox and wait (there is no confirmed time) Later a student interview will take place the student shall state their justice deal and why it would help them in their everyday studies. If yes, then they will do it, then they will go on a trial period that lasts a week, essentially probation. but if not, a teacher will come and say why it's a no-go.


                                              Math                                         


                          By Abiir                             By Bryson


Math is an important subject, it helps you focus on addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I worked on subtraction, and it worked well for me. I'm also working on minuses.


  Math can be hard and it can be easy. I've been working on math at a bunch of different schools. Some people like math and some people don't like math but that's how life works. I like 

I like math because we do the writing. I like riding the problems


I like working in a small group with a teacher.


Pointillism In Art 

Madelyn 


In art we have started pointillism. We are learning about a famous artist called George Seurat and he started pointillism. He was born on December 2nd 1859, and he passed away on March 29th 1891. Pointillism is all about bringing light to the piece. You can use any tool, that is a pencil or marker. Mrs Pritchard is in charge of art class. She is the one who told us about Georges Seurat. The art is one hundred percent dots, and it is supposed to make it so it looks not like dots. With a pencil or tool you can make little dots look like a big picture. Thank you for listening and this is Madelyn signing out.



  Halloween 


Halloween is coming up! We love Halloween. It's on October 31. At our school, we have a party on October 31. We are guessing everyone is going to be wearing costumes. 

There is Halloween music too! The party will have candy. There's a no-weapons rule for the costumes and no violence. At the party there is going to be lots of games I think. I hope there are games like Twister. I heard that the teachers dress up. I wonder what they're going to be!  


                                                 Bye  Scarlett and Braylee