Wisdom Tale Comic

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In this project we learned what wisdom tales are and read some of them. Reading the wisdom tales led up to a big project where we had to make a one-page comic about one of the wisdom tales. To keep the definition of a wisdom tale short a  wisdom tale is a story with a moral. For a wisdom tale to have the same moral it doesn’t have to be a similar story. To get the same moral it will have some similarities but there will be more differences than similarities.

After reading some wisdom tales we got to decide on which one we would use for our comic and I chose the wisdom tale Feathers. I chose Feathers because it reminded me of some situations that I’ve observed like this wisdom tale. Another reason I chose this story is because I wanted my comic to be different from other people’s comics, and I knew exactly what I was going to draw when I thought of this wisdom tale.

Feathers is a story about a woman who is unkind and was accused of starting a rumor. The woman went to the rabbi and tried to protest against what she said and the rabbi told her to go get his pillow, cut it, and try to collect every single feather and to bring it back to him. The woman attempted to do this task but failed miserably. The moral of this story is: think before you speak because words cannot be taken back.

Before we started drawing our comics we got some tips from Mr.Peck. Mr. Peck is a visual storyteller and artist. Some tips he gave us is to keep it simple and you don’t need to have a lot of detail for something to look good. Out of all of the tips he gave us, these two stood out the most to me.

When I was trying to draw my comic I had no idea how I would draw the people. After attempting to draw the woman in Feathers and not liking my drawings  I remembered the tips he gave me. I eventually kept it simple and in my opinion it turned out well. Usually I’m a perfectionist and I add a lot of detail in my art and I would’ve done that on this project but there was one big difference. I usually draw on paper but for the comic I had to draw digitally. I ended up using squares, rectangles, triangles, and circles for this comic. I definitely recommend doing this because it’s simpler, faster, and you can make it look cute or professional.

The drawing app that I used was Sketchbook. Sketchbook wasn’t the best to work with when it came to copying, pasting, moving the picture, and layers. Sketchbook was good with having a variety of art supplies and being able to customize them. If I had to draw another comic it’s most likely that I won’t use Sketchbook again.

ComicLife3 was also a bit confusing. Sometimes I would have to delete things and a lot of the time I would have to adjust everything and start from scratch. If I had a choice on what app I would use to make a comic I wouldn’t choose ComicLife 3 again. On my iPad Comic Life 3 glitched a lot and it would kick me out of the app very often. 

In conclusion, out of all of the projects I’ve had in school  this was my favorite one. This project allowed me to relax and not stress or really think really hard about it because I love to draw, color and art in general.




Daily Habits / Plank post

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A small daily habit can have such a big impact on your life. If the habit is good or bad it can still impact you. For example, if you have a bad habit like biting your nails it can impact you by getting you sick because of the germs on your nails. But if you have a good habit like reading and adding a minute every day it can impact you by increasing your stamina to read for longer. The daily habit I did from October to December is planked every day starting at 30 seconds. Every week I added 15 seconds and it started to get a bit harder once I reached a minute and thirty seconds. 

To stay in the plank once it got hard, you had to have a positive mindset. If I was having a bad day I would automatically have a bad mindset. What I did to not have a bad mindset while planking is to plank next to my friends and try to have a conversation with them. When we were holding the planks for longer that would be kind of hard because you have to multitask. Holding a plank uses a lot of core strength and to talk you need to breathe. In my opinion, it’s kind of difficult to breathe while tightening your core. 

As I added time when I was planking I noticed that the first day it was harder but as I kept  on doing it every day it got easier until the next week and the cycle just keeps going.  On days that I had a lot of homework, sometimes I forgot to plank. The days I almost forgot to plank, my friend Jules reminded me. On days that I didn’t know if we were going to plank today or if I had planked today I would ask Jules. Now that the weeks of holding planks for minutes have gone by I feel more confident and stringer in holding planks.  

My new daily habit I chose to do now is to meditate every day. I chose this habit because I noticed that one of my friends is always happy and relaxed all of the time and one day I asked them how they stay so happy and relaxed through all of the stress at school. They told me that they meditate. Since school and gymnastics are so stressful, I decided to take her advice to meditate. So far my new daily habit is going very  well. I have noticed the difference in my mood from before I started meditating and after I started meditating. 

