Project 1
Art: At first I wanted to sculpt something like maybe the guy who started Taoism. But after some time of doing my research I came across ink painting. Ink painting is prevalent all throughout Asia, but because of my topic idea I had to focus on Chinese ink painting. Ink painting in Chinese mandarin is called shui-mo, which translates to water and ink. Ink painting in China started to come around in the Tang Dynasty from (618-907), and was invented by a man named Wang Wei. Ink painting only usually only uses shades of black, but you can also use colored ink. But they use different shades of black and amazing brushwork to help convey the sense of spirit or essence. There are different techniques to ink painting for example by default you want the bristles of your brush to have a fine point, this will get you to have a straight line. You can also spread the brush out to get multiple lines etc. At first I was just going to jump right into my final product, but because I am new to ink painting I decided that I would be a good idea to practice first. In total I created 12 ink paintings of animals and landscapes. Since I created so many I decided that these would be apart of my final product. After meeting with my art teacher I picked out three of my favorite painting that I did and I wanted to remake them but on a bigger piece of paper. After recreating the three ink paintings that I had original created I met with my art teacher again. He told me that I should retry two out of the three that I did and that I shouldn't use too much ink this time. Instead he told me to make the line work a lighter.
English: For english I focused on Chinese poetry, and I wanted to make a poem of my own. Poetry in China has a long and rich history. Throughout Chinese history there have been the rise and fall of many dynasties, the literature also changes with the dynasties. Each genre of poetry has their own characteristics. For example in the Pre-Qin period people would write poems based on their thoughts and feelings. As a result people would write about their feelings about politics and current events, these are the types if poems that people who practiced confucianism would write. In the Han Dynasty literature with prose became popular along with another formate called Fu. Poetry really became popular in the Tang Dynasty. People used rhythms and rhymes to express their emotions and thoughts. These are a few famous poets from the Tang Dynasty Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi, Li He. In the song Dynasty the poetry evolved into a genre called Ci. These were song poems that were performed/read at parties or banquets. In the these types of poems there were rules on the number of sentences you could have and the tones on each word. I decided that I wanted my poem to be about global warming because in the Pre-Qin period they wrote poems about their thoughts and feelings on current events. I had never really written poetry before and wanted to give it a try. But it was harder than I expected and I decided to write an essay explaining the context of Chinese poetry instead.
Self In the Modern World: For social studies I made a slide show explaining Taoism and Confucianism and how people in America might be unknowingly practicing these religions/philosophies. The first half of my slide show was dedicated to the context of Taoism. Like who started it, the belief system, and how some people might be unknowingly practice it. The second half of the slide show was dedicated to Confucianism and I explained it the same way I did Taoism. The last slide of my slide show was how Taoism and Confucianism have affected me. I explained how I grew up in a christian family but in recent years I have separated myself from the religion. I explained how I still consider myself a religious person but I don't associate myself with any religion. I explained how I consider myself a spiritual person and what that means. I wrote about how Taoism is more inline with what I believe in and practice. In Taoism they are all about being closer with nature, like meditating, eating healthy, etc and this alines with what I do and believe.
English: For english I focused on Chinese poetry, and I wanted to make a poem of my own. Poetry in China has a long and rich history. Throughout Chinese history there have been the rise and fall of many dynasties, the literature also changes with the dynasties. Each genre of poetry has their own characteristics. For example in the Pre-Qin period people would write poems based on their thoughts and feelings. As a result people would write about their feelings about politics and current events, these are the types if poems that people who practiced confucianism would write. In the Han Dynasty literature with prose became popular along with another formate called Fu. Poetry really became popular in the Tang Dynasty. People used rhythms and rhymes to express their emotions and thoughts. These are a few famous poets from the Tang Dynasty Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi, Li He. In the song Dynasty the poetry evolved into a genre called Ci. These were song poems that were performed/read at parties or banquets. In the these types of poems there were rules on the number of sentences you could have and the tones on each word. I decided that I wanted my poem to be about global warming because in the Pre-Qin period they wrote poems about their thoughts and feelings on current events. I had never really written poetry before and wanted to give it a try. But it was harder than I expected and I decided to write an essay explaining the context of Chinese poetry instead.
