The Life Of Mimi

Destination Imagination Regional Tournament

By now you may know what DI is, if not you can view my previous post or keep reading. DI is basically a tournament where many groups of kids, classes or teams come together and present there understanding of a challenge through telling a story. Each challenge has a different objective, for example the challenges that I worked on was based around a disappearance of a colour and a vanishing act that we needed to incorporate.

We started just a month and a half ago, where we focused on practicing our instant challenges which are essentially mini challenges that they present to us on the spot and we usually have a certain amount of time to complete them. For example one challenge we practiced during our class time was a timed game where we had to stack plastic cups using just elastics and string, the team with the highest tower won!

After many classes of instant challenges we started on the actual challenge, we first got into groups of 4 or more and chose our challenges, like I said at the beginning my challenge was the fine arts one. In this challenge you had to create a skit that included the question “what would happen if a colour disappeared” also a vanishing act that would help the revealing of the answer to the question.

We started brainstorming ideas and came to the conclusion that we would base each colour off of people, and the genre would be mystery/adventure. The story was about the disappearance of the colour yellow and how an agent from the CIA would help find that primary colour. An agent is led to Giza, Egypt and the skit ends in the finding of the colour which was part of a group of people who wanted to cause “chaos” they where called the eye of rah. We decided to create a vanishing act using lighting and shadows. There was a script with hieroglyphs that we researched and they translate into the location of the colour, the revealing of the translation was glued at the back using paper so when the light shined through it, it created a shadow which appeared overtop of the hieroglyphs.

Us making the hieroglyphic script:

The day of the tournament we arrived at 8 am, then at 8:30 we went to a opening show where each group was presented, the we showed off our posters. At 9:30 we signed in for our instant challenge, overall I think the challenge went well because we worked together really well as a team. After that we had a few hours before our actual challenge so we decided to setup, go over lines and run through the whole play a few times. Our challenge was at one so we had to check in a few minutes earlier, I think the challenge went pretty well but I definitely think we have a few things to work on. Overall we came in second which means that we will be heading to provincials in a few weeks! Here are the final scores that we received:

Can’t wait until provincials!

Disney World and Astronauts!

Just a few weeks ago we headed to sunny Orlando for a field study! We started our adventures at 4:30 in the morning at the airport. We were headed there to further our study in imaginary worlds and what draws us to them. The trip was planned around an individual project where we chose an attraction at Disney World, one of the places we would be visiting in Orlando. I chose the attraction called Kilimanjaro Safaris, it was a safari that taught people about poachers and the animals of South Africa. People where drawn to this attraction because of the environment and real life animals, which creates a connection between the people. The video below will explain and go more into detail of what draws people to imaginary worlds:

On the first day of Florida we went to Magic Kingdom, a park at Disney World where we went on everything from water rides to spinning teacups, then we ended the day with fireworks at Cinderella’s castle. The second day we headed off to universal studios where we had a full day at Harry Potter land which I was most excited for. My favourite attraction was the one in Hogwarts which was a simulated ride, it took us through the forbidden forest where it had spiders that would pop out at you and 4D effects like water spitting at your face that would act as the spiders venom. During the attraction you would go ride through a Quidditch game, and fly beside the Hogwarts trains. For lunch we went to the three brooms restaurant where we ate traditional meals like corn, ribs, potatoes, chicken and vegetables.

The next day we took a break from rides and headed to Merritt Island animal sanctuary where we spotted many alligators, a variety of birds, geckos and turtles. The whole sanctuary is led along a path road where we drive through and learn about each patch of area. After the Merritt island we headed off for dinner then straight to bed!

The next day we got up bright and early to learn how to surf, we started on land and everybody practiced popping up on there board then we eventually headed out to the water where we started to get our own waves. Everybody in the class got the hang of it after a while and at least caught a few waves, in the end I did a hang ten and caught a whole bunch of waves, it was tons of fun!

Once we dried off and changed into some new clothing we headed off to NASA to train as astronauts! We started off by learning a little bit about how they lived and what they ate, like for example we learned that all the food had to be packaged because of the zero gravity environment. After all of that we started off training in the landing simulator where we would be given a controller and a key to each demand.

Then we went to the next room and got strapped into a shuttle simulator which would twirl us in either direction and even upside down! I felt really dizzy after 15 seconds and the astronauts had to ride this simulator for 45 min every hour I can’t imagine how they felt after that! We then where assigned roles of people in the command centre and the shuttles and then we reenacted a shuttle flight and landing with all of the proper equipment.

