Nicaragua children's book project reflection

The "Born NOT in the EEUU (Spanish abbreviation for the United States of America)" project was a very interesting one. The objective was to write and illustrate a children's book that described the culture of a latin country from an adolescent's point of view. My character's name was Juan, and he moved from a town in Nicaragua, called "Jinotega", to a different city in Nicaragua, its capital, "Managua". Juan basically goes through a few days of life in Managua, walking with a large group of people during a Managuan festival.
This project was one I found very unique, cool, and interesting. However, I recently got a concussion around the time we first started working on the books themselves, and concentration was a little tough for me. In fact, I basically illustrated and wrote the book in 1 night. In the future, I definitely plan on taking time before the last day to work on the project, in order to make all of my work more professional and precise. To complete this project, I used the "perseverance" Habit of Heart and Mind. By leaving myself with a very limited time to finish the project, I needed to persevere in order to complete it as best I could.

Del Alma Reflection

After having completed our children's books, we decided to go and read them to children from a local Elementary school. Many of the children already understand Spanish fluently, although some don't at all, or do very little. But basically, we went into the room where the children were, sat down with them (3 of us to ever 1 of them), and read them our books in Spanish. 
This was an intriguing experience, although I was kind of intimidated around the kids. I seem to be like that around most kids, though, and was expected. Still, I can imagine that they were substantially more intimidated by us, because they had to sit down with 3 other people whom were all older than them. 

Here is a video composed of an audio recording of me reading the book, as well as a slideshow of many of its pages.

Arte y Lengua

Descripción del trabajo

In this project, we chose different Spanish artists to base our work off of. We needed their work for the inspiration of our own original pieces of art, and along with the art we had a writing assignment. The writing was in Spanish, and adresses the artist themselves, us, our work, and the relations between our artist's work and our own. My writing piece is in the following paragraphs:

Declaración del artista

            Salvador Dalí es un artista de muchos talentos. En su vida, Dalí era un pintor, escultor, un fabricante de películas cortas, un fotógrafo, un arquitecto, un escritor, y más. Al fin, puedes decir qué él es un hombre muy interesante. Pero quiero enfocar en sus pinturas. En las pinturas de Salvador Dalí, puedes ver simbolismo repetitivo. Por ejemplo, en más de uno de sus pinturas, Dalí usa huevos para simbolizar el amor y la esperanza. Escojo el artista, porque él es muy diferente de otros artistas porque él usa simbolismo único.

            En el arte de Salvador Dalí, veo muchas características obvias de cuales voy a usar en mí pintura. Describen algunas de las mensajes que Dalí tiene en su arte. Por ejemplo, pinto una mano que es mucho más grande de un hombre, quien está en la pintura, también. Las diferencias de los tamaños describen la potencia y la autoridad que la mano tiene en el mundo del hombre. Otra característica que uso en mí pintura que Dalí también tiene en sus pinturas, es el simbolismo del huevo. Es visto en mí arte, y el arte de Salvador Dalí. Para mí, el huevo representa el nacimiento de la humanidad.

            En mí obra, uso una mano para simbolizar el padre de Humanidad. Con el mano, uso huevo a representar el nacimiento de la humanidad. Hay un hombre que está cayendo del huevo. En a una cacerola con un reloj. El hombre cayendo en a la cacerola representa como la gente del mundo se lanza en a una sistema cual consiste de la vida en un horario. Uso café para un color común en mí obra, como en la mano, y en la cacerola. Mí parte favorita en la obra es la mano, porque es muy interesante y agradable a la vista.

Palabras:

Talentos: talents

Fabricante: maker

Fotógrafo: photographer

Escritor: writer

Enfocar: to focus

Repetitivo: repetitive

Esperanza: hope

Escojo: I choose

Siempre: always

Relacionados: related to

Obvias:            obvious

Diferencias:   differences

Potencia:         power

Visto:                viewed

Humanidad:   humanity

Cayendo:         falling

Cacerola:         saucepan

Lanzada:          hurled

Sistema:          system

Común:            common

Agradable:      pleasing

Reflexión

This was easily one of my favorite projects of the year. I mean, what's not to love about it? We were able to express our abilities to create art through the project via the presentation of our own physical art pieces. But, along with the fun, I was met with a few challenges. First and foremost, I don't know much Spanish, so putting together the writing piece came as an evident challenge for me right off the bat. Another example of the challenges I faced is the fact that I hadn't used paints before in the past, and not only that, I was about to adopt the painting style of an artist with good expertise in that field. However, I was quickly able to overcome these challenges, and I am very proud of the work that I made in the end.