Describe an interesting project or homework assignment.?

Question

What the topic of this project or homework ?

what research or preparation you did?

how difficult this task was?

and why you feel it was interesting???

Answer 1

We have pursued several interesting projects over the years. Some that I remember as being the most memorable are:

We e-notebooked our studies for about 3 years. E-notebooks are a cross between notes, scrapbooks, and webpages. These are fun to pull out even years later because they are so full of memories of what we did. You can see dome examples of what we did at http://www.virtualhomeschoolgroup.com/co... You can sign in useing the guest access (lower left) at the sign in screen.

A similar projest was to concept map out a full year online portfolio. You can access that project at http://cmapspublic2.ihmc.us/servlet/SBRe... Just use the icons at the bottoms of the nodes to navigate.

Every summer the kids design their own 3 month project to pursue. Some of the memorable ones are ...

... my daughter modding Tomb Raider (using a level editor) to become a student created story for X-Files including script writing, modifying game characters to look like characters from the X-Files, learning how to get game elements such as rain, creating sets from images of the sets from the TV series, etc. Ittook the full 3 months to learn the computer skills, do the necessary research, create the stories, character mods, and props, and then set up the game puzzles to solve.

... we spent one summer doing stream studies. We took water and stream organism samples and did chemical tests, tracked organism counts, and observed organism behaviors. We had a few lab guests that we observed daily (tadpoles turning into frogs, a crayfish, and a tank with store purchased ghost shrimp since we could actually see internal organs at work. We dissected crayfish (lab prepared, not our guest) to understand some of the behavior we observed. There were many interesting discoveries that year and we learned how to better care for our stream.

We did a paper architecture unit. We studied everything from simple paper pop up cards to very intricate paper designs such as fold out skeletons, dinosaurs, and space shuttles. That really developed some good spatial reasoning skills.

All three of the older kids have done website and forum projects that they really enjoyed. They learned a lot about html and graphic design as well as how to put together good content. They also learned how to moderate and make tough choices when forum conflicts arose.

Right now we are doing a project to get an online course co-op up and going. The online course co-op uses a live virtual classroom with full duplex audio, whiteboard, text chat, webcam, application sharing, and more. We also have a course management system called Moodle. Currently we have 6 courses running. Next semester the kids will be designing their own courses to teach to other homeschoolers. It has been a very interesting project and has potential community service project/ministry or maybe even a small business.

The kids have enjoyed making videos. The taught themselves how to use Aduacity for the audio and the camera for the video. They also learned a lot about film editing and special effects.

Another project they have pursued is writing their own novels. Both of my oldest two enjoyed it so much they both strongly considered becoming writers as a career area.

My oldest son developed a deep passion for computers and taught himself how to build and repair them. This passion has grown so strong that he is now in a degree program for computers. He has created a campus tech club in which the members will help local non-profits with their computer systems.

Well, I am sure there are more but they are not coming to my mind at the moment and the post is probably long enough already to give you several good ideas.