I want to introduce the self guided project Bug has started recently. This has been an interesting adventure for me as well. I love the idea of a project approach to learning and can totally ‘picture it’ with older kiddos but an early reader? How on earth was that going to work? If you are looking for tips on it I would recommend stopping by Camp Creek Blog for a bit. Some great food for thought there.

Anyway, we choose a theme together. I think any Magic School Bus covered topic would have worked. Bug decided on Inside the Body. Ok, so off to the library we went. I had him talk to the librarian about what he wanted. She showed him to the anatomy section in the kids department and recommended a DVD to him. So he grabbed that and a stack of books.

Now what? I let him browse the books and choose what he wanted me to read to him. He saw a big diagram in the back of the Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body book and thought that was pretty cool and wanted to make one. I suggested we trace him for the outline. He then asked for coloring pages “like maybe the heart.” So I printed one off for him and he matched the colors to a diagram in one of his books. After we put it up on his body he wanted another one of “the guts.” I went off to print something up for him and came back and GASP – he was drawing all over the body and the bulletin board. I caught myself in the middle of a “What are you doing?!” (thinking he was ruining it).

Bug – “Just drawing all my red blood cells. And look see here are some white blood cells eating these germs. And here are some blue blood cells that are out of oxygen so they are going back into the heart.”

Eureka! We talked about it for a few more minutes, I handed his the digestive track coloring page and then left him to it. Then next day while he was working on it he showed me a cut he drew on his finger and the blood dripping out. “But don’t worry mom, I’ve got lots of platelets here, here and here.”