Honoring Night

After the 5th grade students have presented their projects to their classmates they are honored, along with their mentors at a special night at the school. Each child sets up their poster boards and stands to answer questions from other parents and visitors.



The program gives the mentors an opportunity to speak of the students strengths and abilities. I loved watching these kids stand confidently listening to their mentors praise them.

For many of them, completing the paper and presenting to their classmates stretched them far outside of their personal comfort zones. But they did it! Each one had every right to be proud of his or her hard work and accomplishments. I know that I was bursting with pride for all of them.

PCCS Honor's Project

An important part of the 5th grade experience at Prairie Creek Community School is the Honor's Project. As a progressive school, much of the student's studies are emergent, integrated, experiential and student-driven. As a kind of "capstone" project, the children are to select a mentor, choose a topic, research it and present it in 4 different ways: a written paper, an oral presentation, a poster board, and a "doing" component where they engage the other students. As a kind of joke we said that Emma had to "defend her 5th grade thesis." It really is a big deal, and an incredible accomplishment.

Emma chose for her topic "Ancient China" and a friend from our church was her mentor. She chose this topic because she had studied other ancient cultures and now wanted to know more; she was fascinated by pictures she had seen. I realized at the beginning that she was probably "biting off more than she could chew" and would need a lot of involvement from her mentor and from me.


Early on we developed a pattern that worked for us. Seeing the project as a learning experience, we read the books together and talked about what was useful information and notecard worthy. Sometimes I read aloud; sometimes Emma read. She wrote out some of the notecards or dictated to me what she wanted written. After we'd read a few books, we made a mind map of the topics. After we'd read all of the books we made a "road map" for the paper. (For a young mind, the traditional outline with Roman numerals and letters didn't make sense.)


As we began the paper, Emma sorted out her notecards into the various topics. She quickly learned that not all of the information fit nicely into her paper and would need to be omitted. She also found that gaps in information meant more research. As with the notecards, some of the paper was written in Emma's own hand and some was dictated to me. I did very little editing except to occasionally say, "That's a bad sentence. Try it again."

I was very proud of Emma's project. I felt she learned so much not only about ancient China but how to research and compile information. She learned how to plan and pace herself. She learned that she can work longer and harder than she thought she could.

Making Paper

My youngest daughter just finished her 5th grade Honor's Project (subject of an upcoming post). As part of her project, she had to have a "doing"part ... for her and for her audience. Since her topic was Ancient China who had the earliest paper and the oldest printing press, she thought that making paper for her classmates to brushpaint numbers on would be a good idea.

We found instructions on-line and they seemed pretty straightforward and simple.
Step 1:
Cut or shred newspapers into small squares.


Step 2:
Soak the paper in water.


Step 3:
Mix vigorously to cause the paper to dissolve into a pulp.


Step 4:
Spread the pulp on a screen and set in the sun to dry


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Remember ... nothing is ever as simple as it sounds or looks!
Like all projects, you learn along the way. Here are some adjustments we had to make:
-- Torn paper grabs the water better than cut edges.
-- You need a high water to paper ratio.
-- Let the paper soak for quite a while.
-- If you start with hot water, by the time it's cool enough to handle it's absorbed a lot of water.
-- Mixing vigorously with a spoon is not enough. Use a food processor or blender to get "pulp."
-- If you use the daily newspaper, the ink will stain (and ruin) your nice plastic bowl. :-(
-- Scooping the pulp and pouring it on the screens works better than dipping the screens into the pulp.
-- We used my food dehydrator with window screens on the trays.
-- The thicker the pulp, the thicker the paper. Our first batch was more like egg-carton consistency.

Now that we've fine-tuned our process, we're ready to experiment with various added elements. My son made paper the other day with plain paper, grasses and leaves.