The fourth day was another day at NASA, we had a tour around the whole site and we saw all of the assembly sites, my favourite part was lunch which we had with an actual astronaut! He talked about his career and how he got to where he was today, what where his highlights and what training he had to do to become an astronaut. The next few days where back to Disney World! We went to every single park, EPCOT, Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios over the course of three days. After that it was time to head home, overall this trip was tons of fun and I can’t wait until the next one!

Vancouver to Seattle!

We started off the day bright and early and drove 3 hours to get to our destination, Seattle. We where there with our whole class studying “The Crazy Ones” this meaning people who where separate from the crowd and believed in what they believed in. To name a few, Martin Luther King, Bill Gates and Dale Chihuly. Once we got to Seattle we headed straight off to Microsoft where we learned about there thinking process and how they come up with new ideas, like the “Garage” which is a place where they essentially brainstorm ideas.

The first day was a slow one, after Microsoft we went to go watch the new movie “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” because we where doing a project around Harry Potter and imaginary worlds for our miniature Blue Sky exhibition.

The next day we got up bright and early and went to the EMP where we learned all about the Seattle Seahawks and famous musicians that where linked to Seattle. After we went there we headed off to the Bill and Melinda foundation to learn about where all there money is being put towards, what causes they are supporting like malaria and what there plans are for the future. Right before lunch we had a Seattle duck tour where we toured around the city and the water, then we headed to McDonalds for lunch! Each person in the class had to get into groups and pick a crazy person (what I was talking about at the top) my “Crazy Person” was Dale Chihuly, so next we went to the Chihuly gardens which is essentially a garden of glass. Dale Chihuly was a famous glass blower who grew up in Tacoma and is very well known for his diversity in colours and shapes. To end the night off we headed up to the space needle, a famous attraction at Seattle.

The last day was my favourite, we first headed out to the iFly simulator. iFly is a simulator where air essentially blows up wards in a wind tunnel and it creates a zero gravity feeling. We first needed to learn a little about beginners aeronautics, once that was finished we headed up to the wind tunnel in two separated groups, and suited up for the flight. Each person got two turns in the wind tunnel, the first took awhile to find a centre of gravity so by the second turn we started becoming more used to it. After that we headed to the Boeing Factory and got an underground tour of the tunnels and where everything was assembled. Then we hoped back on the bus and headed back home, the whole trip was tons of fun and every day was packed to the minute with activities.

Rockets and NASA

These past few days we have been working on creating a prototype rocket that we are going to launch soon, the reason of this was because we are going o NASA in just a few weeks and had no knowledge whatsoever on this subject. Our task was for each person to create and design a rocket, we had a choice in between the Alpha, the Viking, and the Wizard. Each rocket had a different setting, for example the wizard was fast and goes really high (this was the one I chose) the Alpha was really big and had a lot of force, the last one, the Viking went really fast but not as high as the wizard. Before we started creating our rockets we had to learn a little bit about the anatomy of a rocket and NASA. Below I will include pictures of the rockets (the first one is the one I chose)

Once we chose our rocket we went deeper into learning and the teacher showed us the anatomy of the model rockets compared to the real rockets. The model rockets usually consist of a nose cone, body tube, payload, parachute, recovery wadding, engine mount and a few other things. Obviously a real would be more complex but they are more or less the same, to compare I’ll show a picture of a model rocket and a real one to compare (the one on the left is a model and the other is a real one)

To create the rocket we had to go through quite a few steps. We first had to attach the fins, they varied from 3-5 and you could put them on in any formation as long as they are all straight. Next we put a little tube on the side to direct the rocket when it is launched. Then we attached a little ring near the find to stop the engine from just shooting through the rocket when it is launched, once the bottom was finished we moved on to the parachute and nose cone. We started by attaching an elastic to the top of the tube and the nose cone, then 5cm up the elastic we attached a parachute type thing that would slow down the landing. Once we where ready to launch we would spray paint everything and make your own design on it. Once everything is ready and we are outside and ready to launch we add the wading to protect everything and insert the engine and ignition.

A few days after we started building the rockets we watched a movie called Hidden Figures. It was based in the late 1950s in the headquarters of NASA. It was about a mathematician called Katherine G. Johnson who calculated flight trajectories for Project Mercury, the main point of this movie was to show the racial discrimination in the 90s and how it effected people. The point of watching this movie was to show us a different perspective from people who actually worked there and what it looked like.

