Little Mr Tree Top

A few weeks ago, Leighton found out that the Kindergarten class he joins in the mornings was going on a field trip to the zoo and the children are completing animal projects to complement the trip.  The teacher let us know that when she had to break it to him that he wasn't able to go on the field trip with them, he asked if he could at least complete the animal project.  She was excited about his enthusiasm and sent home the information for us.  He had to write a short report on his chosen animal and had to create a 3D model.

At first, Leighton wanted to do his project on some sort of monkey.  He then changed his mind and decided on a giraffe.  He asked every day if we could sit down and start writing the report, so Roy quickly printed off a lot of information on giraffes for Leighton to read through.  Leighton and I would discuss some of the things he read, and then he'd decide how to shorten the information into one sentence.  It was very impressive how well he could do that.  I think his teacher gave us 3 pages to write the report on.  I had to trace it out twice because Leighton wanted to keep writing more and more and filled 4.5 pages!

Being the excellent role models we are, we procrastinated and waited until the last weekend to get the model made (we had two weeks to work on it ... oops!).  Roy had plans on building a giraffe out of wood with Leighton, but as we were running shorter on time, we fired off frantic emails back and forth that last Friday coming up with alternate ideas.  In the end, I grabbed some foam board, giraffe printed fabric, giraffe printed paper, giraffe printed faux leather type stuff, some felt, some black textured material, and some paints.  Leighton is extremely artistic and we knew he could attack the project with those materials and come up with something great.

Roy drew the outline of our giraffe (yes, Leighton's artistic abilities definitely come from his father and NOT his mother!) and cut it out of the foam board.  We then traced one side of the giraffe onto the fabric and I cut it out with the sharp fabric scissors before Leighton and I glued it on.  For the other side, Leighton traced around the giraffe onto the giraffe print paper and then cut it all himself and glued it all on.  Riley liked helping glue. too!  That was as far as we got on day one before we declared we were starving and needed to head out for burgers (best decision ever!).

And after Leighton went to bed, I started panicking that it looked like we had done too much and that it wasn't looking like a kid project.  As a teacher, you never want to see the parents' work coming in on projects.  You really do want to see what the kids can do.  We even used to joke that there should be a parent science fair project and a kid science fair project so the keener parents could have their own competition!  And now, here we were, drawing the giraffe and helping our child glue so that it looked all neat and tidy.  I was so focused on just wanting to get the giraffe cut out for him to start decorating it that it never even occurred to me to have him draw it.  I just suggested Roy do it and cut it because I knew that was the best way to have that part completed safely.  But a kid can do the drawing and THEN the parent can step in and do the cutting.  Especially when we have a kid like Leighton who loves art so much!  Duh, Mommy!  I seriously considered going to get more materials the following day for Leighton to start over and complete independently.  Roy talked me down and reminded me that it is ok for us to help a 5yr old build a 3D model and that is really is meant to be a family project.  Oh, right.  Phew.

So, giraffe project day two began.  Leighton glued some googly eyes on the giraffe and then cut and glued a tail and 'mane'.  He cut out a tongue and glued that on.  And he decided the giraffe should be eating a leaf, so he got some green paper and cut a partial leaf to put on the tongue.  Not the whole leaf though - the giraffe had already eaten the other half.  And after a while, he figured he needed to put that other half of the leaf in the giraffe's belly.  So he cut up a bunch of tiny pieces of green paper to represent the chewed up bits and on the inside of the belly they went.  He loved knowing that when we glued the two halves of the giraffe together than the food was in there!  It was like his little secret.  Finally, he painted the inside of the legs with some random giraffe spots and we glued the two halves together.

And then we told him we were taking a break and were heading off to the zoo so he could look at the giraffes and see if we were missing anything!  We had already planned to meet some friends there for the morning, so it worked out perfectly.  Ronit, Guy, Hagar, and Yuval were our neighbors at our old house and we hadn't seen them since before we moved in January.  It was great to catch up and for the kids to play.  We miss living next door to them!

There was an Earth Day celebration going on, so the kids were able to collect stamps on a map from stations around the zoo and could get a prize at the end (on the way out - love the incentive to leave when it's time!!).  Hagar and Yuval wanted to go to the petting zoo, so our kids got very brave and decided they could handle it, as well.  We were really proud of them touching and brushing the goats!

And back to the giraffe project.

After watching the giraffes at the zoo, Leighton decided we really hadn't missed anything on our model.  We just needed to get some ears put on (he was very accurate with the placement and stood in front of the giraffe looking from side to side to try to match them up - smart kid to figure out how to do that!) and he wanted to make it look like the giraffe was walking though grass like in his favorite picture Roy had printed off for him.   He used green paper and brown paper to make the grass.  When I asked what the brown was for, he looked at me like I had two heads and informed me that there was dead grass mixed in with the green grass.  Geesh, Mommy, keep up!  But he only did it on one side because he was getting a bit tired to cut all the itty bitty pieces by the time we got to that point.  We should have gotten Riley to do it - she was overly keen to do more with the glue and she's always up for a round of cut-everything-in-sight! 

Leighton worked really hard on his giraffe (named Little Mr Tree Top), and although I still feel guilty that we didn't get him to draw it, Leighton loved it and was so proud and excited to take it to school.

He got to read his report to the class and this past week, we got his marks.  He got 28/25.  Yup, over 100%  He got bonus points for writing more than the required 5-10 sentences and for doing such a neat and creative model.  And even though he's not part of the G/T (Gifted and Talented) Kindergarten program, they were putting Little Mr Tree Top out for the G/T Expo the other night for everyone to see.  I didn't find this out until 5:00 when we were getting in the car to leave the playground though!  I managed to call the school for details, call Roy to share those details, drive home, make dinner, feed us all, get myself changed, get the kids dressed into clean clothes (they were excited to choose matching outfits!), get their hair brushed (even Riley's, which takes a while!), get a bag of snacks together, and have us in the car to leave by 6:14!

It was neat to see the other students' projects and to see what the kids in other grades were working on as well.  And Riley and Leighton liked that there were cookies :)