In September she had a geography project where she had to create a continent. Kaylen came up with a great idea to do her theme based on pasta. The continent was named "Noodle fonala", with noodle-themed countries. It was in the shape of a wide fettuchini noodle, had a forest and swamp, the seas and lasagna reefs. It turned out really cute! (Click on the photo to enlarge.)Then they had a "Simple Machines" invention-type science project. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of it when she was working on it and doing her final testing at home. Her goal was to knock a cherry off the chair, into a bucket, using a combination of at least three simple machines. She actually ended up using a few more machines (including a complex one) than she'd put in her write-up, as none of us caught them as "Machines." (This wasn't a strength for any of us, but Daddy did awesome guiding her on this one!) She ended up using a ruler as a lever to roll a toy truck, to knock down the first in a series of dominoes, then knocked the last domino off the edge of the table, down a paper towel tube, then more dominoes on the chair, knocking a cherry off the chair and landing in a bucket. She had to work on the size of the bucket, as the cherry was tiny and the precision wasn't the best. She also had to work on spacing and placement of the dominoes to get them to do what she wanted. All in all, it turnd out awesome!
They didn't do a month-long project for November or January because of the various testing they were doing. They didn't do one in December because of the short month/holidays.
Her project for February was a book report. She had to read the book and write a one-paragraph summary, and answer a few other questions about the book. The trick was doing in first person, as if she was the main character in the book. Then, on the last day of the month, she was to come to school prepared to present her summary and the answers to two other questions. She struggled a bit with summarizing (given her awesome memory for details!), and with writing the answers to the questions by rephrasing the question as part of the answer so that you could read the answer without knowing the question. But, she did awesome. She was nervous to present, but once we got the costume figured out, she was excited. This is Kaylen as Grace, from Saving Grace by Priscilla Cummings. Grace was an 11-year-old when the great depression hit.March is also a short month because of spring break, but over spring break their homework is to be doing research for a partner non-fiction writing project about animals. Kaylen and her partner chose "Big Cats" as their animals to write about. In early march, they also did a coral reef science project. Not all of them turned out well (apparently too much shaking), but it sounded like a fun experiment. They sent out the recipe and instructions for us to try it at home, but we haven't tried it.
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