Y is for Youtube

Did you know that YouTube became one of the fastest growing sites on the web?

Who founded YouTube? Three guys with the names Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, Jawed Karim, who were former employees of PayPal.

Many of you know that Youtube has become popular over the course of the years that it has been running. I know lots of people that use YouTube to look at music videos, movie trailers, TV shows and many more. Probably the wierdest and funniest videos that you can think of can be found on YouTube.

I think everyone knows now that a singer with the name of Justin Bieber became popular by YouTube. One day he entered a singing contest in his hometown of Stratford, Ontario. Some of his friends and family could not make it to the singing contest, so they asked him to put a video of his performance at the singing contest on YouTube. After Justin Beiber put the video on YouTube he realized that he was getting many more hits than he had family and friends. One day, Usher was looking on YouTube, and he came across Justin's Video. After he saw the video, Usher wanted to get in touch with Justin so he could sign him to a music contract.

Even my parents use YouTube. Sometimes they tell us about old TV shows or funny commercials and they can usually find them so that they can show us what they are talking about. Like Lucille Ball wrapping chocolates.... or Abott and Costello's "Who's on First" . But then sometimes we want to show our parents things, like General Larry Platt's "Pants on the Ground".

Thanks to Chad, Steve and Jawed, the creators of YouTube, you can spend too much time on YouTube, when you should be writing your blog.

Life Lesson: Be careful what you post on YouTube, because the whole world can see it.

S is for School

Have you ever been to a new school? Have you ever been scared the first day?

One day in Grade 2, I was visiting a school that I did not know very well. As I walked into the classroom with people staring at me that I had no clue who they were at all. Later, once my mom left, the teacher introduced me to the class. After he introduced me to the students, two students named Ashton and Hayley, took me on a tour of the school. Hayley stayed with me all day and even had lunch with me. I was feeling better about this new school and I wasn't scared any more.

This school that I was visiting was different for me because there were many more kids and everybody in the class was in the same grade. At MY school, there were kids from grades 1-3, all in the same class! I had friends that were my age, but also older and younger than me.

Even though I changed schools for Grade 3, I still talked with and visited my friends from my old school. Even now, when I run into one of them, we share a great big hug! One of my friends moved to British Columbia. Her family was here a few summers ago to visit some people, but I couldn't see her that time because I was at summer camp.

I'm glad now that I changed schools because I have even more friends than I did before.

Doesn't mean that if you leave them behind that you can't still be friends.

F is for Friends

Have you ever been to a place where you don't know anybody? Well if you have, then all you have to do is say something to get their attention. For example, you could say "Hi", smile, and ask them their name. They might even ask for your name.

I was at my ski club the other day and I didn't know anybody in my ski group. So what I did was say "Hi" to this complete stranger that I didn't even know. So then the complete stranger and I went up on the chair lift together to start our lesson. We started talking and I asked her where she lived. It turned, out when we were talking, both her and I live in the same city!" Not many chances that would happen like one in a billion. Once I found out that she lives in the same city as I do. "I asked her where in the city she lives?" She said by Westmount Rd. which is like 2 minutes from my house. Turns out we live like 5-10 minutes away from each other.

After that ski lesson I told my Mom about this girl. Well she knows her Mom and Dad and I found out that my old babysitter is the cousin of this girls' Mom. Well! Did we have a lot to talk about at our next ski lesson!!

Life Lesson: The next person you meet could be your next best friend, so don't be afraid to meet new people!

Empathy Writing

This post will be on how authors try to create a feeling of empathy in their readers. Authors try to create a feeling of empathy in the readers by adding adjectives and to add lots of detail to their writing. One reason why authors put empathy writing in their books is so that readers can fell the same way as the characters in the book feel.

Empathy can be shown so many ways which includes depressed, sad, sympathy and pity parts in the book. One example of empathy that I found in The Breadwinner is when Parvana and her family had to see him being taken away by the Taliban. Another way how authors try to create empathy is when someone dies or gets taken away.

In another book that I read that has empathy in it is Bridge to Terabithia. The part that made me fell empathy in Bridge to Terabithia is when one of the main characters Leslie Burke dies. This made me feel empathy for both the readers and the characters in the book because they will never see her again. That is my blog about empathy.

Breadwinner

Imagine living in a country where women and girls were not allowed to leave the house without a man. Imagine having to wear clothes that cover every part of your body including your face with something called a burqa.

If I had to cover myself head to toe with something called a burqa, I would not be that happy because the climate in Afghanistan is always SO hot. Also you would have to wear it all the time and every where you go. I imagine it would be hard to breathe and you would have only limited space to see around you. It would be hard to walk and I think that I would have to walk everywhere. With a burqua, you can't see when people are smiling, sad and angry. I think that I would feel stiff, have difficulty moving and always worry about staying covered in public. It would be hard to tell my family and friends apart if they were all dressed the same. Overall, if I had to cover myself with a burqa, I would feel invisible.

Holocaust Survivor Dr. Eva Olsson

Imagine being lined up with everyone you love and you are told to go in one direction and everyone else has to go the other way. How would you feel? Not even being able to say "I love you" for the last time. If I was Eva I would feel scared because you don't know where your mom is. And then, someone comes up to you and tells you to give your niece to someone who is old. This was a little girl who Eva promised her sister that she would take care of. How could she give her away to a stranger? That is what she did, and it saved her life because all the people with their children were killed. Also 65 or so years later it still makes Eva sad to think of the loss of her mother and father.




I am wondering how Eva got the picture of her mother and father. I think she is lucky to still have a picture of them. Was there a secret hiding spot in their house that they kept pictures so no one but the family members knew about? I wonder if her sister is still alive and how they found each other after the war without today's technology.




Overall, during Eva's speech, I felt touched because she could talk to my school about how she survived the Holocaust. One thing that my school did was sing Happy Birthday to her and give her flowers which made Eva so happy that she cried!

MS Team Building Day!

On October 19th, Grades 6, 7 and 8 went to Norval for a team building day where we learned to work as a group to finish the tasks that we were assigned. One of the things that my team did well at was everyone was helping to achieve the goal to finish that task. When we were at the activity where you had to get the tire off the king's finger, everyone was helping out somehow to make sure that Thomas was safe all of the time when he was off the ground getting the tire. We manged to get the tire off and Thomas was safe. With still more than half of the time left, our group leader told us that we could put the tire back on the king's finger. So everyone decided to have me go up and put the tire up because I was the lightest in the group. As a group we managed to get the tire on and off.

During the zig-zag activity, where you had to go on the four planks to get to the end, it was my turn and I tried to use the rope to help me across the planks but the rope seemed to make me fall off the planks. So I overcame this problem by holding out my hands like I was on a balance beam. As I started to cross the first plank again, holding my hands out seemed to work, then I decided to do it for the whole time which seemed to help me balance. My group leader told me after that he thinks the rope was not helping me balance as much as holding my hands out. That was so true what he said.

My overall impression of MS Team Building Day is that it was better than grade 6. It was better than grade 6 because we got to do more exciting activities. Also my group worked well together. The people in my group were Jamie, Hayley, Brenna, Emma, Darcy, Wilks, Thomas, Ethan, Eric and Robert. Overall MS Team Building Day was good.