school holiday summary

holiday topics:

English/History:

For English/History I have been watching a series called Roots, i'm learning about slavery. In Roots we are following a character named Kunta Kinte, the story starts in West Africa where Kunta is training to be a Mandinka warrior. His father, Omoro names him in a naming ceremony and he tells him "You must always honour your ancestors." 

Kunta is captured and enslaved, he is taken on a ship with the other slaves, there is a mutiny where Kunta and the others try to take over the ship. It fails and "uncle" gets killed. The ship arrives in america and Kunta gets sold to a horrible American man. He escapes by joining the 'Red Coats', the English soldiers are fighting the American soldiers. They offer him his manumission papers which means he will be free. During the battle he flees but is captured. The American chops his toes off to stop him running away, he also gives him lashes (whips him) because he wont accept his slave name, Toby, because his name is important to him, he was given it by his father and he wants to remember his roots.
I am also reading a book called 'The Book Of Negroes'

Science:

I have been learning about cells, we did an experiment with agar in petri dishes, after that we took swabs from lots of different things around the house. We were surprised how much bacteria grew in things that we thought should be really clean such as plates, dishwasher and a tv remote! Not quite so surprising was my feet, the swab from my toes went completely black in the end it was one of, if not the worst swab of therm all.

Photography:

I watched a documentary on Vivian Maier.
Vivian was a Nanny, she took hundreds to thousands of pictures during her life but nobody knew that she was such a fantastic photographer until after her death when a man bought a job lot of her films.