Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Project

I had decided to do Maggie's first project on space (I thought it was her strongest interest) but she didn't really take to the whole project thing. I would suggest we read one of the tons of library books we checked out on space and she wouldn't be interested. I would suggest we watch a show about space and she wouldn't be interested.

My first thought, of course, was that this doesn't work; I needed a strict, rigid curriculum. School at home! But then I started thinking about it and I realized, she doesn't talk much about space anymore. A year ago she did but not so much anymore. But she is really interested in bugs. She loves to watch bugs and talk about bugs. We still had our butterflies, which she was loving. So I made up a list of everything I could think of that we could do involving bugs. And then I saw a link to an older documentary all about bugs. When she got home on Monday, I suggested we watch it and she was excited. She made me go back and watch some parts seriously about 15+ times. She asked a gazillion questions and every one made it clear she was listening and trying to clarify what she was hearing. She continued asking questions hours after we'd stopped watching the show.

Today she asked to watch parts of the show again and when I pulled up some books and suggested a couple on bugs, she loved it (and these were non fiction, fact filled books). When we got to Dad's house, she wouldn't come inside because she wanted to watch some ants eating a dead bug (which, yeah, gross but still). She told several people about what she had watched.

I feel so much more excited about this, especially seeing as how this is only day 2 and we haven't started digging in. I've been making a list of things we can do.

  • continue watching the documentary and look for others
  • continue reading books about bugs
  • look more closely at the display in our library of bugs and maybe try to identify them
  • there's a display of butterflies at the FW Science museum where we could do the same
  • watch youtube videos of specific bugs doing specific things she's interested in (we once watched in super, super slow mo ladybugs opening their wings and taking off for about an hour)
  • making bug habitats and catching bugs
  • finding bugs in various yards and just observing them
  • drawing/photographing bugs and labeling them
 If anyone can think of anything else, feel free to let me know.

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