Something New Every Day

Last Saturday afternoon was our local Home School Education Fair. It is a chance for the home educated children in the area to get together and show some of the work they have been doing this year. Last year, Jude's project (the bat house... which I am now discovering I never managed to blog about? Was I busy, or something? Photo here.) was not finished in time. This year, the teacher planned a little better (ahem), so both Jude and Noah had a presentation all ready to go.

The assignment for Jude was an ocean animal report, and he had to do it in a tri-fold board format. He did awesome, doing research on the internet and in books, typing up the information, painting the board, colouring and cutting out letters that we printed from the computer for a title, matting all the sections, and being self-motivated to do it all.

Things I learned from Jude's report:

• Orca society is matriarchal.

• Orcas and wolves have a lot in common; for example, they hunt in groups and will eat anything.

• Orcas can live almost as long as humans.

Noah's assignment was an ocean animal report, but I gave him a sheet to fill out with just some basic facts while he did his research. Obviously, I had to work a lot more "hands-on" with him. He painted a "modern-art" picture of sea lions (a sea of blue with a tiny blob of brown in the upper-right corner), picked his favourite sea lion photos to print, and even did a story about sea lions for his writing sample for our teacher-facilitator, which I photocopied and he included in the presentation.

Things I learned from Noah's report:

• Sea lions get eaten by orcas

• Noah can be pretty creative when he wants to be

(I thought I had a photo of the actual Sea Lion report, but I don't know what happened to it... Sorry. Maybe I'll add one later.)

I am very proud of how both the boys did. Jude also did a great job of public speaking, and he had all the pressure of being first to present! Great job, guys!