Oh school projects - we love them and we hate them. They take a lot of time and effort to prepare, but the outcome is always so amazing and watching these kids spend 45 minutes up in front of their classes presenting, leading discussions, asking questions, and involving them in hands-on activities - man, it really is incredible to watch. The skills they are learning through these projects are lifelong skills that are so important. But we sure are glad when they are over!!
Karly and Olive got to present about hazelnuts and all the info anyone could ever want to know about them. We put together a home video of them for their class to watch as they roasted, peeled, and ate them. It was full of funny moments, cute things they would say, and they were so excited to show it to the class. Their favorite part though was bringing crackers and nutella for the class to snack on. Yum! Good job girls!
Eden's social studies project this year was on NM Pueblo history, and specifically about the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. She had to spend a lot more time and effort to research, as the historical information from pueblos is very hard to find.
She met this fellow at the Pueblo Cultural Center Library who ended up being a great help for her in gathering information.
Her project rubric also required doing service of some kind, so as a family we drove to the nearest pueblo to pick up trash along the roadway. We ended up getting stopped by Pueblo police who said we couldn't be there without permission from the Pueblo leaders so we had to cut our service short. But we still made a small difference for the time we were there.
She did an amazing job presenting all her info to the class! Well done Eden!
For Bentley's class, the social studies topic was countries around the world and he chose to learn all about Vietnam. Coincidentally, we have a lady in our ward who grew up in Vietnam and she graciously let him interview her to find out her perspective on all sorts of topics. It was very interesting to learn about her upbringing, and to compare her real life experiences to the history we were reading online.
Bentley also had a service project component and we struggled to think of some way he could serve that was tied to Vietnam. During his interview, Thuy told him about being a refugee from Vietnam and her families experience having to leave their country with nothing. At this time we were also working with our ward to provide furnishings for an apartment for Afghan refugees. It ended up being a great correlation for him, so when we had our snow day, he did lots of extra sidewalk and driveway shoveling to earn money to purchase the pillows for the refugee apartment. I think he was pretty proud of being able to serve in that way.
Bentley did an awesome job presenting to his class, and answering their questions.
And we are done! For this school year at least. Phew...
