Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Fellan's Sick Day

Fellan got sick on Sunday evening. He ended up with a fever that lasted almost all day on Monday and since you're supposed to be fever-free for 24 hours before returning to school, that meant he had to stay home from school on Tuesday, too.

By the afternoon, he was apparently desperate for some sort of mental stimulation. He and the babysitter went out to "catalog plant species" and he apparently spent some time writing on the driveway and creating recipes in the kitchen. I always cringe when I see that the kids have been making "soup" with my spices because I know that I have some things in there that cost and arm and a leg, but I can't remember which ones! Anyway, here are some pictures of the evidence that he was bored yesterday:

If you look closely you can see the Start and the Finish. And apparently, "if you win you get 100$". I was home before the family got home last night from Marxo's gymnastics class, so I asked him for my $100. It didn't work.

This is a recipe he was creating. He must have gotten interrupted because next to this paper was a bowl full of water, paprika, smoked paprika, some empty pea pods that he must have stolen from the organic garden, and I don't remember what else. I cleaned that up before I thought about documenting his creativity in the kitchen. I'm not sure what you can make with "black barys, flouers, bazle, and res..." but I'm sure it must be good!

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Bat Project

The end-of-the-year project for the first grade at our elementary school is to choose an animal and do a research project on that animal. Each child must choose at least three sources (can not include Wikipedia) and must include information from each source in the report. The written report may be either be in the form of a five-paragraph document or in the form of a book with a table of contents included. Additionally, an art/craft project is to be completed for the project. It can be either a picture or a diorama of the chosen animal in its natural habitat.

Are they nuts?! Don't they realize they're giving this project to a bunch of 6 and 7 year olds? And yet... Fellan loved it!

His chosen animal was the bat. This happened to be quite an easy animal for him to do - we have a "Magic Schoolbus" book about bats (Source #1), we found a website about bats (Source #2), and we visited the Waugh Bridge Bat Colony (Source #3).

The husband was in charge of helping Fellan write his report and he, of course, chose the "book" form of the report. (ugh!) Fellan finally completed it at about 8:30 last night, but we still had to do the craft project.

We had originally thought that we would just have Fellan draw some pictures and write some bat facts and put them on a presentation board. However, over the weekend, we heard several parents talking about making their animal out of clay or making some other kind of craft project, so we figured we'd better step it up a notch.

Enter the build-it-yourself bat house kit! The husband went out yesterday morning and found one of these so we could build it last night. Luckily, it was a very quick and easy project. We taped an "actual size" bat to it and called it good.

Man, if this was a first-grade project, I'm dreading what the coming years are going to hold...