Monday, October 7, 2013

The "Me Tree"

We had so much fun home (really un-) schooling last year, that we decided to do it again!  A common theme in many schools at the start of the school year is "All About Me."  Mini egotists that they are, young children love doing projects about themselves!  It's also a fun way to record what they are like at a particular age, and for comparison at the end of the year, as well as future years.  One of our projects for September was a "Me Tree."  I was inspired by a lovely drawing that Ocean did, which was a tracing of her hand with tiny leaves decorating the fingers.  We traced her hands and arms to make the trunk and branches of the tree, which I hot-glued (alas, you can tell I'm no Martha Stewart with the glue gun!) to a piece of (slightly warped) cardboard from the recycle box.  I then cut out leaves, on which Ocean wrote out things that she loves right now, at five-and-a-half (unicorns, dogs, books, etc.).  We glued them on along with some pictures of favorite things from magazines.  She completed the project with a self-portrait.  Maybe we'll put this aside and make another for comparison at the end of the school year, to see how she's grown and changed.

I feel like this craft has so many possibilities.  With a classroom, you could make a huge tree with branches and leaves for each child.  Another thing that came to mind was expanding on this idea to include "roots" for a genealogy lesson. You could add photos of relatives and ancestors with *their* favorite things.  Maybe we'll do that someday.







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