Category: 6th Grade

Habits

27addisonp /

From November to December the LA class started with a 30 second plank and gradually added on 10 seconds every two days or so. I thought this was a fun experience and it challenged me to have the determination to be able to stick to a daily habit. Having this daily habit got increasingly harder as we increased the time, but I am proud that I never gave up on it. At the beginning, I had no idea how I was ever going to do a plank longer than 2 minutes. Even so, I managed to overcome that and plank for 5 minutes at the end. 

 

My daily habit that I am working on currently is stretching. It might sound weird at first, but stretching every day has a ton of benefits including injury prevention, increased flexibility, and more. Especially for an athlete like me, it’s important to stretch. So, I created a daily habit of stretching. This particular daily habit isn’t as hard as the planking, but I challenge myself to add a stretch about every 3 days.

Wisdom Tale Comic: Antlers

27addisonp /

I chose to make a comic for the wisdom tale Antlers. Antlers sends a message to say that everything serves a purpose. I chose Antlers because I like how the story interprets the moral and puts it into the eyes of a deer and a hunter. Even though the tale is very short, it goes through the same process of having a character with a series of events that changes their perspective, which is how the moral came to be. I also just like the fact that it has animals instead of humans as the main character. I guess it is just more interesting that way to me 🦌 🌲.

I made it by (1) using Comic Life to make the layout and (2) using Sketchbook to make the illustrations. Here are the steps of how I made the comic:

  1. download Comic Life
  2. make a new comic design
  3. choose your layout for your comic
  4. add text to it (speech bubbles, thought bubbles, etc.)
  5. go to Sketchbook and create multiple images depicting the events in your story. I drew with a black marker to make the outline of what I wanted to draw and then filled it in with color.
  6. take screenshots of those pictures for your story
  7. add the screenshots to Comic Life in the image bubbles with each blank space.
  8. That’s it 💭 📖

 

Art!

27addisonp /

I have recently started Art as a new fine art. I am enjoying all the fun activities we have done so far, so I thought I might share some of the things with you 🎨:

 

The first activity we did was making a picture of a face. Just a typical face, with a nose, mouth, eyes, you get it. This sounds pretty simple, right? Well, there was a twist. We could not use markers or any other drawing supplies, and only make the picture with things out of our backpack. I used paper to create my face 🗒 🙂.

 

The second activity we did was take pictures of all the art supplies we have at home and then draw that picture. I used a plain piece of paper and a pencil to recreate the image on a drawing  ✂️ ✍️.

 

That’s all we have done so far! I am really excited to do more fun activities 🖼

 

Accomplishments for the Remote Week

27addisonp /

During the remote week, I felt the workload was more balanced than with hybrid learning. I approached my learning in a manner to make it simply just easier for me. Here are the things I did / tips to help you make learning remotely/ hybrid easier:

1. Organize 👍: Write down your assignments and plan out your day. Trust me, it makes it a lot easier.

2. Spread out the workload 📚📝:Don’t complete every assignment you have for the week in one day. If you spread it out, you’ll have more of a balanced schedule every day

3. Take your time ⏰: Take your time completing assignments and be flexible with the time you finish them at. It is better to finish at 4:00 with your best work done than at 12:00 when you’ve rushed through it.

When your at home, there are no specific time slots for classes, so it is really up to you to make the schedule balanced and efficient as it can be. 🗓

Some of my favorite activities in the classes were completing projects. I had projects in Science, Spanish, Math, and PE. Having projects (especially when they have flexible timing) was fun to do over the remote week because I got to choose even more of my work load. I also just like doing projects more than regular assignments, but maybe that’s just me 😊. Another activity that was fun to do was the meeting with my Art class. We had a Teams call where we talked about our favorite types of art and played games 🖼.

I am currently reading The Tale of Witchcraft. It is the sequel to The Tale of Magic (read about it in one of my posts below 📖).

One of the many outside activities I did during the remote week was bake. Baking has always been one of my favorite hobbies, and, especially during the pandemic, it has been something calming for me to do. During the pandemic, I have baked 6 birthday cakes (one of which was mine 🎉), 4 pies, 9 batches of cupcakes, and about a dozen batches of cookies! 

