When I heard about the Science Fair that our homeschool group is hosting, I'm sure, I was more excited about it than my son. As a science person, I am a little biased about my passion in teaching my kids about the fascinating world of SCIENCE. We've done various investigative activities in matters that piqued their interests, as well as experiments that are related to the curriculum we are using (details of these science investigations will be in another blog that I am working on). Sometimes I have to hold my self back in pushing it to them so for this project, I asked him first if he wanted to do it or not. I've got a lukewarm response. Anthony showed some interest and I feel that the experience will benefit him, so we went for it. To make it more 'his' project, I made sure that most of the output are his and that I only help and guide him through the process.
The topic of the Science Fair was endangered species. To help him decide what animal (he decided to work on animal and not plant) he will work on, I brought him to a zoo to search for any endangered animal that might interest him. This activity became an integral part of this science fair project. Not only did it helped him choose an animal, it also became a learning process as we go from one animal exhibit to the next. We took out time to read the information written for each animal that we looked at and it became a mini-lesson about animal ecology, behavior and habitat. He started asking questions and it gave an opportunity to discussed things with him. It is amazing how Anthony was able to have a better understanding about what does it mean to be endangered, why and how some animals are endangered and really appreciate the various animal exhibits. He came up with three endangered species, and at the end he chose to work with the African wild dogs.
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| Anthony and Aidan looking at various animal exhibits at the Roger Williams Zoo in Providence, RI |
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| We used Miss Jones template in writing an informative book on the African wild dogs |
We had two months to work on this science project so my game plan is to work on it 3-4 days in a week, gathering information, writing facts and making the actual materials for the exhibit. We didn't really follow a strict schedule. Having enough time allowed us to work on his project in his own phase which minimizes the frustration level for both of us. As I was browsing one of my favorite website for teaching resources
(http://www.teacherspayteachers.com), TeachersPayTeachers I came up with
this lesson on writing by Miss Susan Moran Jones which gave me an idea
to 'kill two birds with one stone', meaning Anthony can work on his
project and at the same time, provide an opportunity for him to do
research, develop writing skills, and learn about various types and
parts of books. I asked Anthony if he will be thrilled to make his own
book about the African wild dogs. I showed him the template of the book
and since most of the pages require drawing pictures (which he loves),
he was excited to start it.
How did we tackle the writing part?
Anthony worked on one page at a time. We started with going over the various parts of a non-fiction book, and since most of the books we borrowed from the library are non-fiction, we had many samples to look at. Normally, we looked at a particular page that he is working on that day and explained to him the content of the page/s (what information should be included, the importance of that part of the book), then he worked on with the page of his book. When it was time for him to write his paragraphs I found it helpful to do a spider diagram of all the information we are looking at. For example, when he has to write something about the African wild dog's habitat (at this time, he already knew how to use the book's table of contents to find the page of what we need) I read to him that section of the book that has the information we needed and then I asked him after reading, to summarize what he understood and remembered about the theme we were working at. I used the spider map to lay out his summaries, and he then used the map to write his paragraph. After he was done with all the pages, and he was satisfied with his finished book, we made copies of the book and gave copies of them during the fair. I also bounded the original copy for us to keep.
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| Anthony working on his non-fiction book on African wild dog |
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| Title page |
Anthony also made a diorama showing packs of African wild dogs in their
habitat using play dough and Styrofoams. In addition, Anthony came up
with this 'story cube' to add to his exhibit. Instead of using a tri-fold poster,
we used a box and covered it with colored papers. We made copies of
the diagrams he drew for his book, and put them around the box. My
husband helped us to make the box rotate. We ended up using these
materials since they were readily available eliminating the need to buy
materials or spend money.
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| Rotating 'story cube' |
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| Anthony explaining his project. |
I agreed with a lot of moms who participated in this science fair. Most of the learning are achieved in the process, not in the actual product. It has been a great experience for us. More than thirty children participated and their projects show how unique and special each child is. Overall, this has been a very enriching experience and we are looking forward to the next one.
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