We recently survived our homeschool group’s annual Project Fair. There’s really no other way to say it. It sounds pretty easy. Each child can do a project on absolutely anything that catches his or interest. Anything. At all. In the whole world. So you see, that right there makes it quite a challenge. Because how do you choose just one thing? And we have to do that five times. And then each of those amazing interests needs to be somehow translated to a project that others can walk by and see or taste or feel or hear enough to be amazed at the information being presented. And of course, no one wants to be boring. Because boring would just be worst possible thing that one could be at Project Fair.
Ideally, the projects are begun months before the scheduled fair day. But I don’t work that way. Even leading up to the week before we were tweaking and focusing. And then we got sick. All of us. The week leading up to Project Fair is absolutely the very worst time to be visited by the plague, which is really all that this malady could be called. Yet we overcame and conquered and finished up our projects, perhaps not quite to the extent that we had originally planned, but no one else needed to know these things.
We had Maddie presenting Duct Tape. She made duct tape flowers, duct tape bows, duct taped pencils, duct tape bags, the obligatory duct tape wallet (our oldest son made one that he used for over 5 years), and a mad hatter style duct tape hat. Fun stuff, there!
Zach revisited his love for all things medieval and enlisted Papa’s help to build a small size working trebuchet and cross bow. These were tested many, many, many times in the kitchen, accompanied by many shouts of success, moans of misfire, and giggles of direct hits.
The little girls have been doing some machine stitching this year, so we combined them into one project presenting their perfectly place stitches. Colorful buntings, a set of coasters, a doll-size quilt and pillow, both strip pieced together. After completing these, Sophie declared that she’s quite ready to draft a pattern and sew a dress by herself. I did a bit of redirection and dodged that one, but we’ll be working on it soon, I think.
Of course, Silas couldn’t be left out of the Project Fair presenting, so he made up his own little project of Cars and Guys – his two very favorite things these days (besides Mama) and with some help from his big brother, he had a road set all drawn out and colored in.
We enjoyed spending so much time making and crafting, something I don’t usually make enough time for, but now that we’ve all had a taste for it again, we’re going to try to make Makin’ Stuff become a part of our normal routine. And I’m itching to get to some sewing projects that I’ve been putting off.
~ Dreaming of beautiful fabrics and crafting projects.