It has been quite a few weeks since we have builded these rockets so I’m not quite sure when we will launch these, or if we ever will! But I will keep the blog updated if we do and insert a video and some pictures! And for the most part this project was really fun and I felt like I know some basic knowledge of NASA, rockets and shuttles!

Science Labs and Experiments!!

In science class, about a week ago we finished our superheroes projects that have taken us about a month to complete. We started learning about compounds and how to name them and symbolize them. We learned to add prefixes, symbolize the names and many other things.

Yesterday we did a lab in class with a compound called copper dichloride and we also used aluminium (tin foil). Our task was to turn that compound into another called Aluminum trichloride and turn fire green using this compound. We started by adding the copper into a beaker then we added a rolled up piece of aluminum to it, this turned it into a rusty colour and it slowly broke up into pieces and sank to the bottom. The elements slowly started to separate, once this happened we poured the top contents out (the copper) then did a wash twice with water (a wash is basically like what we did with the copper but with water to clean the aluminum) We added the chloride and did another wash with that. We then scraped the aluminium from the bottom of the beaker and picked it up with tongs. We then hovered it over the fire which, this is what happened:

The fire had a reaction from the aluminum trichloride which turned it into a green flame! I had a lot of fun with this lab and learned a lot, I hope we do it again!

What is wonder?

Yesterday in class we started a new unit called “Wonder” we started reading the original Alice in wonderland to inspire us about wonder and to kick off the unit. The first thing we did when we sat down was to brainstorm what wonder means to us we collaborated ideas with other people and made a mind map to show our ideas, then we shared them with the class. Here’s our groups mind map:

Once we where done that we learned about we read this article on one persons perspective on wonder and the experiences they had. Once we read everything over a few times we where given  4 questions to answer from the article which is linked below.

Answers from article :

1. How was Prinz’s experience with the “ringling brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus” different from his parents? Why?

Prinz was a very young boy when he saw the circus, when you are a child like that your mind tends to wonder about a lot more magical things than if you were an adult. As it says in the article when your are an adult you wonder about things that are more material than the nonexistent things that children can wonder about. For example children wonder about magical creatures and weather you will be able to fly or not whereas adults would wonder about history and wars.

2. What are the three bodily symptoms prinza postulates as components of wonder?

The three bodily symptoms Prinz talks about are sensory, cognitive, and spiritual.
Sensory: “wondrous things engage our senses”
Cognitive: suspension of breath, sacred, startled
Spiritual: “we look upwards in veneration”

3. How does Francis Bacon consider wonder?

The 17th century English teacher Francis Bacon believed that wonder “broken knowledge” was something that science couldn’t cure.

4. Describe one moment in your life when you have experienced wonder. Use imagery and figurative language “show, don’t tell”

When I was little and played soccer it seemed like it was always raining on Saturdays when we had our weekly games. Every time I would look up at the sky or feel a drop of water on my face I always wondered why they where shaped like a small leaf, and why a huge glob of rain spreading across the whole city can’t just come down like a wave forming over your head. This always led me to thinking why everything was so perfectly evolved and why the world was like this, which led me to many other deep thoughts and questions I had for the world when I was younger.

Finally to finish the class off we did a little writting prompt. Usually when we do this we have a picture to inspire us with. Writting prompts can be anything from short story’s to song, recipes and poems. For our writting prompt today we were gaven a picture of a rabbit hole from the rabbits view with grass and flowers swaying in the wind. At the beginning I had no idea what I wanted to do, but after a while I got inspired by the flowers and blue sky, so I decided to make a poem about when your mind gets lost in wonder and your thoughts in the world. To bring the poem to an end I decided to wright about when your mind brings your back to reality, and how wonder is very different from reality.

Writting prompt:

The flowers swayed in the wind.

The smell of freshly cut grass drifted throughout the yard.

I could hear a faint sound of horses galloping in the distance.

And the bright blue sky shining in my eyes as the clouds blew my hair to the side.

The tree in the front yard creaking like a door, and the birds frantically flying away.

As the day began to grow older the night sky swept over the house like a blanket in the blink of an eye.

The clouds grew darker and darker as the night went on.

Drops of water started to form a magnifying glass on the window.

Another day gone just like the others, I thought to myself.

I heard the ding on the oven as the waft of fresh bread drifted throughout the house,

taking my thoughts away and bringing me back to reality.