 

My Reading Timeline

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Five minutes of reading? That’s so long, my younger self would say. If I were forced to read a book I would choose an extremely short graphic novel. I loved to use my imagination but when it was time to read I would do anything but use my imagination. I would try to get out of my comfort zone sometimes and read a chapter book but I could never get past the first page. I would read chapter books like how Siri would say something because I just couldn’t use my imagination.  I’m in the 6th grade now and I absolutely love to read. I feel like I am a good reader but I know that there are a few things that I could work on. For instance,  I could work on reading more often and also read more than just graphic novels. 

Two of my favorite books that I’ve read are Ghost by Jason Reynolds and The Summer of Broken Rules by  K. L.  Walther. Both of these books are realistic fiction books but are totally different. Ghost is a book about a little boy who runs track and struggles in life a lot. The Summer of Broken Rules is about a girl who’s big sister died and her and her family goes back to the place she loved the most and she finds herself, happiness, and love again. 

I read because it brings me out of reality and allows me to go into someone else’s view of the world. When I read I have to be in a comfortable and quiet space or else I can’t concentrate or enjoy my reality snatcher. One of my favorite memories of reading is when I went to my grandma’s house and we drank hot chocolate and read books together. My grandma and dad have inspired my reading so much and I love them for it. Now I own over 30 books and I’ve read 4  chapter books over the summer. 

At school we get little time to read and we’re always inside when reading. I’d love it if one day my class could go outside and read and one day have the class read the whole class period. If I had to choose a book character to be friends with I would choose Claire from The Summer of Broken Rules because I love her quirky and shy personality and how we have a lot of things in common. If you had to choose a book character to be friends with, who would you choose? Please answer this question in the comments section below.

Window or Mirror

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https://durhamacademyms.beanstack.org/profiles/13683531/

 

Earlier this summer I read an amazing book called Ghost by Jason Reynolds. This book is a realistic fiction book about a kid named Castle who has a boring everyday life. One day, he goes to a track and field practice to sit and watch. There is this cocky kid named Lu who thinks he’s faster than everyone else and Castle wants to prove him wrong. Castle goes down to the grass beside the track and races Lu. Castle won the race and the coach wanted him on the team so Castle joined. Castle was always in trouble and he had to stay out of trouble to stay on the team. Anytime Castle got in trouble the coach would cut him some slack because he knew his home life wasn’t the best.  

This blog post is a post about if this book is a mirror or a window book. A mirror book is a book that you can relate to and/or could’ve  happened to you before.  A window book is something that has never happened to you before and/or cannot relate to. For me this book is both a window and mirror book. It’s a window book because I rarely get in trouble and my home and family life is pretty good. This book is a mirror book for me because I love track and field but hate conditioning. This is also a mirror book for me because Castle loves sunflower seeds and so do I except I don’t eat them everyday after school. If I had to choose if it was more of a window or a mirror book I would choose window because I have tiny struggles but I don’t relate to the extreme struggles Castle has gone through. 

I chose this book because it’s one of my favorite books and I feel like this book is a good book to talk about for this subject. I choose books by the epilogue not by if it’s a window or mirror book. This book doesn’t have any situations that would be a mirror for me if it wasn’t already a mirror part.

 

 

The Summer I Went To Oklahoma

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The Summer I Went to Oklahoma

It was mid June or July when I arrived at the busy, loud, claustrophobic airport. I was very unenthusiastic and it was very obvious because my mom asked, “ What’s wrong?” I replied with “ I’m just very tired.”  Inside my head I was holding a full conversation with myself because my thoughts were ticking. I don’t want to go to this place. It’s probably just full of fields and old country roads like all other country states are. I kept swerving through the crowd with everybody going different ways to keep up with my family. I finally caught up once we got to our gate to wait for our flight. While we were waiting I decided to text and call my friends because I wouldn’t be able to on the plane. I was happy on the outside and scared on the inside. Why was I scared on the inside? I was scared for a lot of reasons. First, I wouldn’t be able to sit next to my family because all of the three seats were taken in every aisle. Second, I didn’t know who I was sitting next to and hopefully it wasn’t a strange person. Third, I hate when we go up in the air very fast because it makes my ears hurt very badly.

