This is my tree book! It was in a gallery along with my classmates’ tree books. You might ask why do I care and what is a tree book and I’ll tell you so keep reading!
For the past two months, the whole sixth grade at Durham Academy has been working on tree books. A tree book is a project the sixth grade Language Arts teachers came up with. The tree book is decorated with writing we wrote in class and has wishes like the book Wishtree. The tree book is cardboard in shape of a tree with all “nature things” to decorate it. I made a landscape in mine. These books have flaps that fold out with the landscapes and are writing on them. The writing we put on are books are Life lists, Roots writing, wishes, when this is over poem, and a little picture of ourselves.
Roots writing is a paragraph that is dedicated to someone important to you. I did my Roots writing on my mom and dad. Life Lists are goals we have that we want to complete and we put them all down on a piece of paper that we put in our books. We also had a few wishes that we put on our books. I doted mine around on my book. In the picture above you can actually see some of my wishes. There is also this poem we wrote that is called when this is over. It is based on a real poem and my classmates each wrote there own. The poem is on things when covid is over that we won’t take for granted, like walking without a mask. Lastly, we have little pictures of ourselves hanging or tucked in a pocket in our books.
So now that I have told you what is in my book let me tell you how me made them. We made the tree books with a local artist called Peg Gignoux. Here is her website;
The first thing we did was screen printing. Screen printing is when you have this clear sheet and you put a sheet of paper with words on it and get a roller and press down on the sheet to paper with words, screen, and the paper you are adding the words on. We did that to a bunch of books. A couple days later we choose a book. I wasn’t there for this part but because I was out sick but my teacher did mine and the class added paper to make the folds. The next step is actually decorating. Before I continue let me tell you what akua ink. After all we decorated are books with akua ink. Akua ink is similar to screen printing. You put plants on this jelly plate but color on the plate and print it onto your piece of paper. So back to decorating.
I wanted to decorate my tree book like a landscape so that’s what I did. I made grass with extra green paper, trees with brown paper for stumps and different green paper for layers on my trees. I also made clouds in the sky. I’m really happy with my tree book.
Now lastly, the reason you probably decided to read this post, my tree book along with the 6th grade books were all in the Frank Gallery! They were put on display.
My mom and I went to the Frank Gallery to look at my book. She read my Roots writing and I even made her cry! I haven’t shown my dad my writing yet, but I can’t wait to show him.
Well, thanks y’all for reading my blog post. I hope you have a great day! Laurel out.