The Biggest School Project of all Time

Jason is currently about halfway through what has to be the most extensive 5th grade school project of all time. His class is doing state reports and his state of choice was Michigan. The project is broken up into 7 parts with portions due at the beginning of March through May. I'm all for projects, I think it's good for them to do but this one is a tad bit out of control. There is only so much you can learn about a state... The first three parts were due only a week apart from each other so EVERY night he was working on parts in addition to regular school work and sports.

1) Fact Ladder: The kids had to find 52 facts about their state and put them on 27 index cards and string them together. The end product was kind of cool but it took 3 hours for him to type out the facts and then hole punching, tying together and gluing. We helped organizationally but Jason did all the typing/cutting/gluing.

2) Written report with three hand drawn maps. This written report had to be typed (I helped with that part or it would have taken 24 hours/day to complete) and include the works, bibliography, table of contents, etc. The maps were political, historical and geographical maps. These took a few hours each!  At one point Jason said "Mom, I should have chosen Kansas. It's a rectangle, and it's flat."

3) Travel poster: This part I backed out of. He did it all on his own.

The rest of the project is due in a few weeks...

4) Fact Box
5) Oral presentation
6) Food item for open house
7) Salt and Flour 3d Map

We usually have a no to minimal parent participation rule for projects. With Caitlin's 4 week series and this right after, we feel like we're back in school ourselves!!!!