Lizzy e.
How to Make A Voki
For an art project, I had to make a voki. A voki is a little online character that you can characterize to your liking and make it talk and say what you want it to. The first step is to go to www.voki.com and if you happen to have an account, then go ahead and log in. If you don’t have an account, then click on the register button. In the name blanks, you can make up a name or you can put your actual name, and then you will need to enter your email into the email blanks. You need an email to do this, so if you really want to create a voki or have to create a voki, then you need to make an email and then continue these next steps. So, now you get to make up a password, and I would suggest making one that you can remember. Last of all for the making an account process, you just have to agree that you are thirteen years or older, and you have to accept the terms of use. Now for the actual voki creating. You will see a button that says “Create A New Voki” and has a plus sign. Click on that button. This starts the part where you can customize your voki. If you want to edit the face and looks of your voki, then click on the button the represents a head and you can choose what type of face, mouth, eyes and eye colors, and whether or not you want eyebrows on your character, hair and hair colors, and other features like that which involve the face. If you click on the button that has the shirt and the cap, then you can change your voki’s clothes. If you click on the button that has a pair of glasses, then you can give your voki a pair of glasses. Those are where to go to choose how you want your voki to look. If you don’t like your background, there is an option for changing that as well. In order to change your background, you will click on the button that says “Backgrounds” on it and has a picture of a tree, and you can look through the different backgrounds and choose which one you want. Now for the voice. If you want to make your voki your voki say something that you want it to, click on the button that has a picture of a keyboard key on it, and type what you want your voki to say into the blank that will show up. You can edit the accent/language by clicking on the arrow on the accent/language button. It will give you a menu in which you can scroll through and pick the accent/language you want. If you want to change the voice, then click on the arrow on the voice button. There will be a drop down from that as well, in which you can pick the voice that you want. Once you have finished that, click the green “Done” button, and then click the gray “Publish” button. You have successfully made a voki!!
The Color Wheel
The color wheel is very often used in art, and not just for one type of artwork. It’s used for all types of artwork, from paintings to sculptures to graphics. The color wheel has the three primary colors on it, and the main few combinations of the primary colors. The three primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. These are the primary colors because you can’t make them with any other colors. You can use these colors to make different colors and color schemes, which can be what causes art to be so catching. Without the color wheel, art wouldn’t be as amazing as it is.
Vincent van Gough is a very famous artist. We hear of him often when people are talking of famous artists because his paintings are truly amazing. His paintings wouldn’t be as amazing as they are though, without their color schemes. In his painting “The Starry Night,” he used a color scheme of blues and yellows. The use of all the blues gives the effect of an eerie night. However, the use of yellows to make the stars and moon gives it the effect of a beautiful night. These two color schemes put together by Vincent van Gough contradict each other in such a way that they caused one of the most famous paintings ever.
Laser Beam
It’s time! It’s finally time! I sit in a beige metal fold out chair at the ceremony of my graduation from high school. I sit in the seventh row, next to my best friend Alyss. I’m about read to burst out of excitement! I mean, the day has finally come when I sit in the navy blue robe of graduation of my school, just waiting to get my diploma, move the tassel on my cap, and throw my cap into the air! Oh, I can just imagine it. In about 30 minutes, I will be starting a new journey in life with college and a real jobs! It may be tough, but I’m ready for the challenge.
They start calling names to come up and get diplomas. I wait, nearly falling out of my chair of excitement. Alyss leans over towards me.
“Rose, calm down” she whispers to me, and then leans back.
I lean towards her and whisper back “How do you expect me to do that? We are about to graduate!” There is no way I’ll be able to calm down! I don’t understand how she would expect me to calm down in a time like this, but to me it’s pretty funny that she thinks I might be able to calm down.
The row in from of Alyss and I is called to go get their diplomas. I just get even more excited, but slightly nervous. They announce the name of each person as that person walks across the stage, and they get their diplomas and shake their teachers and principals and administrators hands. I hear my row get called. All of the sudden we get up and start walking towards the front of the auditorium. I start slightly shaking as I walk, so nervous that I’ll do something wrong. We wait at the ramp of the stage as each person’s name in our row gets called, one by one. I hear Alyss’s name called and watch as she walks across stage. She seems so calm. I just don’t get it.
