A week ago we watched a video of a girl named Alma, We were asked to do a perspective writing piece.

I stroll down an alleyway, posters of missing children are hung up. I look to my right and see a black board. I see the names of my friends. I write my name on the board, the screeching sounds hurt my ears, I drop the chalk. A small squeaking sound alerts me. I look behind me, a doll is displayed in the window. Eerily the doll is my splitting image. I curiously walked closer to the window wiping condensation off of the glass, I gaze at the doll. I looked down to compare our outfits, to my surprise the doll disappeared. I hurry toward the door, I peer inside, the doll is sitting on a table surrounded by other dolls. I try to open the door , the door is locked. I keep trying, it won’t open. Out of frustration I picked up some snow, created a snowball then threw it at the door. Giving up I walk away disappointed. I hear a bell chime then comes a creak… the door opens.

I push the door open, walking in. There’s a sudden chill in the atmosphere, hundreds of porcelain dolls staring at me with glass eyes. I see the doll. I try to grab it, she vanishes. I look around . The sudden sound of wheels catches my attention, I look down to find a doll on a tipped over bike, I place it upright, it zooms past me. It heads for the door, the door slams shut “ was it trying to escape?” I thought out loud . My doll appears again , it is sitting on top of a shelf. I climb on top of a table. Stretching my arm out attempting to grab it. I touch the doll.

As soon as I touch the doll, I begin to feel hazy, I black out, little snippets of dolls appear, they stare at me . I open my eyes, everything is magnified, my eyes feel like circles. My face feels like porcelain. “Why am I not on the ground?” I look around at where I’m sitting, I’m sitting on a shelf. I hear ticking sounds coming from beside me, I turn, dolls stare at me with their glassy eyes. That’s when I realized… all of these dolls.. Are children… so am I..

Last week, we made a table with how families in Ukraine relate to me. This table included Hope, Kindness,Family and Sacrifice. 

Our recent reading this week was to learn about how mothers in the Ukraine are protecting their children and family from the horrors of war. The story is called “We Are Going On A Holiday” from the NZ Herald. We created a “role on the wall.” On the inside of the drawing we described how the refugee child felt, on the outside we described why they felt this way.

I made it to the diving place, I could hear the clip clopping on white tiles and splashing “is there a pool” I thought. I started trotting forward trying to catch up with the group. Moving forward I notice a black little cube in the corner of my eye. I move closer and realize it’s a camera watching our every move. Posing for the camera before my friend Ellma pulls me back by my ears while Lupe’s laughing in the background. I quickly trot forward with the rest of the group. We get to this spiral looking path that leads up, the smell of the chemicals of the chlorine hits my senses, my ears are twitching in anticipation, my tail is wagging, I hear my heavy breathing.

The silence in disturbed by Ellma and Lupe arguing in the back about who gets to go dive first. I move in between them “stop arguing you two!” I said, they stop arguing, Ellma kicks my hoof and laughs.  Laughing with her, but inside I am crying and screaming in pain. We clopped along the spiral ramp and  came to a sudden halt. I realised that everyone had moved behind me “I guess I’m supposed to run up?” I gather my confidence and sprint forward.  Hearing the fast clip clopping rhythm, my heart races as I near the end of the diving board. My friend Ana is waiting to flip me, I could tell that she was nervous too.

I leap forward and grab onto her, she flips me over. I see the ceiling moving downwards as I start to flip backwards. I look back and see the glistening water nearing closer and closer. I’m about to hit the water, I shut my eyes SPLASH.  Hitting the water, I hear my friends cheering for me in the background. Their sounds were like murmurs as the water slowly filled my ears. I was about to swim towards the stairs leading out of the pool but I was too relaxed. I tried to float but I can’t get the hang of it, “how do those humans do it” I think to myself. trying again I finally get it. The water slowly drifts me away. I begin to feel sleepy and realize I am sinking. The water is filling my lungs, stopping my ability to breath. I quickly paddle towards the surface but I can feel some sort of invisible weight on me, “isn’t water supposed to make me weightless.” I am exhausted.

I make it to the stairs, my body lifting out of the water. I line up with my group, and we march to the edge of the pool. We all lean down to have some water, the water was kind of salty, I was too thirsty to care. With every step I make my breathing becomes heavier, my legs are aching, I feel as if I was going to lay down and sleep. We gallop towards the exit. Outside the sky was a gradient mix of pink,orange and yellow. I reflected on the event that happened today, “let’s not come back again.”

For our last challenge today we made 2 structures, first we made a flying fox, it was hard but we managed even though we didn’t get much points we were still kind of happy with it, the only problem with the flying fox was that it couldn’t really carry the weight of the flying fox trolley and the aluminium bars weren’t really stable. For our last project we made a swing, to be honest the swing was quite easy it just needed a few adjustments. during our Epro8 challenges I learnt new things, I learnt how to make different structures and constructions.

For our challenge today we made a caveman car. Now, when I first heard of the caveman car I was nervous but, when we started to build it, it wasn’t so hard, Once we had finished we raced our car against others, we won on the first 2 races but, then when others started to come, we started losing. I had so much fun.

This week we were introduced to EPro8. EPro8 is an engineering program where we get to build things. Last week we started by making crane. It was confusing and hard at first but then it got easier, we would add different things to the construction.

Once we had finished we were very proud of what we made.

Starting off with our 2 freeze frames,  we started with trudging away from our bombed homes then finished off with Peter and his father resting peacefully. We were asked questions of how we felt creating a vocab list for our writing piece. We were given 15 minutes to write this.

We trudged past the forest, my hunched over, my legs are aching, I hear the faint sounds of bombs. I’m shivering from the coldness, I look at other children around me, I look at them, emptiness was all I could see. My stomach grumbles, my throat is dry of dehydration. My hands are blistered. My feet are numb. My shoes are worn out. With every step my legs start to shake. I am worried that that the soldiers will come for us.