Friday of last week saw our penultimate project fair of the (academic) year with a Nature themed fair.
The premise of the fairs if quite simple – create a project connected to the theme. So, our theme was nature and the children each chose a project, which I have shared below.
Anna Atkins & Cyanotypes
Em chose to learn more about Anna Atkins who produced a book of cyanotype images of British plants. It was groundbreaking at the time and it made for a lovely project for her to work on independently. She used the book, The Bluest of Blues as the basis and I purchased a kit from Etsy for her to produce her own cyanotypes.
It was a great little project to do and she was interested in learning more about the cyanotype prints and how to refine the images she was able to capture.
Monkeys
H did a project on monkeys. This was only a very small project for him but he learned the difference between Apes and Monkeys as well as the New and Old World Monkeys and the differences between them. The main thing for H with these project fairs is helping him to order his learning and be able to tell others what he has learned.
Extreme Animals
D wanted to do his project about extreme animals. We spent a lot of time defining this project’s scope and understanding what he meant by extreme. He realized that as he found more and more interesting, and extreme, animals, they didn’t fit quite as neatly into his initial project scope and definition. This project for him was entirely self-led with some questions and queries from me to get him to think about what he defined as an extreme animal as well as how he might present the information on the project boards.
Other participants projects
This was a particularly well attended fair with lots of new families joining us which was lovely to see. We had projects looking at snails, bees, the Big Five, wildlife in the children’s home gardens, pavement plants, guinea pigs, leaves and wildflowers, and many many more. The children all worked really hard on their projects and it was great to give them the opportunity to bring it all together and share it with their peers.
This is interesting and I def want to know more about their individual projects