Self In the Modern World: For social studies I made a slide show explaining Taoism and Confucianism and how people in America might be unknowingly practicing these religions/philosophies. The first half of my slide show was dedicated to the context of Taoism. Like who started it, the belief system, and how some people might be unknowingly practice it. The second half of the slide show was dedicated to Confucianism and I explained it the same way I did Taoism. The last slide of my slide show was how Taoism and Confucianism have affected me. I explained how I grew up in a christian family but in recent years I have separated myself from the religion. I explained how I still consider myself a religious person but I don't associate myself with any religion. I explained how I consider myself a spiritual person and what that means. I wrote about how Taoism is more inline with what I believe in and practice. In Taoism they are all about being closer with nature, like meditating, eating healthy, etc and this alines with what I do and believe.
Project 2
Nikola Tesla
Social Studies: For self in the modern world I focused on Nikola Tesla's 369 theory. The main idea behind his theory is that 3, 6, and 9 were the key to the universe, and that the numbers can help manifest anything someone might want. Because of time I decided to write an essay about his theory. I started by Making a rough draft. In this rough draft I came up with a few questions for myself to answer. For each question I wrote at least a paragraph, this helped me a lot because I was able to take my answers and just put them into the form of an essay. The questions I asked myself were explain who was Nikola Tesla, explain Tesla's theory, explain how Tesla came up with the theory, talk about the down fall of Tesla's career/mental decline, and what did his critics think about him. I went into detail as best I could for each question. Even when answering the questions I didn't have to do much because I already had the answers to the questions because of all the note taking that I did for my research. After I was done I went over my answers and added/fixed a few things; after this I put my answers into paragraph form to make my essay.
Here is the link to my essay if you want to read some of it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/162qBgXezyyXqE-foPo39QaDbQ8h2K8939gq2fE7Wqh8/edit?usp=sharing
English: For english I decided to write a diary from the perspective of Nikola Tesla at an old age. For my research I had to look into the mindset of Nikola Tesla, especially after the decline in his career. I learned that when Tesla lost the race to invent the radio to an Italian inventor named Guglielmo Marconi. After this, the hype that Tesla had behind him started to die down. His sponsorships started giving him less and less money to work with for his experiments and building his inventions. Tesla began staying in cheap hotel after cheap hotel. He became very impulsive and started obsessing over the number 3,6, and 9, he would only stay in hotel rooms that were divisible my three. In the end Tesla died alone and broke in a hotel in New York on the 33rd floor. After his body by a maid working at the hotel, the FBI searched the hotel room and took all of his papers and files. The diary starts two months before Tesla dies. I also made sure to make the dates divisible my three. This is because Tesla was obsessed with the number 3, so I thought it would make sense to make the dates of the entry division by three. Throughout the diary I have Tesla reflect on his life up until now. Tesla died at the age of 86 because of old age, so throughout the diary I made sure to include that Tesla was ill because of his old age.
Here is the link if you would like to read the diary: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L-1X_76uvEL0f_2xX3aEvshTJVjnQPlWGFo6AtqRwEs/edit?usp=sharing
Art: For art I didn't really know what I wanted to do for sure, but I ended up going with a charcoal drawing of Nikola Tesla. Because the thinking skill for project 2 was perspective I had to include something in my drawing that would represent that. When I had a meeting with my art teacher about my idea he suggested that I include something about Tesla in the drawing. For example Tesla biggest dream was to create wireless electricity transmissions from long distances. In my drawing instead of drawing Tesla's clothes I would draw like one of his inventions or one of his projects that maybe he never completed. I have only done a few charcoal drawings in the past so I did have some experience. I didn't have a lot of time to work on my drawing in class, so I decided that I would spend my class time working on my practice sketch and time outside school to work on my actual drawing. I started by looking up on charcoal drawings for beginners on Google. I found a picture that I liked of a woman's face I didn't entirely copy the face. I mostly used that picture to make my drawing but I did take inspiration from many other drawings that I saw on Google. Over the few days that I had to work on my drawing at home, I was really struggling and I kept having to start over. So instead I decided to write an essay about Tesla's main goal. The first paragraph of the essay was a short summary about him, the second paragraph was about Tesla's inventions/what he accomplished throughout his career, the last paragraph is about is goal and if he ever achieved that gaol.
