Whew, the kid-driven summer projects were a hit

Saw a fun summer idea on a friend’s blog, Wisdom Comes Suddenly, to buy the kids poster board and let them do a project on whatever they wanted. Floated the idea past Ree and Ro while we were doing back-to-school-supply* shopping at Target and they were all over it!

The projects spanned two days and resulted in fantastic posters and presentations and happy girls. The best part was that Ro and Ree were completely occupied and not fighting with each other for hours and hours.

These projects were totally self-driven and the only object was fun. They picked their subjects, did research and printed pics using the iPad, decided what their poster boards should look like and what kind of facts and illustrations to include, then did brief presentations (a little over 2 minutes for Ree and about 4 minutes for Ro) to their incredibly receptive audience of one (me!).

“Hello, my name is Ree and my fairy name is Leela. [smiles proudly] My project is Fairies! Fairies are tiny humans with wings. There are dark fairies and good fairies...”:

“Helllll-o, my name is Ro and my project is about Mermaids. Mermaids are half human and half fish. Mermaids live under the sea. They have tails like this little fishy [points to poster]...”:

Cute! And a fun idea for your kids if you’ve still got a few days of summer vacation to fill.

Some of the other project ideas Ro and Ree tossed around before settling on the final winners, by the way, were Dogs (I really wanted to see that one but kept quiet – you know that was hard for me), Castles, and Royalty (hello, Prince Georgie! – squeal – again, kept my mouth shut...).

Happy last blast of summer.

~~~

* Who sells UHU glue sticks, whatever the heck those are?! Does anyone else worry about this type of detail or do you just get as close as you can on the school-required supply lists and call it a day?