It was finally time. My heart was beating fast and a part of me wanted to cry. I had just said goodbye to my friends for the summer and I didn’t think it was going to be a good trip. I was walking slowly on the plane mentally preparing myself for who I was about to sit next to and the pain my ears were about to get. After about 15 minutes of waiting, we started the safety rules and then we took off. The flight was 3 hours long and I had to stay up. Staying awake would’ve been very hard because it was very dark, comfortable, and a beautiful afternoon . I have to stay awake. WAKE UP NADIA! My thoughts were running through my head. Every 30 seconds I felt like I yawned. Then it happened. I fell asleep. It was a peaceful nap because I was listening to meditation music on full blast. I woke up to the loud sound of my music and the drowned out announcements from the pilot. “We have made it into Chicago, Illinois . Enjoy the beautiful sights of Chicago.” I started meditating and then realized that my ears weren’t hurting. A few moments later I had a bit of a disturbance. I got slammed into the chair in front me because the pilot didn’t slow down when he was landing. 




I’d finally got out of the plane and found a place to sit and I went back to sleep because we had a 3 hour layover. I laid there for 15 minutes trying to go to sleep and I couldn’t. I started scrolling on my phone not knowing what I was trying to do. I finally decided to put my phone away and start reading. I was reading a book called Ghost. In my opinion, Ghost is a really good book and I would rate it 9/10. I rated it 9/10 because it ends on a cliffhanger. Anyway, my family and I went to the food court. It’s a very small food court with not many choices but we’ve been there so many times that we know what tastes the best and exactly what to order. First, we went to our favorite popcorn place Nuts on Clark. Next, we went to a really good Irish restaurant called Reilly’s Daughter. My mom and I ordered the Irish fish and chips which was AMAZING with all caps. My dad ordered some sandwich with pickles, tomatoes, cheese , and fish on it. I would most definitely recommend this restaurant anytime you visit Chicago. After we ate we went to our gate and waited until our flight. 4 hours later, the receptionist finally announced that our plane was here. 


The sun was setting and I was enjoying my book Ghost while listening to relaxing music. The sun got lower by the second it seemed like and I was very disappointed because the sun was my source of light. About 10 minutes later the sun finally set and I turned on my airplane light. I was almost done with the book as I felt my eyes get heavier. I really wanted to finish the book but it was late at night and I hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep the night before. I decided to just close my eyes and not go to sleep. I woke up again to the sound of the pilot telling us that we had 20 more minutes left. I yawned to pop my ears and went back to sleep. I woke up to the feeling of someone tapping my shoulder and heard a lot of commotion in the background. I gathered all of my stuff and  drowsily walked out of the airplane. I walked out of the gloomy gray tunnel to see a really colorful and quiet airport. I was astonished. I walked through the tunnels that had doors that only let one person walk in at a time. I walked through the exit to feel a nice humid and cool breeze. My family and I walked to the rental car building to get our car. We walked up to the building to see a beautiful welcome to Oklahoma sign and really pretty ombré rainbow colored doors. I really expected to have the inside be ombré  but it wasn’t. I was very disappointed but amazed at the same time. We went to the desk to ask for the key to the car but we ran into a lot of computer problems. It was 1am and we were all tired. Some of my weariness went away once I started moving again. We eventually got the key after 30 minutes of computer problems. My family and I went outside to find our car. We went to the exact spot the slip of paper said to go to but the car wasn’t there. We checked every spot and still couldn’t find it. After 15 minutes of searching we finally found it. It was very small but big enough to fit all of our luggage in it. I tried to go back to sleep after we got settled and started driving but my mom kept me awake. 

