How many projects?

[dalynnrmc]

I haven't been very good about including and implementing projects into our homeschooling, and I really do want to change that. Part of my issue in getting it done is the planning phase of it, when what works for me is more of a "to-do" list of daily tasks.

 

We did a volcano this past week and next week are working on a lapbook insead. A project a week is going to be too much for Mom. ;) I might consider a lapbook a "minor" project, but if so only just.

 

 

So, as a starting point:

 

How many projects do you typically do in a year? A month?

 

I'm talking medium-sized projects, what you might think of as "normal" stuff and not really over the top: volcanoes, solar system models, cardboard castles, chicken mummies. :tongue_smilie: History, science, art.... Things that I can prepare for this morning and do either this afternoon or tomorrow.

 

 

What I think of as a "major" project would take more than day-before preparation. What I think of as a minor project would be things I would almost certainly have the required materials for on-hand and could be done spur-of-the-moment.

 

 

So how many "normal" projects do you do in a year/month? How many major projects? How many minor projects? Which subject inspires most of your projects?

[MomatHWTK]

zero :001_smile:

[Ellie]

Er...none. Projects were just not a part of our homeschooling lifestyle. :-)

[MrsH]

mummifying a chicken counts as a "medium" project? To me that's MAJOR! So that tells me you're probably doing more than you're giving yourself credit for...

 

I hope to increase our projects a bit next year because I'm realizing more and more what a hands-on, kinesthetic learner dd10 is. I'm thinking some clay models, a pyramid or tomb, MAYBE the mummified chicken, some art based on our historical time period. We also do some science experiments and experiential learning there (based on BFSU) but nothing so major. Oh we raised butterflies this year that was fun, but very hands-off on my part.

 

I've become a great fan of having her do notebook pages, but as I prepare for next year, DH is helping me to see that dd would probably do better sharing the information orally with her grandparents, or making a video, or somehow using the information to invent a new board game, etc. She enjoys the work more and is able to recall information in a snap, whereas if we're sitting talking/writing about it, she has real trouble.

[kroe1]

We do have a science lab every day, although not for 2 months while DD12 is in camp. But I don't really count that as a project.

 

I count Powerpoint presentations, lapbooks, research papers, etc. projects. For those we do about 6 a year. What I really need to work more on implementing is art projects. :confused:

[Seshet]

For elementary:

 

3-4 topics in Science each year with generally 5-15 experiences/demonstrations/projects per topic

 

generally around 15-30 projects/activities for the year for History

 

Geography could have as few as 5 or as many as 15, depending on what we're studying.

 

Art is very dependent on the child & what we're doing for that Art that year, but may be up to 30+ projects for a year.

 

We also have been known to do projects for Lit, since we don't waste time on book reports.

 

I don't classify projects as minor, normal, or major, though. Plus, in my experience, what one person considers minor or normal, others may see as major, or what one may see as major, others may see as normal or even minor. So, I don't know how much help it would be if I tried to classify them that way for this post.

 

Our projects can range from preparing a meal traditional of a civilization or era to building a working trebuchet, to building a castle (including making the bricks), to doing mosaics, to leatherwork, to cave paintings, to solar system models, to digging up dinosaurs, to tri-fold display boards, to posters, to dioramas, to creating videos, etc. Most of the projects/labs/demonstrations/activities are planned ahead of time, at least to some extent, so materials are purchased when I purchase the rest of the materials for the year. We always keep a decent stock of Science materials for when they come up with projects/activities/experiments of their own, that I had not planned for.

 

Hands-on work helps add an element of fun to our schooling, and is important, as my kids are mainly kinesthetic learners. I also find that they are more useful for utilizing the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy than worksheets, textbooks, notebooking, etc.

[regentrude]

zero

 

My kids do not find projects an effective way of learning and consider them a waste of time; they much rather read a book. I am grateful, for I share the same sentiment.

[NotSoObvious]

We mummified the chicken two years ago.

 

So...once every two years? :D

[dalynnrmc]

mummifying a chicken counts as a "medium" project? To me that's MAJOR! So that tells me you're probably doing more than you're giving yourself credit for...

 

Nah. I actually have never mummified a chicken and have no earthly idea what goes into it. Just guessing there. ;) And since we've done maybe a half dozen projects in as many years of homeschooling, I'm not over crediting myself for sure!! But I might be over estimating what others do...

 

For elementary:

 

3-4 topics in Science each year with generally 5-15 experiences/demonstrations/projects per topic

 

generally around 15-30 projects/activities for the year for History

 

Geography could have as few as 5 or as many as 15, depending on what we're studying.

