In Language Arts class this year, we read a book called The Westing Game in which one of the characters named Turtle, invested in stocks. As a project, we “invested” $20,000 fake dollars into stocks. I invested in The Boeing Company, Nike inc., General Electric, Elf Beauty inc., LVMH Moët Hennessy, and Prime All Shares. Overall, I made $5,983.52 which was the most in my class. We recorded our stocks over time in Google Sheets, in which one of our math teachers, Mrs. Sprague helped us input the formulas for our stocks. The stock that won me the most money was LVMH Moët Hennessy which won me $5,917.66. The stock that lost me the most money was Nike inc., which lost me $239.96. Overall, the stock market was really fun, though very unpredictable, so go start investing in some stocks!
Books From This Year
The first book I am going to be talking about is The Last Cuentista which is about a girl who evacuates earth and has to escape the people on her ship who want to erase all memories of earth. The book was about the importance of keeping stories you have from the past. I think this message is really important because stories from the past can teach you things, and help you deal with problems better in the future.
The next thing I am going to be talking about is the ideal world project we did. I have already made a blog post on that where you can read my whole ideal
world but I am just going to touch on the process of making it. When my teacher first told me we would be doing an ideal world, I was ecstatic because I had already designed one. Or well, just one town of one. It was really fun, designing my dream economic system and people and geography.
The next thing I am going to talk about is making a book. The first thing we had to do was start printing and coloring floral patterns onto paper. The only thing I wished I had done was make more and different colors, only because I didn’t fully realize what the purpose of that was. The next thing we did was fold and cut out our books so that we could have a foldout design in our books. I also wrote a story about how I got my name, and added it in the back of my book. In my inside scene, I added all my floral prints and collages them inside. My ideal world was supposed to be the scene inside it. My name story takes place in New York so around my collage I added the skyline of New York.
These are all the book projects I have done so far this year. I think they were all really fun, and I hope you decide to try out one of these too!
Ted-Like Talk
The title of my Ted Talk and slides
One of the final projects we did in my Language Arts class was the Ted-Like Talk, which was basically a “Ted Talk” presentation in front of the class. My topic was about motivation because I believed it to be a key skill everyone should know in life. For preparation, we had a checklist for all the things we should do before presenting, including practicing, printing speaker notes, or memorizing our speech. My presentation was all about the basics of motivation, what it is, how to do it, and I also connected one of the Ted Talk videos in class we had watched to one of my key points to help the people in my class understand the concept better. All in all, I was ultimately very nervous to present but by now, I am glad I did it, if not only for the practice in public speaking. Thank you for reading!
Movement
One of my favorite classes is Movement. In my school, we have trimester rotations of different electives. I have done Theater, Computer Science, Chorus, Art, and now Movement. Next, I will do Band. In seventh grade, we will get to choose one elective we will do all year. I love Movement because I am a serious ballet dancer. I dance four days a week for 1 hour, 30 minutes at my studio, Barriskill Dance School. I have been dancing since I was four. My most recent performance was The Nutcracker in December. I played one of Drosselmyer’s elves, which if you are familiar with the story, is his “helper”. In my dance, the other elves and I were preparing the dolls for the show on Christmas Eve at the party Clara’s family was hosting. In Act 2 I was part of the Marzipan corps who performed for Clara and the Prince. Our next performance is Peter Pan, in the spring. In this, I play one of the baby crocodiles of Tick Tock Crocodile. I love Movement because it is a class where we dance all styles. I also like helping my classmates with a particular step. Right now, we are working on our final projects. I do my final project with my classmates Emmy, Taylor, and Jake who’s blogs you can find on the side bar. These are all the reasons why I love Movement and a bit about my dancing.
My Perfect World
There are a lot of problems in our world. So this is my new world, the former Kepler-186f that orbits around the star Kepler-186. The planet is now named Cirreliotropatus, derived from the two words heliotrope and cirrostratus. Locals call it Planet Cir. The planet was named for its sky, a faded heliotrope color with Cirrostratus clouds, creating a marbled sky. There is one sun in the day and in the night the sky has two moons named Faye and Altair. Altair is a huge moon hovering over the horizon, and taking up about one fourth of it. Faye, the moon that is about eight times smaller than Altair floats in front of Altair at the top left corner.
In the southeast, there are many farms and fields creating a patchwork pattern if you look at it from above, sheltered by low mountains and hills. This is where the majority of the food was made. There were many crops grown in the fields and backyard gardens the villagers tended to. There was a farmers market every fortnight where the farmers met about the most recent crop plagues and swapped tips. The farmers also raised and herded sheep, pigs, horses, and cows. The farmers sold them around the globe for work, making sure who they were giving the animal to and that it would be well cared for. The farmers were also experienced enough to not help them so much that they couldn’t survive on their own.
Cir’s southwest was mainly islands and lagoons and beaches. There were five main islands with 28 others littered around them. The five main ones were called Cerulean Lagoon, Snow Beach, Hanging Cliffs, Land of Spice, and The Port. The Port was where all the fish were caught and where goods and ships came in hourly. Land of Spice was a broken circle of island with such a salty sea inside, that you could walk on the water, being supported by the salt. The island itself held numerous herbs and spices that were cultivated by the villagers there. Hanging cliffs was the most dangerous island, with rocks and land jutting up all throughout with waves of turmoil crashing against them. Snow Beach and Cerulean Lagoon were the main tourist attractions, with lakes of silverfish, white, soft sand beaches, and boardwalks all throughout and connecting the two islands.