My uncle David, who is the reason why we came up here, said that the hotel he booked was very nice. We got to the hotel in about 5 minutes and in my opinion it was anything but nice. First, there were too many bugs and moths flying around to the point where we couldn’t even get in the hotel without any bugs getting in. Second, the receptionist had extremely bad attitudes. Third, the room wasn’t that clean and I felt really uncomfortable about eating my waffles I had in there. Lastly, the room name wasn’t even in my parents! My mom is very picky so she went to the front desk to check out of the room. My dad and I stayed in the room and ate our waffles. My mom gave us the signal that it was time to leave so we packed our bags back up and drove cue into the city. We went to the other hotel and it was extremely chaotic. The police were out in the middle of the street, there were creepy people walking around, and there was a crowd of people coming from somewhere. Let me remind you that it is now 2am in the morning. My mom decided to get out of the car and walk to the hotel. She went in the hotel for about 5 minutes and decided that she liked that hotel. We checked in and I got ready for bed because the next day was a very busy day.

It was 10am when we woke up we packed up and got ready to go to another hotel later. We drove around and got waffles again because none of the breakfast places had good ratings except iHop. After we ate we went to get some black shorts because I left them at home. When we got to the store the police were at Panda Express. I was scared and interested at the same time. I was scared because the police had their guns pulled but I was interested because it was like a real life movie. We got the shorts and then we drove to the party. On the way to the party I was drawing an eye. When we entered the neighborhood the party was in, I was amazed. The neighborhood was full of extremely big houses. I saw my dream house. It was very modern with a pool in the backyard. It wasn’t a pentagon shape though. It was cubed but almost every section of the house had its own cube. After driving through the neighborhood for a few minutes we saw the clubhouse. The clubhouse was very vast in size and looked like a hotel. We parked down the street and walked to the clubhouse. Once I got in the clubhouse I was very excited because in a few minutes I got to see my grandpa. I hadn’t seen my grandpa or my aunt in 3 years! Then I smelt very strong cologne to turn around to see an old man that looked just like my grandpa. If I’m being honest I didn’t really like the smell but I missed it very much. I ran to give my grandpa and my aunt a hug. My grandpa walked my parents and I to the ballroom we rented. I walked in the room to see a big room with a dance floor, a photo booth, and a bunch of extended family and friends that I did not know. My grandpa introduced me to my cousins  Dionne, Desiree,  and Deanthony. My cousin Dionne and I explored the place and took a lot of Hershey Kisses from the stand.

My parents and I went to check into the new hotel. When we got there it was surrounded by nice restaurants and museums. We parked on the curb of the hotel and there was this guy named Jason who opened the door for us. Jason was really nice and had lots of manners. Jason walked us to our hotel room and carried our luggage for us. We tipped Jason before we changed to go to my cousin’s house. It was almost dark and my cousins lived in the country. We met Jason on the way out of the hotel and he opened the door for all of us. We put the GPS on and started driving to my cousin’s house. I took a nap on the way to the house and when I woke up it was beautiful. It was another house of my dreams except this one wasn’t cubed. I walked up the long driveway to meet a tiny green frog at the door. I named it Bob Billy Joe. I went upstairs after greeting everybody to hang out with my cousins. I caught up on the latest drama in my cousin Dionne’s life and watched a movie with her. An hour later, my parents called me downstairs and told me that it was time to go. I was sad because I didn’t want to leave but I was happy at the same time. I walked back down the long driveway then stopped. I looked up to see a full sky of stars. That’s so beautiful I thought and then resumed walking and got in the car. We were driving back down the dark and scary roads when we came across a coyote. I have never in my 11 years of life seen a coyote in person. 

We got back to the hotel and Jason opened the door for us , walked us to our room, and we tipped him again. The next morning we woke up, got dressed, and went to my cousin David’s house. On the way to his house we turned to see a road full of red dirt. My dad turned the way the GPS was taking him and we flew over the hill. We landed safely but we didn’t know where we were. After about 40 minutes of driving around we eventually got to his house. He showed us around his house and told us about the art he does which was amazing and his school he teaches at. I showed him some of my art and he thought that it was amazing. Next he showed us around the other houses he owns and one of the old things our great great grandpa use to own. He showed us the Threatt Filling Station which was a place people could go when they were escaping from slavery or just traveling. After we left we went to have dinner with my family (cousins, aunts, etc.) I got a vegan burger which  was good but had a bad aftertaste. We all said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. I was very sad because I don’t go up there a lot.

