My Scratch Project

In my last post I said that I would embed one of my Scratch Projects in a post, so this is it. Scratch is a visual programming language and you can use it to make your own games and things like this.

Here it is:

Can you spot the bad dancer (that's me)?

Learn more about this project

Fill-In

The first thing I'm going to say before I say anything else, is that I'm sorry I've been such a bad blogger lately. Everything has been going on so fast and I just can't fit in a time to blog about it. So now I'm going to have to fill you in.


My ballet exam went really well, I still haven't got any news, though. As the summer holidays crept slowly closer, the work at school began to come down to watching movies and things like that. As this was my last week at this school it was kind of sad for me, leaving all my friends behind. The last day was finally here. There were a few tears in the morning from the year eights who were the oldest in the school and were going up to upper school. We worked through the day which actually, now I think of it, included no work at all. For the last lesson we had a party in our form room, with of course lots of crying. On the bus on the way home I was afraid the bus was going to flood, because all the year eights crying. 


The Summer Holidays!!! Aahhhh, a break! Time to chill out! Not for me and my brothers. My Mum has recently started on a part time job which means that both my Mum and Dad are working. Luckily, my Dad can work at home, so he works in a little office in the garden. My Mum travels to work, but as she is so hardworking and amazingly talented, she will leave me and my brothers an email so that we can read it throughout the day. This will consist of all the things that she would've told us to do if she were here. But, as she isn't, she leaves it all in an email instead. This isn't all chores though; this email may also say 'watch TV for half an hour, Lily's turn to pick the program.' It was actually a really good thing to do, because it kept us busy until she got back, and Dad would come and make our lunch or just pop in occasionally. My Mum also set us projects on Scratch, a programming document, and if you know about Scratch you will know that it is an amazing thing and is really fun to play around with, but if you don't I suggest that you try it out, because it's a really good way to learn how to make your own games and stuff. I'll leave a link to the website at the bottom of this post. 


Well, that pretty much sums up what I've been doing in my summer holidays so far. Here's the link to the Scratch website:scratch.mit.edu 


Hopefully, next time I'll work out how to get some of the stuff that I've done there on here. Got to go to Rowing now!

Rainy Days

The worst thing about this week is the weather. Rain forevermore. But besides the weather, my week was actually really good. On Monday I had quite a normal day at school; nothing really happened except that I had my French Horn lesson. On Tuesday though, I had a practice of my dance that I'm performing at my local upper school, and then in a festival. That meant that I got to miss two lessons. After school, I had my second-last ballet lesson before my exam.On Wednesday, I had another dance practice and 1 lesson out of my school day, and after that another two lessons out because I had to practice for my concert that night. I then went home, had my violin lesson, and quickly whizzed back to school for the concert. The concert went very well, and I performed a violin solo. Going on to Thursday, I performed in our school talent show, playing my piano, and I won!(YAY!!!)

Friday the 13th. Well, let's just say it's the best Friday the 13th I've ever had! Two of my friends that live in my local area thought that it would be fun to camp out, because it was the weekend, and it was an unlucky day, so it's always funny if you plan something just to see it go wrong. We tried to camp out in a tent, but the only friend that had a tent wasn't allowed. So we tried just sleeping in her house. That didn't work. We tried the other friend's house. No luck. Finally, I asked my mum and dad if my friends could sleep over. It worked! So me, my dad and my two friends went to the shop and bought loads of sweets so that we could have a midnight feast. We also watched a movie(Mean Girls 2). So now I'm very tired because we went to bed really late, but no luck for me! It was the festival today, which meant I had to get up early to go and dance.

As lots of fun things have been happening I'm going to put some pictures on of the stuff I did!

This is me in my ballet costume

This is me in my dance costume

Me wearing a ridiculous mask holding my French Horn

Be prepared for some more pictures soon! It's Rowing and my ballet exam tomorrow!

Over and done with!

You're probably wondering what the title means. Well, today I did my French Horn Grade 1 exam and I guess I could say I'm glad that it's over! My exam went really well and I think when I go to Senior School that I might just carry on playing (which was not the original plan). My examiner was very encouraging and seemed to be pleased that I was a French Horn player ('The French Horn is an endangered species', so he says). My teacher has also encouraged me to keep playing, which is all good.

Tomorrow's two sessions of Rowing, and I promise you that I'll try to get some pictures in soon, I must be boring you with all this talk!

Home again

I'm back, and all in one piece! As I said in my last post, I went on a residential trip on Monday. The place I went to was called Eaton Vale in (unsurprisingly) Eaton! I went with a lot of my friends from school and we had an amazing time. Eaton Vale is an adventure holiday, or in my case a school trip. When you get there you do lots of different exciting things, whatever the weather! Unfortunately, when I got there it started lashing with rain, but the instructors are really encouraging, so we had fun anyway.

