We are in our final week of Genius Hour, and boy has it flown by! There have been lots of ups and downs during this project, but we managed to overcome those obstacles. For the most part, our group was fantastic with communication and spreading the workload amongst ourselves so that none of us were overwhelmed. It was definitely an experience for us all, and a positive one overall in terms of group work. We are all pretty relieved that we were able to accomplish such a huge project and that our teamwork was so interconnected and successful as well.
Each of the activities we tried helped us accomplish our original goal of expanding our horizons and becoming more well rounded with random interesting hobbies, skills and knowledge. While we all did enjoy each new activity and hobby that we tried, each one of us had our favorites. Gabby’s favorites were tennis and baking. She has always had a love and passion for baking, as she did a lot of it with her grandparents growing up. Gabby was also happy to share her love of tennis with her group members, and help them with their technique and consistency. Bonnie Jo’s favorites were magic tricks and tennis. She has been very interested in magic ever since she was young, and has learned some tricks that she shared with the group. Like Gabby, she was happy to share her love of tennis with the group. William’s favorites were learning more about the stock market and baking. As we get older, knowing stuff about the stock market will come in handy. He also enjoyed baking as it was a nice and relaxing ending to our project. Kathryn’s favorite was our random acts of kindness. As she always says, one smile can go a long way! As far as this past week has gone with our completing our final presentation and preparing it for our class to see what our project has actually accomplished for us, it has gone fairly smoothly. We were able to compose a Prezi to display our achievements, failures and ventures of the past 12 weeks, and practicing for the final presentation was also something we were able to work out amongst ourselves. Because each of us has been involved in the making of the project, it was easy to assign portions of the presentation and have each of us understand what we were talking about. This past week was also a reminder that this was a school assignment, though, and not just some fun outings with friends to further our experiences in the world. It has been a pleasure to finish this project, though, because we definitely learned some things along the way, so we are all grateful for the opportunity provided to us in this project. This is the final week that we get to wish this to you, so we hope you all have enjoyed reading about our adventures! We’ve certainly loved getting to share them with you.
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Hello everybody! It is now Week 11 of Genius Hour! Crazy how time flies, isn't it? We have had so much fun with this project, and we hope you’ve enjoyed following along with our progress. We’re a little sad that it’s coming to an end! This has been quite a busy week for all of us, but we found some time in our schedules to fit in this week’s projects, including magic tricks and baking!
For Week 10, we were interested in learning a couple of magic tricks. During class time on Wednesday, we performed them with each other. Kathryn and Bonnie put on a show! Bonnie had some previous magic experience, as she was fascinated by it when she was younger. She showed us two very impressive card tricks that amazed us all. Kathryn also learned a card trick Her cousin has tried to share some tricks with her in the past, but they never really stuck. We even intrigued some other groups with our magician-like behavior. If anyone is interested, Bonnie would love to show off her skills in our final presentation! For Week 11, we all got together and baked! This dessert extravaganza consisted of Kathryn’s mom’s famous pound cake, William’s chocolate chip cookies, Gabby’s peppermint chocolate chip cookies, and Bonnie Jo’s mom’s signature banana nut muffins. Kathryn even topped the cake off with a little caramel icing. We all enjoyed the time together and especially liked taste-testing some new recipes. A big thanks to Kathryn’s mom and sister for helping us clean and prepare everything! We cooked at Kathryn’s church but ran into a slight issue when the handle of the oven fell off, oops! Thankfully, her grandpa said it was an easy fix because it’s fallen off before. For our final week of Genius Hour, we plan to prepare and practice the presentation. Thanks for following along with our journey! We cannot wait to show you all everything we’ve accomplished! Hello again faithful followers of our project’s progress! We are closer than ever before to being finished with our Genius Hour adventures, and while it is relieving to know that we will soon be finished with not only these projects but our entire sophomore year, we are a little disappointed that our fun times with this project are almost over. Nonetheless, this has been quite an experience for us all and we look forward to sharing the end of our project with you all!