I hear my name called loud over the speakers “Roseta Maria Love.” I start to walk across the stage. My principal is there waiting for me, with my diploma in one hand and the other ready to shake my hand
“Congratulations,” she says as she hands me my diploma and I shake her hand. From there, I proceed to shake the hands of the vice principal, my teachers and administrators. When I get to the last administrator and start shaking hand with her, I hear a loud bang and I turn around and gasp.
I see a giant whole in the roof of the auditorium that was black around its edges from being scorched by a laser beam. Something floats down, into the auditorium through the whole in the roof. It looks just like a normal Earth lady does. She wears a light pink dress with darker pink flower designs on it. She looks good, harmless almost.
“I’m here for Roseta Maria Love,” she announces. Everyone in the whole auditorium immediately turns towards me. I stand there, having no idea what to do, scared and with mouth gaping wide open. She floats towards me and I close my mouth.
“You are Rosie Maria Love, correct?” she asked, and she held up a picture of me that I had made in an art class earlier that school year. It was made in black and white coloring and had multiple pictures to make up the one picture. Where in the world could she have gotten access to that picture? I had posted it on my blog, where I posted about cool things that I had done. She must have found that website and gotten the picture from there.
“Yes, I am. That would be me,” I answered back.
“Come with me,” she said, and held out her hand.
“Do I have a choice?” I asked, because I thought it might be good to see what options I have.
“No. And if you don’t want to, I have guards that can come help, so it’s the easy way or the hard way,” she said.
“I’ll take the easy way,” I said and took her hand, “but why me?”
“You shall see,” she said as we started floating through the air and heading through the whole in the roof of the auditorium.
The Art of Tagxedo
Tagxedo is an online image of words in a shape that is easy, interesting, and fun to make. In order to make one, I went to www.tagxedo.com and clicked on the create button. I then clicked on the shape button. I could’ve just clicked on one of the shapes that are already there, but instead I used a shape of my own by finding a picture that I really liked and saving it as a JPEG to use as the shape. When After I clicked on the shape button, I clicked on the add image button and found the one I saved as a JPEG and clicked on it once, and then I clicked the open button. I then proceeded to mess with the threshold and blur until I got it where I likes it, and then I clicked the accept button. Then I clicked on the load button, and I typed the words that I wanted to use into the bigger box, capitalizing the first letter of each word and putting a comma and a space in between each word. The last thing I had to do was to click the submit button next to the box that I wrote the words in, and there I had my own tagxedo. It was that simple.
For my tagxedo, I chose lots of words that I think represent myself. Some of the few that I think I relate to the most are intelligent, strong, optimistic, thoughtful, and friendly. I work hard on schoolwork, and do my best, causing me to be intelligent. Working hard doesn’t just go for my schoolwork though. It also goes for my sports and extracurricular activities. I know that the hard work pays off and I’m good at the things I do, so I’m strong because I won’t let anybody get my down by telling me that I’m bad at any of the things I work hard on, because I know that I’m not bad at them. I’m also very optimistic. I always try to see the bright side of things, no matter how hard or stressful, or bad the situation gets, and I’m not going to let myself lose the ability to do that. I’m also very thoughtful. I think about ideas all the time, but that’s not what I mean. I do what I can to not hurt anybody’s feelings because to me, it isn’t nice or right to do that to someone. Last, I would say I’m very friendly. I have lots of friends, some much more different than each other, some more like each other. This is because I like meeting all sorts of people from total nerds to total athletes, and a few that are like me, people who are both total athletes and total nerds, or right in the middle of the two. That is why I believe that I relate to those words the most out of my tagxedo.
This was a project that I really enjoyed. I enjoyed it because I think it represents me very well. All of the words that I used, I can relate to. This, for me, was used as an expressive portrait by expressing who I am in words. It also had my head and face as the shape for the words, which makes it even more of an expressive portrait. I think I will make more tagxedos after doing this because I found this project so much fun.
