Welcome back to my blog of never ending work! I just got back from a crazy new unit where we studied the renaissance. For those of you who don’t know or have completely forgotten what you’ve learned in grade 8 humanities, the renaissance is a period of time after the medieval times. The term renaissance means to be reborn or the rebirth of the world. The renaissance was a very busy time period full of growth and creativity mainly shown through the arts and sciences. These people, including the famous Leonardo Da Vinci, helped spread and change the way we see our world today, or in other words, these people, helped shape our worldview. During this unit, we had to fill out and answer a variety of questions on the renaissance topic which might help further explain what we did in class so I’ve attached the link to the page I filled out below!⤵️

Humanities Questions-12o9773

During this period of change, three groups or categories of people most influenced the change and ideas that occurred. These three groups were the Thinkers, Artists and Scientists/Mathmetitions.

The Thinkers were an interesting bunch. They basically came up with the first ideas of Humanism which explains why they are popularly called humanists. Thinkers thought of ways for the individual to strive by themselves and being less dependent on religion such as biblical studies and such. Humanists found both beauty and knowledge in humans and believed in trusting yourself and being unique.

The second group of people and infact my favourite group of people were the artists. The artists began to depict their pieces more realistically using lots of detail and paying special attention to the human body and how it could be used in their art to create a deeper feeling and meaning. This began a trend as most artists began to feature more of the human body to show human excellence. Patrons played a big role because they supported artists at the time so that they could make a living. Learn more about art patrons today by clicking the link!

The final group of people we studied were the science and mathematicians. The famous scientific method as well as medicines and astronomy were well developed during the renaissance. People learned through books to try and answer their questions leading to people wanting to discover more. A great theory by Galileo was that our Earth is not flat but round. For centuries people thought the Earth we lived on was flat but was then proved using the first telescope invented in renaissance times.

So how does this all tie together? Well to show the changes that occurred during the Renaissance, we were asked to create a triptych. Triptychs are a three panel piece of art that was very popular during the renaissance. Today they can be found in some churches, however, triptychs are made up of three images, each independent and different, but together, they create one magnificent masterpiece. For us, one panel had to show the changes of ideas, one thespread of ideas and the Center was the impact today on our worldview. To begin this project, we filled out a guided research sheet to help brainstorm ideas for each panel.

The change of ideas

The spread of ideas

The impact of ideas

Ok, after completing all of these organisers, it was time to start drawing out my triptych. Below is my first draft as well as the feedback given to me by my peers.

To wrap this post up, the whole post and unit was basically leading up to this final project of the triptych. I am pretty proud of how it turned out and can’t wait for another rushing adventure! I guess you can say that from the renaissance, “this changes everything!”

Have you ever heard the saying « a picture is worth a thousand words? » Well, the same applies to quilts. Back in the days of the Crusades, quilts were not only a beautiful piece of art, but a way of telling stories. Many quilts used symbols to symbolize something of a deeper meaning to help tell the story. Stories sometimes told legends or myths containing an important moral, which at the time, stories were how many people learned new things.

Now, although I may sound a bit like a boring school teacher at the moment, let’s go over a quick recap of the Crusades. The Crusades were basically a series of religious wars where nights and men alike fought to reclaim what the each army thought was rightfully theirs, the holy land of Jerusalem. The Christians sent armies and knights and men to go fight and bring back Jerusalem. To the right is a map of the travel route people took to get to the war. Judging by the distance people had to walk (remember, they didn’t have cars) the Christians must have really wanted to win back their holy land!

It began with the fall of Ancient Rome back in around the 15th century. Once Rome fell, trade began to occur. Because of all the trading that was caused by so many people traveling, towns began to form. This created a convient stop for travelers to rest as well as a one stop shop to buy and sell goods. To show how Trade led to towns during the Crusade times, I created this short comic. Click on the picture below to view! ⤵️

Basicaly what the comic is saying is that towns were formed because it was so much easier for people to live right where they needed to be in order to get what they need. This helped civilization thrive as people were where the resources were.

As towns developed, a society known as Feudalism began to grow in what is now known as Western Europe. Feudalism, as many societies were back then, used the idea of ranks. This meant that people were ranked more or less important than another according to what they did. For example, merchants were ranked lower than priests because priests were the ones with direct contact with God. Feudalism was based off of the 3 F:

Fief: Land

Fealty: Loyalty

Faith: Belief

These three main points were the base of Feudalism.