 

Art is very dependent on the child & what we're doing for that Art that year, but may be up to 30+ projects for a year.

 

We also have been known to do projects for Lit, since we don't waste time on book reports.

 

So um, you do almost a project per subject every single week? No way I can manage that here. LOL No way, no how.

 

Hands-on work helps add an element of fun to our schooling, and is important, as my kids are mainly kinesthetic learners. I also find that they are more useful for utilizing the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy than worksheets, textbooks, notebooking, etc.

 

I agree and it works best for especially my 9yo also, but I simply do not have the means (let alone the inclination, patience, time, or even opportunity) to do a project in every subject... even every month, let alone every week. Actually, a project every single week would likely be stretching it. I just feel it's what we're "supposed" to be doing....

 

 

 

So, does anyone have a happy medium between one a day and absolutely none??

 

:bigear:

[Seshet]

I don't know how your subjects are set up, so this will be really general.

 

*You could try planning one a month, alternating subjects for each.

*You could plan to do maybe 5-6 for the whole year.

*Let's say you plan to cover 4 topics in Science. You could plan 1 activity/lab/project per topic.

*For History, you could plan a specific number of projects/activities for each topic/sub-topic or for the whole year.

*You could plan to do 2 easy projects/activities - something that comes in a kit and involves little to no prep, 1-2 medium projects/activities - where you need enough notice (a week at most) to make sure you have the easily available items, and maybe 1 long-term project that will take some planning & more than a day or two to finish.

*You could decide that only Science & History will have projects/activities and that each will have 4 in a year.

 

You don't have to do tons of projects, find a level that's comfortable for you & that you can feasibly do. Make sure the projects have value. I hear so many people say that they don't hands-on work/projects because they don't like arts & crafts and don't want to waste time with boring coloring or cut & paste busy work. That isn't what projects need to be, though. They don't have to be cheesy craft projects made from construction paper. Choose projects that have real value, that utilize a skill, that apply what they've been learning. They can cover more than 1 subject. For example, making Mosaic coasters while studying Ancient Civilizations would cover both History & Art (plus would give you nice, long-lasting coasters that you'd want to hold onto & would be functional), and might even introduce your child to an art form/media that they really enjoy & want to learn more about. I wouldn't be able to get excited about doing projects either, if they were all cut, paste, & glitter.

 

One of the activities we do for each era/civilization we study in History & Geography is to make a dish or whole meal traditional to that time/area. It's such an easy way to add an activity to the study. The child helps choose, plan, & prepare the dish/meal. If you start with stuff that's that easy to add in, it shouldn't be too difficult to start adding more projects to your schooling.

 

I hope some of that helps & that I didn't ramble too much. With everyone in my house talking to me & having to remove a splinter from ET2's foot while I tried to type this, I'm sure I rambled some.

[fairfarmhand]

I live on a farm. That is a homeschool project.

 

We've raised baby chicks, hatched out eggs, milk a cow, raised calves and cows, grown gardens, trees and flowers. etc.

 

Projects don't have to be an official project.

 

Put up a poster that has common NA birds on it, plant some sunflowers and see which birds show up for dinner.

 

Join 4H.

 

Do some artwork.

[Trilliums]

 

Projects don't have to be an official project.

 

Put up a poster that has common NA birds on it, plant some sunflowers and see which birds show up for dinner.

 

Join 4H.

 

Do some artwork.

 

 

:iagree:

 

My kids like hands on projects and they benefit from doing and seeing, but most of the projects they initiate on their own. I rarely try to integrate it into academics. Although one year DS made a pretty awesome salt map if the Nile Delta.

 

They enjoy doing density experiments, building catapults and mini shooters, building and programming robots, training cats to jump through hoops, making things out of duct tape, making composite materials and then testing the relative strengths (I would never come up with a project like this), pulley systems, etc.

Recently I found wooden architectural blocks at the thrift store. My boys are 14yo and 15yo--seemingly too old for blocks. But, they were so cool looking I just couldn't resist. Within 10 minutes of bringing the blocks home, my kids started building and testing the stability of different structures (and no they weren't just destroying stuff :)). Keep asking your kids "what if...?" and their inquisitiveness will probably result in plenty of projects.

[Jenny in Florida]

What I think of as a "major" project would take more than day-before preparation. What I think of as a minor project would be things I would almost certainly have the required materials for on-hand and could be done spur-of-the-moment.

 

 

So how many "normal" projects do you do in a year/month? How many major projects? How many minor projects? Which subject inspires most of your projects?

 

I'm not sure I'm clear on your categories?

 

I was looking at my notes for last year, and it looks like my son:

 

- Wrote and compiled a code book for cryptology that included descriptions and examples of the assorted ciphers he'd studied and one original cipher. He worked on that one a little at a time for two or three weeks.

