Big School Projects & Displays

As parents we often end up helping or supervising our kids when they're faced with a BIG project at school. Lauren worked an a country report for two months followed by a country fair that was held for more than half of the school day as parents and fellow students paraded through. This is the first major project I've watched my kids undertake (excluding the science fair,) so as I walked through the displays I took some mental notes and some photos to help my kids make engaging displays in the future. I think it's a matter of engaging as many senses as possible...

1) FOOD: Everybody loves samples. One of the kids who chose Italy was handing out Gelato - Yum! Some people even had local spices to smell.

Hummus for the Egypt display 

My cute girl with her samples of Swedish Fish

2) MUSIC: The girl who studied Jamaica had Bob Marley playing on the CD player and this Calypso drum on display - so fun! People were dancing in front of her booth and sampling the delicious jerked chicken.

3) CLOTHING: a lot of kids dressed the part, from the Irish Dancing girls, to this Egyptian headdress or this Mexican traditional dress.

4) ETHNIC ITEMS: The girl who studied Uruguay had the most things on display by far! Traditional crafts, copied artifacts, books, cookware, artwork, postcards and modern products of industry. Most displays were 6 to a table, but this girl needed an entire table to herself. (Sigh... I was no help to Lauren in this department. I've never set foot in Sweden.) Because Lauren didn't have any THINGS to display, she printed a lot of photographs of interesting sites like the Ice Hotel, bridges, castles, and modern marvels.

5) ENGAGE THE MIND: The following two displays had interactive panels. The girl doing Canada had you pick a number and then she asked a corresponding questions. You lifted the flap to see if you got the answer right. The Italian display had pictures of famous Italians and you would lift the flap to see if you guessed the name of the person correctly. Well prepared kids were ready to talk to people about what they studied in a way that didn't bore you to tears. Kids, here's a tip... don't tell people about the longitude and latitude of the country... tell people what you thought was the most interesting, weird and exciting thing about your country or project.

All in all, it was a fun afternoon and we left with lots of ideas for future projects. Jared left with a full stomach, since he made friends with pumpkin-cake-boy, juice-girl, and the chip-kids. I think he sampled everything twice, but no one seemed to mind sharing with the grinning-two-year-old.

Well done, Lauren! It's not easy being the oldest and having to learn the hard way by being the "first" to do everything.