In design, our first unit was making a lightbox that represented one of our favorite places we couldn’t go to because of COVID. It was supposed to be a landscape, but I decided to make something that actually represented me. For my lightbox, I created a cozy scene of a room in my house with bookshelves, a fireplace (because I love fire!) to enhance the cozy feeling, and a rug with a cat plus another cat. These objects are some things that make me feel safe and things that I like to do. The pictures of my final product are below.

I learned so many skills during the creation of my lightbox that may not help in my daily life but was fun to learn! Most of the things I learned

were concerning Adobe Illustrator. I learned how to merge shapes, add them from another website, and even change their color! I had a lot of “trial and error” while I was making my lightbox since it took me a while to figure out how to label my pictures right to get the laser cutter to cut the shapes the way I wanted them. I also learned a little about acrylic paint, like how to apply it evenly so it wouldn’t be clumpy.

I think my lightbox is pretty good already, except for the fact that it is kind of messy. You can see from the pictures that the wires are kind of sticking out a bit, though I wanted it to be like that even though it seems messy. Also, I think my lightbox is a little missing in layers. It is made up of mostly think frames with the symbols on it, and that made it seem a little empty. I would change it so the frames would be a little thicker so the symbols would be closer together and so that would hide the wires more effectively and make the box a little less empty looking. I would also go back and make the paint more perfect, because it is really messy right now, and even though I planned it really thoroughly, I had some problems with the masking tape and with the deciding of the colors.

I really enjoyed this unit and really like my teacher Mr. Layman. He was really patient with all of us even when some of us were making trouble and taught me a lot. He is also really nice! I would choose to take this class every year if he was the teacher even if the project is really dull because Mr. Layman has this way of making boring things fun! So a big thank you Mr. Layman and I hope that I can take his class next year and that the project will be as interesting as the lightbox project!!

This is my groups’ design project. We call it Galaxy Basketball because it is kind of like a basketball game in the galaxy, though we didn’t paint the inside. It is still fun though, due to the huge smiles on the fourth graders’ faces! One thing I would like to change is the color to make it more like a galaxy and less like poisonous clouds in a background of black.  My biggest success was the actual building of the project. It turned out all right, and it was fun, cutting out the parts and gluing them together. One piece of advice I would give a future student doing this project is to give it lots of thought. Once you start, there’s no turning back, though you can tweak some things around!