Teaching with Ticia: Family projects

This is a post, I'm still thinking through, but is on my mind because my kids just did an oral report for our history co-op. So, I'm going to be checking back off and on all day to see what people's thoughts are.

What is everyone's thoughts on family projects? like them, hate them,

 Back when I was teaching we did one family project a month. I tried to find my masters so I could share what we did, but I can't find it anywhere in all of my school stuff. As we used it a family project is something that would be hard for your student to complete completely on their own, and they would need some help. It was a great way for our students to spend some time with their parents and learn more about their family. Here's a few suggestions for family projects: 

September

 Where I live- Draw a map of your house and memorize your address. The school I taught at many of the students entered not knowing their address and phone number.

 October

 Fire Safety- We taught them how to call 911, memorized their phone number and how to escape their house.

 November

 Hide Tom Turkey- At this point we started to require more writing, and so in addition to creating a disguise for the turkey, they were also required to write two sentences about how they hid him.

 December

 Family traditions- This is the one I really wanted to share the printable with you. There were 4 questions for them to answer, and to the best of my memory it was fairly non-specific to a certain holiday.

 January

 Any suggestions?

 February

 Famous person report- Since this month has President's Day, and right before it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Write a report on a famous person, this included when they were born and died, where they were born, what they were famous for, and one other interesting fact. Homeschool Creations has a great famous person report (scroll halfway down the page).

 March

 Animal report- They had to find information about where the animal they chose lived, what it ate, how long it lived, and one other interesting fact about it.

April

My insect- This is always a fun project, they had to create an insect that follows the rules of insects (so 3 body parts, 6 legs, etc) and come up with its' habitat and where it lives and as many points as possible.

May

When I grow up- This is a fun end of the year report, to see what their thoughts are on this subject.


When I taught we gave this assignment at the beginning of the month and they had at least two weeks to work on it.  Not because it really takes that long, but because schedules are busy and we wanted to make sure everyone got a chance to work on these with their parents.  When the time was up they presented their report and were graded with a rubric.

So, do you like reports like these?  I'd love to hear thoughts from different sides of the equation.  What do parents think?  What do teachers think?

After I've heard some feedback and thoughts, I'll make up some forms for doing these different reports to share with ya'll.

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