Tera has been researching Sergeant York for awhile now. So, when I decided to organize a local history "share" event, she knew right away which topic she wanted to do. She made the board, a lapbook with games inside and had a digital picture frame with a slideshow of our trip to the Sergeant York State Park.
Daniel heard about the first U.S. submarine, The Turtle invented by David Bushnell, in an episode of Liberty Kids. He made a display board and a model of the submarine. (I'll post about how we made that soon!)
Michael just had to do a project like his brother and sister. I had some conditions related to his project.
1. Obviously, he would need help.
2. It needed to look like he did the majority of the project.
We read lots of books on George Washington Carver.
I had a packet on peanuts from the Peanut Council, so we started there. I printed out 2 worksheets that he colored and labelled the parts of a peanut and the parts of a peanut plant.
Then, I found a list of things George Washington Carver made out of peanuts. I read the list out to Michael and had him pick things. He then wrote those on a strip of paper. I cut out peanut shapes and clip art to symbolize what he wrote.
We dissected a peanut and he labelled each part: Testa, Pod, Germ, Cotyledon
He summarized who George Washington Carver was and picked pictures from the computer to print out. His sister helped him glue the things on the board where he wanted them.
Last, he wrote out a recipe for peanut butter cookies.
I'm sure this looks like a lot for a 4 year old, but this project was done in small increments over weeks. Whenever he was tired, we just put it away and came back to it another day. It was great incentive to see his sister and brother working on their own projects. He wants to be just like them!
