Project Fair and Observations

Last night was our homeschooling group's project fair. Taliesin did his project on knights, and Nathanael (with our help) did a project on pirates. Taliesin put A LOT of work into his. He surprised me in that he wrote everything out by himself. He would say what he wanted it to say and ask me how to spell it. Do you know how long it's been since we've even had a chance to work on his writing? The last time he wrote anything more than his name was probably three or four months ago, and then it was a lot of tracing letters that I dotted for him. It's like he was ready, so he started writing. He loves making recycled art. So he made a castle out of boxes, cans, cups, and yogurt cups. He also made a shield using cardboard, paint, and pieces of unpopped popcorn. We also had some books on knights and the medieval period for people to look at - one that had a plastic castle model that comes apart to see in the inside of the castle. Nathanael also had one of those for his pirate project, but it was a pirate ship, of course. He also helped make a pirate flag out of felt and t-shirt paint. I helped him list the different colors of pirate flags that pirates actually hoisted and wrote what each of them meant. He helped color the flags. And he did help make some pirate biscuits. The original recipe was disgusting enough that only a starving pirate would have eaten them. So Kelsey tweaked it to make them a little more tastey. We didn't want people throwing up with one bite. :^) Taliesin helped a lot on Nathanael's project, too.
I was a little disappointed that there were only fifteen kids who participated in it. This is a big homeschooling group, so fifteen is probably a fourth of the member families. It was really interesting, though, for me. This is the third year I've seen the project fair, the second year our family has participated (last year, Taliesin did a project on airplanes); but this year I guess I've been so immersed in unschooling that I paid closer attention to the styles of projects the kids chose. There was one who did ceramics. There was one who did a bug collection. There was family whose was all out of a textbook with computer images and worksheets (two kids - subjects insects and vertebrate animals). There was another family who has two kids - one did a project on different facts about insects and one who did one on the differences between the moth and the butterfly. There was one little boy who had a marble game. His sister made a hanger and airplanes out of cardboard (very creative). One entered a 4-H project on livestock.
Now I'm thinking we might have a project fair for the unschooling group. There are members of the unschooling group that do not go to the other group. And Taliesin's thinking he might want to do some more recycled art for his 4-H project for the fair this year.
Kandy