On a projects redux note, we did a little bit of clearing out yesterday, and I went through the girls' old school papers. The Scientist attended a parochial school Preschool-Second Grade, and Wildchild had a year of Preschool and a year of Pre-K at the same school. Some of the work they did then actually had pretty good concepts behind it. For example, in Pre-K Wildchild did one self-portrait towards the beginning of the year, and one self-portrait towards the end of the year. It was also interesting to see how her idea of how she looked, the parts of her body she felt important enough to draw, etc., changed even during that short period of time.
Other projects allowed the girls to share their own thoughts. It is fun now to go back and see how although the girls' mindsets were immature, in a lot of ways their core personalities have not really changed. The Scientist is still very thoughtful and introspective; Wildchild still likes bunnies and ice cream.
Of course, these were relatively simple projects, done on paper, but they still took some creative thought. I might try to capture some memories, some snapshots of who the girls are, on paper this year. Of course, being the girls' teacher I see much more of them than I did when they were in school, but it's nice to have something physical to look back on later when memories are not as fresh. I wonder if there's a book or anything with ideas for clever projects out there?
I still would like to do more "big" projects with the girls, like holiday art projects, science projects, and projects related to history: dressing up, historically accurate meals, historically-based art projects and so forth. I just need to not beat myself up for not doing as much as I'd like; guilt will just paralyze me into not doing anything. Still it's good to have goals to work toward, even as I realize I won't always accomplish them.
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