Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Building the Diorama

Have you ever considered having your child make a diorama as part of history project? It doesn’t have to be difficult, and researching to build one can be very educational. Dioramas are miniature scenes and can depict anything from historic land and sea battles, to fantasy castles, complete with dragons.

To begin with, your child will need to determine the subject of the diorama. Then they will need to determine exactly what they want to include, for purposes of illustration let’s use a Mississippi River scene from Tom Sawyer. Your child will need to determine scale, meaning how big pieces need to be in relationship to the entire project. Then he should lay out the landscape, or river-scape in this case, on a piece of paper, drawing in the points of interest.

For this example, a river boat, a river, a raft, perhaps some trees for the bank will all be components. Some things can be bought, such as the trees, from model railway suppliers, but all of it can be constructed from cardboard, construction paper, digital photos, paper machete, and pieces of plastic.

Imagine what your child will learn from researching this project. Reading about Tom Sawyer, learning about river boats and the Mississippi River, organization, exercising their artistic knowledge and eye for detail as he creates this scene in realistic miniature scale. When the project is finished, let him become the teacher, and tell you what he has learned.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Digital collections

Back when I was in school (a really long time ago!) when we had to make a collection, say of bugs, we had to use kill jars, and push pins, and the worst part about it was we actually had to catch bugs, eww! I remember paying my little brother fifty cents a bug for some of the most offensive of bugs (read: wood roaches) to complete my collection for my 6th grade science class.

Well, times have changed, and the powers that be have figured out that it is not good to expose our children to formaldehyde, imagine that! Technology has made it possible for our students to make collections without killing a single creature. For my daughter at least that is really important, she is incredibly soft-hearted, even when bugs are concerned.

So how can technology help us with collections? Through digital photography! Consider taking your child on a nature hike, and having them photograph as many different kinds of mushrooms as they can, never having to touch potentially poisonous varieties, then coming back, labeling and identifying the digital pictures. The same principle works for trees, birds, and yes, bugs!