A few months ago, I posted a blog showing what my Perfect Planet looked like. We turned the Planet that we created into a book using the essay that we created about our make-believe planet.

We used ink and rollers to make cover pages, and illustrations.

All of these art projects were with Mrs. Peg Gignoux. She was a very nice person and she was very patient with us. She helped us learn how to make collages using plants which was a very fun process. Her website is https://gignouxart.com if you want to know more about her!

The process of making the art was very fun. First, we picked out some fresh plants. Then, we used a roller to roll some ink onto a sheet of paper over the plant. The plant was laid on a jelly plate. Then, you could pick any color of ink and when you rolled hard enough, the imprint of the plant would go onto the paper. This was how we created illustrations! Day 2 was when we got the plant illustrations and we cut them out to glue into a paper that we folded into a book. This was a very fun process to put our book together and make it look good!

I really loved this project!

In this blog, I will tell you about the new book I have read. It’s called The Sun and the Star and it’s from the same world that the Percy Jackson series was in.

This story circles around Nico D Angelo and his adventure through Tarturus to help Bob (a friendly giant). He travels through the dangerous Tarturus with his boyfriend, Will (son of Apollo), which isn’t very good for Will, considering that he lives in and depends on sunshine.

Anyways, how did Nico Di Angelo know that Bob needed his help? Bob transferred his cries for help through Nico’s sleep in the form of nightmares. Nico thought that these nightmares were way too real to even be fake. Nico even was given a prophet from the oracle that made him realize that Bob was actually in grave danger. Through the adventure to and in Tarturus, Will, and Nico faced many challenges that sometimes even damaged their relationship. Both of them still preserved and got to know each other better.

At the end of the book, they successfully got out of Tarturus and were amazing heroes, saving Bob and Little Bob (Bob’s shapeshifting cat).

I think that this wasn’t my favorite book written by Rick Riordan, but it was still very exciting and thrilling to read. You should read this book too!

A few weeks ago, Chamber Theater Productions, a group of fresh college graduates, came to our school.

During their trip to our school, they performed the acts of: ‘The Raven’ ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ ‘The Monkeys Paw’ and ‘The Necklace’. 

Sadly, the 5th and 6th graders (including me), could only see 2 out of the 5 acts because, the other acts are apparently too inappropriate for us 5th and 6th graders.

Anyway, we watched the Monkeys Paw and The Necklace which both of them were amazing and we all enjoyed watching. Let me tell you what the Monkeys Paw was about.

The Monkeys Paw was where a man tampers with magic which leads to having a tragic life. The Man held the Monkeys Paw which allowed him to have any three wishes that he would like. Since he was a greedy man, he asked for 200 pounds. The same night, his son didn’t come back from work, which was unusual for them. Until suddenly, a tall man came in through their front door with terrible information.

He said, “I’m sorry but I have to tell you that you’re son died by getting caught in the machinery. For compensation of your sons death, we would like to give you 200 pounds.”

The parents were in sorrow, and so the Father, once again, used to the Monkeys Paw (still not knowing it was a dangerous weapon) to travel back in time to when his son didn’t have a fateful death yet.

We all really enjoyed Chamber Theater’s performances!

About a month ago during LA class, we finished reading a book called, ‘The Last Cuentista’ by Donna Barba Higuera. In this book, we learned that the characters revolved around stories and cuentos. These stories made up who they are, so in class, we started working on a project called My Story.

The My story project was about some story that your parents told you when you were younger that inspired or changed you in some way. Or, it could be something that happened in your family that you want to tell a story about.

My story is one that my Mom told me about. When my Mom was younger, my Grandma would also tell this story to her, so it’s special to me.

The Lazy Boy

Long ago, there was a boy who was very lazy. He was so lazy that he didn’t even want to move around to do things himself. His mother had to look after and take care of him all of the time. One day, his mother had to go on a business trip that was mandatory for her job. The problem was that the boy was lazy and he never did anything himself, so his mother had to create a solution.
This solution was the best thing she could think of. She decided that she would just put a huge loaf of bread around her son’s neck.
She thought, “This shouldn’t choke him and he would get enough food for the whole 3 days! What a good idea!”
So as a result, the next day right before she left, she cut a hole in the bread and put it around her son’s neck like a necklace. Then she said her farewells and quickly left the house. During her trip, she felt like a free person. She didn’t need to take care of anyone other than her! On the other hand, at home, the son was not doing well. He had only eaten the portion of bread that was close to his mouth, but was too lazy to turn around and get the other parts of the bread.
When the mother came home she found her son so much skinnier with the huge piece of bread still around his neck. She quickly rushed over and was confused on why he didn’t eat the other pieces of bread.
He answered, “I was too lazy to.”

A few weeks ago, a retired NASA astronaut came to our school in Durham to talk about his experience working with NASA and his personal life. He talked about how he started having the love for spaceships and planes, how he got involved with NASA and everything from experience on the spaceship to takeoff and landing. He really taught us so much about what his life as an astronaut was like.

As a kid, he loved planes and spaceships. When he grew up, he joined the army and became a pilot. One day, he and a couple of other friends had a thought that they wanted to be an astronaut. He tried out and was accepted to be one! All of his other friends thought that they wouldn’t be accepted in NASA in the first place so they didn’t try at all.

Colonel Virts taught us that if we wanted to do something, we should achieve that goal by trying hard to reach it.

