Year: 2025

Today, I did the last activity of the Summer Learning Journey from this year. This is the Step It Up version of beak breaking and tongue twisting, and I am back with another tongue twisting video. Instead of just any tongue twister in English, I stepped this up by doing Māori tongue twister in funny voices. In my video that I have made, I voice my normal voice and a weird voice in both Māori and English. A tip on how I made the voices are to just talk abnormally.

Happy New Year to everyone! How do you tongue twist your new year for 2026?

Today I am going to share my Badge Board for the Summer Learning Journey for 2025. Some of the badges were missing from the original posts, so I used Canva to create the missing badges here and added it in the Badge Board. These are my badges for all of the activities I’ve done in 2025 so far. Until then, see you next year!

Happy New Year 2026 to everyone! Enjoy the year ahead!

Today, I did the beak breaking activity on tongue twisters. I watched some people doing a few tongue twisters and then I had to make my own. I was given a selection of tongue twisters to choose from. After choosing, I recorded myself and turned it into a Google Vids. I chose 1 English one from the selection and I also did one in Cantonese that I found from my parents. I decided to do this Cantonese tongue twister because it’s about a spider and its spiderweb which is one of the tasks I did earlier on the start of the Summer Learning Journey. A tip of you are doing a tongue twister is to group the words and practice. This is my tongue twisting video.

How fast can you tongue twist?

Today, I did the Māori Step It Up version of birds. I watched 2 videos and guessed a book. The first video I watched was about the traditional Māori story on the battle of the sea birds and the land birds. The book I read in Te Reo Māori was about different birds, like the owl being a nighttime bird and the pūkeko being a swamp side bird. Because I cannot read Māori, I had to use Google Translate to get an idea on what the book is about. I also watched another video on a Māori story on how the kiwi lost it’s wings.

In the story of how kiwi lost it’s wings, it talks about the kiwi (bird) having wings a long time ago. This guardian said the forest was dying of insects and it needs a bird to sacrifice it’s wings and eat the insects. The kiwi’s bird friends denies the request and only kiwi is left last. Kiwi accepts the sacrifice and becomes a flightless bird. Kiwi also becomes the favourite because the guardian is not pleased with the other birds. The guardian force sad changes to kiwi’s friends and promote kiwi to be the best. Apparently this is why New Zealand goes by “Kiwi”.

After learning about these facts, I crafted a native bird from New Zealand. I used paper and glue. This is my bird penholder, and please try to guess what native bird I have tried to create.

Answer: Hoiho or yellow-eyed penguin.

What is your favourite native bird from your country?

Today, I did the Step It Up version of making a flying thing using nature. It’s just like the kick start activity, but this time, I had to make a story about a day of it’s life to go with it. I made another flying thing with natural materials that can be recycled afterwards. Using food, I made a swan that is very tasty. This is my story of a day in life from the point of view of the swan and a picture of the swan.

Once there was a swan made of fruits and ice cream, and that was me. I had a banana neck, red cherry eyes, rice cracker feathers, ice cream body, pineapple beak and peach neck. I lived on a plate in a café.

There were children coming to see me. They stunned at the sight of the creation of me. “Wow! Look at that swan made of fruits and ice cream!” one child called. I held my model posture proudly, hoping to please them. In my view, they seem to be surprised by my beauty which is exactly what I wanted.

I felt lucky that these children have got here on time. If they came later, I wouldn’t be able to stand the heat from the sunlight, peering through the window. It’s very hard to stop my body from melting into mint chocolate.

Finally, the children graciously devoured me. I kept my proud posture as bite by bite, I was eaten. Tomorrow, a new new life cycle will start again.

Would you prefer to be the child, swan or the café manager that “makes” the swan?

Today, I did the Māori kick start activity on flying. For this activity, I watched a video on a traditional Māori story about the sea birds vs the land birds over food. One bird, called Tītī, thinks there are enough food for everyone so Tītī disagrees with all the other sea birds. After losing the battle they started, Tītī stays with the land birds. Tītī lives in harmony with all the other land birds.

I folded an origami paper bird that is meant to flap it wings as it flies. It’s like a slightly modified paper plane that flaps in the wind. Then, after folding with a video tutorial, I decorated it so it looked like a real bird with genuine chicken feathers. To make a head, I used a singular bay leaf and folded it into a shadow of a head. As the leaf broke and the juice leaked, it filled the house with insect repellent that smell so good. This is my paper bird.

How would you make yours even more realistic than mine?

