Saturday, May 9, 2009

School projects

It's finally done...for a few years anyway. Having children in consecutive grades has it's advantages and disadvantages. Whatever assignment Ryan has, we know that Emily will be doing it just the next year. Whatever programs Ryan is in...we know that Emily will be in them next year.

In third grade at out school the students are assigned 4 oral book projects. When Ryan brought the paper home that explained them, it did not escape my mind that Emily will have to do them the next year. The kids learned a lot and had a great experience. But it was a lot of work! Thank goodness for Micheal's and the three panel poster boards. The first assignment was to recreate a picture book. Both years we went with flannel boards and unfortunately I cannot find those pictures. Next was the non-fiction book
This is Emily's poster...she also made a model of the solar system. Ryan picked the same book, but is poster board got re-used. Love the sun on this one. The next book was an auto-biography. Ryan chose Thomas Edison. Ryan re-created one of his experiments for his speech.
Grandpa helped us build an electric magnet. Ry learned so much about Thomas Edison and his experiments. We decided not to dress up like him. Emily chose a book about Amelia Earhart.
Emily set up a pretend radio interview. She taped herself asking some questions. Then, in the classroom dressed like Amelia, she answered them. It worked out pretty well. Both Amelia and Thomas lived amazing lives. Yes, after these projects I feel I am on a first name basis with both of them.
The last book project was a fiction chapter book. Ryan picked the book My Teacher is an Alien. The poster had to help them re-tell the story. There are flaps..the portrait slides to show the unmasking of the teacher/alien and the rocket flies up and down.
This week was Emily's last project. She chose Chocolate Fever. Again we used the sliding picture technique. The Henry (the main character) picture slides to show him with spots and without spots. Emily added a Henry running across the bottom of the poster and flaps to unveil the cure. I am going to add that in the same week she had to give the speech she had an electric magnetic test, spelling test, and math homework.

Who knows what 5th grade will bring...but we know that Emily will be giving a "How to" speech next year. This year Ryan choose how to make a paper airplane.
We are already thinking about what Emily will want to talk about and how to make a poster to show it. We are talking about Cat's Cradle...the string game. The poster might have stuffed gloves to show the different steps of the game. Luckily, we have lots of time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey! You can tell Em that I did a book report on Amelia Earhart when I was in 4th grade too!!

I actually found out that my neighbor here is Amelia Earhart's nephew or something like that. I thought that was pretty cool when I was in 4th grade :]

Anonymous said...

Hey! You can tell Em that I did a book report on Amelia Earhart when I was in 4th grade too!!

I actually found out that my neighbor here is Amelia Earhart's nephew or something like that. I thought that was pretty cool when I was in 4th grade :]