3rd Quarter Medieval Women Studies

In humanities this quarter we learned a lot about medieval women. For the first few weeks we did lit circles. Lit circles is a reading group where you are assigned to a book and you read it along with doing assignments. I read Eleanor, Crown Jewel of Aquitaine. Every book was based off of a medieval women. For the past few weeks we were put into new groups and learned about new women. I learned about Khadijah, Rabi’a al Adawiya and Zubayda. I was the captin of my group. We read about three women because the Khadijah packet was short, but that allowed us to present differently. We then presented to the class what we learned. All of the women were extraordinary for the medieval era. I think that the reason why we are learning so much about medieval women is because they had it really hard back then, and they still do now. A successful women was a rarity back then.

My Arabian Nights Story

Revision is rereading your writing and changing major parts of it, not just mechanics. If something does not make sense, you change everything that you need, not just one sentence. It is like turning coal to diamond, crummy to great (even though that is not possible.)

I really like my Arabian Nights Story. I had a very good plot and story line, but I did not spend enough time on it. If I could rewrite it I would spend more time on it. When I revised my piece, I made the story about the wolf a real story, not just a sentence recapping it.

Math Percentage Problems

40 = 20% of what number?

40 x 5 = 200

40 = 20% of 200

A dog walker makes $40 a day, and works five days a week. What is the dog walker’s weekly salary?

 

8 1/2% of $500.00 = ____

10% of %500.00 = $50

500 x .085 = $42.50

8 1/2% of $500.00 = $42.50

You are splitting money with your friends. Each friend gets a different percent of the money. Your share is 8.5%. How much money do you get?

 

18 = ____% of 150

 

 

18/150 = .12

18 = 12% of 150

Joey needs to figure out what percent 18 is of 150. Can you help him?

 

The Coloisters

IMG_8214When we first walked in, we saw a cross hanging from the wall. The Cloisters was better in the beginning, when I was not bored from standing around. The art work was amazing, and there were a lot of compartments. My favorite piece of art was the unicorn tapestries. All of the work from The Cloisters is from the medival era, which is what we are studying.

2nd Quarter Humanities Reflection

image (1)my castle drawing————————^

I am proud of my castle drawing. I had to start over, but when I finished I think that I did really well. I listed a lot of important parts of a castle.

My Parzival Essay was challenging because I had to do it without talking to a teacher. I stayed up late one night to finish it, but it came through. I worked at my grandparents house and I worked on the plane home. Here is my Parzival Essay:

Parzival was raised by a mom who did not want him to succeed, and that led to many bumps on the long road to his “success.” In the book Parzival, The Quest of the Grail Knight, Parzival was quickly set up to fail by his mother. Parzival suffered greatly and was negatively impacted as a result. He was so ignorant that it took him a long time to develop the skills to learn on his own. In addition, Parzival’s upbringing hindered him in life because this negative reinforcement it made it very hard for him to succeed.

 

Parzival’s upbringing made it so that he was isolated and did not know anything about the outside world. He also did not receive any help for his journey, and in fact was setup for disappointment. Over the course of many years, he continually encountered roadblocks. A good example of this is when Parzival didn’t know his own name.  On page 3 it reads, “The only home the boy had ever known was a cottage in the wilderness of Soltane, and the only parent he had ever known was his mother.   He was never called by his proper name; indeed he didn’t even know that he had one.” The fact that Parzival did not even know that he had a proper name is evidence of ignorance during his upbringing.

 

Parzival’s upbringing hindered him in life because he was ignorant. For example on pages 13-14, the book reads, ‘“Good day my lady,” he said.  “My mother told me to give a cheery greeting to everyone I meet.  And to take a ring from a good lady if the occasion arose.”  The duchess was so frightened she hardly knew how to reply.  She begged the stranger to go away and leave her alone.  But he took her ring and helped himself to the broach he found on her gown.”  Another example is on pages 7 to 8, “He threw himself face first upon the ground, blocking the path of the great horses.  “If you be God”, he cried, “be merciful to me!”  The startled knights jerked their reins and stopped their horses just short of the boy’s’ body.  “Fool”, they cried.  “Do you want to be killed?”  But the boy was not offended.  “Tell me, “ he said “are you the one called God?”  The knights were amazed.  Who was this ignorant boy who mistook three knights for God.” When he took the brooch from the duchess, he misquoted his mother, who never said take anything from a women, but to accept one if presented. This provides further proof of his ignorance. The  later quote said that Parzival was ignorant, perfectly saying the point: Parzival’s upbringing hindered him in life because he was ignorant.

 

Because of Parzival’s upbringing, he was unaware of religion and the importance that it had in the world. Religion played a major role in the medieval era, and Parzival knew nothing about it. If that was ever discovered, he could have been punished severely.  While this the same example that was used before, it proves this point too. On pg. 8 it says,  ‘“Fool”, they cried.  “Do you want to be killed?”  But the boy was not offended.  “Tell me, “ he said “are you the one called God?”  The knights were amazed.  Who was this ignorant boy who mistook three knights for God.”’  Another example is ‘“There is another who is the lord of Hell.  He is called the devil and you must flee from him, for he is the father of treachery and despair.”’ on pg. 6. This has a hidden meaning. It is basically saying that you must flee from the devil, which comes to someone when someone does something bad. If somebody does something bad, even as small not knowing about religion, they could get punished if someone ever finds out. The first piece of evidence was literally a knight saying that you could get killed by not knowing about God.

 

 

Because Parzival’s poor upbringing hindered him in life, he was ignorant,  he took a while to grasp onto life, and he could have been severely punished for not knowing about religion. It took him two tries to save the king from the greatest pain anyone has ever felt, and if he was brought up properly, it is evident that that he would have saved the king from the most horrid pain the first time, while not being shunned by practically everybody he knew. Although Parzival’s mother provided him major setbacks, it seems certain that he would have saved the king earlier, would have been reunited with his wife earlier, and everybody would be happier as a result.

Quarter 1 Math Seminar

Math Seminar has been really fun this year. We have worked on Caesar ciphers, substitution ciphers, and really confusing but fun word problems. Caesar cipher is basicly the alphabet, but shifted. A substitution cipher is all of the letters shifted individually. The word problems have been about money in piggy banks and the most recent problem has been about abundant, perfect and deficient numbers.

6th Grade Ashokan Trip

This is the G.O.A.T. GREATEST OF ALL TIME! (It might be a sheep)

This is a bridge that was bought in an auction for 1$

This is the ropes course. It was easy but fun.

I loved blacksmithingIt was one of my favorite activities.

My favorite things to do at Ashokan were blacksmithing, playing football at open rec and canoeing. I learned how blacksmithing works and that Cristian is the best. He is the real G.O.A.T. We didn’t do blacksmithing last year. We also didn’t do homesteading this year. I had a better time this year.