Day 5: Here to stay

Activity 1: Persistent Pollution

In 2016, the World Health Organisation announced that Timaru, a small town in the South Island of New Zealand, had the highest recorded levels of air pollution in New Zealand. Some of this pollution was caused by natural events (eg. fires) but most of it was produced (made) by humans.

Watch this short video on air pollution. It will tell you more about natural and human causes of pollution.

On your blog, share three new things that you learned about air pollution from this video.

Algae is a natural cause of pollution. I never knew that.

4 of the causes of global warming is carbon dioxide, Methane, Nitrous oxide and Fluoridated gasses.

There is 2 causes of smog, Sulphurous (caused by burning coal which is used for steam trains) and photo chemicals (also known as ground level ozone, is caused when sunlight, nitrogen oxide, volatile organic compound is mixed together).


Activity 2: Changing Climates

Over the past decade, the climate in New Zealand (and around the world) has been changing. In fact, the climate has been getting warmer and warmer. While many of us like warm weather, climate change is not good news. Higher temperatures can cause glaciers to melt (leading to flooding) and increase the amount of rain that falls.

Here in New Zealand, we have noticed the change. In fact, we sometimes have torrential (huge) rain storms causing flooding, landslides and road closures. When it starts to rain really hard, Aronui and I usually hide out in our lounge and play games like Yahtzee, Monopoly and Uno. If it rains all day, we will also spend some time reading, watching movies and baking.

What about you? What do you like to do on a rainy day?  

On your blog, tell us about five things that you like to do when it is too rainy to go outside.

Play on my iPad (if the rain hasn't caused the wifi to stop). Otherwise, colouring in my colouring book.

Writing important things that I need to do during the week (yes, I do that).

Cleaning my room, making it more organised (and yes, I do that too)

Reading books (mostly my Rick Riordan books)

Drawing or organising in general :)

Activity 3: Let It Rain

Over the past few decades, we have seen an increase in the amount of rain that falls here in New Zealand. We are lucky, however, that most of the rain that falls is regular rainwater and not polluted acid rain. Acid rain is rain that has bad chemicals (pollutants) in it. When acid rain hits the ground it can enter the water system, killing plants and animals. Click here to learn more about acid rain.

Let’s imagine that New Zealand was hit by a massive acid rain storm. Acidic rain fell for three days and three nights. When the rain fell, you stayed inside with your friends and family. When it stopped, however, you and your family decided to go for a walk outside. You opened the door and...

On your blog, write a short story about what happened when you opened the door and walked outside after the acid rain storm. To earn full points, you must write a story that is 8 – 10 sentences long.

We opened the door and took our first look for the first time in 3 days and it was as if we stepped into a whole different work. The lush green grass was no longer vibrant green. It looked as if the temperature had risen by a 1000 degrees. It look the same for the trees. Animal carcasses were littered around trees. The only animals that we alive were pets. The trees also looked like they had been baked with only the skeletons remaining. The beach no longer had any water (now this would of definitely would of upset me if this was really because I'm a water baby) which looked like we wouldn't be swimming in any time. Our faces were full of sadness. We all wished we had the power to reverse time.

Next week is the last week of SLJ 😞