For Week 10 and into Week 11, we have decided that we are going to learn magic tricks. With the wide variety of types of magic that are available, we cannot master every trick in the book - as much as we’d like to, we can’t figure out how to saw somebody in half and put them back together safely - but we’ve decided to make almost a challenge out of our process. We will display these tricks in the final presentation, but for this week, each of us is going to learn a trick and present it to the group. Bonnie has a slight advantage over the rest of the group - she was very into magic for several years and already has a few tricks up her sleeve, so to speak - but we are all looking forward to our mini magic show that will be put on for each other. We certainly hope that we can wow not just each other, but you all as well! Depending on the quality and type of tricks we end up going with, there may or may not be videos of our tricks on the Gallery page. Descriptions of the tricks will be posted next week…just kidding! First rule of magic - don’t EVER reveal how you do them. It just takes all the fun out of it, does it not? We could all use a little magic in our lives, even if it is just from how we perceive the process. We hope you all have enjoyed our ventures up to this point. For our final activity, we will be coming together one last time to enjoy becoming some low-level chefs because who doesn’t love food? Following that activity, we will be writing our final blog and preparing our presentation for the class. Until next week, everyone! Hello from ¾ of the way through Genius Hour! Our excitement was prevalent when we drew this week’s goal - learning calligraphy. Unfortunately, we cannot learn to drive a manual in the time we have left in this project. It just won’t work with AP exams and our full schedules. We are very busy high school students!
The dictionary defines calligraphy as “decorative handwriting or handwritten lettering.” Just going by the definition, one could assume that this would be an easy task to accomplish - after all, isn’t it just fancy penmanship? However, we discovered that this is NOT the case by any means. There are levels of intricacy to performing calligraphy that we couldn’t understand fully until we tried it. Though, calligraphy was interesting to learn and will definitely be useful in spicing up our cards, projects, and other similar endeavors (perhaps Mother’s Day next Sunday). Calligraphy gave us a chance to step outside of our normal styles of writing and create a totally different kind of lettering. The most interesting part about it was getting to see the difference in all of our calligraphy, even though we received the same instruction from the same person. Our gratitude goes out to William’s mom, who took the time out of her day to teach us! She taught us that calligraphy is just the simple combination of strokes - up, down, and looping strokes make up all of the basics of writing letters. The difficulty comes in when adding extra elements to your writing. As a group, we decided we wanted to learn a more fun and funky kind of calligraphy rather than a formal one. We were educated in adding shading and highlights. We all had a wonderful time, and it was cool to see that everyone produced something unique. Our individual personalities showed through in our lettering! We still need more practice, but thanks to all the effort and amazing instruction, we can now write in basic calligraphy! To see the results of our lesson, view the “Gallery” page. We look forward to the last three weeks of Genius Hour and getting to share it all with you guys! It’s week eight of Genius Hour! It’s gone by so fast, don’t you think? And we’re all counting down until the end of school, aren’t we? Only 32 more days! This week, we drew Random Acts of Kindness, which has been quite touching.
On Wednesday, we put up some Positivity Post-Its around the school. It gave us that warm fuzzy feeling that you get when you know you’re doing something good for others, even if it’s small. We were a little disappointed when we noticed an administrator take one down, but that’s alright because he probably didn’t know what they were for. In hindsight, maybe we should have mentioned it to Mr. Pruitt, and he could have helped us make it a larger project. That’s really how life goes sometimes: you think you’re doing great and have a plan, but then you face some hiccups. Though, that does not mean you should just give up. If we can, we would love to put more sticky notes on cars because you never know what someone needs. We also went through a McDonald’s drive thru and paid for a man’s dinner. Our goal this week was to encourage ourselves and others to incorporate more kindness into daily life. It sounds like a cliché, but even a smile can go a long way. Kathryn truly hopes we can continue this activity for the rest of Genius Hour, as it is something near and dear to her heart. Her mom’s motto is “always stay humble and kind.” Another idea we had was to send coloring books to kids in the hospital. With all that’s going on in our world right now, we feel it’s important to step out of our comfort zone and think about those in need. For our next “crazy idea”, we drew “learning how to drive a stick shift.” We are concerned, though, that might not be feasible with our busy schedules. There are many different factors that go into completing this skill, including getting our hands on a manual car we can all drive, and while it's a fantastic skill, it probably requires a little more time than one week. There are some other adventures we would like to pursue still in the bucket, so it will be fun to figure out what we are doing. Hope y’all have a great week! In these past 7 weeks of Genius Hour, we have “mastered” knitting and sewing, navigated the basics of the stock market, practiced tennis, and solved (or at least attempted to) a Rubik’s Cube. Most recently, we tackled learning sign language! It’s definitely high on the list of most useful skills we’ve tried yet.
