What can I expect from my children?

Have *I* Learned Anything?

Depends on what time of the day you ask me. I feel that I am learning daily on what works and what doesn't work for my family. My daughter just completed her biography report. There were many times where we walked the fine line of "critique, criticism, constructive suggestions, brainstorming". Sometimes it went well, other times we fought to where we would come to a creative stand still (that's code for "lots of tears".)

How high can I set the expectations?

I still am not sure how to gauge the quality and level of work to expect from my children. What is age appropriate? I didn't pay much attention to how her past teacher's taught language arts. For example, how many 45 minute sessions did it take the class to write one project? How many minutes were spent on introducing the project, first draft, second draft, final draft, presentation, etc. How often did my daughter complete her daily goal and was just waiting around for the rest of the class to be finished? I have very high expectations, I want them to have attention to details and have pride in their work. However, if I expect too much, will it cause them to feel less than adequate, set up to fail, resistant to doing the project at all? I am still trying to figure this issue, no answers yet.

Dioramas

Animal Habitats

The kids wanted to study animals. So I gave them both the assignment of

1.Checking out 2-3 books on their chosen animal from the library

2. Researching on the internet (at least once source)

3. Writing a report of what they learned (include habitat, are they endangered, if so why?, what they eat, where they live, basic characteristics...)

4. Create a diorama of the animal's habitat

5. Completing a resource page (daughter only)

Scaffolding: My son (6) chose the house cat. This diorama shows the different rooms where a cat might go during the day (master bed, computer desk, tv room, kitchen). He learned about the many ways a cat communicates through various meows. When we came back from a short trip, he cried when our own cat meowed as he interpreted her saying, "I missed you."

I helped a lot with this project, reading the materials to him (even though he can read), helping him with the questions, and mostly, helping create the diorama. They were all this thoughts, ideas and creativity, but he needed help in the execution of it all.

My daughter (9) picked the leopard, a big cat. She did the entire assignment on her own, from finding all her books at the library, to her diorama. I could not convince her to take notes, she stated she had all the facts in her head. She only had to look up one or two facts, so I wasn't able to argue the benefits of note taking on this project. We'll work on that later!

I did get upset at one point, when I noticed an entire sticky notepad used up. I couldn't understand where all the pages went. Then my daughter showed me how she crumpled up the pages, leaving the sticky part to allow her to stick it to her "tree" without using glue. How could I be angry after seeing how genius the method was!