On my trip (this is only what my school has chosen) I did Crate Stacking, which is where you are harnessed to a rope and are pulled up by it whenever you step on another milk crate. The aim is for the people who are not being pulled up to stack the crates as high as they can so the harnessed people could step on them and go up higher and higher. At the bottom of this post I will put a link to the Eaton Vale website so that you can see the activities for yourselves (they're kind of hard to describe). I also did Raft Building (to get to the point you build a raft), Indoor Climbing (which is exactly what you think it is), Riffle shooting and a lot of other fun things. 

As it was a residential trip I had to sleep there, and my dorm was very cosy. There was another room called the Boss' Room where you could relax and play a game and watch TV. I felt very comfy and settled in quickly to the routine, but I did miss my family.

Overall, I really enjoyed my trip and if you like the sound of it, then check out the website: eatonvale.co.uk

Time to start the fun!

I guess I could say that so far this week has been pretty normal. On Monday I had my French Horn lesson in school, where I was practicing for my exam and Tuesday I had my Ballet class, in which I was also practicing for an exam. Wednesday was Orchestra after school, then my Violin lesson, and finally Rowing. On Thursday I had a break from clubs, but I still have 3 instruments on the go, so I had to practice them. Friday I also had a day off, so I watched a movie with my two younger brothers and chilled out as it was the weekend. Today I traveled with my dad the 50 minute journey to my Violin group lesson, which is where young violinists taught by the 'Suzuki Method' (which is how I am taught) get together to play songs both from the repertoire and just some pieces that are fun to play. Everyone is friendly with each other and we have lots of fun! Tomorrow I am doing a Violin performance after a double Rowing session in the morning.


Then on Monday I am going on a residential trip with my school and I'm afraid I won't be sending any more posts for the next few days(but of course if anything happens tomorrow I will post). I will tell you all about it when I get back!

Rowing and Singing

Today I went rowing in the morning(very windy!) and luckily I didn't fall in! It was quite hard, because most of the time the wind was blowing in the opposite direction to me.


In the afternoon, after I had eaten a quick lunch, I did a choral workshop. That just means that a few people my age were going to get together and sing a few songs, and at the end we were going to sing with an actual choir in a service. Well, that's what I was expecting. The workshop was actually quite different, because first of all, it was a range of ages and we didn't only 'sing a few songs' at all! First we went through some songs, and then had some people doing a lower part so we had a nice harmony. We practiced these pieces for most of the time, but then we went to the chapel - which is where we were going to sing in the service - and rehearsed it with the choir. Then we had tea, which was refreshing, followed by a final rehearsal before we sang in the actual service. When we finally did it the result was brilliant and the harmonies worked out perfectly, and altogether it sounded amazing. All I can say is that it was really fun, and I want to do it again!

Breaking News

I was going to my violin group lesson this morning and me and my mum were talking about something that she'd seen on the internet. She said that there was a video on YouTube trying to encourage girls to be scientists. Some people were greatly offended at the video, because of a range of reasons, but some people had obviously thought about it and I know somebody who has already changed their mind due to the video, and is willing to do more to help girls get into science. If you'd like to watch it at the end of this post I will put a link to the video. What do you think of it? Feel free to post your opinions!

On 'mumsnet', an online forum for mothers to exchange ideas about a certain topic, there is 200+ posts on a thread about the video, named 'Prepare yourself for a fit of rage', most of the mothers being outraged at the video saying that it is sexist.

Here are my thoughts about the video and girls/women in science (a bit random, but I'll share them anyway):

My opinion of the video is that it is merely trying to encourage girls to be scientists, saying that they're not only capable of being models and fashion designers. I think that the video meant no harm but might accidently cause offence to men (the guy looking at the girls).

However, risks for women scientists are that it might affect childbirth if the woman happens to be pregnant, or maybe tradition might affect their career: tradition is that men are scientists and some women may think that it isn't good to change that. It can also backfire as well though. Maybe men might think that they have to follow tradition and end up as a scientist even though they might not want to. In fact, I know somebody who did just that.     

So don't forget to post your opinions! Oh, and here's the link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g032MPrSjFA

Friday at last

I know, it's hard to believe that the week is finally over. It's 3 weeks until the summer holidays and I'm just about surviving it. I owe it all to my clubs. I'm not a very typical 11 year-old; some people my age will get home from school, flop down on the sofa with a bag of crisps and watch TV till they go to bed. But not me. Almost every day I have at least one extra curricular activity and I guess I could say that it keeps me on my toes. But don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with just my clubs. This blog is almost going to be like an online diary, but I will put on some pictures to make it a bit more interesting!