Unfortunately, around five percent of the world’s population suffers from hearing loss. Imagine being in a room full of people and not being able to understand what they are saying. It’s similar to being in a room full of people speaking a different language. It’s hard enough in Spanish class. We cannot possibly understand how confusing and upsetting that must feel. That’s why it’s truly amazing that sign language exists. Learning other means of communication is extremely beneficial. Sure, we are using this knowledge to play around with each other, but we could also use it to truly help someone in need. This week has reminded us of how lucky we are. It really wasn’t as tricky as we thought it would be to pick up a couple of signs. This wasn’t Bonnie’s first rodeo either, so she was very helpful. We watched a video and learned some introductions: our name, asking how someone is feeling, and where we’re from. As we finished out the week, we tried to sign to each other going down the hall. We totally recommend trying to pick up a bit of sign language in your free time. Next time, we’ll take it a step farther and have a lesson from William’s mom, as she is somewhat of a sign language expert! We hope y’all have enjoyed following along with us and The Bucket. And be sure to check out the “Gallery” page because we finally have some pictures up! Sorry for the wait! Hello again from halfway through! This project continues to be quite the adventure as we keep adding to our arsenal of skills. Our last drawing involved solving a Rubik’s cube, and boy did that turn out to be a lot harder than we thought it would…let’s break it down a bit.
None of us had ever actually attempted to solve a Rubik’s cube, let alone succeed in doing so. When we began this challenge in class this past week, immediate confusion set in. Who knew that there was a specific way to hold the cube so that we could manipulate it better? In fact, our confusion was so bad that Kathryn had to share the video she’d found so we could all finish it later. Bonnie’s brother attempted to jump in and solve it for her, but she refused to let him help. Following the steps on the video was simple until algorithms got involved. Why is solving the Rubik's cube so COMPLICATED?? Needless to say, this portion tripped us up pretty badly. It was like an impassable gate that wouldn’t let the newbies through. Only one victor was able to get through it - Bonnie finished the Rubik’s cube one time, but has been unsuccessful in doing it a second time. Once again, this is an example of the random skills that we can add to our list of abilities that may or may not prove successful. Stay tuned, and we will keep you updated if anyone else finishes the cube! Because we are at the halfway point, we would like to make note of the process so far. It has been a lot of fun doing this project with each other, and because we stay in touch with one another in regards to scheduling, we have a pretty easy time getting things done. It also helps that we all have our drivers licenses because we can meet up without interrupting a parent’s schedule. All in all, this experience has been fantastic. We certainly hope you guys have enjoyed getting to read about our adventures. As far as pictures and videos go, we are still figuring out how to do that. They should be up shortly! Finally, our next activity is learning sign language. We are so excited for this one because it will not only be enjoyable but also extremely educational! See you in a week, and happy halfway mark! Week 5 of Genius Hour was great! So far, in our group, we have tackled knitting, sewing, and a stock market crash course. We are all looking forward to the next few weeks to see what the next tasks will be. This week, the group played a little tennis at the Davie High tennis courts.
