Holiday Project

Once a month or so the first graders at Harper's school get a project assigned for homework. I think the idea is that we talk about it together as a family and then Harper goes to school and presents her project to the class. They are graded on the project itself (whether they met the basic objectives) and then on their presentation.

In August/September the children had to make a poster about themselves. In October/early November they had to turn in a project about a fall tradition in their families. And this week they had to turn two "quilt squares," one written and one visual, about a specific winter holiday tradition that each child was assigned.

Does anyone else find it a little funny that Harper's assignment was nutcrackers?

Now I may be approaching these projects the wrong way - we usually do discuss them as a family but I make Harper do most of the work herself. This time we read some information about the history of nutcrackers and then Harper wrote a little something. Unfortunately there wasn't room for all of her ideas on her quilt square. She had to leave out the part she wrote about the ballet.

Here are her squares:

Her nutcrackers made me laugh. She was only going to make one but she kept making them so tiny. She finally decided to put several on her quilt square - a little nutcracker army.

I'll be interested to see how this project is graded - due to the traveling we did over the Thanksgiving holiday it may not have been our very best effort. Ahem.

Any interesting school projects for you this time of year?