After writing her many mini reports Charry got to make a model of the Solar System. She was very excited because this meant she finally got to use the clay I had bought on sale after Christmas. I also found a use for another sale item, file folders, and some foam peanuts I'd been wanting to recycle.
I glued and label a spot for the sun on one end of the open folder. Then Charry drew and labeled the paths for the other objects in the solar system. On those paths we glued down foam peanuts to hold the models. Next Charry had to make the models. She tried very hard to use the colors shown in the pictures even though I told her she could do whatever she liked. In the end I was very impressed with her. Saturn in particular showed great ingenuity.
Her model was very nice and she showed a lot of attention to details but as a parent I was even more impressed with her painting of the night sky.
What impressed me was not her artistic skill (which compared to mine are quite extensive) but the fact this wasn't an assignment. She was simply playing with cousins and painted what she had been thinking about. This showed me that our lessons had gone beyond something she had to do for school and become fun.
