With the busyness of our summer, crafting has been at a minimum. I find it hard to summon the energy to assemble the materials and support and supervise my children through the process of making stuff. But I'd been telling Jude for a week that we'd make a dinosaur diorama, and today was the day.
Air-dry clay made the perfect bases for our prehistoric trees (cedar and spruce branches), and we gathered some moss as bushes. Creating a diorama gave us lots of opportunities to talk about the kinds of plants that might have grown in the Age of the Dinosaurs.
We left the assembly of the scene to Jude. He has played and played with it since he finished it. The teacher in me is interested the focus and interest Jude had in this project, without the motivation of marks or a rubric to tell him exactly how to do it. With patience and guidance, he learned the process, without the promise of an external reward, a deadline, or any pressure from me. Something tells me we'll be saving boxes to create more dioramas, and I'll be keeping an eye out at thrift stores for more plastic animals!
I think my boys would love to do this! Yesterday at the grocery store they were building forts with all the boxes near the windows and begging the bring home extras to make cardboard guitars.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I think even my 10 year old would enjoy a project like this with her little pet shop animals or some such! Tell Jude I LOVE his diorama. Those dinosaurs look very happy in their prehistoric home!
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