So Ellie will be 5 in August. We have been dabbling in Home schooling but haven’t really set an approach in stone for her “kindergarten” year. With my back ground in early education, I tend to pull from all sorts of approaches. We have a little bit of Reggio, Montessori, Waldorf  and even Charlotte Mason in our home right now.
Lately, I have been working along side one of my Mama friends, reading The Project Based Approach by Lori Pickert and have really been inspired to create a different learning environment for Ellie. We may not be going full throttle into Project Approach learning but I definitely would like for the approach to be part of our days. After changing her learning spaces around a bit, I’ve been giving her afternoons to really work on child led “project work”. In the past, shes been working on a dinosaur story that she’s writing herself and illustrating slowly. But the other night after I read a May Day story, she popped up and exclaimed that she wanted to make her own skirt for May Day. It would be her project.
The next day I set out a pad of paper and the story, to hopefully remind her of her “idea” and to get started. unfortunately, it did not motivate her. She said she wanted to do it with Gramma instead of on her own.
The next day when we had some “project work” time, I asked her if she would like to look in my fabric scrap drawer and use my drawing model to make a mini skirt (something she could show Gramma to help). This got her excited and she went to work. I stayed available to her, but she really did the whole thing, cutting a pattern that she drew (“just like Gramma does”) and attaching the skirt to the drawing model. She used the book to help her with picking colors and fabrics and then the following afternoon, we took all her photos of her work previous, and brought it up to my parents house, to show Gramma. The two of them, cut out a larger pattern and sewed the skirt together. Now, I know project work generally doesn’t have such a cut and dry beginning and end, but it was neat to see her measuring, and using pins on her own and really getting into her project. It made me feel good about the choices we’re making for her education.