First attempt at watermelon carving

   As I've already mentioned in my CAS plan, Karina and I are organizing a handmade crafts club. When it was time to come up with a list of activities we were going to do for this club, for some reason one of the first things that crossed my mind was watermelon carving. However, before we try to teach this skill to younger students, we have to learn how to do it ourselves, so that's exactly what attempted to do yesterday.

    For my first time I chose to carve a flower, since I thought it was the easiest thing to do. Oh, how foolish I was to think that watermelon carving is easy! The first problem that I faced was the fact that I didn't have any special tools for carving, so I had to use a kitchen knife instead. This led to the carvings looking not as neat as I wanted them to.

This is what my watermelon flower turned out to
look like.

    When I'll do this next time, I should first find special carving tools and also put some newspaper on the table, because I had to spend half an hour only cleaning it yesterday. Considering the fact that it was my first time, I think that the result turned out to be pretty successful, however I decided that doing this for our club wasn't a very good idea, because it's much harder that is seems to be, so we should master this skill first, before teaching it to others.

CAS learning outcomes:
- Increased awareness of my strengths and areas for growth
- Developed new skills (hopefully)
- Undertook new challenges

He can now perform in a circus ;)

For my 10th birthday my parents decided to buy me a parrot and for me it was the best possible present at that time, especially considering the fact that at that time I was keen about becoming a veterinarian. My dad gave me an opportunity to choose a bird myself and as we found out later on, the parrot that I've chosen is a yellow-headed amazon.
From this very day my dad always mocks me, because even though we've had Arik (yes, I'm aware of the fact that that's a really weird name for a parrot, too late to change it :P) for more than 6 years now, I still haven't succeded in teaching him to talk. That's why I decided to try and teach him to do something different but equally fascinating. This is what I've accomplished in a few weeks - he can now do a flip around his perch! He's already gotten used to me giving him a piece of his favourite delicacy - a "Yubileynoe" cookie - so now I just have to open the door of the cupboard where these cookies are stored and he already starts doing his trick.

In the future I'm planning on teaching him some new, harder tricks and then perform in front of my family and friends :)

“Cooking is at once child's play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love.”

For the last few weeks I indulged my family with some of my best meals so far. Even though I've already tried cooking a lot of different meals, from salads to desserts, I already decided on a top 3 list of my favourite things to cook.
The bronze of my list was given to the cake, that a lot of people simply adore - the famous Tiramisu. Not only is it quite easy to cook, but also it is something that my family loves, so it totally got the third place in the list.
The silver of my list was given to the orchard eve's pudding with fruits. The best thing about this dessert is that you can use whatever fruits you like - from apples and plums to strawberries and grapes.


The meal that deserved the gold of my list is the guiness pie. It is an old English dish, which was very popular in England in 20th century (it was mostly served in the countryside). Even though it takes a lot of time and effort to cook a good guiness pie, it is totally worth it. :)

In the future I'm going not only to try to perfect these three meals, but also try some new recipes and become aware of my strengths and areas of weakness.

My CAS plan

Creativity:

 

- Cooking. My dad always tries to make a bet with me, to see for how long I will be able to cook dinners for our family. During summer holidays I attempted to cook dinner every day for two weeks and, surprisingly, I succeded. Now I am up for a new challenge - cooking dinners for my family at least 5 times a week AND produce a tutorial each Saturday, in order to show what cooking skills I've mastered so far. I hope that this will help me to master my cooking skills even more (and of course it will show my dad that I'm not a quitter).

 

- Handmade crafts club. I've enjoyed making jewelry, household items and decorations myself since I was a kid and now I decided to teach younger students. Me and Karina are planning on setting up a handmade crafts club, that will take place on Wednesday lunchtime in the art room. Not only will this give younger students an opportunity to surprise their beloved ones with a unique gift which they made themselves, but also it would help us to collect excellent items for a fundraising Christmas auction.

 

- Photography club. Photography had always interested me and when I found out that there's going to be a photography club in our school, I realized that I simply couldn't miss such opportunity. I will join the photography club (on tuesdays after school) in order to master my photography skills. This will give me a chance to learn new skills, which I will then be able to use to produce my portfolio, which is required by a lot of art universities that I want to apply to.

 

- Nail art. I will do a new nail art design at least 2 times a week in order to develop my creative thinking.

 

Action:

 

- Horse riding. Recently I've found out that there's a really nice horse stable near my house. Not only is it very accessible, but also very enjoyable. I took a few horse riding lessons 3 years ago, however I was then forced to quit. However, now I have an amazing opportunity to start again :) Horse riding is both very calming AND very good for your body, so I decided that I'm going to go horse riding 3 or 4 times a week, depending on the amount of homework.

 

- Tennis. I've wanted to try playing tennis for quite a while now, however I couldn't find any sport centre with a tennis court near my house :( but luckily, a few weeks ago I found a suitable place not far from where I live, so now I'm going to play tennis each Sunday. After a few lessons I am planning to have a friendly match with a friend in order to see how much I've learned and what are my weaknesses that I'll have to work on.

 

Service:

 

- Helping out at horse stables. As I have already mentioned earlier, there's a horse stable (you can actually call it a zoo - in addition to more than 20 horses there are goats, sheep, dogs, cats, a camel called Genadiy and a deer that adores bagels) near my house. There are two simple reasons why I decided that I want to help - I love animals; this horse stable is relatively new, therefore they still have a lot of things to fix, so they need any help possible. I will help to take care of and train horses, clean the stables and even teach horse riding to kids and beginners. :)

 

- Fundraising auction. BISM is really involved in many different kinds of charities in Moscow, so we decided to help to collect money for charity. We are planning on organizing a fundraising auction, for which everyone can bring something - handmade crafts, household items and Christmas decorations etc. We will then give all the collected money to charity :)

 

- Cooking & handmade crafts clubs. These clubs will give me an opportunity to teach some skills that I've already mastered to younger students, so that they'll be able to use them as well.

Introduction to CAS

CAS is a compulsory part of the IB, however it doesn't mean that we can't have fun during our CAS sessions :)

During our first CAS session, Mr Gray - our CAS coordinator - came with up with a rather challenging activity. We were divided into groups of four - two "drawers" and two "runners" (my group had only one drawer - moi, and two runners). The "runners" had to run to the other side of the hall and try to memorize as many details as possible from a picture of some farm animals. They then had to come back and explain to the drawers what exactly was on this picture. It might seem very easy at first, however the real challenge was to do all of this without speaking. The runners could mime the animals, however they could not make any sounds. Some of the animals were really hard to guess, especially considering the fact that we were faced with limited amount of time. On the other hand, we really enjoyed this activity, especially after the CAS session, when everyone got a chance to look at each other's work. If we were to do this activity again, I would most certainly try to ask more navigating questions and spend more time on drawing details such as fur or spots. :)

For our second CAS session we had to come up with a skill to teach others. We were divided into groups of four and then everyone got a chance to teach their team mates their skill. Not only did I get a chance to learn how to draw cats and dogs, make a star out of a simple rubber band and do a diagonal line nail art, but I also had an opportunity to teach my own skill - how to braid a fishtail braid. In my opinion this activity was very educational and all of us had most certainly learned a lot of new usefull skills :) Tips for the next time - prepare all materials in advance.

 

The following CAS learning outcomes were met:

- working collaboratively with others

- developing new skills

- undertaking new challenges