It was slightly windy when we went out on Saturday, but that just made it all the more fun, right? There's never a dull moment with us! Our teachers this week were Bonnie and Gabby, who are members of our wonderful women's tennis team. (They're the CPC Champs!) They taught us all sorts of skills tennis-related. Will and Kathryn both had minimal experience, so they had us rally the ball to understand our current set of skills and simply practice. We went over forehand, backhand, and even tried to serve. After base skills were established, we improved specific things such as adding spin, achieving the perfect grip, angling the racket for better aim, and hand-eye coordination for control. We even had a competition to see who could bounce the ball the longest. The trainees became the trainers as Will came out on top. Will quickly discovered that your shoes are extremely influential in tennis. New Balances are ideal for best performance, specifically the Lemon Pepper Steppers. We had a fabulous time hanging out together and getting a little Vitamin D. As fun as it was, Kathryn and Will decided it will best if we stick to dance and track. If this all sounds interesting to you, then you should definitely keep up with our blog! Next week, The Bucket decided we'll be attempting to solve a Rubik's cube. Kathryn thinks this might possibly be up there on the list of most challenging endeavors. Week 4 of Genius Hour was a success! We all agree that multiple small Genius Hour projects are beneficial. Every week is something new so we are adding to our repertoire of life skills. First, we had our knitting and sewing extravaganza, and we just finished our crash course on the inner workings of the stock market. On Friday, we went to Slayton Harpe’s office. He’s been a financial advisor with Edward Jones for over 12 years. Before that, he spent 17 years in the banking industry. We talked about the history of the stock market, and he gave us a handful of pamphlets. In simplest terms, he told us that stocks and bonds are “own versus loan.”
With stock, you own a portion of a company, and it’s a way for you to get a return on something you buy. Let’s say you own stock in Target, and they have a profitable year. You’ll receive a portion of their success. Time is key, and you want to buy when stocks are low. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to us! Bonds are a way of loaning money with a promise of being paid back. Take our new high school as an example. Davie County didn’t have $60 million just lying around. So, people could purchase bonds for the school to be built. Over time, they would be paid back in full, plus interest. “Mutual funds are like a pool with a lifeguard.” (Harpe). You own a mixture of stocks and bonds for multiple companies. A manager makes sure all of those companies are on the up-and-up. If they aren’t, then they’ll throw them out. We even tied it back to the Article of the Week by discussing inflation. We found this meeting extremely helpful. Kathryn is interested in taking it a step further by possibly making a purchase. She already owns some stocks but thinks it might be interesting to buy something new and track its progress throughout the rest of Genius Hour. Slayton’s a big fan of Amazon and Google right now, but we’ll keep you posted on what she and her dad decide. We have also drawn from The Bucket once again. It’s time for some tennis! Gabby and Bonnie Jo play on the Davie tennis team, and William and Kathryn have a little experience here and there. It’ll be fun to spend some time with each other and get a little exercise. Hopefully, y’all have enjoyed keeping up with our progress, and we promise to get videos and pictures uploaded soon! This begins our third week of Genius Hour! Our goal this week is to take a crash course on the stock market. A heck of a time to learn, huh? Once we learn more about the inner workings of the trade, we will proceed to consider buying stocks. Our plan for this week is to meet with Kathryn’s dad. He is a financial advisor with Edward Jones Investments, so he knows quite a bit about stocks! We are planning to meet with him on Friday, March 18th, and he'll be able to teach us much more. The stock market seems like an especially relevant topic right now, so the Bucket's timing was good.
To say the least, Bonnie Jo and Kathryn's knitting adventure resulted in some pretty interesting creations. Kathryn is quoted as saying, "Mine looks like a shrimp!" Clearly, after a…long…affair, their final product was a little different than expected. Most importantly, they had a lot of fun learning how to knit, and hope at some point in the future that they will have a chance to further this learning opportunity. Gabby and Will had a lot of fun, too. It was definitely a challenge, but they are both happy that they learned. Their final product actually turned out to be a gift card pouch. Gabby’s mom has helped them with the basics. Not only did they have discover how to work with the sewing machine, but they also practiced sewing a button on by had. Some pictures will be incorporated under the “videos” section on our website. It's safe to say, we are all thoroughly enjoying our Genius Hour project! We are looking forward to meeting with Slayton for our economics lesson and can't wait to see what The Bucket has in store for us in the upcoming weeks. |
AdventurersWilliam Dwiggins, Kathryn Harpe, Bonnie Jo Taylor, Gabby Thompson |