Trip to Paris

We had planned to visit Paris in Christmas, from past 2 months.I was looking forward to see the Eiffel Tower.I also wanted eat in some Indian restaurants. My sister wanted to visit Louvre and my mom wanted to see the parks she told she had read about in the novels she read. My father had seen Paris several times and he wanted to see Christmas market.

           But what we all did not expect was the amount of cold we were going to experience !! It was 0 degree Celsius on 24th December when we went to Paris. And it went down up to -8 degrees over the 5 days that we stayed there. 

           We checked into Citadines hotel at La Defense. La Defense is the new part of Paris. It has many modern sky scrapers and a grande arche. From the grand arche, we can see Champs Elysees and Arc De Triomphe all in 1 straight line. It was a very beautiful view in the nights and equally beautiful in the mornings !! Christmas market was setup in La Defense and we saw them in the evening of 24th December. All shops were very colourful.

          The next day on 25th, we went to Disney Land (it's a place where you can play games). First we played on a ride which turns 360 degrees. Next we saw the sleeping beauty castle. Then we went to the haunted house but it was not so scary, because they made us sit in small cars and made us see skeletons instead of doing something to scare us. We also went to a pirates ride which was good. We went to several such adventure rides. In the evening, there was a Christmas parade by all Disney characters. It was the best part of the day - all disney characters came in the chariots and danced to very nice songs. Their costumes, the lighting, their dress up, everything was beautiful.

        The next day, the 26th,  we went to the Louvre Museum. I had never seen such big museum like Louvre before. There were extremely nice paintings there. We saw the Mona Lisa. Then we went to the giant wheel outside. We could see the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysees, the Arc De Triomphe everything from the top. 

           The next day, the 27th, we went to the Eiffel Tower and a boat cruise. We went past many bridges and also saw many famous building on each side of the river. After the cruise, we went to a famous Indian restaurant called Sarvana Bhavan for lunch. I loved the food there and ordered more than two times! Later we visited the Galleries La Fayette and then we went back to the hotel. 

     The next day, the 28th, we went to Notre Dame Cathedral. It was very cold there and had huge crowds. The church was very tall and very big. My mom was telling that there is a very great novel written by Victor Hugo that happens around Notre Dame. Though the bell tower was free for me to enter, I could not go as it was very cold outside and there were huge crowds. 

29th, we headed home. I loved the trip.. the city was very beautiful - if only there was little more sun, I would have enjoyed even more ..

A wordy snowflake

Happy Christmas everyone!

And here's another kind of digital snowflake!
This one - click the link - puts whatever text you enter into the flake. Have a go!

Let the holidays begin... with snowflakes!

Well done everyone for a great autumn term! Thank you everyone, parents and students, for all your kind words and gifts to us teachers! The holidays!

If you feel like blogging a bit during the holidays, do! It would be great to hear from you!

I'll post something now. I've just seen another online way to make snowflakes - perhaps better than the one we've used before!

It's called Paper Snowflake (although of course it's not). It looks a bit like this:

You click the corners of shapes you create - in the right hand blue rectangle - that's the folded-up one, then click "Make Snowflake" on the right hand side.

It's got the look of a paper snowflake - but without any trees needing to be cut down! Have a try!

Thanks to Malke Rosenfeld for showing me this!

Divide and rule!

We've thought lots about our clock flowers. We've talked about multiplying, about factors, about prime numbers. It was time to mention division too. So we each chose one of the factors and literally divided the clock up into slices of that number of minutes.

 

Goodbye... for now

 

Yesterday we said goodbye to Sofia, as she heads over the Pyrenees into Spain. We're going to miss her a lot! We all wished her all the best not just for Christmas and the new year, but for the big change ahead next term.

It is quite possible that she will return next September, which would be fantastic. Au revoir, Sofia!

NATO phonetic alphabet

Me and my dad have been learning the NATO phonetic alphabet in the car.

The NATO phonetic alphabet is used in radio communication to make sure you don't make mistakes.

For example, Holly = Hotel Oscar Lima Lima Yankee.

Letter:	Code Word:	Pronunciation:
A	Alpha	Al fah
B	Bravo	Brah Voh
C	Charlie	Char Lee
D	Delta	Dell Tah
E	Echo	Eck Oh
F	Foxtrot	Foks Trot
G	Golf	Golf
H	Hotel	Hoh Tell (FAA, IMO, ITU) Ho Tell (ICAO)
I	India	In Dee Ah
J	Juliett	Jew Lee Ett
K	Kilo	Key Loh
L	Lima	Lee Mah
M	Mike	Mike
N	November	No Vem Ber
O	Oscar	Oss Car
P	Papa	Pah Pah
Q	Quebec	Keh Beck
R	Romeo	Row Me Oh
S	Sierra	See Air Ah (FAA) See Air Rah (ICAO, IMO, ITU)
T	Tango	Tang Go
U	Uniform	You Nee Form
V	Victor	Vik Tah
W	Whiskey	Wiss Key
X	X Ray	Ecks Ray
Y	Yankee	Yang Key
Z	Zulu	Zoo Loo

Why don't we make a Y4 phonetic alphabet. Maybe we can use our names, colours or foods?

A: Apple

B: Blue

C:

D:

E: Egg

F:

G: Grape

H:

I: Ice-cream

J:

K:

L: Leonie

M:

N:

O: 

P:

Q:

R: Red

S:

T:

U:

V:

W:

X:

Y:

Z:

Then we can have fun and make up names for each other or our families.

Grape Apple Blue Red Ice-cream Egg Leonie Leonie Egg!

Factors of sixty

After making a giant sixty-factor thing with Cuisenaire rods on Monday, Gabrielle, Marie and Rose were determined to make their own record of what they'd created. We had to stick some squared paper sheets together to make it big enough. They've added a few lines of rods of lengths we don't actually have, giving them new colours!

(Girls, I tidied it up a tiny bit, and turned it on its side so that it fits on the page!)

Can you see, there are still some factors of sixty missing? Do you know what they are?

How did there come to be sixty seconds in a minute, and sixty minutes in an hour? Apparently, it goes back a long way. Have a look at this video:

Christmas Concert 2

And well done again!

The Christmas Concert - The Snow Queen

Well done everyone for the performances of the Christmas concert!
 If any parents have any pictures from the nights, please share them with us - or write a blog post!

Gerda and Kay before they fell out

Gerda swims in the river

Here are 4G's words for the snowflake dance:

More clock flowers

We used the Scratch Clock Flower Project and noticed lots of things - have a look at our comments.
Then we together looked at which size jump "fitted", so that the jumps only went round once to create nice neat petals.

We scanned them and coloured them in quickly on Paint:

Meanwhile, Rose, Marie and Gabrielle volunteered to try a similar thing with Cuisenaire rods. Their line of rods had to be 60 long. Only numbers that "fitted" exactly into sixty could be added.

They did a great job. The line at the top is the twelves, made of ten+two because we don't have any twelve rods. Can you see any other big factors of sixty that are missing?

Hour of Code 2014

If you're in Year 4 at IST, you've been busy coding at code.org this half term. If you enjoy doing creating programs, you might like to try this year's Hour of Code.

We've had a bit of a snowflake theme in Year 4 this Christmas. Here's another way to create snowflakes.

Code with Anna and Elsa

"Let's use code to join Anna and Elsa as they explore the magic and beauty of ice. You will create snowflakes and patterns as you ice-skate and make a winter wonderland that you can then share with your friends!
Ages 8+"

You'll find it's very similar to what we've been doing in class, but this time with a "Frozen" theme.
Happy coding!

Exciting Sunday!

This morning Telmo, Vega and their parents came home for a brunch because we were going to go to the Airbus Christmas party. My mum decided to have a brunch because the Airbus party started when we usually have lunch in the weekends. After the brunch, we played minecraft and lego Star Wars because Telmo loves it. Meanwhile, my sister and Vega played 'Just Dance' with the Wii. We all played until we had to leave to the the Airbus party.

When we got to the party, we found Gustavo and Miguel in the parking lot… I was happy to see them but they suddenly disappeared with David and their parents. After leaving the cars, we walked until we found some fun fair games: spinning rockets & crushing cars. Out of these two games, I preferred the crushing cars because you were in a small car in a big track, and it was very fun to drive forward and backwards crushing into other similar cars. I really enjoyed it because Mateo, who I met right before, was also driving and we were very good at it. This was the first time i've ever been in a crushing car animation. I played twice, the first time, I struggled because I could not go forward when I wanted. However, the second time I became the master and I could really hit my targets (Mateo!)

Around three o'clock we all went inside the 'Zenit Auditorium' where the main part of the party was, which consisted on a Magic show. The theme was about a man pretending to be Jules Verne while he was doing magic tricks (making people smaller, transporting people from one place to another, elevating people, chopping them though they were still alive, etc). The majority of us found it a bit boring because they always did the same magic tricks. My sister, for instance, disliked it so much, that she didn't go to the second half, and instead, she stayed outside with dad making hand made crafts.

When the show ended, we all grouped together and each family went home.

Overall, it was a nice way to finish the weekend. Just one more week until Christmas! Next weekend I shall be flying to España! :-)

Merry Christmas to all!

Clock Flowers on Scratch

After some class work on clock flowers last week, I wrote a little bit of code on Scratch to make some more. You can make "petals" for the flower that have jumps of between 1 and 22. Try it out. Click the green flag to begin.


What do you notice?
What do you wonder?

My favourite snowflake

This is my favourite Snowflake that I have made:

It has been so much fun making these snowflakes!

My snowflakes

 Here are some snowflakes that I have been making with 'Make a Flake':

Here are some snowflakes that my sister has made:

Me and my sister have been making much more snowflakes like this.