Haikus

What is a haiku?

A haiku has seventeen

syllables, three lines

 

The first with five beats

The second contains seven

The third, like first, five

 

Haikus though simple,

Short, small, can still be profound

Some see their beauty

 

Some are blind to

The art of haiku, “Easy”

“I could do that” say

 

The haters with doubts

If haiku is truly art

If you could do that…



Then do it! I’d like

To see just how far you’d get

Maybe then you’ll realize

 

Now, I will display

Another haiku that speaks

fire and flames. Enjoy!




FOR FIRE ON OUR SIDE

 

Crimson inferno

crescendos above, sparking 

a revolution 

 

Prevail, finally

we may, for fire on our side

burn our enemies!

 

The grip is not just

Doesn’t give up on control

Over us. Wish luck…..

 

On an unfightable 

Fight for peace first comes violence

First comes fire—please!




Wisdom Tales


We started the Wisdom Tales project four months ago and it was a great experience. The one to two page tales were divided by where they came from, China, India, Europe, Africa. We read and summarized the stories and determined their morals on Google Slides. I recognized some of the stories, like Paca and Beetle, which felt like the Tortoise and the Hare, and had never heard of others. Sometimes we would act the stories out and read them in front of the class, which was very entertaining. At the end, we picked our favorite story and created a one page comic depicting the tale. 

The story I chose is called The Useless Tree from China. In this story, loggers, carpenters, and lumberjacks come to a forest. They cut down all the trees in the forest but ignored the “useless” tree because it was knotty and twisted. However, the children of the village play on the tree now and the old men rest beneath it. A villager exclaimed one day, “This tree is so useless! If it was useful, it would not be here!” Another replied, “If it was ‘useful’  we would not be able to gather around it and the children would have nowhere to play. It is useful, in its own way.” I said that the moral of the story was that everything has a use. The reason I chose this story is because I thought that it had a good message and the pictures would be fun to draw.

Right before we started drawing our comics, Mr. Peck visited our school. He is a professional artist and also one of my classmate’s dad. Mr. Peck showed us how all characters start from just simple shapes like circles and triangles. The example he gave us was Little Red Riding Hood. Red was depicted as a red triangle. He explained how to make the trees slanted to give the forest, and the reader, an ominous feeling. One thing I learned from him is that the shapes and colors you give your characters are really important. A smooth and circular shaped character will  feel friendly and a bit protective while a character with a lot of angles might feel mean and stubborn.

I created my comic one hundred percent online, using Sketchbook and Comic Life 3. I was already familiar with Sketchbook and had used it many times before and I really like the app. Sketchbook is an online drawing app. The layers feature was very helpful, when illustrating my comic. I had never used Comic Life 3 before, and I got a bit frustrated with it, at the beginning. However, after playing around with it I got the hang of it. I traced the useless tree and loggers off of images, but added my own color. The wisdom tales project was so much fun, and I’m really proud of my finished product!



My Daily Habit Journey

The first day our class did a plank, I was confused and a little annoyed. After all, this was our Language Arts class, why were we doing a plank? Every day, starting from October 24, we planked, and increased our time by 15 seconds every week.We talked about a book called Atomic Habits and how “Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.” This is a quote from James Cleary, the author of Atomic HabitsA daily habit with a compound effect lets us keep growing every week. If we had done 30 seconds every week we wouldn’t have been able to get to the times we have gotten to now. We kept track of which day we planked, and which days we didn’t, on our habit tracker.  I had a lot of trouble remembering to plank every day, especially on the weekends. We planked for 7 weeks, so the last week, we were planking for 2 minutes and 15 seconds. On the very last day, we had a plank challenge where we all planked for as long as we could. I listened to music while planking and it was really helpful in staying up. I was able to plank for three minutes (and four seconds!) but I think if I did it again I might be able to go longer. The longest plank in my class was around eleven minutes and the longest plank in the grade was twenty seven minutes. They said they could’ve gone longer but the class ended.

My new habit is to stretch once every day. This is a habit that will help me reach my goal of being able to do a split. I’ve always wanted to be able to do splits, but I was having trouble. If I stay consistent with this habit, I hope to be able to do the splits. The daily habit was definitely a learning experience and one I’m glad I did.  

Who I Am As A Reader

Images from Unsplash

I love to read. A lot of kids my age don’t like to read or would rather do a lot of other things. But not me! I actually, genuinely, like reading. I read because books are interesting, or at least the well-written ones are. Good books make you think about the ideas and characters while you’re reading. Great books make you think about the ideas and characters all through the day until you can get home and read and read and read. Another reason I read is for that sense of accomplishment when you finish a book. I feel that I have achieved something great every time I get to the last page of an amazing book. 

I always have multiple books “on hold” in my mind, waiting until I finish my current book, and have the time to pick up another. I am part of three monthly book clubs, Durham Book Club, a mother-daughter book club, and the book club at my school, which are places to get my next book to read. Sometimes, my mom will go to the library and get me bunches of books that I probably wouldn’t have picked myself. But when we have the books in the house, I feel more compelled to read books from different genres and of a higher reading level. Some of which I read or are reading right now are, The Curious Incident of the Dog in The Night-time, Flowers for Algernon, To Kill A Mockingbird, and Outliers.  

My favorite genres are realistic fiction, fantasy, and some historical fiction books. One of my absolute favorite historical fiction books is The Great Trouble: A Mystery of London, The Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel. This book is a mystery about science, but also a historical fiction. Another great historical fiction book is The War That Saved My Life. This book is set in the time of World War II.  I used to not read a lot of non-fiction books, but I have been reading some more lately. I find reading non-fiction books feels a lot more like work and not as much of an enjoyable thing I would choose to do. However, one great non-fiction book I read is, Terrible Typhoid Mary, because it doesn’t feel like a fact-packed non-fiction book, more like a crime busting story, which made it more fun to read.

It’s really hard for me to read books on electronic devices. The way the words seem to pop on the screen and the glow of the device make it not feel like a real book. My eyes and brain aren’t able to focus on the “pages” like they do on a paper book. I also have a hard time listening to audio books. My brain starts to wander and I zone out. By the time my thoughts return to the book I’m listening to, I’ve missed half the story! The only way I can listen to people reading me books is when I can see the pages of the book and follow along as they read. 

My goal is to read one hundred books this year. That means I have to finish a book every three to four days. I keep an ongoing digital list of the books I have read which helps me track my progress with my goal. On my list, I will add one to three hearts, depending on how much I liked the book. 

Do you have any book recommendations for me? Comment! I would love to hear them!