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Must I do hands-on projects?!
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I’m hoping some of you can help me gain a little perspective when it comes to doing school related projects with the kids. (I currently have a 1st and 3rd grader.) When my oldest was in PreK, K, 1st and 2nd grade we did hands-on projects GALORE, and she enjoyed them. But I must admit, that after four years of “creating”, I am just plain burned out from it all. Honestly, I would be happy if I never saw another bottle of glue in my life! 🙂 The truth is, I never LIKED doing projects, I just did them because everyone told me I “needed” to do them.
But this year, I guess I have been a little rebellious, and have done hardly any school related projects with the kids. (Okay, we haven’t done ANY.) We have stuck to doing an abundance of reading and narrations, and they have learned a tremendous amount of information. But I have left the projects up to them, and consequently they now do MANY of their own creations. For example, they’re in the playroom right now building a multi-story barn out of cardboard boxes for their toy horses. But as for me planning projects to go along with our lessons, it’s pretty much non existent. But here’s the thing…they seem content with it. They never say to me, “Mom, we’re bored.”
So my question is, did Charlotte Mason talk about planning projects to go along with her lessons? Did she feel they were a crucial part of learning? (You know I’m secretly hoping that she didn’t!) And do any of you think my children will “suffer” for a lack of making a reconstruction of the Mayflower? I realize that as kids get oldre they maybe need less and less crafty stuff, but as I said, my youngest is still in 1st grade. If I were to OCCASIONALLY plan a project do you think that’s sufficient? I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter!
Sincerely,
The Projectless Parent
I had to smile when I read this post because you described our situation exactly! That first year or so I thought I had to have projects, because that’s what I was raised on — projects at school, projects at Sunday School, etc. But as the years went by and we got more into great books and narration, we didn’t feel the need to do projects. (And I felt relieved because I’m not an artsy-craftsy person.) The kids started gravitating more toward doing their own projects and their creativity has been on full-throttle ever since.
When I read this passage from Volume 2, School Education, pages 255 and 256, I threw away my guilt:
The children worked for a week upon ‘an apple.’ They modelled it in clay, they painted it in brushwork, they stitched the outline on cardboard, they pricked it, they laid it in sticks (the pentagonal form of the seed vessel.) Older boys and girls modelled an apple-tree and made a little ladder on which to run up the apple tree arid gather the apples, and a wheel-barrow to carry the apples away, and a great deal more of the same kind. Everybody said, ‘How pretty, how ingenious, what a good idea!’ and went away with the notion that here, at last, was education. But we ask ‘What was the informing idea?’ The external shape, the internal contents of an apple,––matters with which the children were already exceedingly well acquainted. What mental habitudes were gained by this week’s work? They certainly learned to look at the apple, but think how many things they might have got familiar acquaintance with in the time. Probably the children were not consciously bored because the impulse of the teachers’ enthusiasm carried them on, But, think of it––
‘Rabbits hot and rabbits cold,
Rabbits young and rabbits old
Rabbits tender and rabbits tough’––
no doubt those children had enough of apples anyway. This ‘apple’ course is most instructive to us as emphasising the tendency in the human mind to accept and rejoice in any neat system which will produce immediate results, rather than to bring every such little course to the test of whether it does or does not further either or both of our great educational principles.
Now, I do still think some projects are helpful in emphasizing a point (for example, walking out the actual size of the tabernacle or of Noah’s ark) but I don’t worry if we don’t have any planned. Usually those types of projects happen naturally and flow out of a narration comment that gets us all started wondering about something.
I do include some optional hands-on projects in the history/geography/Bible handbooks and on their links and tips pages, but they are by no means mandatory and no one is a bad mommy who skips them. 🙂
I’m glad that Sonya had the quotes ready because I don’t have time to hunt them up. But no, you don’t HAVE to do projects. If you enjoy them or if you have a child who really responds to that (I have one) then you can choose a few. If you do not enjoy them, then don’t force yourself. Provide some basic materials (craft materials, recipes, dress up clothes?) and let it happen naturally. It will.
Now, do handicrafts. I do encourage doing something REAL with the hands. It is very useful to those of us who’d really rather read all day. 🙂 But it does not have to be building a medieval castle out of ice cream sticks or (my nightmare) a gingerbread house that looks like a log cabin. (Don’t ask about that particular project. Oh, and also don’t ask about the 200 Civil War paper soldiers I forced myself to punch out one year–and about how the boys took it outside the first day and BLEW THEM ALL UP in the backyard before the blisters on my fingers even healed!)
My “project” son likes to do a few things, but we choose them carefully. We always build a catapult or two in the Middle Ages. (Oh, Sonya, that Egyptian water drawing project in the GentoDeut&AncEgypt book? Guess what? My son turned it into a catapult. Sigh.) We all really like to do a few recipes. But we really don’t stress out anymore about all of it. So you have permission to do just what you and your children WANT to do and leave it at that. Tell the Homeschool Police so if they show up. 🙂
Michelle D.
Oh, Michelle, I can’t stop laughing! How funny . . . I mean, not really, but . . . I can’t stop laughing! 😀
Thank you ladies for your encouraging (and funny!)words. They are greatly appreciated! Sometimes it’s just nice to know you’re not alone in these things!
Michelle, I just have to pass this along for your boys. It is a set of plans to build a small trebuchet out of cardstock. You print it out, fold, tape, and start catapulting grapes across the room. 🙂
http://web.archive.org/web/20050604023856/www.fryerskits.com/trebuchet/trebdownload.htm
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