Another outside activity I enjoyed was swimming. I competitively swim, so I had many swim practices during the remote week, and even a meet!  🌊 🏊🏻‍♀️

Anyway, those are some of my achievements during the remote week. Thanks! 😊 👍

The Tale of Magic

27addisonp /

I am reading The Tale of Magic by Chris Colfer. The Tale of Magic is a great book if you like tons of unexpected twists and turns. It is a fantasy book, which is easy told from the cover. It doesn’t have many illustrations, except for the start of every chapter. What’s cool is the illustration that is at the beginning of a new chapter shows you something big that’s going to happen. The Tale of Magic is the start of a new series by Chris Colfer. The Tale of Witchcraft is the second book in the series. I chose to read The Tale of Magic because The Land of Stories series, also by Chris Colfer, was my favorite series of all time, so I figured it might be worth reading 😊 📚.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

27addisonp /

I have used this chocolate chip cookie recipe many times and it always comes out perfect. Enjoy!  🍪

 

Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe:

 

Ingredients

  • 2 and 1/4 cups (280g) all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 and 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup (1.5 sticks or 170g) unsalted butter, melted & slightly cooled*
  • 3/4 cup (150g) packed light or dark brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
  • 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk, at room temperature
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  • 1 and 1/4 cups (225g) semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

  1. Whisk the flour, baking soda, cornstarch, and salt together in a large bowl. Set aside.
  2. In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together until no brown sugar lumps remain. Whisk in the egg, then the egg yolk. Finally, whisk in the vanilla extract. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix together with a large spoon or rubber spatula. Cover the dough and chill in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours or up to 3-4 days.
  3. Take the dough out of the refrigerator and allow to slightly soften at room temperature for 10 minutes.
  4. Preheat oven to 325°F (163°C). Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.
  5. Roll the dough into balls, about 3 Tablespoons of dough each. The dough will be crumbly, but the warmth of your hands will help the balls stay together. Roll the cookie dough balls to be taller rather than wide, to ensure the cookies will bake up to be thick. Place 8 balls of dough onto each cookie sheet. Press a few more chocolate chips on top of the dough balls for looks, if desired.
  6. Bake the cookies for 12-13 minutes. The cookies will look very soft and underbaked. They will continue to bake on the cookie sheet. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
  7. Cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week.

Notes

Good luck! 👍

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/chewy-chocolate-chip-cookies/

 

Vanilla Cupcake Recipe

27addisonp /

This recipe is really simple and works every time. I followed this recipe and made pumpkin decorated cupcakes. Basically, I made cupcakes that looked
like pumpkins. I have put how to make pumpkin cupcakes below the recipe 🙂

 

 

VANILLA CUPCAKES

  • 2 1/2 cups(325g) all purpose flour
  • 2 cups (414g) sugar
  • 3 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 cup (240ml) milk
  • 1/2 cup (120ml) vegetable oil
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 cup (240ml) water

VANILLA FROSTING

  • 1/2 cup (112g) salted butter, room temperature
  • 1/2 cup (95g) shortening
  • 4 cups (460g) powdered sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 2–3 tbsp (30-45ml) water or milk

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (176°C) and prepare a cupcake pan with liners.
2. Add the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt to a large mixer bowl and combine. Set aside.
3. Add the milk, vegetable oil, vanilla extract and eggs to a medium sized bowl and combine.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and beat until well combined.
5. Slowly add the water to the batter and mix on low speed until well combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed to make sure everything is well combined. Please note that the batter will be very thin.
6. Fill the cupcake liners about half way and bake for 15-17 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs.
7. Remove the cupcakes from oven and allow to cool for 2 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack to finish cooling.
8. To make the frosting, combine the butter and shortening in a large mixer bowl and mix until smooth.
9. Add 2 cups of powdered sugar and mix until smooth.
10. Add the vanilla extract and 1 tablespoon of water or milk and mix until smooth.
11. Add remaining powdered sugar and mix until smooth.
12. Add remaining water or milk as needed and mix until smooth.

Pumpkin Cupcakes:

1. Follow the recipe above until you get to step #6.

2. Before step #6, mix orange food coloring into the batter.

3. Continue on with the recipe and add green food coloring to about 1/5 of the of the frosting. Add orange food coloring to 4/5 of the frosting and decorate as shown in the picture. If you have piping bags, use them! It’ll make the cupcakes look more like pumpkins. 🎃

Tips:

If you don’t have shortening for the frosting, you can substitute it for 1/2 cup (a stick) of butter

 

Start with 1 tablespoon of water or milk for the frosting. I ended up only using 1 tablespoon last time I followed this recipe. Of course, the consistency of your frosting is up to you!

 

I hope you enjoyed 👍

 

 

What I Notice

27addisonp /

I notice masks. Especially during the pandemic, the design of your mask tells a little bit about you. It´s like the clothes you wear in a non-pandemic time, the first thing people notice. Masks are necessary during the pandemic, so I notice them. Even if I already know someone, their mask still tells a lot about them. One thing that I always notice is the color of people´s masks. In some way, the mask someone wears is a reflection of themselves.