 

- Made a wall display showing the various kinds of codes/ciphers/secret writing.

 

- Made a Greek-style helmet for history. He researched, studied photos, made the helmet out of cardboard and papier mache and then painted it. Again, it took a couple of weeks in little bits of time.

 

- Made a display board with information about a battle during the French Revolution. That one was quicker. He finished it in a week.

 

- Designed and sewed garb for a Renaissance Festival field trip. He worked on that one for several weeks, but wasn't happy with the results.

 

- Assembled a few small robotics kits, each of which took no more than a couple of hours.

 

I think that was it for hands-on stuff this past year. I'm assuming we're not counting essays and papers?

 

Next year, there will likely be more, although he'll have a fair amount of freedom to decide how much of that kind of stuff he'll do.

 

I think I have 18 place-holders in my lesson plans for projects (for history and art, mostly, and a couple of English). But he gets to choose what he does to meet those requirements much of the time. I bought syllabi from Hewitt, which include a nice list of project ideas, some of which are hands-on activities and some of which are more traditional papers and essays. I suspect he'll lean towards the hands-on options whenever possible, since he likes that better, but it will largely be up to him.

 

We're also doing labs for chemistry next year, at least one most weeks. I hope to have that all prepared in advance so that I won't have the mad scramble to collect supplies at the last minute.

[Mimm]

Well... we attended co-op this last year and I taught an art class so my kids were getting (and I was creating) one art project per week. We did at least a couple other projects per month, some months were one project per week. Some projects were as simple as putting together a lap book because we were in the mood for a unit study. Some were on a whim. ("Hey, we have a bunch of cardboard. Create a bridge that spans these two chairs and holds up a full gallon of milk." And they did, drawing up plans ahead of time, cutting, taping, gluing, painting, etc, with almost no help from me.) We drew in our nature journals when the mood struck and they were involved in robotics but we didn't do a lot of robotics stuff at home. But for the fall, they were pretty busy with that till First Lego League was over. In the spring we got really interested in polymers so we were in the kitchen a lot mixing up various goops and slimes and mixtures. We made a mess, failed to do things correctly plenty of times, and had a ton of fun. :) They also did several projects/experiments/lapbooks and so on with the other classes in our co-op (science, cooking, critical thinking).

 

This coming year, I am trying to do something hands on every week, and plan them out ahead of time but we'll see if we stick to it. Some weeks just get away from me and sometimes one of us just gets an idea and we run with it. For co-op this year, I'm teaching Geography with Mapping the World with Art so we'll be drawing maps and doing Geography related projects for that.

Edited July 18, 2012 by Mimm

[dalynnrmc]

I'm not sure I'm clear on your categories?

 

I was looking at my notes for last year, and it looks like my son:

 

- Wrote and compiled a code book for cryptology that included descriptions and examples of the assorted ciphers he'd studied and one original cipher. He worked on that one a little at a time for two or three weeks.

 

- Made a wall display showing the various kinds of codes/ciphers/secret writing.

 

- Made a Greek-style helmet for history. He researched, studied photos, made the helmet out of cardboard and papier mache and then painted it. Again, it took a couple of weeks in little bits of time.

 

- Made a display board with information about a battle during the French Revolution. That one was quicker. He finished it in a week.

 

- Designed and sewed garb for a Renaissance Festival field trip. He worked on that one for several weeks, but wasn't happy with the results.

 

- Assembled a few small robotics kits, each of which took no more than a couple of hours.

 

I think that was it for hands-on stuff this past year. I'm assuming we're not counting essays and papers?

 

Next year, there will likely be more, although he'll have a fair amount of freedom to decide how much of that kind of stuff he'll do.

 

I think I have 18 place-holders in my lesson plans for projects (for history and art, mostly, and a couple of English). But he gets to choose what he does to meet those requirements much of the time. I bought syllabi from Hewitt, which include a nice list of project ideas, some of which are hands-on activities and some of which are more traditional papers and essays. I suspect he'll lean towards the hands-on options whenever possible, since he likes that better, but it will largely be up to him.

 

We're also doing labs for chemistry next year, at least one most weeks. I hope to have that all prepared in advance so that I won't have the mad scramble to collect supplies at the last minute.

 

 

Yes, those are the types of things I've been thinking to include more of this year. Not really needing ideas, just wondering how often to think about working one in. 18 a year sound pretty reasonable. We school year-round, taking off about 6 weeks over the holiday season, so we're looking at 10 months or so, and 18 weeks would be almost one every other week, with a little bit of "give" built in.

 

 

Thank you!