P & P Thursday

Today was our first Presentation and Project Thursday.  The kids had such a great time putting together their presentations and assembling and painting bird houses.

Guard's presentation was an oral report about bald eagles. (We are studying birds in science currently.)  He drew a picture of a bald eagle in its nest and and told us some facts (he dictated them to me and I typed them to put on the back of his picture).
"Bald eagles are very fierce.  Eagles make very big nests, big enough for Gavin to lay in.  They have beaks that are strong and good for catching meat.  They lie to eat rabbits and fish.  Baby bald eagles are all brownish-gray and they get their white heads as they grow older.  They fly fast.  Bald eagles are American's national bird.  These is also a bald eagle on the Utah flag."

Kate has been studying and reading about the Underground Railroad.  She has read several books and learned how conductors on the Underground Railroad used quilts to communicate with escaped slaves.  One of her favorite blocks to learn about was the bow tie block.  A bow tie block would let slaves know that they could stop at that house for fresh, clean clothes.  New clothes would make it harder to spot a runaway slave and throw off the scent for the dogs who were searching for them.  Kate choose some Civil War colored fabric from my statch, cut the blocks and sewed her block.  She did about 75% of the sewing herself including the machine quilting.  I did the binding.  She did an incredible job for her first quilting project!

Enoch also chose a Civil War project.  He has been studying espionage during this war and he has learned some really interesting facts.  One of his favorites was Union soldiers sending coded messages in hollowed out eggs.  He tackled this project by puncturing two tiny holes in both ends of an egg and blowing out the liquid.  He let it dry for three days.  He wrote a coded message on tissue paper, rolled it up as small as he could and put it in the egg. 

The children had a great time cracking the egg and decoding the message.  One message was not coded, but the mystery message read "Confederates have sub" (he read a book about the first submarine to sink a ship, which happened during the Civil War - he loved it!).

Hannah gave an oral report on penguins and showed her lap book she has been working on - very impressive!

After presentations, we assembled and painted bird houses.  Nailing the houses together was a bit tricky, but we got it done and painting was a blast.  The kids loved it!