November 12

Eye Value Drawing

 

This is my eye drawing. In art class, we have been working on looking at the value of things and this is one of them. We started by taking pictures close up pictures of our eyes and making them black and white. Then we started to outline where out eye was, and iris and pupil and eyelid. Then we started shading using six pencils that were all different shades and it took a couple weeks. After finishing my eye drawing I think I could have made the eye look a little more realistic by lightening up the reflection and making the shadowing look a little less streaky.

Category: Art, Seventh | LEAVE A COMMENT
May 9

Letter to Rifdah from Shabanu

Dear Rifdah,

 

I am Shabanu, a Muslim girl from Pakistan. I am a nomad and I just watched your documentary on the Koran by Heart! You were amazing! Your voice was beautiful and you don’t even speak Arabic! I wish I could do something as amazing as that, but I am set to get married to my cousin Murad next year. At least he’s handsome!! I first saw him a couple days ago and he has broad shoulders and a deep set square jaw. He has perfect hands! They’re as wide as a camel’s foot! And he has kind eyes, they are serious too, but mostly kind!

 

I live in the desert with my beautiful sister Phulan, Mama, grumpy Auntie, my two annoying little cousins and Dadi. Dadi is the one who has chosen for me to marry Murad. My sister was supposed to marry his brother Hamir, but Hamir died from a gunshot and we are still in mourning. I am not sure that Phulan will ever be the same again, her silky black hair is now in a mess and her perfect face has gone pale.

 

You’re lucky you have lots of people in your country, I am stuck traveling with just 6. There are more people in my country of course, there are actually 201,995,540 people in my country but I am stuck with just 6 of them. And you can imagine how sick of them you could get if you rarely saw anyone but them. But 392,960 people in a country is still a lot of people, and you actually get to see them, they’re not just a number to you! I bet you don’t get sick of them often.

 

I heard that your father wants you to be a housewife instead of a scientist which is what you want to do. I would like to know what it would be like to be educated, especially in math in science! But, our goal in the desert is to have many babies, preferably boys, because girls cannot provide. That is why one of my goals in life is to have babies with Murad and provide for my family that I will start to build next year when the wedding has ended. My sister says I am strange because I help Dadi with the camels and all the “men’s work” but we do not have any brothers and Phulan is much too pretty to have to stand out in the sweating sun caring for smelly camels! Mama says that Phulan and I are better than seven sons but I’m not so sure I believe her when she says that. Sometimes she gets this sad look on her face and looks pained, like she’s thinking really hard. I hate to think that by being born a girl I have burdened this family even more by not being a breadwinner, and that is why I will act like a boy as much as I can as long as I can. Of course, that behavior must stop when I am married because I am to be the perfect wife, quiet, timid, able to bear sons and able to cook, sew and care for children. Do you know how to cook, sew and care for children? I do mostly, but I am still learning!

 

I am worried for my family, my sister is no longer betrothed to anyone, Mama and Dadi will soon grow old like grandfather, Auntie is always grumpy and isn’t in a state to help out right now, yesterday, she lost her son while he was still in her stomach. I will not be married for another year and it is impossible to keep track of Auntie’s two little boys.

 

Now that I have told you all about my life, I would like to know a little about yours. I have always wanted to go to Cairo but I am almost certain I will never get the chance to. But… what is it like? Is it beautiful? Is it crowded? Is it perfect? Will you ever go back? Do you want to go back? Does your father want to you to go back ever? Can you teach me the Koran? It sounds so beautiful! I wish I could meet you in person but I am sure you have more important things to do, like studying the Koran even more, so I will leave you alone.

 

Sincerely,

   Shabanu

 

Category: Cattafi, Humanities, Sixth | LEAVE A COMMENT
May 9

Paths Crossing

In art we are starting our final project of the year where we get a subway map of New York City and we have to change it some way to show our unique experience of the city. I have chosen to cut up my map into strips so that I can paper mache them around a balloon, so it turns into kind of a globe shape thing. Then once it dries I will take pieces of string cut at random lengths and glue them on in random patterns across the “globe” to represent people’s paths crossing through life. I hope that when people look at my piece they will take away the fact that if our paths cross, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you are the paths will cross anyway. I am really excited to get to create a project that has almost no guidelines and I am curious to see how my plan changes as I go along.

Category: Art, Demster | LEAVE A COMMENT
April 20

Guilds!