There are a lot of reasons that people do graffiti. One is that people get bored, and don’t think they have anything better to do. They might get some people to come with then and graffiti on walls. Some may do graffiti alone. Another is that people like the adrenaline rush they get when running away from cops. That goes for people who do it illegally, thank fully not all do it illegally though. Last is that people are wanting of good reputations, and graffiti can ruin those reputations. People do graffiti for a lot of reasons.
Creating a digital graffiti wall is a fun project to try. First I went to a website, which was postergen.com, and I clicked on the create a graffiti button. I type the word I wanted into the text box. The word showed up as a graffiti and I went to the buttons under that graffiti and picked the font style I wanted, the colors I wanted, and I chose the white background to make things later a little easier. I went through that process for every word I wanted to do, and I made the colors in different combinations and used a different font every time. I right clicked on each word when I was done with the design of it, and clicked save as, and saved it. I went to files and found the word and double clicked on it. I clicked the open button, then I clicked on the photo gallery button, then the edit button, and then I double clicked the word that I wanted again when my photos came up. I then clicked the crop button and cropped of the strip of black that said what website the word was created on. I clicked the little down button under crop and clicked apply crop and then clicked make a copy and saved it. I did this for every word. I opened up a PowerPoint and used the same slide for every word. I went to insert and inserted the word, and then I clicked on remove background and moved the margins until the background on it was completely purple and the word was the colors that I made it on the website. I clicked the keep changes button. I did this for every word. After I was done doing that to every word, I got a brick background and put it onto the PowerPoint, right clicked, clicked on send to back, and then sized it to fit the PowerPoint. I then sized all of the words and placed then how I wanted them. That was how I made a digital graffiti wall.
This wall was made with my name on it as the biggest word and words that describe me were surrounding it. I am an athlete. I love sports, and swimming is one of my top two that are tied for my most important sports and favorite sports. I am intelligent and work hard to make good grades. I am a very thoughtful person. I keep aware of what I do to make sure I’m not offending or hurting anyone because I would hate to do that. I am a talented person. I have a lot of things that I work hard and do well in that makes me a talented person. I am creative. I come up with unique things. I am very artsy. I do art outside of what I do for school, especially crafts. I am a bubbly person. I am always a cheerful person. I also just love the Divergent book series by Veronica Roth, and I may not necessarily be divergent, but my mind is. That is how all of those words describe me.
Arcimboldo was a very skilled painter. He painted faces made of fruits, animals, and flowers. In one of his paintings, he shows a bowl of fruit right side up, and how if you turned it upside down, it looked like a face. Arcimboldo’s painting showed that by looking for a different angle, we can discover something new. His paintings also included amazing precision and detail. This is phenomenal, and it shows that by looking for a new angle, you can discover something new.
I made my food face the way I did because I wanted it to look at least a little similar to a human, like how Arcimboldo’s food faces are. The food face I made had whites of the eyes and pupils, along with the color, just like a human face would. I used powdered doughnuts to make the whites of the eyes, blueberries to make the blues of the eyes, and blackberries to make the pupils. I used corn for the teeth because the shape of corn resembles the shape of a tooth. I had used a pear for the nose because a nose starts small up near the eyebrows of a face, and gets a bit bigger and sticks out of your face more as it gets a little bit closer to the lips. I even used spaghetti for the hair because the strands of spaghetti resemble the strands of human hair. I wanted my food face to at least slightly resemble a human person’s face, so I did what I could with the shapes and looks of different types of foods.
John Adams Narrative
I have gone through many events for the greater good or for bad. I was born on October 30 of 1735, which personally I would consider one of the more important events. I was given the name of John after my father, and took on my last name of Adams from my father as well of course. I wasn’t born into a wealthy family though. I was born into a family of farming in Massachusetts. My father had always hoped that I would become a clergyman, so I received a formal education. I attended a dame school, then a Latin school, and then a preparatory school. I exceled at my studies and soon entered Harvard College at the age of fifteen and graduated in 1755. I taught a Latin school in Worchester after college and then I studied law with a prominent local lawyer in Worchester, and that’s where my schooling and childhood ended.