Ok, now that we’ve briefly covered what the Crusades were and how Trade led to towns during the time, let’s get back to how quilts can tell a story. To begin this topic, we learned what a myth and legend are. This helps to explain the story I will describe in my quilt later. Anyways, a myth, as is a legend, is a type of story that is usually passed down from generation to generation. Most myths contain a certain hero that may have some kind of supernatural power. During this lesson in class, we discussed and read different legends and myths such as the Legend of Robin Hood. Consider this portion of the unit “story writing class”. As a take away from this class, we learned that all stories had a certain flow to how they were written. This, we then learned, is called the Heroes Journey. Below I’ve attached a short video explaining exactly what the Heroes Journey is. You might even think of certain movies or stories that come to mind when watching! ⤵️

Any movies or books come to mind that follow this cycle? Hopefully the video helped explain the cycle to you. If you didn’t watch the video or happened to not fully understand what the Heroes Journey is, let me do just a quick recap. Most people know the story of Harry Potter. Well, like most heroes, he started out as an ordinary boy. However, he gets called into the Wizarding World by Hagrid. This is described as the CALL TO ADVENTURE. He then receives ASSISTANCE  from his friends, Ron and Hermione and guidance from Dumbledore. Fast forwarding through like five or so books, Harry has all these small battles or otherwise known as TRIALS and APPROACH. As you get to the Deathly Hallows book and Harry dies from defeating Voldemort, this is known as the CRISIS or the hero’s time of most need. He then gets REBORN and defeats Voldemort at the CLIMAX before RETURNING HOME. Below is the layout of the hero’s journey planner for the legend my group and I were to create. ⤵️

Quilt Blocks Planner 3-113kldy

Now it’s time to get quilting! Once we learned and understood how quilts could tell a story using symbols and how to follow the Hero’s Journey, it was time to get into our groups and write our own Crusade Legend. I had the great opportunity to work with people I don’t usually work with: Izzy, Fraser and Kyle. So this was a great learning experience! Our legend had to follow the journey of a Christian hero as well as one from the Muslim point of view. While the two stories were meant to be separate with their own heroes and goals, together, they also created one big picture. To begin the task of writing the story, our group broke into two: Fraser and Izzy, and Kyle and I. Izzy and Fraser would write the Muslim’s side of the legend while Kyle and I wrote the Christian side. Below is our story idea from the Christians perspective. ⤵️

storytelling graphic organizer-yvx6nq

Together in class, we drew out what we wanted the quilt blocks to look like:

Story 1: Crusaders

William and Annie depart on a Journey to Jerusalem in search of revenge.

Along the way, they were attacked by a Muslim man and Annie shoots him with her bow and arrow.

Although the man tried to kill them, Annie feels sorry for him and kneels beside him to pray. Then, William and Annie continue their journey to Jerusalem.

Story 2: Muslim

Flynn, a Muslim man flees Jerusalem after witnessing the death of his wife and children.

During his journey, he sees two kids camping out in the forest. With jealousy, he tries to kill them because these kids got to live while his are dead.

Flynn dies during the attack, but forever lies peacefully among the flowers.

Ok, now you kind of see how each of the stories fits in with the other and how each are still their separate stories. To see more examples of how art could tell a story, our teacher, Ms. Willemse took us to the Gordon Smith Art Gallery. There, we used the featured art as examples of different stories that could be hidden within the picture. To do this, we each had to pic and stand beside a piece of artwork, then explain to the class, how it tells a story. Whether through words, symbols or realistic detail, each piece of art told a different story. Here are some of the masterpieces we saw! See if you can guess any of the stories hidden in the art!

Well, there you have it, how art or in this case quilts tell a story. Thanks so much for reading and stay tuned for more posts on the way! Bye!

And…we’re back from another crazy adventure of Destination Imagination (or DI)! What a great learning experience full of team work, growth and creativity! First off, you might have noticed from our team picture at the beginning of this post, that we’ve lost 50% or a good chunk of our team. Well, to answer that question, let’s just say that they couldn’t make it to this tournament (lucky them!)so, we had a independent group of two who took the challenge head on and attended DI. For those of you who have like no idea what in the world I’m talking about, DI is a worldwide academic competition where students between the ages of Elementary school to post Secondary compete in different stages of competitions where they will use teamwork, determination and creativity to solve a challenge both pre-prepared and on the spot! For more information about Destination Imagination and my challenge I competed in, click on the link to my regionals blog!

