Throughout the year, I have enjoyed three particular Language Arts activities. They all have to do with books, which is a topic I love to research and study. These projects are a great thing to do at home or at school, and are great ways to improve your writing and artistic ability.
Book Reading: The Last Cuentista
One of the books I had to read for Language Arts was The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. This story follows a Latina girl named Petra and her journey across the galaxy. The book is set in 2061, when Halley’s Comet is predicted to come close to Earth.
In the story, Halley’s Comet crashes into the planet and supposedly kills every single living thing on the planet, except for a small group of people aboard a spaceship, who escape into outer space. Main character Petra and her family are among this selection of people, and they go into stasis for about 400 years while the commanders of the ship guide them to the planet Sagan, where they can build a civilization. When Petra gets out of stasis, she discovers her family has been purged and that a malevolent group called the Collective have taken over the ship. It is up to her to save the last group of humans in the galaxy!
Book Writing: My Ideal World
This writing activity was a great way to express creativity and work on writing long essays; I had to come up with an idea of an ideal world, and write a description of it. While not technically being an entire book, it was a lengthy project that was a major highlight of the year. My ideal world is called Aeryworld, and I have made a separate blog post depicting this interesting planet. I also had to create a poster about Aeryworld, which was a fun shift from writing to drawing in Language Arts.
Book Creating: Painting With Peg Gignoux
A follow-up to the ideal world project was the creation of the book that I would insert my Aeryworld essay into. I made the book by folding pieces of painted cardboard and covering them in collages depicting scenes from my planet. To make the paper we would use in our collages, we worked with artist Peg Gignoux. She taught us how to make prints using akua ink and leaves. Once I was done with my prints, I cut shapes out of them and formed the shapes into pictures, making a collage.
In the center of the book, I have shown the core of Aeryworld and its massive supercomputer, along with the pantheon of robots that govern the many districts of the planet. On the sides of the book, I have created some picturesque landscapes that appear regularly in the wilderness of Aeryworld. Finally, I have pasted the actual essay onto the back of my book. This is a great, artistic activity to do if you have the time, effort, and akua ink.
Hopefully you will get to try one of these amazing projects! These three have really changed my Language Arts experience.
