Tuesday, April 17, 2012

The Bald Eagle

Eli was assigned his first research project just before Spring Break. He was given over two weeks to learn about, compile data on, and prepare a poster displaying information regarding his chosen animal. He did not choose a shark, as I would have guessed. Or even a dog or whale or cheetah, which are all also animals of interest for him. Instead he chose a bald eagle, randomly.

Lehr spearheaded the beginning stages of this project, helping Eli research characteristics, eating patterns, habitats, etc. We were given very little direction with this project, so most of what we did, we chose to do. Along the lines of being only as much work as we wanted it to be. (Pretty cool.) This last week found us doing a little bit on the actual poster each night. Eli typed out six lists of information from the research he'd done. He printed, colored and cut out a picture of a bald eagle. And then he asked if we could make the poster look like the American flag, due to the obvious ties to the eagle. All of this was done by him which is really cool. So even though it took probably 14-ish 'sessions' of working, his poster was done with no arguments, no work by Mommy or Daddy and passed off as work by Eli, and no stress. (Sidenote: I stopped by the school today to see the display of the posters and I was so glad to see the broad spectrum of presentation. Some posters had a scribbled picture and a few words, some had glitter and glitz, some had no words and lots of pictures, and some had toys taped to the paper instead of pictures. Eli's fell very snugly in the middle of all of it. Sooo glad his first experience of this nature was a good one, and I'm so glad that his peers, the work he's probably comparing his to, was all so unique.

No comments: