Saturday 29 October 2011

Projects

I am amazed that I made it through school . . . because sometimes I simply don't know if I will be able to successfully get all three of my children through school.  It just seems so much harder than I remember.  This past week was PROJECT WEEK at my house.  All three of my children had major projects due. 

Hannah was preparing an oral presentation on the Ktunaxa people.  For those of you who are non-Canadian, the Ktunaxa are indigenous to British Columbia.  As you can imagine, I probably know more about molecular biology than I know about the Ktunaxa people.  I was no help at all with this report.  Hannah created an entire power-point presentation about their clothing, food sources, weapons, etc.  It was actually quite impressive.  My involvement with the project was very minimal; thus, my knowledge of the Ktunaxa people is still basically zero.

Tyler awoke the dormant English teacher inside me when he announced that he was preparing to read and interpret a poem by Tennyson at the 8th grade Poetry Cafe.  What I did not expect was that he planned to create computer animation for the entire poem using "soldiers" that he created out of bear-shaped honey bottles and tinfoil (don't ask - it really is too difficult to explain).  After what seemed like two billion hours of computer time, we discovered that there was a problem with our computer and the project was not saved correctly.  So, the entire project had to basically be recreated on my laptop.  It also turned out to be pretty entertaining although I can't imagine that Tennyson ever imagined that "The Charge of the Light Brigade" would every be interpreted through the use of bear-shaped honey bottles.

Alex's project was to create a poster about seeds.  There were several "rules" in making the poster.  He had to have 10 different types of seeds.  Five had to be from flowering plants.  The seeds could not come from seed packets.  He had to include a Bible verse that mentioned seeds.  He had to have a title.  He had to hand-draw sketches of each plant/flower/fruit.  Etc. Etc. Etc.  One difficult part of this project was that he had to know the name of the flower/plant the seed came from.  For many people, this would not be a problem.  For me, this was basically like asking me to identify various strains of bacteria.  I can recognize roses, sunflowers and carnations . . . and not much else.  I definitely do not know the names of the random flowers that grow in my neighbor's front yard alongside the roads in Ontario.  So, when it was all over, I am only about 70% sure that we correctly identified the seeds on Alex's poster.  I am hoping that this won't be a problem.  I mean, really, what are the chances that his third grade teacher is a seed expert?

Probably the MOST DIFFICULT aspect of Alex's project is that I have self-diagnosed OCD and Alex has . . . whatever the opposite of OCD is.  This means that things like letter formation, color choices, and writing in strait lines are extremely important to me and not so important to my 9-year-old.  I had to keep repeating to myself, "This is not my project," "This is not my project," "This is not my project."  And I managed to keep it together, smile and completely agree with Alex's creative vision for the project.  (I tend to be a "less is more" type of person and Alex is definitely a "more is more" type of person)  In the end, it all turned out really well and I'm proud of his ideas.  He had several good ones!  We had a lot of fun making the poster together and the best part was that he was really proud to take it to school.  Now we just have to wait to find out what grade we he earned for our his hard work!

Saturday 15 October 2011

The Amazing Race

Alex ran in his first cross country meet last Wednesday.  The third & fourth grade competitors were required to run 1 kilometer through the beautiful Ontario countryside.  Alex was one of three 3rd grade boys from his school in the competition.  The North Toronto Christian Cross Country Team managed to win 1st place so they brought home a giant trophy and a pennant to hang in the gym.  Alex was pretty excited!