Mini Blue Sky of 2k16!

For the last blue Sky project of 2016 we had a Harry Potter themed exhibition, but if your a little confused by this point of what blue Sky is click here to catch up. As I was saying we had a Harry Potter themed exhibition, this meant that we all had to have a question that related to Harry Potter. For example mine was “how did Harry Potter influence and inspire technology and our knowledge?” At the beginning of this project when our teacher introduced it to us, we had to brainstorm our ideas to come up with the perfect one. Each person had 5 minutes to come up with as many questions as they could next we sorted them into different piles and organized them. After coming up with and sorting as many questions as we could we chose two that we had to send in to the teacher on Showbie. Once our question was critiqued and approved the next stage was to plan everything from what we where going to work on each day to deciding on our presentation plan. We all had a little time chart we had to fill in and complete which had to include revision and presentation setup.

Once everything was planned out down to the second it was time to actually do the work and start researching and starting on the actual project part. For mine I decided to pick a few significant technology pieces of the first few Harry Potter movies like the invisible cloak and the moving newspaper and researched them, I then found out that they where actually recreated in the the real world by everyday people and entrepreneurs. I researched and researched these specific inventions and slowly came to a conclusion. Once I had done all my research on the topic I did a few wright ups of the object in Harry Potter and what they did and then the objects in the real world and what they did, then I glued them on a poster board side by side so that the audience could compare the two.

In the end my conclusion was that Harry Potter wasn’t just a movie but was an influence to the world and people’s lives. Once the research part was done I created a mini museum with the materials that where used to recreate each object then made a mini glass case to put them in with an explanation of each material and what it was used for.

After a few weeks everybody had completed the projects and it was the final step, the decorations and theme! We got into groups the next day each group had to come up with a different part of Hogwarts (the wizarding school of Harry Potter) we chose the forbidden forest.

For the exhibition each person had to have food, decorations and interactive games. Heres our floor an exhibition plan:

Since it was a forest everybody brought in lots and lots of branches, twigs and plants from home, then we decided to string green streamers and lights across the ceiling. For our food we made spider blood (sprite and green food colouring) as a drink and gems (chocolate dipped Rice Krispies and gold sprinkles as the gems) Finally for our game we played toss the ring on the unicorn horn because there are unicorns in the forest. The final part of the exhibition was filling out a little poster for each of our tables to explain the process and introduce our selfs.

The day of the exhibition we had 3-5 hours of time to setup so we had a lot of time to perfect everything. Everybody in my group had great ideas and in the end the night was a big success and a lot of fun, can’t wait until next year!

Super heroes and the periodic table!

These past few weeks we have been studying every part of the periodic table from the elements to the atoms and ions in them. After all the worksheets and quizzes we got into groups where we had to pick a superman and superpower, for this we couldn’t just pick any superpower we had to pick one that would make sense with the element that you would pick afterwards. For example you could pick a flying superpower, and choose hydrogen for an element. We chose to use hydrogen and francium because they are both flammable, and for our superpower we chose to have a power of being able to turn anything to flames. The first part of this project was to fill in a form and contract for our group essentially saying that anyone who wasn’t participating was allegable to be thrown out of the group. After that we had to draw a badge with our power, name of group, element and chemical properties of it. Here’s a picture of our badge:

Once our badge was completed it was time to show that we knew what the periodic was and where everything was. We started with receiving a big white poster board where we had to draw the periodic table with the atomic name, element and symbol of each element on the periodic table. Once that was done we colour coated each one by there family and group (halogens, noble gases, alkali metals, alkali earth metals and transition metals) We then took our two chosen elements and wrote two chemical and physical properties. Here’s our final poster:

This class we finished an atom model of the element hydrogen, right now our group is pretty caught up and on task most of the time. Sometimes we where a little off task but besides that we where a pretty collaborative group. This is only half of the project so far so I’m excited to see how everything will turn out in the end!

Final Metaphor Machine Draft!

Last week I wrote up a blog post explaining the project we had been doing for the past month or so, if you missed that click here to catch up otherwise nothing I’m saying will make sense to you. Essentially in the blog post I was explaining what the metaphor machine was and what we had done so far. In the last post I created finished off by explaining what our group had accomplished. Last Thursday was when the second draft was due and I think we have came a long way from there.

To start off we had spray painted everything black because before it was covered in blue, copper and silver basically there where a jumble of colours and we didn’t like the way it looked. Once all the paint had dried we decided to spray paint the container and the tin can used for the transfer.

