by Alex -

Week 8: Holidays!

Hello, and welcome back or if you are new, welcome to my blog!

For this week, one of the tasks asked us to write about the holidays that our families celebrate. 

My family and I may not religious but, we still celebrate holidays like Christmas, Halloween and Easter. But, for this  In this part of my post, I will only be doing holidays that my family celebrates in December. I will explain those holidays in detail and possibly, if my family and I have any specific traditions. So let’s just jump into it!

Christmas!

Now, this holiday is very important to my family and is also the one that we celebrate the most. We put up lots and lots of decorations inside and outside of the house, we get a huge Christmas tree and decorate it until there is absolutely no space left on the tree! 

To prepare for Christmas, my family and I try to get our Christmas tree in the first week or so of December. We also get our lights up and start shopping for presents! The past two years or so, we have adopted a mini elf that named Fred that hides somewhere different every night and we find it in the morning We also buy those sort of “boxes” that have chocolates in them and each day counting down from the 1st of December, we get a chocolate. 

On the night of Christmas Eve, we go to a friends house for a party. We eat, drink (JUICE) and watch a movie, most of the time it’s Polar Express. 

On Christmas morning, first, we make a fire, then get comfy and start unwrapping our presents! We start with the stocking stuffers, then have breakfast, open the big presents and Skype my grandparents who live in Quebec. For the rest of the day, we all play, dance and do a lot of other fun things! Later that day, we also have dinner with my aunt and uncle. 

Boxing Day!

On the 26th of December, which is Boxing Day, we have a big dinner with my whole family: cousins, 2nd cousins, aunts, uncles, etc! 

New Year’s Eve!

For New Years, my family and I usually go and celebrate it with our family friends. One year, we went to Penticton at our friend’s apartment and celebrated it there, dancing and singing all the way till midnight! Another year, we went to Sun peaks to watch the fireworks then go get some ice cream!

For the 2nd part of this post, I chose to give my blog a holiday makeover! Here is the before and after. 

That’s all for now!

-Lexie😆

by Alex -

Week 7: Your Choice!

Hello, and welcome back or if you are new, welcome to my blog!

For this week’s challenge, it’s catching up week and/or we can write about whatever we want! So, I decided to talk about my very favourite sport, drum role please…….Soccer! I have been playing this sport for 9 years now, and it takes out a big part of my life. I now dedicate 5 days out of my week to soccer. 

For my first 7 years of playing soccer, I was on a team called the Jungle Cats, had lots of fun there, made lots of friends and my coach taught and helped me through a lot. Now, for my second year, I am playing with a selects soccer team called the Fury. 

At the end of grade 5, it was the year to try out for selects which is a higher level of soccer. They had two levels: gold 2 and gold 1. I was looking forward to trying out but, this was the one year where I actually started to take soccer a little more seriously. 

Once, I found out that I hadn’t made selects that year, I was pretty devastated. It made me sad, that’s certainly no surprise! I took this as a learning experience which meant that next season, I would have the chance to try better and possibly make it the next year! My dad kept telling me: “if at first, you don’t succeed, try, try, again”. 

Grade 6, was where I really shinned, I scored about 20 goals that season, even with about 8 games canceled due to icy roads and snow covered fields. I got called up to a gold 2 team named the Bandits and played a few soccer games with them. 

At the end of that season was the second chance to try out for selects soccer. This time, they added silver and metro levels. The order goes like this: silver, gold 2, gold 1 and metro as the highest level. The tryouts lasted for about a week. 

 

A couple weeks later, I found out that I had made silver for that season! I was very happy and excited to play in a higher level. When I met my team mates, they were all super nice and friendly which made me super excited to play along side them during games. We called ourselves, the Fury. 

That year (grade 7), we won two tournaments in total, winning gold in the coastal cup against our arch nemesis, Squamish. Even though I only scored 2 goals, that year. 

This year, my team moved up to gold 2, since we won our division. Even now, we are better than the two gold 1 teams and also won a div 1 tournament, bc soccer has decided to not move us up. We also have not had any loses yet. I am so glad to be on this team and have scored 4 goals this season so far!

Thank you so much and I will see you in my next blog post! 

-Lexie😊

by Alex -

Awesome images #2

This post is kind of like the “sequel” to my previous awesome images post. Once again, we are learning how far we can go beyond photography. For this task, we have been looking at portraits.

