Grayson’s Blog

A week ago, I went to tōtara with my classmates to learn about something called kaitiakitanga. At tōtara park, we used an app on our iPads that used an AI that could scan plants and identify them. I was able to scan around 75 there. You can also scan animals, insect, fungi, fish, and birds. The entire trip was around 2 and a half hours and I would say it was fun, albeit incredibly tiring. I scanned a tuatara and a red striped oil beetle. And I managed to scan one bird; the Eurasian blackbird. It looks something like this —-> 🐦‍⬛. My friend Joshua forgot his iPad so he just came with me. He helped me scan some plants and told some stupid jokes. I touched a plant and he said, “leaf him alone!” I told him it was a stupid joke, and he agreed, but he said it to everyone in a 10 metre proximity. Through tōtara park, runs a river called the puhinui stream. It runs for twelve kilometres, starts at tōtara park, and ends at the Manukau Harbour. In the beginning of this blog, I mentioned something called kaitiakitanga, which is all about being a guardian of nature. The puhinui is a huge asset towards care of the environment around it, and functions as a great link to Manukau’s heritage. The week after, we went to the botanical gardens, which went quite well. It was quite similar and we also used the seek app. We had a look at how the storm water thingymajigies worked. There were heaps of plants to scan and ended up reaching about 150 scans of different plants, mammals, fungi, birds and reptiles in total.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on the 3rd Jan 1892, and he grew up to be one of the greatest authors of all time, publishing 29 books, including ‘The Hobbit’ and the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy.

Tokien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, but at the age of four, he moved to Birmingham, England after his father who was a bank manager sadly died of rheumatic fever. There he studied at King Edwards at the age of seven. In the year 1900 when Tolkien was eight, his mother converted to roman catholicism along with J.R.R. Tolkien’s brother Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien. After a while, J.R.R. Tolkien went to Exeter college. He then got a scholarship to Oxford university. He had to leave Birmingham, but he still visited his family often. At Oxford he studied English and Literature which influenced his style when writing
his stories.

Tolkien wrote his first story for his children. This story was called ‘The Hobbit’ and his sufficient literary knowledge on old english myths and Icelandic sagas really influenced his writing style. ‘The Hobbit’ was created out of his literary interest for these same sagas and myths. He got ‘The Hobbit’ published on 27 September 1937, and the 1500 that were originally made sold out incredibly fast due to the fact that the people loved it so much.

Tolkien’s first published book was ‘The Hobbit’ in 1937. There was then a big gap until 1954-1955 when he wrote the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ was published in 1954. So was ‘The Two Towers’, but ‘The Return of the King’ was published in 1955. The sad thing about Tolkien was that he only got very famous after he died. He had 35 posthumous works which were published thanks to his son Christopher Tolkien who sadly died in 2020. ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy were the only works of Tolkien’s that weren’t published posthumously.

I have given you some information about J.R.R. Tolkien, but here is a compilation of facts about him:

Tolkien was able to read at the age of four.
His literary interest started when his mother taught him some latin before he even went to school.
He served in the first world war.
Frodo, the main character of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy was originally going to be named Bingo.
Tolkien died on September 2nd 1973.
While Tolkien was in Africa, he was bitten by a baboon spider.
Tolkien was fascinated by his travels in Switzerland and the landscape which inspired the misty mountains in ‘The Hobbit’.

Tolkien was a great author who managed to write more than 29 books. We must also give credit to his son, Christopher, for if he wasn’t there, we wouldn’t have nearly as many of his brilliant books as we have today.

Our topic this term is the night sky, so I thought that I should present a few facts about the night sky.

Aurora Australis (The southern lights) are formed when the sun releases flares and they are carried to the earth. It interacts with earths magnetic field and creates a stunning image that only shows up certain times in a year. A neutron star is formed when a sun dies and the core creates lots of neutrons. The star can’t be too dense, or it will create a black hole. Don’t worry though; the closest black hole to us is 1560 light years away and will not do anything to earth, and our sun isn’t dense enough to become a black hole. The Kuiper Belt is a massive collection of asteroids, debris, and dwarf planets that surround the whole solar system. A quasar is the core of a galaxy that emits an insane amount of light. When particles fall into the quasar, it emits electromagnetic radiation.

I haven’t been at this school for very long, but so far I am liking it. In our first few weeks of school in 2024 we have done digital art three times. This is the first one I did, and after tinkering around in canva , I was told that the view that the picture is from would have the bird bigger than it realistically would, and that is what I did. I loved doing this art and I think i learnt a thing or to about canva as well. My art: Untitled design 2

This school is very different from other schools in many ways. On the first day I made a friend named Joshua. This is my fifth day in this school and our teacher is named Mrs. Barrowman, and she organised a thing where we made Chinese lanterns for the new year. I think this school was very fun and I will enjoy this year very much.

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