The critique we received for the second draft was that we needed to have more symbols on each part of our machine. We decided to stick some flags onto either side of the tin cans to represent how Europe overcame China. Then we decided to add some opium poppies to the spinning gears we had which would represent the addiction china had. The last symbol that we had created was the one on the marbles where we painted Chinese symbols of words meaning young and old because in our machine the marbles are the leaders and at some point the power of the leaders was transferred and we needed a way to symbolize that.

Once we felt that our machine looked a tad bit nicer than before we started to fix up our iMovie. At the beginning of this project we had to fill out a story board, for this we came up with an idea the idea was that we would have a shot of a whiteboard where we would be drawing sketches and mini comics to help the audience understand the revolution in a easier way. During the critique process of draft two our teacher mentioned that our video was too long and the first quarter didn’t even show our machine. We decided to add mini clips of us working at the beginning and a full view of the machine during the first few clips so that you could get an idea of our machine and you could get a little bit of a break from the regular shot.

Here’s our second draft:

And here’s the final draft:

What did you think? I thought we did a good job of explaining the revolution and what we represented for each one. The only thing I think we could have worked on more was having a few more pictures and videos of us working on it. I thought our machine turned out pretty well, although we didn’t kick off to a great start with all the complications on our machine design I thought we pulled it off pretty well. The one thing I would improve on next time is the initial design of it all and having everything properly thought out and drawn on a piece of paper, I also think it might of helped if we had made a list of everything we needed to accomplish and bring in. Besides that I’m pretty happy with the outcome!

National Take Your Kid To Work Day!

Today I got to learn all about what my dad did at work. Every year all of the grade nines in Canada have the option to experience what there mom or dad do all day. This year was my turn to see what my dad does. He works at RBC as a institutional portfolio manager. Since most of the dad’s who work there have multiple meeting with clients and employees and can’t afford to lose a day of work they organize the day full of games that teach you more about what your dad does.

To start the day off, I woke up bright and early and went out for coffee after I went to my dad’s office and dropped of my coat. Here’s a picture of where he works:

All 6 of the kids that were there met in a room where they had very nicely laid out various beverages. They thought it would be a good idea to start our day off with learning about stocks and funds for an hour, after awhile of watching a PowerPoint I was starting to learn something about pension plans! After the presentation we played a game where we had to pitch an invention to a fake investors, then once they funded of us we had to come up with a number of what it would all cost. Once everybody had come up with there idea we had to pitch our invention again to a share holder. Once all the numbers where added up we were given two dice that we needed to roll a seven or higher other wise we would lose money and potentially go bankrupt , of course every time we rolled the dice we would get 4 so in the end we declared bankruptcy!

Right after that we had a person come talk to us about how he got to where he was and what he had done in his career. I think this was my favorite presentation because he brought Timbits! The person who had presented to us had started his career off as a Olympic athlete, his dream was to be a track runner but unfortunately he injured himself and wasn’t able to continue so he decided to take up bob sledding where he actually competed at the Olympics for Jamaica! After his career in bob sledding he decided to study kinesiology but oddly enough ended up in finance! This taught us that not everybody knows where they are going to be at the beginning of there career.

After that we got a lunch brake where we went out to a Japanese  restaurant, then to the number one ranked gelato place in the world!

When we got back from lunch we played jeopardy that involve some pension plans and stocks! After a while of that somebody else cam in a talked a retirement plans, she had a website open where we created our own retirement plan. After that my dad toured me aaround the office, I also learned that where my dad works they hold the title of being the largest stock holders in Canada! Once we had tours the building the day was over!

When we where finished we had to fill out a mandatory piece of paper and interview people to find out more about the different areas of your parents work, so here’s a picture of mine

I think I enjoyed learning about the technology they used in the office because it was interesting to see which software and hardware company’s where the best! To tell you the truth I never actually knew what my dad did until this morning, In the end it was really surprising to learn what he actually did! I think that with all the information I actually took away, I would think about getting a job in banking and investing! I think that if I had to choose a career I would want to study medicine, and become a veterinarian. All of the jobs I learned about today where all a big part of stocks so when everything crashed in 2007 it was lots of hard work and stress to bring everything back up and fix it all, I think that would be the only negative part of having this type of job.  This was a great experience that really influenced me and made me really think about what career path I want to choose and what aspects to look for when finding the perfect job for yourself.