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In Jacob's QUEST (G.T.) class this semester they have been studying Medieval Times.  They read a book about it.  They have been researching, writing, everything you can think of associated with studying this topic.  At the end of March they were assigned an at-home project (that they could also work on in their once-a-week class) based on their personal interests related to the topic. 

Jacob chose to do his project on the weapons and battles of the Medieval period (sur-prise, sur-prise!).  He was supposed to do a diorama, and sketches of weapons with written descriptions.  The written research project was done earlier in the semester in class.  And yes, this is a BIG project for a 3rd grader!  And he was adament that we couldn't help him (engrained in him by his teacher).

So in April he started working a little at a time.  He wanted to do a battle scene with clay men.  Great!  It took him a month to do all of the clay men.

Then it came time for the project to be due.  The weekend before the due date was an extremely busy one for us, which left him no time to work on it.  The Sunday evening before I sat him down and we discussed his game plan for the next two days.  He understood that it would take up ALL of his after school hours to get it done.

AND IT DID!  He came home on Monday and worked for 6 hours with only one break for dinner and FHE.  He came home on Tuesday and worked hard to be 3/4 of the way done so he could go to Cub Scouts.  Then he came home and worked some more (total of about 5 hours that day).  And despite their being some deep sighing, occasional staring off into space, and some grunts of exasperation, he did really great.  He has a history of tears and melt downs when he gets overly tired.  But seemed to understand that there was no point in crying about it - a sign of maturing on his part.

Next time I will try better to help him calendar a project like this out on paper and space it out – I just don't think his 9-year old brain was capable of seeing the big picture in a project like this.  Lesson learned for both of us.

I am proud of him.  This project was all his own – he made all of the clay men and their weapons (out of toothpicks and foil).  He drew and colored the castle.  He drew and labeled all of the weapon sketches (and my favorite part, rated each of the weapons on a "danger scale").  He wrote and typed the description of his battle scene.  The only thing we helped with was the glueing of the grass and the supervision of the hot glue gun when he was positioning the men.

Here's the final project – don't look too close if you are at all squeamish about clay blood or rolling heads.  As Jacob likes to tell me "it was a very brutal and violent time, Mom" – apparently so! 🙂