Please brag! Come share what your kids have done this year.

[plain jane]

I'm looking for a few project ideas to round off our school year. My kids enjoy this sort of thing but I am feeling a bit uninspired lately and have not done as many as we typically. Stuff we have done in the past has included the medieval four-all diorama, a poster of the Punic wars, where dd drew a giant map and marked out the paths each army took and where all the battles took place (plus a little write up on each battle that she included on the poster. I know we have done some science ones this year but it's been a long day and I'm not recalling them off the top of my head at the moment.

 

So- I'm looking for some inspiration. I'd love to hear what you and the kids have done this year in terms of projects that either went above and beyond what you were studying or ways that you had your children present what they learned that was not in written form.

 

I thought of maybe having my third grader do a story elements chart with illustrations to show that she understands the different components of a story but that is striking me as rather blah ATM.

 

Anyways, I know we have some very creative moms and interesting kids on this board so let's hear about what y'alls have done!!

[km123175]

I was just going to say that my 8 year old wrote 2 very nice paragraphs - completely new skill recently.

 

My 6 year old went from still sounding out each letter to blending and reading words.

 

But those have nothing to do with projects; so, I'm just gonna give you a bump so maybe you can get some inspiration. :) We rarely do projects. I'm just not that kind of momma. :)

[Koerarmoca]

We have had so little time for projects this year. I'm hoping to do something this summer in that dept.

 

I would though like to add my 7 year old who has had the hardest time reading did awesome today and even read a few words that I really didn't think she knew at all. I almost cried.

 

Here is a bump for your thread though. I will try to think of projects we have done in the past and get back to you.

[Embassy]

This one wasn't this year, but it was enjoyed. We did an edible skin model: http://eclectic-home...ating-skin.html

 

This one was well-liked too: http://eclectic-home...s-of-egypt.html

 

Most of the projects this year were with my youngest and they weren't academic at all. My older kids have done some creative science challenges this year though:

[plain jane]

Bumping this back up. Are we a really modest group or a group that strongly dislikes projects? :p

[PachiSusan]

I'm not a projects kind of mom, so I have nothing really to share. Having an only doesn't help either. LOL

[Grover]

DS designed and built a model of a chess themed playground, lol! Maybe not everyone's cup of tea.

[duckens]

Dd6 is making a diorama of a coral reef. She wants some fish to swim in it.

 

http://www.amnh.org/ology/features/stufftodo_marine/coral_main.php

 

-------------------------

For something less "projecty," we have been reading many Usborne books, and using their Quicklinks for enrichment.

[Plink]

Jane, I know exactly what you are talking about. This time of year just screams out for projects.

 

I just pulled together our own summer plans. We are going to be reading through Gravitas Press Elementary Physics (which is much shorter than it sounds), watching Bill Nye, and building our own physics playground in the backyard. Here are my lesson plans. Wish me luck!

[Ecclecticmum]

Our projects tend to be more integrated into our day, taking them out of that context just makes them look weird. I will, however, try to give a few examples of things we have done that can sort of be pulled away from the cross-curricular life vortex they are from.

 

Most of these are just Atlas' projects:

 

- Created a lifesize Guillotine (obviously no sharp blade, used grey card instead)

- Created her own soap bubble recipe

- Self-taught via imitation how to create simple meals

- Wrote up a weekly shopping list by herself

- Created a faux flower garden with individual flower varieties (inside garden, using foam, crepe, etc complete with fence)

- Created a new boardgame

- Made fairy tale characters

- Created room-size symmetrical web using yarn copying a spiders web photo

- Made a playscene for her hospital

- Made up a desert diorama using real plants and sand

- Experimented with seeds & pots (creating different conditions to view outcome)

- Made a birds nest

- Took care of a millipede she caught (that thing was HUGE *shudder*)

- Made cards & letters for all holidays & family

- Created a stationary set

- Dissected a stick insect

- Experimented with Ants (different foods/ant lines/outcomes etc)

- Burnt Paper with Magnifying Glass

- Created costumes for all 3 children

- Mummified an apple (that was gross....lol)

- Drew up a comic book

- Created her own nature journal used for noting down birds/bird spotting.

- Made up a height chart & measures herself & the other 2 kids frequently.

 

There are many, many more, but thats all I can remember right now. All of these were unprompted life-learning projects. She just found out/got interested in something and proceeded to create it. About half of them were done after our discussions we have. She would (or one of the other kids) would come up with a questions, and so we would end up discussing it. None of the prompted projects/school projects are listed there.