When I first started my life on my own, my career didn’t have the best start. I launched my legal career of being a lawyer in 1758 and had only on client with a case I wasn’t able to win before a jury until about three years after opening my business. However, when my business grew and I began to court the lovely Abigail Smith, the daughter of a Congregational minister in nearby Weymouth, It didn’t take me long to find her as a wife of whom I married in 1764. We had five children, although one of them died in infancy, which wasn’t a kind day. Anyways, later as my business became more popular, I was chosen to defend two British soldiers of whom were charged in the Boston Massacre, and saved them from having to go to jail. I lived, going back and forth between Boston and Quincy, and started writing many essays and publishing them in Boston newspapers. During the Stamp Act, I didn’t really want to play an important role, but I ended up writing more essays and making propaganda pieces anyways. The government started to strip the people, including me, of our rights of self-government, and I quickly became a non-friend of the ministerial policy. I then moved to Philadelphia to the First Continental Congress and was reelected for the Second Continental Congress as well. I elected George Washington of Virginia to the Continental army’s commander when congress made it. I later was appointed by congress to prepare the Declaration of Independence along with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and some others. In 1778 I was sent to France to secure the French aid, then to The Hague to make sure a needed loan was in progress, and then became part of the American diplomats who helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris, ending the War of Independence. I continued helping in events and treaties and became the first United States Minister to England. I continued writing papers about the government and publishing them in the newspapers, making a series called the “Discourses on Davila”. I returned home from London and soon came back to do what I could to gain the position of vice president, and I received it in 1789. I was reelected as vice president in 1792, as it turned out I was soon to be elected as president.
In 1797 George Washington refused a third term of presidency, so I was elected. During my presidency the main issue is that there is a possibility of having another war with France, so in order to make the critics spreading all the rumors be quiet, Congress approved two acts. They were to be called the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Alien Act allows me to arrest and/or deport any foreigner of whom I thought would be a threat. The Sedition Act made it considered a criminal offense to printing anything false about or criticizing the government or its officials. With this in order, I was able to send peace commissioners to France and settle the differences, keeping there from being a war, which makes events in history at least slightly more peaceful than they would’ve been with a war. My life has been full of many events from my childhood to my presidency and have made and still make my life interesting.
School Spirit
I believe that we should take time out of instruction to raise school spirit. Don’t get me wrong, I am the type of person who loves school and learning, but I think that it is nice to occasionally take some time and do a fun activity to raise school spirit because without it, it’s easy to forget about team work and the few events that make things exciting. Some good ways to do this that I know from experience are to have teachers do something completely and totally amazing, and hilarious or have a competition between the homerooms, like a door decorating competition, or some sort of fun event. The trick of these is to make it take hard work and teamwork to get there. My friends, teachers even, and I all enjoy these events on the occasions they happen.
Team building activities that are meant to raise school spirit do actually work and are lots of fun, According to Education World, ‘But the real winner of the scavenger hunt at Kent Primary was school spirit. The hilarity of the whole thing made people smile, Pinkerton added. "It reminded us that we are all in this together."’ These activities really get people excited and the team work reminds them that sometimes we can get projects and other things done better if people put their brilliant minds together. At a school that I once went to, we had a door decorating competition based on school games and teams they are going against, and we had to decorate the door and come up with a good slogan. I remember that this really hyped people up and reminded them of their school spirit for a long time. My group actually won the competition one year, and I remember everybody in my group participated, contributed ideas, and worked hard. It took an insane amount of teamwork and reminded us all what we were capable of with that team work and school spirit, and we all had a great time. There are also events that we will do where the teachers do something funny or we get to do a special event if we meet our AR goals or make good enough grades. These inspire people to work hard and make good grades so that they can see and go to these events. This raises school spirit, teamwork, and grades, which really helps out the school.
To have occasional school spirit raising events is important. These events make everybody more enthusiastic about school and remind everybody what teamwork can do. They also give kids and teachers something to look forward to. They can even cause grades to raise by inspiring kids to work hard to get the event. These are reasons why I believe that we should take occasional breaks from instruction so that we can have fun school spirit events that lead to a good outcome.