Last night (4/19/17) we had our guilds! Over the course of 6th grade we have been studying medieval life and we learned about all different guild types. Then we were sorted into our guilds, and I was put in the Medicine guild. I chose to be a bonesetter apothecary. On the night of the guild we had already done a dress rehearsal for the 5th graders and we were all set and ready to go at our stations in our rooms.I had a lot of herbs laid out on my table as well as some recipes, aloe plants, cooked apples, pieces of felt and wooden dowels. At about 6:10 people started to pour into our room picking out their ailments and wandering around the room. At some points I had 6 or 7 people crowded around my small desk toughing my props and knocking over things but that only helped me get more into character. I had a monologue rehearsed and ready to go, but I found myself only using it on about two customers. By the end of the night I had come up with a completely knew monologue that I had memorized and I used that one instead. It worked much better than the original because it was shorter and I could put more energy into it also. As I stood behind my desk I felt my feet grow tired and my neck grow hot but the rest of my body was feeling more and more confident and excited. At the beginning of the night I felt like I was Stella Story, but by the end I felt like Agnes Grimmoult.

Category: Drama, Humanities, Sixth, Uncategorized | LEAVE A COMMENT
April 11

Nervous System

 

 

In Science we are learning about the Nervous System

 

The nervous system is a very, very important system in the human body because it is the part of the body that tells your arms and legs to move, your eyes to blink and your mouth to form words. It lets the body feel things, if you stub your toe or get tickled the reason you can feel it is because of the nervous system. The two main parts of the nervous system are the brain, and the spinal cord. The brain is located inside of your skull and your spinal cord is a bundle of nerves surrounded by bones called vertebrae. When you touch something, a neuron is stimulated. It creates an electrical impulse that travels from neuron to neuron using chemicals called neurotransmitters. Did you know that in the time it takes for you to say misisipi three times, an electrical impulse could travel across a football field and back? We would like to learn more about some of the diseases associated with the nervous system and what causes them.

 

Category: Science | LEAVE A COMMENT
April 8

Music

For this trimester in music we have been exploring each other’s compositions in small groups of five or six. We were split up into three groups and each group chose two classmate’s pieces to work on. Then, we practiced separately and together until we had a finished piece with each of us playing an instrument we were comfortable playing with. We performed this in front of our class and here is a video of my group’s performance:

Group6 from LREI on Vimeo.

 

Category: McLean, Music | LEAVE A COMMENT
December 13

Artist statement

My piece is named Grid Portrait Drawing. I created this work of art by drawing lines over a picture to create a grid. Then, I copied the grid onto a different piece of paper and drew the picture like I saw it, then I chose different techniques to use to color it in. I used ink and brush, colored pencils and watercolor. One thing I learned during this was that even if all your pictures look exactly the same, it makes the picture look completely different depending on what materials you use. My favorite part is the one that I made with watercolor. If I could change one thing about it would be to make all my noses look alike. While making it I was surprised that if you put a time limit on your drawings, they actually come out better because you can’t spend forever making it look super perfect. Something else I want to share about this piece is that even though this project took a long time I really liked working with new materials.

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Category: Art, Demster | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 7

Descriptions Using Adjectives in French

In the past couple of months in French we studied adjectives and verbs. We did a lot of activities with grammar as well as fun related work. We did a project on adjectives for Halloween. We learned about regular and BAGS rule adjectives so we could describe things. We chose a picture that had some Halloween objects on it and we thought of adjectives we could use to describe those objects. We had to put in two adjectives in for each thing in our picture.  Here was my final project.

 

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Some of the sentences translated into English mean for example:

The pumpkin is happy and weird.

The long broom is brown.

The medium sized bag is orange.

The bad ghost is white.

And so on

I worked really hard on this to make all the adjectives make sense with the object and I am very proud of this project.

 

 

Category: French, Hahn, Sixth | LEAVE A COMMENT
March 8

Shark Tank!

Howdy People! In Science this month we have been doing a simulation using Sharks, Minnows and Seaweed. Here is a graph that represents how it went:

 

Let me set up the game for you.

Sharks can run around and eat the minnows. But for the shark(s) to survive they have to eat two minnows. If a shark wants to reproduce, they have to eat the two they need to survive and at least one more to reproduce

Minnows can only fast walk to seaweed and for them to survive, they have to eat at least one seaweed. For minnows to reproduce, they have to eat the one seaweed they need to survive and then at least one more seaweed to reproduce.

Seaweed is anchored to the ocean floor and they can not move. They do not have to eat anything to survive, because they are there only to help the minnows survive. But, at the end of every round, the population of the seaweed that was left standing is doubled, because seaweed can only reproduce once.

If you take the rules I just put out into account, you will be able to imagine how the game went.

Bye, Bye for now!

Category: Bobrowski, Science, Uncategorized | LEAVE A COMMENT