Link to essay: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WoTrX_pQ0VcummhMowZ0f6oiZGRpEfYnydQQ7fz57SQ/edit?usp=sharing
Here is the link to my essay if you want to read some of it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/162qBgXezyyXqE-foPo39QaDbQ8h2K8939gq2fE7Wqh8/edit?usp=sharing
English: For english I decided to write a diary from the perspective of Nikola Tesla at an old age. For my research I had to look into the mindset of Nikola Tesla, especially after the decline in his career. I learned that when Tesla lost the race to invent the radio to an Italian inventor named Guglielmo Marconi. After this, the hype that Tesla had behind him started to die down. His sponsorships started giving him less and less money to work with for his experiments and building his inventions. Tesla began staying in cheap hotel after cheap hotel. He became very impulsive and started obsessing over the number 3,6, and 9, he would only stay in hotel rooms that were divisible my three. In the end Tesla died alone and broke in a hotel in New York on the 33rd floor. After his body by a maid working at the hotel, the FBI searched the hotel room and took all of his papers and files. The diary starts two months before Tesla dies. I also made sure to make the dates divisible my three. This is because Tesla was obsessed with the number 3, so I thought it would make sense to make the dates of the entry division by three. Throughout the diary I have Tesla reflect on his life up until now. Tesla died at the age of 86 because of old age, so throughout the diary I made sure to include that Tesla was ill because of his old age.
Here is the link if you would like to read the diary: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L-1X_76uvEL0f_2xX3aEvshTJVjnQPlWGFo6AtqRwEs/edit?usp=sharing
Art: For art I didn't really know what I wanted to do for sure, but I ended up going with a charcoal drawing of Nikola Tesla. Because the thinking skill for project 2 was perspective I had to include something in my drawing that would represent that. When I had a meeting with my art teacher about my idea he suggested that I include something about Tesla in the drawing. For example Tesla biggest dream was to create wireless electricity transmissions from long distances. In my drawing instead of drawing Tesla's clothes I would draw like one of his inventions or one of his projects that maybe he never completed. I have only done a few charcoal drawings in the past so I did have some experience. I didn't have a lot of time to work on my drawing in class, so I decided that I would spend my class time working on my practice sketch and time outside school to work on my actual drawing. I started by looking up on charcoal drawings for beginners on Google. I found a picture that I liked of a woman's face I didn't entirely copy the face. I mostly used that picture to make my drawing but I did take inspiration from many other drawings that I saw on Google. Over the few days that I had to work on my drawing at home, I was really struggling and I kept having to start over. So instead I decided to write an essay about Tesla's main goal. The first paragraph of the essay was a short summary about him, the second paragraph was about Tesla's inventions/what he accomplished throughout his career, the last paragraph is about is goal and if he ever achieved that gaol.
Link to essay: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WoTrX_pQ0VcummhMowZ0f6oiZGRpEfYnydQQ7fz57SQ/edit?usp=sharing
Project 3
Topic idea: Why is storytelling important?