Zentangle
Creating a zentangle was a very amazing process to me. It helped relax me and express the mood(s) I was in and what I was feeling while making it. However, it did take many steps and a large amount of time. The process included marbling the paper for my final, choosing patterns I liked and practicing each one on a practice sheet, and then putting them on my final. There is so much detail in each design, no matter which one it is, it takes a good bit of time for each so the whole thing takes a while, but it is an easy to enjoy activity.
There were many steps I had to take in order to make my zentangle. The first thing I had to do was marble my final paper. That was done by putting shaving cream in a bucket, adding paint onto the shaving cream and making designs in it by moving a popsicle stick around in it, putting my final paper on it for a few seconds, rinsing the excess shaving cream off of the paper with water, and then letting it dry. Once my final paper was dry, I had to start the process of the actual zentangle drawing. I had to pick out both zentangle patterns and zentangle strings for the zentangle project. The zentangle strings are what separate the zentangles from each other, while still being zentangles in themselves. I picked these patterns and strings as I went, and I tried to pick ones that would make a balance between business and calmness as well as a balance between dark and light. The hardest part of making my zentangles was honestly how long it took to draw out everything. I had to find the patterns, practice them, and then put them on my final paper. Each zentangle had so much detail that all together, it took a while to make the whole zentangled paper. After I finished all the zentangling, I took a picture of it, downloaded the picture on my computer, and did a little bit of computer editing to it. I didn’t do anything major to it though. I didn’t want it to be overly busy. I didn’t even care to edit out the mistakes in it because making mistakes is okay, and they were bound to happen. All I did was brighten it up a bit and make it more vibrant. I, personally, am very satisfied with how my zentangle turned out and its benefits.
Zentangling, for me, was amazing, and had many benefits. When I was drawing my zentangle, I felt much more focused and very relaxed. It helped me be more relaxed, both during and outside of school. I didn’t stress as often over my schoolwork during the week or two it took me to make my zentangle. Making my zentangle was a very enjoyable process, and I will most likely start zentangling a bit in my free time.
The Stargazer
Everybody chooses a different path in life. Some people will be doctors, veterinarians, mathematicians, scientists, or teachers. Others will be professional artists, dancers, musicians, writers, poets. There are so many to choose from, and a man, since he was a boy, knew exactly what he would choose. He had always known, that he would be an astronomer.
This man went by the name of Glen. Glen’s father was an astronomer, and his favorite hobby, which he did every night, was to stargaze. Since Glen was a baby, his dad would take him outside to stargaze along with him. Glen would stare at the stars and the moon with a curious gleam in his eyes. One night, when Glen, his father, and his mother were stargazing in their backyard, glen pointed at the stars shining above him. Glen said, as he pointed, “star”, his first word.
Glen continued to show an interest in the vast expanse that lies above him. His parents started buying him books and factual magazines and models and posters about space so that he could continue learning more about it. By the time he started kindergarten, he had already learned about space to about the sixth grade level. When his teacher asked him what he wanted to be on the first day of school, he said that he wanted to be an astronomer, and his teacher was truly amazed, especially since he knew what that word meant. His teacher soon learned that because of his reading of many books about the universe, he had learned more than just firth grade education skills already, and that he would be taken out of kindergarten and into second grade.
Throughout Glen’s school years, he was always the smartest kid in his grade, and he, even to himself was a total nerd. He enjoyed the studying and learning of new things, especially of space. He always had his nose stuck in a book that was astronomically related. There were some kids though, kids that were bullies to him. They told him that he would never succeed in life and that astronomers were useless. They told him that being a nerd was a bad thing and that he won’t ever accomplish anything. That hurt Glen and made him really upset. He decided to ignore it and keep accomplishing and working hard, and that paid off.
When Glen was in his mid-20s, he had reason to be excited. He had been offered a high quality job as an astronomer. He would get to travel to use the major telescopes and fancy equipment for research. He might even get to partner up with some of his favorite astronomers to work. He took the job and had the time of his life! Every night since, he went outside and stargazed, just like his father had.
Swimming Is a Sport
Many people do not consider swimming a sport. They say that swimming is easy. Some go as far as to say that all swimming is, it moving your arms back and forth. However, this is not true. There are a few solutions that can be done to fix this thought though.
