For Humanities Grade 7, we searched about the Renaissance period in Europe. The renaissance period is when everything flourished. It was around the 1500′s, and at around that time, mediaval age retrieved it’s beauty. There were many geniuses, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, William Shakespeare, and more. Everything became more advanced, and lot’s of the most famous art were drawn during the Renaissance period. And for our project, we used a program called “Minecraft” where we had this server that we shared with the whole grade. We broke into groups of three, four, five, and we created a building that it world famous, and was created during the Renaissance period. My group mates were, Maya, Zerric, and Yudai, and we created the Arc de Triomphe, or The Triumphal arch, created in 1806, in France.

I think our Arc de Triomphe was done in a good amount of time, and also made fairly well. I did not really take part in creating the arch, but more of collecting the information. Since Minecraft was new to me, I did know how to do anything, and couldn’t even place a block. It did take quite a long time for me to get used too the atmosphere, and also the graphics, since my eyes hurt a lot each time I close the program. We didn’t start creating the arch until about a week before winter break. We completely forgot about the arch, and we always were building new houses in our area. When we did start building it, none of us really participated besides Yudai. And during winter break, me, Maya and Zerric completely had forgotten about building the arch, and didn’t really touch it for rest of the break. When we did come back, we realized it was finished, thanks to Yudai, we started started sharing the information and also writing the scripts. One of the things I learned and thought during this unit, I learned that France was really a powerful empire once. They were very proud of all their victories, and also with their soldiers. There were many soldiers that died during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, which their names mostly unknown. This shows how proud and satisfied they once were with their Empire, and that is why there is also an arch to show their Triumph.

Even though we had quite a lot of trouble with all the vandalizing on our server, I thought the project went very well. We often fought with other groups, and we had some people acting annoyingly or destroying other people’s buildings, which was a problem. But that was only for the first few weeks, and otherwise, we did quite well with all the building. I think all of us chose good groups to work in, even though we did have trouble with sharing information in our group, it wasn’t much of a problem. When the vandalizing actually happened with the hacker and everything, it made lots of people uncomfortable and annoyed. It took a long time to fix everything in our city, but at that point we still hadn’t started building our arch so our team was okay. I also think all the lava and water buckets made lots of people get angry, and lots of people probably wasted time on that. I think that Minecraft was a very interesting a fun thing to have for a project, and I am pretty sure most people enjoyed using the program then the usual projects. I am not addicted to Minecraft or anything, and I do like the regular researching and creating a slideshow thing more, but I do think it was something new and fun. It was more fun than drawing the building on paper, since I can not draw and I am sure some people have some difficulties with drawing. Some parents may not want their children to play Minecraft, but I think it is loads of fun, and it is very easy to create anything, and we can also use it for learning as we did in our Grade. I do recommend more schools to play Minecraft, and I do hope to see Minecraft getting used for learning soon.

During these past few weeks in Humanities class, each one of us were creating our own personal coat of arms, and the each one of us have a special meaning for what we put on our coat of arms. Some of the wealthy Japanese families in the olden times had their own signs, called “Mon” in Japanese, so people would know who is from what clan. And, now, some of the names have been passed on to the families in Japan. If you are curious, and would like to know more about Mon, click the link here! If you are from Japan and would like to see what your family Mon might have been click here and/or here!

Mon

Coat of Arms

The coat of arms that I created has lots of the things I like, and what are important to me. This is a picture of my coat of arms:

My Coat of Arms

This is my coat of arms. Looking at it, it looks really awkward, and not everything fits in perfectly. But this actually has lots of things that mean a lot to me. First of all, The sword in the back. This isn’t just a regular sword. It’s actually the sword that Percy Jackson uses in the “Percy Jackson and The Olympians” series by Rick Riordan. I love the Percy Jackson series, so I decided to use the sword as an symbol of my love fore books and a little bit for power.

Sword of Percy Jackson

The red dragon overlapping the sword is the one of the symbols that represent Hong-Kong, China. I was born in Hong-Kong, and lived there for a little while, so Hong-Kong means a lot to me. I decided to use it since I love Hong-Kong, and the dragon also represents the year I was born which is Dragon year.

Hong-Kong Dragon

The eye on the bottom, is The Eye Of Horus. Horus is a God in Egyptian myth, and he is an Pharaoh who overthrew his uncle Set for revenge on his father. I put the eye of Horus on because I love Egyptian myth, and since The Eye of Horus means protection and lots of other meanings, it shows how strong Horus is. And since I like Horus, I put it on to show my love for myths.

The Eye of Horus

The 8-headed monster on the left, is the Greek monster Hydra. I put this on, since I love Greek myth. I chose to put the Hydra out of the hundreds of monsters, because there is a monster that looks like the Hydra in the Japanese myth called the Yamata no Orochi, which has eight heads just like the Hydra. I love both myths, and since I am from Japan, I put the Yamata no Orochi.

The Hydra

Picture of Yamata no Orochi from Naruto

I am not really sure of what went well, since half of the time I was talking or just looking at pictures. But I thought collecting the pictures went quite smoothly, and putting it on the template of the crest was really easy, and went well I guess. But I did have some hard parts, such as finding pictures that actually were looking at the right way, or searching about the crest of arms and Mons.

Overall, I do like this, but I am not actually proud of it. It looks okay, but it doesn’t look really good either. Possibly because I have no sense in laying out stuff, or just because the pictures don’t match with one another. And some pictures look really awkward crushed into one template, but it is okay since it shows me and not anybody else. It does kind of show who I am, and I don’t really think that the fact it shows me is bad, but it is just that everything doesn’t fit in together. But I do like it and I tried so I think it is okay:)

Right now, we are making a page for National Geographic in humanities. It’s not for the real national Geographic, but a pretend one. We were supposed o pretend that we found a ancient civilization. I made a civilization up called, “Karathia”, and I wrote a 11 paged article about my civilization.

I really enjoyed this unit, and I found it very fun writing the paragraphs. I am not really proud of what I did, but I think I did an okay job, but I think I can do better if I try harder. I especially liked writing down the parts of beliefs and religion, because I liked creating the Gods and how the villagers in my village worshiped their Gods.

I would like to improve on my writing part, because I think I didn’t write very much, and I think there isn’t enough writing there. If I could do it again, I will try to make everything longer, and I will put much more detail in it. I wanted to make the beliefs part longer if I could, but I couldn’t and I am not really pleased with it. But overall, I think I did do quite a good job.

I would not like to live in my civilization, because I have a feeling that I will break a rule and I will die easily. And there is also a rule that when each child turns 12, they will get a job. I really won’t want to get a job when I turn 12, and I think I won’t be very good at it. I also think I won’t want to live their, since it takes so much time to write/carve letters.