Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II is coming up on her 91st birthday this year. So to commemorate her, I chose to recognize the changes she has made since she was queened, and before that.

In 1926, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born to the Duke and Duchess of York. Her father was the second son of the king, making her the third in line for the throne. When King George V passed on, her uncle Edward VIII became king. But that did not last very long, since he abdicated later that year, making her father the king, and her heir presumptive.

She, not unlike a lot of young girls, participated in Girl Guides, doing similar stuff they do today.

When she was almost 18, parliament modified the law so that she could be one of the five Counsellors of State if something were to happen to her father, or his absence.

In 1945, she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service, trained as a mechanic and driver. Five months later she was promoted to honorary junior commander.

In 1951, King George’s health started to deteriorate. Elizabeth more frequently had to step into his place at public events. Then, in February of 1952, the king passed, so Elizabeth was made queen. She chose to keep her name, instead of choosing a new regnal name.

Elizabeth also modernized the monarchy. She has welcomed the end of the Civil List, cut some formalities, and made some sites and treasures more accessible to the public.

Elizabeth is a role model, and a wonderful Queen of Canada, the Uk, Australia, and others.

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Destination Imagination Provincials

My DI regionals post shows a brief outline of DI. Please check it out.

Imagination of 5 was an amazing group of people, including Melanie as Citrine the yellow goddess, Luca as Amethyst the purple goddess, Syrah as Charcoal the weather goddess, Sophia as the narrator, and yours truly as Emerald the Green goddess. We worked very hard on this project, although it was a long and hard process, starting in late January. Let me explain exactly how it worked.

Destination Imagination is a educational non-profit organization that encourages kids from preschool to high school to think outside the box. There are six different categories, which include fine arts, scientific, outreach, engineering, improv and technical. They each have a different set of perimeters. For example, fine arts, the challenge we chose, had to have a colourful character, a vanishing act using a technical theatre effect, a disappearance of a single colour, and a story. Every team (other than the improv group) also had to create two team choice elements, showcasing your interest and talents. It seems like a lot, right? Well, it’s not. There’s still so much left to your imagination. Also known as ‘omg I have no idea what we are going to do for this I have no imagination left!’. That happened to our group quite a few times.

We made a lot of changes from regionals to provincials. For one, our team choice elements didn’t score very well. So we decided to redo them. One of our things was our costumes. They were Greek toga-like things with headpieces. Melanie and I had to change in the middle of the presentation, so we put a lot of effort into them. That’s why we wanted them as our team choice elements. We improved them by sowing the pieces together, making them easier to put on. We also hot-glued the ends of the headpieces together. This enhanced the costumes quite a bit, giving us a much greater score.

Our other team choice element in the regionals was music. I played the song ‘True Colours’ on ukulele at the end of the performance. But, we didn’t end up having enough time in the performance, so that didn’t work out to well. For provincials, we decided to dump that as our team choice element and go with something completely different(we still did play music, but it wasn’t our TCE). Our new idea was a staff to give to charcoal when she became a colour god again. So we found a stick, put a lightning bolt on it,

Put a light in it, wrapped it in tissue paper, and ta da! It may not sound like much, but we put a lot of effort into it. The lightning bolt is a coat hanger that I unbent, measured, bent some more, cut up, and glued. It was really difficult, but worth it.

We also added a few extra props, including an amulet for Citrine, a wand for Emerald, and, er, I think that’s it. Oh, and we totally changed the script.

I think we did a much better job this time. The tournament was much easier this time. We were calm, we knew the basic flow of things, and got to watch a few other performances. Now finally, scores.

So, as you know, we came in third in the regionals tournament. At this stage, we did much better pertaining to the performance, but our instant challenge did not fair as well. All in all! WE CAME SECOND AND HAVE THE CHANCE TO GO TO GLOBALS!!!! We’re not going to, because $$$, but it’s still cool to know we could’ve.

Poetry Ploof

Poetry is very interesting. I like to write poetry. But when we are confined to one topic, it’s very difficult. So of course, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing.

Haiku. Juxtaposition. Onomatopoeia. Various other terms we started with.
Every class, we would learn a few new poetry terms. Then we read a few poems, answered a few questions. For homework, we would have a poem. This continued for about two weeks. But the catch was, all the poems had to be about worldview. This was very difficult for me because worldview isn’t a topic I am overjoyed with. It was a learning experience for me, writing about things I had no interest in. It was very difficult at first, but by the 7th, I had gotten the hang of it.

All of the poems we created are going into books, using Book Creator. These, once edited, will then be transferred into iBooks, where people will be able to download them.

From this project, I learned how to work with topics I don’t like. I also learned many different poetry terms and poetry styles!

Here’s my book: