We had to make a mental map of how we get to school. I chose my bike route to school and included things in the key like stoplights, houses, and start and finishes.

For our flag project, we learned a little bit about the 5 principles of flag design and how symbols and colors can represent different things about you. Every flag should be a combination of everything that is important to the country/state/person, but it should not be overwhelming. The 5 principles of flag design are

• Keep it simple

• Use meaningful symbols

• NO letters or “seals”

• Use 2-4 basic colors

• Be distinctive

I followed this to the letter. Every single color and design means something to me. For example, white represents completion and innocence. The mountains on my flag represent my love for nature. Blue represents the calm side of me, and the bike wheel represents my need for exercise, and the fact that it's a little off center represents me as a perfectionist. Yellow represents creativity and my happy-go-lucky attitude.

My flag changed a lot. I wanted to have so many different colors and things on it, it would have looked like a unicorn vomited on my it – all except for the sparkles. I took away the sun rays that represented my age, and also the path in the mountains representing nature. The bike wheel only has 8 spokes, instead of the original 24, and I don’t have the clouds that represent the members of my family. Though simplified, I believe my flag still represents me in every way I wanted it to.