For our first activity we had to shoot self-portraits, we got to try different angles, integrate props and go hands-free while using the timer! Here are some of my favourites:

For our second activity, we got to make a portrait where we positioned our subject in different locations, compose our shot, work with our subject, getting creative and applying filters. Here are my favourite pictures from this activity:

For activity number 3, we got to create a silhouette portrait. The instructions said to backlight our subject which would make it a lot easier to edit. Here is mine:

For our last and final assignment and my personal favourite, we got to either recreate an old photo or an old painting of some sort. I obviously chose to recreate an old photo. Here it is:

To conclude, I have really enjoyed doing some sort of “photo shoot” because I found it pretty fun and exciting.

P.S.: Go check out my friends and classmate’s blog that are featured in some of these photos. Kira, Kaia, Meg, Ally, Rhiann and Felix.

Thank you so much for reading my post and I hope to see you in my next one!

-Lexie😁

by Alex -

Week 6: Science!

For this week, we needed to ask ourselves a scientific question of our choice. My question is: why is sugar so addictive and how does it affect the human body? I chose this question because, I have to admit, that I am a sweet tooth which means that I love eating things with sugar or that are sweet and so, I wanted to find out why I love it so much, even more than vegetables. 

The second step for this weeks task is that we need to find a video about our subject that we find interesting. Here is mine. 

The video concludes that having an over consumption of sugar can have adictive affects on the brain but, having a chocolate cake every once and a while won’t hurt you.  

Last step is to do two truths and a lie. Here is the link. 

by Alex -

Awesome images Reflection

In my PLP class,  we are looking at photography. We got the oppurtunity to enhance our creativity and photography skills by using different angles, lighting,etc.

Activity 1: Photograph something familiar

For this activity, we would be choosing a familiar object and examining it to look at how changes in light and perspective impact the photo. Then, we take as many photos as we can so that after we can look at them and choose our favorites! The more angles, difference in focus and exposure and locations, the better!

Activity 2: Take a photo walk

For this activity, just like what it says in the title, we go on a photo walk. But, not just any photo walk, a THEMED photo walk! We take photos of things that have something in common. I chose to do different paterns and textures!

Activity 3: Tweak, edit and adjust

In this activity, we got to tweak and edit some photos that didn’t turn as well as we hoped. We got to enhance, straighten, rotate, crop or doodle on our pictures, where we can do just dirrectly on the photos app on our iPads! For the picture that I chose, I thought that it didn’t have very much exposure from the sun so I enhanced it’s brightness and put on a filter to make it…this!

Project: Create a personified picture

For our final task, we got to take the picture that we had just edited or another if we choose and bring it to life! So to give us more inspiration, we had to imagine what this everyday object might say or do it it were alive.   In order to bring this object to life, we can use markup in the photos app on our iPads. We are not allowed “app smashing” since our teacher wants to see our skills with only one tool.

 

Thank you so much for reading! I hope to see you in my next post!

-Lexie😊

by Alex -

Week 5: Similarities and Differences

Hi! Welcome back to another blog post! For this week’s task I have created a servey for you to complete. It is asking you what your favorite school subject is. You can make your own too! All you need to do is click here and then then click on the blue button and  after you complete the options, it’s done! Here is the link to my servey, if you can, please complete it!

Thank you! I’ll see you in my next post!

by Alex -

Oregon Field Study Reflection

There is only one word to describe this trip: AMAZING. I learned a ton about marine life, earthquakes, tsunamis and other wildlife.

I also became really close to everyone in my PLP class and especially had lots of fun with them! One of the things that I really love about the PLP program or this field school in general, is that we learn lots and work really hard but, still have a lot of fun along the way. I used to not think that was possible, but this program has proven me wrong. Even though I missed my family, I still wish it wasn’t over. 

Everyday, I wake up with a smile on my face, super excited to go to school in this amazing program called PLP. Except during the weekends, because I want them to be over as soon as possible. It’s not just the program that makes it so amazing, the teachers and other students as well make this especially fun. 

Here are the highlights of my trip including best food, best activities, best beaches and some pictures!

Best food/restaurants

John’s incredible pizza company 

 

I’ve got to admit, the food sure was pretty INCREDIBLE, especially the pizza! I really like the whole buffet concept too, it was separated in different categories: desserts, pizza, pasta and more!

Golden Corral 

The food there was delicious, the pizza, pasta, salad, everything! Guess what, they also had a chocolate fountain where you could dip all sorts of desserts: brownies, marshmallows, strawberries and more!

Pig ‘n’ pancake

It says it in the name, as you can tell, pig ‘n’ pancake is pretty well known for it’s…pancakes! Trust me, I tried them and… one word to describe it: DELICIOUS! I definitely recommend going if you happen to be near Cannon Beach in Oregon!

Best activities

Highlife Adventures

In this picture, it’s one of my classmates, Emily. Go check out her blog!

I mean, why wouldn’t this be in my top three activities in this trip?!? Do you know what highlife adventures does? If not, here it is, ZIP LINING!!! It says it itself, it was sooo fun!  At the end, we even had the opportunity to get dunked in their lake (and of course I did!)! Highlife Adventures was also the company that my group (Noah, Brenton and Lauren) advertised for our oregon business ad. There is not much more to say about it, it was amazing and definitely worth it! 

John’s incredible pizza company

Yes, John’s incredible pizza company was that good to also be in the best activities list. Do you know why? It’s because John’s incredible pizza company is not just a buffet restaurant, it is also a sort of version of Chucky Cheese, if you don’t know what Chucky cheese it is basically a place with also lots of games to play to get tickets or to use them. There were some bumper cars games, Wack-a-mole and other arcade games! 

Tillamook 

Tillamook is basically a place where they make and sell dairy products (ice cream, yogurt and most famous for their cheese). I really enjoyed learning about cheese and being able to experience and see how they make it so perfect. Fun fact: I am actually lactose and tolerant which means that I cannot digest dairy products very well. Does this mean that I have gone living my life without eating any milk, ice creams, cheese, etc?? No! Of course not! Also, because I’m part French-Canadian, I eat quite a lot of cheese! 

Best beaches

Peter Iredale

Like all the beaches that we went to, they were beautiful and had an even more beautiful sunset. It was pretty “romantic” if you tell me, but, that doesn’t exactly interest a type of 13 year old girl like me. For me, the highlight of this beach visit was not just the beautiful sunset, but, we also ate some delicious Costco pizza for dinner over there! Now THAT is awesome. 

Cannon beach

This beach was also very pretty just like all the other beaches that we went to.  Also, funny story, our teacher was telling us NOT to turn our backs to the water when we are very close to it because if we do, there could be a wave that could get you soaked. Guess what? Two people in my class did not do what our teacher said to do and got soaked! It was pretty hilarious! 

Beverly beach

Beverly beach was also very very fun to hang around at. The teachers gave us a lot of freedom so we were allowed to go anywhere we wanted as long as the teachers could see us. Beautiful sunset as well! 

Also please check out my book to see some more fun things that I did in Oregon!

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in my next blog post!

-Lexie 😁

by Alex -

Oregon Buisness Ad Reflection

With my PLP class, we recently just went to Oregon for a field school, you can see my reflection on the trip here. Just like for the Deep Cove business ad, we were given a business that we would be visiting in Oregon and got to create an ad for that business.  The buisness that we got was Highlife Adventures which is if you don’t know, a zip lining place.  

My group and I got the chance to interview the owner of highlife adventures so we could learn a little more about the company and what they would want in their ad. Here is our notes that we took during the interview:

Oregon business ad draft #1

I think that this ad was pretty clean and a little professional looking. On the other hand, nothing is ever perfect at first, there is always something to improve on.  

For our first draft, it was our teacher Ms. Willemse who gave us the feed back on how to improve our ad. She told me to:

-have the “zip into a life long adventure” put into an angle 

-To move the “don’t forget to check out our restaurant” at the bottom

– To make the logo bigger and move to the top corner

– And to change the picture because it looks like one of the people in the picture are scarred. 

Oregon business ad draft #2

I think that I definitely improved on my second draft. I fixed/changed everything that I needed to and that was the feedback that Ms. Willemse gave me. 

This time, we got feedback from our class mates: one that’s positive, one negative, and a question. Here are the things that I need to change:

-make info bigger

-a little less blur

-add website link

Oregon business ad draft #3

In this draft, it didn’t change that much. Even though I did make the info bigger, make it a little less blurry and ad the website link. But still, I felt like there was something that I needed to  change to make the ad “perfect”. 

Oregon business ad draft #4 (Final)

Last draft, well for this draft, we didn’t get any feed back, it was up to us! I felt that something on my ad wasn’t right. So, I experimented with sizes, places, etc. The ad still wasn’t perfect! One of my group members recommended this font app that he used and that worked really well called Typorama. Now I knew that it was perfect! Also, I removed the “also, check out our restaurant” because I thought that it was too much text. Ms. Willemse told me that I had improved a lot and that I did not need to make any more drafts! 

Conclusion 

To conclude, this was a really fun and interesting project to do. I really love that we can get the chance to be creative and be in the place of an advertiser, to experience what they do best.  

Thank you so much for reading! See you in my next blog post! 

-Lexie 😁