Today, I did the first activity of the day. As you may guess by the name, I made a bird out of nature and recycled materials. The main materials that I used were bay leaves and chicken feathers, and the other materials were other animal feathers and a coke bottle lid. I started by gathering the feathers into the house. It’s not very good weather here in Christchurch, and it’s been pouring all day long. To avoid getting myself and my creation wet, I did it inside.

The black-ish feathers are real chicken feathers that are from my pet chickens. The white feathers are from my pet ducks. The 1 and only long, brown, spotted feather is a peacock feather from my friend. The bay leaves and some twigs are from my tree. This is my creation of my flying fauna.

Would you like to be a predator or a prey of this bird?

Today, for this afternoon’s Step It Up version of flying, I learnt about how humans tried to copy a flying squirrel’s talent of flying. I found this fact very interesting: there is such thing as wingsuits! I never knew that until now, and after a brief introduction to a wingsuit. I had to pretend to be an engineer, designing and making a model of a wingsuit. Because this was not a real wingsuit and I couldn’t fit in it, I used my squirrel from the kick start activity to pretend to be a mini me. I folded an origami wingsuit and attached my squirrel on top of the wingsuit. Here I am giving a little boost so that my squirrel on the wingsuit can last in the air for about 2 seconds. Above is the wingsuit and my squirrel on the wingsuit. If I could change something for next time, I would definitely like to fly it somewhere not so cramped!

Would you rather be a that squirrel and fly like that or be a human that actually flies in a real wingsuit?

Today, I did the kick start activity on flying squirrels. These cool creatures are rodents that glide from tree to tree in the forest. They are usually found in tropical forests across North America, Central America, Asia (from Siberia to Southeast Asia), and parts of Europe.

Flying squirrels don’t actually fly because they only have a piece of skin that helps them glide. You might not see one either because they don’t live where you live or they could be hiding in their cute, warm nests. Flying squirrels are very shy, and they are nocturnal (night living) creatures. One thing I found very interesting is the fact that flying squirrels have a big tail which helps them with their balance and steering. If it’s tail was gone, it’s flying life would be a lot harder for them!

After I learnt about flying squirrels, my mission for today was to build a model of this mammal. To do this, I found a photo of a flying squirrel and colour printed it. I cut it out, and with the help of my dad, I folded it’s wings and made it have a concept of how the flying squirrels extend/retract it’s wings. I modified it even more by turning that sheet of paper into a flying photo by adding popsicles sticks near the head. I managed to fly it for 2 seconds or so before crashing it head first into the wall. This is my homemade flying squirrel model.

Image being colour printed.

I am cutting the printout.

Wings folded to represent retraction.

Wings extended as if it was flying.

My model is flying!

The badge for this activity.

What other mammals that can glide can you name?

Today, I did the experiments for this week which was on making invisible ink. During the Wednesday meeting, I was challenged by Eleanor to make a hypothesis on what will happen if different liquids were used. A hypothesis is a guess or prediction in science, and when it comes true, the hypothesis becomes a thesis. If a hypothesis doesn’t come true, then someone’s believing in fantasy.

Before starting, I had joined early. Eleanor told me that we were making invisible ink, so I requested about onion. Then, Eleanor challenged be to do a little bit more experiments by testing whether stuff like onion juice and milk work or not, so I tested that today.

On the meeting, we (as in us the people who joined) were asked by Eleanor to write in the comments on some things that may work other then lemon juice. Someone write soap. I wrote stuff like milk and onion. Eleanor suggested vinegar, fruits and probably sour, acidic stuff. She also explained that this is called oxidation. Eleanor described it as the brown in the apple.

The original experiment was using lemon juice, create an invisible picture or writing secret code that disappears, because when lemon juice dries up on paper, it disappears and becomes invisible to the naked eye. What I did as my experiment was drawing with different liquids. I used four different type of liquids. They are lemon juice, milk, onion juice and vinegar. All of them disappeared after drying up.

I tried to use the sun with a magnifying glass to heat up the paper and make the invisible ink reappear. The sun did not work well for all of them. The lemon and onion juices faintly appear under the sunlight and magnifying glass.

I also made another experiment with another sheet of paper which I tried to make the messages reappear with a candle or flame. The results were quite good, but the vinegar didn’t show in the sun or with the flame. Onion juice gave out a delicious fragrant which smells really good, and it made me so hungry that I wanted to eat the onion part of the paper.

In conclusion, sunlight does not work well even with a magnifying glass. Please do not do this test with the magnifying glass without any adult supervision because I managed to set the paper smoking and burn a hole on my piece of paper. I ended up doing two sets of experiments both under the sun and with the flame. These are some photos of my experiments.

How do you communicate a secret message to someone in this modern day world?