English: For english I decided I wanted to create and write my own story. For my research I looked up how to write a proper story, I took notes on how to come up with a good storyline, how to format a story, how to start a story, and what not to do when writing a story. The hardest part of the project was coming up with a good storyline. I didn't want my story to be generic and predictable, so instead of planning my whole story step by step of how I wanted events to play out, I only came up with what I wanted to be my story to be about and started writing. By the time I started writing my story I was running out of time to work on my story, so I was rushing to get my story done in time. But I was coming up with ideas of how I wanted my story to play out as I was writing. This caused me to constantly go back to paragraphs or sentences to change them so they could make sense with other parts of the story. My story is about an African American young woman living in the 1930w who is a pharmaceutical scientist. When she get a job at a lab she is approached by government officials who want her to be apart of a top secret project. I wrote this story in first person, I split the story into journals to make it seem like the main character was writing down her experience in journals. I tried my best to come up with a plot twist at the end of the story, but personally I don't think it was very good because I feel like it was a little childish/generic but I tried my best.
Link to story if you would like to read: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wNM5wQcyguL0Pq2VkqYx6l8TIMK7X7ucyeaSv1y5wUk/edit?usp=sharing
Link to story if you would like to read: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wNM5wQcyguL0Pq2VkqYx6l8TIMK7X7ucyeaSv1y5wUk/edit?usp=sharing
Social studies: For social studies I wrote an essay on the legend of Anansi. Anasi is a spider trickster that has many roles in African and Jamaican folklore. In the stories Anansi is in, he sometimes plays the role of a hero, but in most of the stories he is in he plays the role of the bad guy. In stories where Anansi is the hero, his role is to bring knowledge to humans, and in stories where he is the bad guy, he tricks humans to get what he wants. Anansi is culturally significant in the African and in the African American community. This is largely because slavery and the colonization of Africa. Anansi has always been a popular character in Africa as a whole especially in South Africa but during slavery Anansi’s character was used as a symbol of slave resistance and survival for the Africans taken from their countries/tribes. I wrote an essay explaining how storytelling is an important part of human society, and I used Anansi's legend as an example to prove my point. For my research I looked at many websites and articles explaining who Anansi was, the stories he involved in, and how his legend tied into slavery.
Link to essay if you want to read: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10AFIp3VIJAMgt6sAz6ZprCguFe6wn0N34ykx4dHFeMw/edit?usp=sharing
Link to essay if you want to read: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10AFIp3VIJAMgt6sAz6ZprCguFe6wn0N34ykx4dHFeMw/edit?usp=sharing
Art: For art I wanted to focus on how negative emotions are just important as positive emotions and how storytelling can teach people this lesson. I focused on an animated movie called Tale of the Princess Kaguya. It's a story about a young girl in feudal Japan, who is born from bamboo and is raised by an elderly couple. Throughout the story Kaguya's Father forces her to transform into the ideal Japanese girl, she doesn't want to do this but she does it to make her father happy. Her father is doing this out of love because he thinks this is what's best for her. Before all that happened they started out from humble beginnings but Kaguya's father stumbled upon an abundance of gold, Kaguya's father took this as a sign from the gods that Kaguya is supposed to live in luxury. So Kaguya if forced to move away from her friends and beloved town to move to the city. This is were Kaguya is forced to become someone she is not but she hides the fact that she is unhappy to please her father. To show this I decided to sculpt different scenes from the movie. But I underestimated how long this would take me to do. So I was unable to finish it before the deadline for the project, but I was given more time on the project but because of the lack of materials it didn't turn out the way I wanted it too.
