Tech-Taters

After a spring break with sunny days, rainy days and not much warm weather, we come back to school. We all catch up on what happened over spring break, some people went away maybe even got a tan. Some stayed in the city and some went somewhere else. There were a few days when I could take off my jacket and exclaim ‘it is so hot today’. Or some people got a new family member. After all of the catching up we have to clear out all of the cobwebs in our brains and start to get back into the groove of  waking up early, studying for our tests and doing our homework at  night. I was looking forward to coming back to school after two boring weeks of doing nothing. You may think that staying at home for that long is fun really it isn’t.

In maths soon we are going to do a project about stocks. Mr. McShane (our maths specialist’s husband) works for Fox Business News and he came in to talk to us about what stocks are and how they work. If you don’t know what stocks are then I will tell you. Stocks are a little piece of a company that they sell to the public. If you buy that piece then you own a little bit of that company. There are different signs for different companies like for apple is is aapl and for google it is goog. In the morning Mr.McShane gets up very early and at 5 o’clock sharp he is on television and he talks about the stocks for the day. So when he came to do presentation for us, he wasn’t a bit nervous. Stocks can be very cheap but people may buy thousands even millions of stocks for a company so at the end the company itself get a lot of money! The maths project is that we will have a certain amount of money and we get to buy some stocks. I really don’t know that much about it yet,  but I will get back to you when I know some more.

Mr. McShane talks to 5A & 5B about stocks

I just finished doing Nutcracker performances. Oh yes did I tell you that I loved ballet and have been doing it for about 8 years! This Nutcracker is performed at Hunter Theater and is called The Yorkville Nutcracker. This year was my FIRST EVER year in this nutcracker. I played a little French girl in Party Scene and Gingerbread. In this nutcracker people from all around the world come to the mayor of New York’s house. Mary and Putnum (the head children) in the second act go into the land of sweets and then wake from their dream and find them selfs in their own house again! Party scene takes place at Gracie Mansion! Everyone in Party scene was actually a real person in 1995 (the date that that the Yorkville Nutcracker takes place! Doing the Nutcracker was so entertaining and made my heart pound hard in my chest. I did not know this until very recently but in party scene I was on stage for 35 minutes! Is that long or what? I hope I am in another show soon wish me luck! Oh yes and has anyone acted or danced on stage in front of an audience before?

Playing an instrument is fun, right? Well that’s all we do when we have Band. At the end of last year we got to pick an instrument that we wanted to learn to play out of these instruments – Drums, Flute, Trumpet, Trombone, Saxophone, French Horne and Clarinet. In Band we learn how to read notes and play them on our instruments. I think that everyone enjoys Band because the people that didn’t play any instrument get to learn to play one. On the other hand people who already play instruments get to learn a new and diverse instrument.

We just came back from our over night trip at Black Rock Forest. Black Rock is a forest with wild life and lots of diverse and interesting plants. The bus ride was about 2 hours but time flies when you are having fun. Finally we got to the place were we would be staying, it was a lodge with two wings a Boy’s Wing and a Girl’s Wing. In each wing there were bunk beds and closets. Every one was with al least 5 people in one bunk room. The bunk rooms were named after trees like Cedar, Pine or Oak. in the middle was a common area were every one ate and after activities or hikes we gathered there. We were not allowed to wear our outdoor shoes in there. Then we went on a hike- there were 4 hikes to choose from. One of the hikes was ‘slow’ and there you looked around at the beautiful surroundings and really did not hike. Then there was ’Moderate’ which was a slow and easy hike. There was ‘Challenge’ which is a bit faster on a hard hill. Finally there is ‘Super Challenge’. In Super Challenge you basically ran and hiked 2 mountains. I did the Super Challenge and some of the people (like me) got lost at times but we followed the trail and eventually were with the group again. When everyone was on their hikes they had lunch. After the tiresome hike everyone changed and went to an activity. The activities were science, geo caching, water color, photography, trail clearing and the acorn activity. When we finally finished our activity we ate dinner. After we ate dinner we went on a 2 mile night hike. It was really scary because it was a windy night so the clouds were moving fast and it looked like the moon was moving. But finally we got to a camp fire. We had s’mores and sang songs and finally we walked home. We all slept and had breakfast in the morning. We had one activity then lunch. Then another activity and it was time to go home. Nobody wanted to leave but we had to. Everyone sadly said goodbye to Black Rock and we went back to our home sweet homes.

Toasting marshmallows for s'mores