Mother/son school projects

I have meant to post all year about Jacob's new school and how it's going and if it's been a good thing or a not so good thing, how it's different from his regular school, etc. and I DO need to do that but.......

this is not that post.

Our experience in ALL (Accelerated learning lab)has been such a roller coaster that I think I avoided posting about it on purpose. Now that it's coming to a close, however, I think I can summarize it.

But today-

I just want to show you some of his projects that have required us to work together. It has been stressful at times with me working and knowing I have to actually get up and get ready in the morning when we're putting the finishing touches on a project at midnight but he's fun to work with. I get frustrated with his last minute announcements of a project's due date so we're ALWAYS under the gun but he has good ideas and is able to let me know when I'm trying to do too much and when he doesn't agree with me. He's appreciative of my help and complements me when he thinks I have a good idea and overall I have really enjoyed the creativity of these projects and will miss them.

Jacob has a book report every month.

He is assigned to read a book from a specific genre and has specific project to go along with it.

Some of the reports have to be written a certain way or from a certain perspective or in a special format and some involve creativity.

Back in October he was assigned to read a book from the genre: Fantasy. He chose one of the books in the Ranger apprentice series called "The siege of Macindaw"

He was given paper in certain sizes and instructions on how to cut and past them to make this 4 sided shape. He then had to create 4 3-D scenes from the book.

This months book genre was Historical fiction. He chose a book called "Cracker!" about bomb-sniffing dogs in the Vietnam war. His assignment was to create a character from the book out of a 2 liter plastic bottle and a styrofoam ball. We decided to add the dog. Jacob actually carved the dog's head from a styrofoam ball the same size as the army guys. I was a little anxious during the carving process. First he was using a butter knife and the progress was slow. I suggested he get a sharper knife and then spent the next several minutes telling myself that was a stupid suggestion as I watched in fear he'd cut himself......

We survived. No blood.

(look at our dog tags! I actually had a couple of those little ball chain things from key chains I'd saved in the junk drawer. Sometimes it's good to be a packrat)

I was very proud of my hat. I dont' know if you can see it very well, there's a lot of shadow in these pictures but I gotta say..... It's a great army hat. With my hat making skills honed by January's Tri-corn hat experience I felt very confident. My job even helped me out as we'd been studying formulas for finding circumference and diameter in 6th grade this week. As I wondered how long I needed to cut a strip of paper to go around the outside of the hat a light bulb switched on in my brain "C=pi x d and it worked.

See Kids! You really will use math once you leave high school!