It was 4am in the morning when we were outside in the cool breeze returning the car.. My parents and I got through security and got on the airplane. I put on my headphones and listened to music. I felt like a new person. I was being myself in front of people I didn’t know which wasn’t common for me. I felt happy. One of the times I’ve been my happiest. Now this is a good lesson for me about don’t judge a book by its cover. That was my summer in Oklahoma.

 

Camp Kirkwood

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 It was Wednesday morning when everyone started coming to school with big duffel bags, suitcases, backpacks, etc. Half of the grade was tired and cranky while the other half was energetic and crazy. My advisory and I got assigned to the first bus. The bus ride was two hours long with a lot of noise. On the bus  Swifties were singing, people were screaming, intense card games were happening, and lots of talking. Two hours later we finally got there and there was a light drizzle happening. After we got our bags we settled into our cabin and then ate lunch. Once we got to the cafeteria we ate lunch which was a ham and cheese sandwich. In my opinion, the sandwich wasn’t the best but it was okay.

Later we got our bathing suits on and hung out in the cabin until we could go to our activities. In my cabin, we were braiding each other’s hair and talking. Thirty minutes later we went to our activities in our groups and my first activity was Forest Ecology. Forest ecology was fun the first few minutes because we were able to walk around the forest to look for a log. After Forest Ecology we went to the pool with a couple other groups and took a very difficult swim test. The test was very stressful but a lot of people passed. My friends and I went on these really weird rolling things that tip you into the water and tried to learn how to dive. 

After swimming it started raining really hard and my group (which is group 5) was outside going to team building. We had to do 3 different activities. The first one was a hula hoop game where you had to put your body through the hula hoop and try to beat the other team. The second one was a ball game where you had to get the ball back without the person who’s counting see your team with the ball. The last game was really hard and it was a game where you had to get the hula hoop down and pretend there was helium in it without curling your finger under it or tipping it over. My team was very frustrated because we  weren’t communicating with each other properly.  

The next thing we did after dinner was watch a movie called The Lorax  and a lot of stuff happened. They had to stop the movie in the middle of the movie because the hurricane was coming. After everyone got to the cabin and got their pajamas on I realized that there was sand in my bed and it was very uncomfortable. About 2 to 3 hours after I went to sleep I woke up and heard the loud rain banging on the roof and laid there for a bit. After I went back to sleep I woke up to my friend slapping me awake. The whole cabin got up and got dressed about 30 minutes later. After breakfast we all went to our separate activities. I played Jenga with my friends, did forest ecology again and went back to the pool. 

Then, after changing into dry clothes we ate lunch. For lunch was hot dogs and chili which was also not my favorite. Later, we went and played soccer. On the way to soccer we saw three big garden spiders. It was very slippery and a bit fun. After soccer we played some really fun games on the Kanga Jump and then went to the V-Swing. The V-swing was basically this thing that swung you in the air and it was very fun and scary at the same time. Next was dinner and for dinner was chicken and macaroni. In my opinion, that was the best meal I had there. After dinner we had some advisory time and talked about camp and team building. Later we saw an owl then lined up and got paired up to go walk through the woods to make some S’mores. My buddy had a panic attack so I had to calm her down. Once we got to the campfire we learned a song, ate s’mores, and talked about different drama that happened. On the walk back I saw something on four legs run by and I hope I was hallucinating because that was very scary. When I got back to the cabin we got our pajamas on and went to bed. That night I didn’t sleep well at all. When I woke up I realized that there was a wasp in our cabin and everyone started freaking out. After packing up we went to eat breakfast which was waffles and sausage. My first activity was gaga and bubbles. Bubbles was a really cute pig that was very energetic. After we played  we went canoeing which wasn’t that fun because it was very wet and uncomfortable. My last activity was zip lining which was very fun because you got to fly over the lake and see the whole camp. After zip lining we got our stuff, went back on the bus, and went home. On the ride home the bus wasn’t really loud. I had lots of fun talking and having fun with my friends.