While Colonel Virts was onboard the ISS (International Space Station), he took thousands and thousands of amazing photos using an IMAX camera in space. All of these photos got incorporated into the IMAX movie ‘A Beautiful Planet’ which shows us the natural wonders of Earth. He has also written many books including: ‘How to Astronaut’, ‘Apo11o: to the moon and back’, and ‘View from above’.

His website has more information about him. It’s https://www.terryvirts.com.

Overall, our whole school had an amazing experience with Colonel Virts!

Recently in Language Arts class, we have been reading a mystery book called the ‘Westing Game’ by Ellen Raskin.

In this book, many characters come together to play the Westing Game, created by the late ‘Sam Westing’. In the book, a Judge reads the will from Sam Westing which make all of the Heirs very interested to gain the prize. All of the many characters want to earn ‘Sam Westings’ fortune of $200 million and his company. Everyone competes in pairs with clues that they have to solve.

Right now, we also have a project related to the book. A 13 year old middle school girl called ‘Turtle’ loves the stock market. She is the reason why we are having a stock market project in LA class.

To begin with stock market, a teacher came in our classroom to help set it up. We are recording stocks on a spreadsheet so we can see very clearly on how our stocks are doing. Then, our teacher gave us a fake ‘$20,000’ to ‘spend’ on stocks. We all had a choice to either work with a partner or work solo. My partner was Maddie and we chose our stocks based on how we feel about how it would do in the future, and if it’s dependable or not, but everyone had different stocks that was chosen. Everyone is trying to get the highest amount of money earned from stocks because at the end of this project, the team/person with the highest number gained would receive a mystery prize.

So far, I am working with Maddie and we are doing pretty well. We are up 2675.91 dollars and we are in 1st place for all the classes my LA teacher teaches (2). I am very happy with the result of the stocks the we invested in and we both think that they will still be better in the future as well.

The ones that we invested in are:

1. Chipotle

2. Apple Inc

3. Meta

4. Lululemon

5. Microsoft

6. Berkshire Hathaway

My school acted out Elsewhere by Don Zolidis.

Elsewhere is about a group of teenagers that teleported to another realm called ‘Elsewhere’. They were introduced to a half bull half human person who gave them a task to finish. Their task was to go find the missing person that disappeared from Earth a long time ago. To find that  person, they all had to conquer their fears and go through trauma from their childhood.

One person in the production named Ariel, went through the trauma of remembering the brain surgery she did and started going against her friends and at the end when they completed their quest, they all teleported back home without remembering anything, but Ariel remembered.

Last week in History class, we learned about the ancient Egyptians and the pharaohs. To test out if we really know what we learned, my teacher gave us a project to put all of our knowledge on Egyptian agriculture and leaders into one poster. It wasn’t just writing plain facts onto a piece of blank paper, but we were doing Sketch notes.

Sketch notes is a way of summarizing and writing facts of what you learned. Instead of writing things down, when using sketch notes you will draw what you learned. We tried to use sketch notes to see if we liked it or not. In my opinion, it wasn’t my favorite way of putting down my ideas but I still liked to draw things out.

We connected the photos to what we wrote which makes us not need to write too much. We also added color to try to make it look good.

Example of Sketchnotes

Recently, I’ve read a book called, ‘the girl on the milk carton’ by Caroline Cooney and it is in a series of books. This specific book is in the genre of mystery including all the others in this series. Be prepared for spoilers.

One afternoon during lunch, a 15 year old girl named Janie Johnson found something familiar to her eyes on a milk carton. An add was published on the milk carton with a picture of a kidnapped girl. Janie figured out it was her on the milk carton but couldn’t believe that her parents were kidnappers. The truth was that Hannah, the daughter of Janie’s ‘parents’ kidnapped Janie in the mall when she was a baby. Those few weeks she kept this news to herself because she was too scared to tell her ‘parents’. The only person she had told this secret to was her boyfriend and close family friend, Reeve.  She loved her parents and didn’t know her original ones, but she knew that she would have to go to her biological parents house. She skipped a day of school to go to her biological parents house in New Jersey with Reeve. Once she saw them and their similar bright red hair she got scared and hid. Based on this, it was confirmed that she was kidnapped. So, she called her original parents.

This book ends on a cliffhanger and you have to read the next book in the series to see what happens next!

In LA class we are reading a book called the Last Cuentista and the main character, Petra is leaving her planet to find a new one. Earth is a pretty perfect place and planet to inhabit, but what if we could make one ourselves?

My planet is in the whirlpool galaxy which is the brightest galaxy from what we know of. Tulia has fascinating creatures who roam the many forests. In Tulia, we do the best we can to protect them, and nature to create an amazing environment that is not polluted. Our planet now thrives with population and greenery surrounding us, which is why Tulia is a pretty perfect planet.
Tulia has amazing sunsets and sunrises everyday where you can just enjoy your life looking at them. At night the sky is so clear, free from the greenhouse gasses, that you can see every single star shining in the sky. In outer space the planet looks like an explosion of colors that you could see from many miles away.
In the planets solar system just like Earth, Tulia is the third planet from the sun so the climate isn’t too warm or cold which is perfect for living in. Tulia also has the four seasons of spring, summer, fall, and winter with temperatures ranging from 45-75 degrees fahrenheit. The humidity level is also not too high.
In Tulia we aren’t just about greenery but we love technology. Although not built from our own planet, we import things through space. This subject has been debated a lot by our politicians, because if we don’t get along with other planets’ leaders, we won’t get all the things that we need for survival through trading. We do try to create peace between different societies.

Tulia is what I think a perfect planet should be like.