 

To be fair, all my daughter does is one form of project or another so she always has about 3-5 larger projects on the go at any one time (like the guillotine) and then also does smaller projects several times a day (like science experiments/upkeep, cards, lists, natural language skills etc).

 

Chaos is the one who does dismantling projects, so he usually has one project at a time set up on his table. Right now, he's taken apart his toy car, because it is no longer working. So he fiddles and tries to fix it, and asks us for replacement parts if he's figured it out. Sometimes he'll make up a costume or two for himself (simple, basic, recyclable ones)

 

Eve is mostly into recipes right now. She's the kitchen helper.

 

Its nice to add a few projects here and there for the kids, but if you ever go fully into project mode, just be warned that projects aren't "pretty". There's always unfinished projects laying about waiting to be finished off, science experiments EVERYWHERE in various stages of finished. Lots of disaster projects happen, and have to be fixed. And sometimes to projects get so big they taken over a room (like the web project, which took over the whole atelier and half the dining....and is still up, as she's experimenting with wear & tear using the cats as her flies/spiders, to see how much damage occurs in a certain period of time). Its fine to say the projects are limited to this room, and must be cleaned up at the end of the day, but to me, this limits the childs chance of experimenting, and some projects either can't be moved out of sight, or may break if attempted to be moved whilst unfinished. Luckily, our house isn't a showhouse, nor is it a neighbour convention. DH likes the house to be his private domain, to escape work (he's on call 24/7) so visitors don't happen, which makes it easier for the kids to get the chance to go all out..

 

 

Hope that helps in some form

xxx :D

-

[plain jane]

I totally hear you on the projects not being pretty! And they take up a lot of room even when they are completed and pretty!! I struggle with that- all that time and materials and then I have to find so much room to store them all because the kids don't want me to just take a picture and chuck them. LOL My kids did do a few science dioramas this year. Poured their little hearts and souls into them... and they are now in the garage. :leaving:

 

Thank you for all the ideas, ecclecticmum!

[Melenie]

Jane, I know exactly what you are talking about. This time of year just screams out for projects.

 

I just pulled together our own summer plans. We are going to be reading through Gravitas Press Elementary Physics (which is much shorter than it sounds), watching Bill Nye, and building our own physics playground in the backyard. Here are my lesson plans. Wish me luck!

 

 

Wow, this is going to be a great summer project! Good luck, I will have to pop in often to see your progress.

 

We have not done many projects this year, but I hope to get ideas for next year from this thread. I was thinking of adding one big project per term, instead of doing lots of smaller ones.

 

Bump :-)

[2_girls_mommy]

HAven't read all of the others yet, but here are some of ours:

 

Bible: I had each notebook MP instead of doing workbooks. They drew pictures around their definitions. They designed drawings of trees around the Patriarch family tree. They colored in Bible coloring books pges that went with our stories and cut and pasted those in, they used stickers, etc. Made for a pretty notebook.

 

Latin: made posters of animals that they cut from old magazines and calendars and then labeled w/latin names. They drew pictures that went with each color to make a poster of the colors. They drew people on posters to label the body parts. They did a family tree of the gods and goddesses. We did all of this to study vocab for the ELE that isn't in our latin program.

 

History: not a big project year, but we did use self drying clay and made ancient ruins of a temple, glued to a box lid that we covered in glue and sand and created steps going up to it.

 

Science: lots of projects and activities at one co-op class that I wasn't in on like: they made a model of a mushroom releasing spores using shredded cotten and latex gloves. They acted out a food web by each being a piece of it and passing around yarn from person to person. As each animal or plant interacted the room was crisscrossed w/a yarn web to demonstrate. They did many dissections. With me they did owl pellets. We did several egg shell experiments from Apologia.

 

Art: we saved and entered our best art in the state fair arts exhibit as usual. My dds both did really well. One placed first in two categories. We also entered a children's "ugliest cake decorating contest" for fun and one of mine won 2nd place for a cake she had seen in an American Girl magazine. She did it all herself. DD took an art class at co-op and they did all kinds of different projects.

 

preschool: we did standard preschool y activities with them at co-op: we made butterflies on coffee filters by coloring them and then dipping them in water and watching the color spread, then clipping the middle w/a clothespin. They painted by slapping fly swatters in paint and then on their paper when learning about insects. We did sinking and floating objects when they read the Story of Ping. etc etc

 

I am sure there are more, but I am at a loss right now..