You can find the picture of my sketches of what my product was supposed to look like in this folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1n2H7Sifg2Kgdz-jtTHCnwnNthCj8SSFh?usp=share_link
You can find the picture of my sketches of what my product was supposed to look like in this folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1n2H7Sifg2Kgdz-jtTHCnwnNthCj8SSFh?usp=share_link
Project 4
Topic: Mushrooms in medicine
English: For english I wanted to create my own guide to mushrooms, I wanted to do this because at the beginning of my project I bought a book called A guide to mushrooms. I really liked the style of the book because instead of a formal guide it had nicely drawn pictures, the author also added their experiences and some humor in their writing, and the format the author used to write made it easier for me to understand and locate facts about the mushrooms. Because the thinking skill for this project was synthesis I had to take inspiration from other books about mushrooms and include parts that I liked most into my own guide. My research was mostly reading/looking at other book about mushrooms, I also watched and took notes on a documentary called Fantastic Fungi. I created my guide on google slides, I originally wanted to physically make my book but I decided that would be too much work. In my guide I tried to make it colorful and easy to understand, I also included pictures and drawings of mushrooms on each slide. I also made sure to include fun facts about certain mushrooms throughout the slideshow. I made sure in every slide to include the medical value of each mushroom, I tried my best to include as much facts as I can. This is because not much research has been done on the medical benefits of mushrooms.
Here is the link to the slideshow if you want to take a look: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1I09aH6h6nNCpsS45fHwHq0vXc5dLyOTIctO3AHC1Cno/edit?usp=sharing
Here is the link to the slideshow if you want to take a look: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1I09aH6h6nNCpsS45fHwHq0vXc5dLyOTIctO3AHC1Cno/edit?usp=sharing
Social studies: For social studies I decided to make dishes for my final product I also made mushroom tea. For my research I focused on at least six mushrooms. I took notes on how these mushrooms can be cooked and what they can do for your healthy. I went to a farmers market and I bought oyster mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms. I was going to wait until the last few days to cook my mushrooms but because mushrooms go bad fast I had to cook them right away. I looked up how to properly cook oyster mushrooms, I found this website that gave instructions on how to cook them a certain way, it wasn't a recipe just how to cook them properly. I followed the instructions but I added rice to go with the mushrooms, I think it turned out really well. For my second dish I am going to try taking things from different recipes and combining them into one. Different cultures around the world have used mushrooms for medical purposes, I want to incorporate different things into my own dish from recipes from different cultures without over powering the mushrooms in my dish. I decided to make stir fry with my shiitake mushrooms. To start I looked at different recipes online to get some ideas of how I wanted to put into my sir fry. Instead of rice I decided to put Italian noodles in my stir fry. First I cut up onions, radish, red peppers, shiitake mushrooms, broccoli, ginger, Brussels sprouts. I added tamari sauce to the shiitake mushrooms and let it marinate, meanwhile I boiled the noodle. When the noodles were done I added garlic butter to the noodles to give them some flavor. When the mushrooms were done marinating I threw all of the mushrooms and vegetables in a pan and cooked them until they were soft. I then mixed the mushrooms and vegetables with the noodles.
Link to see pictures because for some reason I can't put them on the website: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KUhlRHXBDymx68pwj-ah4tx7tcTXOBOp?usp=share_link
Link to see pictures because for some reason I can't put them on the website: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KUhlRHXBDymx68pwj-ah4tx7tcTXOBOp?usp=share_link
Art: For art I did three drawings of mushrooms attached to different things. For example, my first drawing is of a reishi mushroom attached to a heart because the reishi mushroom is supposed to help and strengthen your heart. My second drawing is of a shiitake mushroom attached to a tumor, because shiitake mushrooms have anti tumor properties. My third drawing is a lions mane mushroom attached to a build up of proteins, this build of proteins is what causes alzheimers. It has been proven that lions mane helps improve memory and cognitive function. My research was mostly reading/looking at other book about mushrooms, I also watched and took notes on a documentary called Fantastic Fungi. At first I wanted to sculpt these but I thought that would be too much work and on top of that I wasn't able to get the necessary materials. So I decided to just draw them at first I wasn't going to add color but my art teacher wanted to see how my drawing would look with color.
Here is a link to see my sketches and drawings: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1g_sZNlvGNY6AAc2LXnQLlyvju971yfvq?usp=share_link
Here is a link to see my sketches and drawings: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1g_sZNlvGNY6AAc2LXnQLlyvju971yfvq?usp=share_link