In the northeast, there are many lush forests with rivers winding through. This was the most rainy climate, with warm showers frequent. There were many different species of trees and plants, some poisonous and fatal, some helpful and can easily be made into a medicine. The ones that were both the villagers really had to look out for. They lived their lives in treehouses with vine walkways connecting them; their whole city was above ground.
The northwest is the complete opposite with marbled russet, gold, orange, brown, and beige dunes and canyons. Some villages lived in the sheltered canyons but most were in the deserts scattered around. The dunes were the most deadly place to live due to the unpredictable sandstorms that frequented the area.
Cir’s very, very, utmost north is the coldest place on the planet. There are fields of snow with igloos and ski slopes dotted around. Most people who live there live off of their reindeer and the fish they can get from ice fishing. The reindeer provides warm clothes, and things to cushion their igloos with. Sometimes tourists come to visit the crystal caves and underground ice skating rinks but it’s usually only the local nomads. The nomads are the only people of Cir that eat any other meat besides birds and fish, which Cir has an abnormal abundance of.
Cir’s political system is split between the five sections. They all have a representative democracy with five different groups in power for each and a representative for each. If any of them have a conflict with another and it cannot be resolved with the others, they will meet up with the other leaders to discuss and come to a conclusion that will be best for everyone. Each person pays a tax depending on their income. Everyone pays the same percentage but the amounts of money vary to make it affordable. That way, the rich can afford to pay more and the poor don’t go broke. If someone doesn’t have a job or can’t bring in income to feed their family, they will get a sort of “allowance”. The allowance is enough to be able to feed that person and their immediate family, but not enough so the person becomes lazy and can live off the allowance without getting a job. The taxes mainly go toward free healthcare and education and the allowances, but other things too.
In terms of technology, Cir has very advanced technology, although the citizens prefer a simple life without the obsession over it. The technology is used for fast travel and urgent communication between others. Cir also has a complex space program where they can easily travel from the nearby planets. There were no fossil fuels on Cir, so the planet has mile upon miles dedicated to solar and wind farms. Each person does their part to take care of the planet by composting and doing their own recycling. Everything from Cir is made from natural resources such as a plastic-like substance. It is made out of sap from a leaf that when boiled and hardened, it becomes a hard and clear substance.
For Planet Cir’s overall society I would generally describe them as advanced. The people as a whole have not only gotten past the “me versus us” state of mind, but have gotten past the “us versus them” state of mind. This means that although each person belongs to multiple groups of identity, they each respect and admire each other as equals. Everyday as they experience new advancements and beliefs, the people become even more accepting.
This is the society, government, geography, and world that would be perfect for me if I could create my own. Advanced people, Earth’s main problems fixed, this is a land I designed to be adjustable for anyone. What would you change about our world?
Museum of Natural Sciences
This is a picture of my 6th grade class at the Museum of Natural Sciences. The museum has many floors and exhibits on all sorts of things. We looked at fossils, the dinosaur exhibit, animal evolution, weather, pollution, bugs and snakes and other live animals, rocks and minerals, a race exhibit, and many more. The museum held many interactive screens, games, and videos. My favorite exhibit was the pollution one because there was an interactive game my whole group got to play where you had to fix a very bad, polluted town. I liked the museum because there were many different life-sized structures of animals, objects, or concepts. If you need something to do on a random weekend day, the Museum of Natural Sciences is the place to go!
Window vs. Mirror Books
My book, Racing Savannah by Miranda Keneally, is generally a window for me. It’s about a girl named Savannah who moves from Maryland to a farm in Tennessee shortly after her mother dies from breast cancer. She lives with her father and his girlfriend in the staff house at Cedar Hills Farm. She gets a job as an horse exerciser, working with a horse named Tennessee Star. This is a window because I don’t work with horses every day or live on a farm. Usually it doesn’t really matter to me if the book I’m reading is a window or mirror but I would probably rather read a mirror book. I would rather read a mirror book because generally all the problems get solved by the end of the book, right? So, if the character in the book is dealing with problems like mine, then I already have a solution! I like reading window books as well because it helps me have an open mind and learn about other peoples’ problems. This helps me build empathy. This is my take on Window vs. Mirror books!
Book Spine Poem
Its Kind Of a Funny Story:
A Journey to the Center of the Universe,
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,
Earth Born,
Breathless
Antlers
Recently in class we read stories from this book, Wisdom Tales from Around the World. When we were asked to do a project about one tale, I chose to make a comic about the story Antlers. I used the app Ibis Paint X to draw it and then the app Comic Life 3 to add the speech bubbles. Visit these sites if you want to make something similar to this! Anyway, Antlers is a tale about a deer that loves his antlers but hates his spindly legs. He doesn’t realize they are very important until he uses them to run away from some hunters that got too close after his antlers got stuck in a tree. The moral of this story is that even things you do not like have a use. Or that everything has a purpose. I really hope you remember this life lesson because it is really helpful!