I am the Walrus

For the past few weeks K’s class has been working on a report for their end of the year project.  All of the third grade classes pick a habitat and then each child in that class is assigned an animal within that habitat.  The kids then have to draw a picture, write a report and build a 3-D model.  The report was surprisingly extensive with the kids having to look up and note facts in 4 different categories and then write a full report including outline, rough draft, table of contents and final draft.  K’s report got off to a rough start as he has a hard time getting his thoughts from his brain to the paper, but even the teacher commented that once he got started on it he did great with each section’s rough draft needing minimal if any corrections.

K’s class had an ocean theme and he was assigned the Walrus.  I now know more facts about the Walrus then I every cared to know.   Since the first day of school, way, way before he even knew which animal he was going to have, K was determined that it was going to be built out of Legos.  K built a really rough model out of the bricks we had here, then J helped him refine it.  Thank goodness for a Lego store nearby that we could drive to and pick-up individual bricks, otherwise it would have been the Technicolor Walrus.  I guess we could have said it was a tribute to the Beatles. 

Here is K’s finished Walrus.   I have no idea why it has a white mark on its chest.  It was never explained to me.

    

Wednesday was habitat night where the families came in and toured all three classrooms seeing the fun projects.  Some of the things the kids did were amazing.  But prior to that night, some of the other students and faculty came in to tour the classrooms during school hours.  Monday K came home all upset because the girl next to him had a Great White Shark and everyone wanted to learn about it and only a few kids were able to come ask him questions before their time was up.  Only my son would be upset because he didn’t have enough public speaking time.

Each of the classrooms was decorated to match their theme.  The boys and I had even snuck away to help K’s classroom decorate the week before.  There were fish hanging from the ceiling, a drawing of the different levels of the ocean on the chalkboard, shells and other sea paraphernalia placed around the room and a jellyfish forest which for whatever reason I think is really cute.  The boys and I may have to make a jellyfish forest this summer as a project.

K and his Walrus

K’s Walrus drawing

Jellyfish Forest.  You can’t see it very well in this photo but they have long tails of curling ribbon handing from them.  There was another forest hanging in a different corner of the classroom but I can’t find a photo of it.

 

K reading his report to D and D pretending to listen.

Overall it was a very fun project and I’m proud of all the hard work that K put into it.