A sport is an activity that requires physical exertion, strength, and hard work. Many people would not consider swimming a sport, but the people who say that aren’t swimmers. This sport takes an amazing amount of strength, since it requires pushing someone’s own body through the water quickly, nonetheless without to many breaths. On top of that, there is technique in the way the sport must be performed as well as balance to stay on top of the water right. Swimming actually works nearly every muscle in the body and takes so much physical exertion that swimmers are always hungry, especially after a practice, because of how many calories they burn.
People who are non-swimmers watch swimming done in the Olympics. The events in the Olympics are considered sports, even the ones that aren’t commonly thought of as sports. For example: ice skating, gymnastics, and bicycling, are all sports. So, why not consider swimming a sport? It takes just as much strength and work as all of the others, maybe even more.
There are many ideas about ways to get rid of the idea that swimming isn’t a sport. One of the ideas is to have a swim practice for non-swimmers. Basically, 100 people who play sports, but aren’t swimmers, would do a swim practice. After the practice, they would be asked to compare how hard a swim practice is to how hard a practice for a normal sport is. They would also be asked whether or not they believe swimming is a sport. The results would be posted for the public to read.
Many do not believe swimming is a sport. However, swimmers, who actually understand what the sport is like, would disagree. It takes much strength and work to be a swimmer, and it’s very annoying to swimmers when people do not believe it. This is the reason the idea of the swim practice for non-swimmers, as well as all of the other ideas to prove that swimming is a sport, have been invented. Swimming is a sport, and it should be known.
Twistopoly
Twistopoly is a game made for having a good time with friends and family, for four players who are ages five and up.
Contents/Materials
- Game board, one di, spinner board, game money, headpieces (hairbands with a lizard, drumsticks, eighth note)
Rules of the Game
- One person must be chosen to not play on the board, and instead stay behind to be the banker
- At the beginning of the game, everybody is given one $100, two $50s, three $20s, and four $10s by the banker
- The playing order goes from oldest to youngest
- If a player falls and takes another player down with him/her, the player that was taken down along with the player who fell, is not out
How to Play
- The player spins the spinner to find out what color and what limb to use, as well as spin the dice to find out what number space to go to.
- The player can choose make their move on the board, or, if the player doesn’t like that spot, can choose to pay the amount of money the square costs, so they don’t have to move on the board.
- Repeat this over and over with each player.
How to Win
- Be the last player to fall
A Great Change
Scene 1 (In the kitchen of Astra’s house)
Astra: *Walks into the kitchen, grabs her keys, and walks to the front door, completely ignoring her mother*
Astra’s Mom: *Looks up from computer* Where do you think you’re going?
Astra: *talks as if annoyed* To the roller skating rink. Bye. *Opens the front door*
Astra’s Mom: Oh, um, ok. Have fun sweetie. Love you.
Astra: Yeah *steps outside and slams the door shut*
Astra’s Mom: *sighs and shakes head, looking back down at her computer*
Scene 2 (In driving with Astra)
Astra: *sighs* Oh, car rides, skating rinks: places I can get away from my family.
Astra: *cuts on radio and starts humming to the song*
Astra: *Sees man drive right in front of her* Ahhh crazy driver!! *Honks horn and slams on the break, causing her to pass out, head falling back with eyes closed*
Scene 3 (Astra’s flashbacks)
Astra’s Toddler Sister: *Toddles in and hands Astra a drawing of them two together* Here
Astra: *Looks at the picture* Oh its lovely! *gives her sister a hug*
Astra’s Toddler Sister: I wuv you Astwa.
Astra’s Toddler Sister: *Hugs Astra back*
Astra’s Mom: Awe, that’s so cute.
Astra’s Mom and Dad: *walk over and join in the hug, making it into a group hug*
Scene 4 (Aftermath)
Astra: *wakes up and intertwines her hands together and looks up to the sky* Thank you, Lord.
Astra: *looks at phone and dials her mom’s number, then puts the phone up to her ear*
Astra’s Mom: *answers the phone* Astra, are you alright.
Astra: *smiles* I’m fine. I just wanted to let you know I love you.