Anyways, for those of you who are completely caught up on my DI adventure, let me tell you how the Provincials Tournament went… well, like I said earlier, we only had a team of two. With Grace gone and Caleb away, our mighty ”Constructures” were whittled down to just two members: Sam and I. This in a way, makes completing the challenge harder especially when having to perform a skit or play with only two, but, a lot less arguing and people in the way came with that. DI is a great experience where your meant to solve problems, well, that just exactly what Sam and I did: solve lots and lots of problems.

We all knew from the beginning that the whole King and Queen story wasn’t working. It just felt awkward having to act so formal and unlike ourselves, so, to solve that problem, Sam and I completely scrapped that idea and rewrote the script, this time using characters based off of our personality and hobbies. I got to dance, and Sam got to use his own everyday slang and puns! Bye bye king and queen! To view our script, simply click on the link below!

Drop Zone Adventure x2-1e3fp33

Secondly, our structure,and every other team’s, got destroyed after the Regionals Tournament to check for nails. This meant that we had to rebuild the structure. Another problem came with this one, however, because the team members that were no longer part of the team were the ones who had the machine saws! This meant that we had to cut the wood by hand. The project was luckily done by Sam (Thank you, Sam!) But ended up being a last minute project. You might have noticed that the sketch with the structure’s dimensions is slightly different than the actual structure. This is due to weight because when our team members left us, we had no idea what type of wood they had used. So when we built the structure, it was overweight and had to be altered. Talking about last minute changes, our team scored very poorly on our event depicter last tournament so therefore rethought the whole thing. And on the night before, painted a new backdrop! Again, thanks Sam for helping! Below are pictures of our event depicter. ⤵️

The cave

The house (opening scene)

The forest

I was very proud of our new backdrop, considering it was a last minute change and that our last backdrop was much worse (it was blank). Another problem that occurred was on the actual day of the tournament. Because of all the last minute changes that were happening, we forgot to print the actual forms that allowed us to compete ! This is where I had my miniature mental meltdown and, like last time, luckily had Sam there to help. We ended up having to fill out most of the forms by hand, but, as boring and hand cramping as it was, this unlikely and sudden activity was a great team bonding event. Way to go team for solving challenges!

Now, you might be asking yourself, well, Kiera, what about the actual tournament? Well, the actual performance went pretty well and mostly as planned. All lines were memorized and costumes were complete. Our structure withstood all the weights to a total of 700lbs! To see our full performance, watch the video below!

We also did well on our instant challenge, but unfortunately, we’re not allowed to talk about it. But, if you want to see our score for our central Drop Zone challenge, click on the images below! If you don’t want to, good choice!

Besides just doing our own challenge, the rest of the time was either used to eat food or cheer on team Seycove. After all, we really are one big team. Cheering on others played an important role during the day as it was encouraging to have people from your class watch your performance but also friends were what made the whole experience worth it. Here are some pictures of us having a good time.

 Cheering on Team Seycove!

Well, to wrap up this DI season, did we win anything? No. Unless you count a participant certificate, but I did learn that teamwork isn’t always easy and sometimes you really have to keep going and persevere even when everything seems wrong and people aren’t exactly with you. If I had to change something about the actual presentation, I would have changed the amount of effort that went into the event depicter not knowing it was worth so much. Next year, I hope to take what I learned and apply that to next year and a fresh new start. Would I do DI again by choice? Absolutely not! After everything I went through to get to Provincials, I would never go through again. But am I glad I did it? Absolutely yes! What I learned from this experience is something I’ll take with me for the rest of my life. DI helped me grow not only as a learner but as a person. Having to deal with difficult situations, whether it be a challenge or a person, the lessons and strategies I’ve learned are and will forever be valuable to me. I guess I did win something after all, new knowledge, and, a new friend:

“Thanks, Sam! Even if it’s for the one millionth time, thank you!!! It was awesome working with you! A crazy journey I’ll never forget. And the greatest prize or treasure of all? Friendship!”