Just a heads up....4th grade is a lot of work for parents!! There is no such thing now as a normal, hand written, 1 page book report. Every month the kids are required to read a certain genre of book and then do some crazy book report to retell it to the class. One had to be a game board, the other was a gift box, posters, etc. This last monthes genre was to read a biography and then they would retell their book as part of a wax museum. Seriously! The kids not only had to present their report to classmates, but the entire school as well as parents!Braxten chose to read about Dr. Seuss. I must say I was surprised by his choice, but it turned out to be very interesting! They kids were required to create a tri-fold poster with at least 10 interesting facts on their subject as well as pictures or other interesting items representing them. They also had to dress up in costume and become the character. Finally, they had to give a 1 minute oral speech in first person, as if they were the character! As you can imagine, this became way more work for the parent than the kids, and yes, I gripped the entire time!!!
They set the "museum" up around the entire school with each child, I think that there is over 80 students, displaying their tri-folds, in costume with a money collection cup in front of them. When anyone would come to their display and place money in the cup, they had to get up and give their "speech"! Again, they had to do this for all the elementary students during school hours and that evening for the community.
I have to say, that evening when we went I was totally suprised not only how much I enjoyed it, but with the students!! There were very few kids that duplicated each other and I learned so much. Most of all, I was impressed at the creativity of the kids and how brave they were to get up and down 300 times and repeat their report, especially to the grown ups! I was also so impressed by how supportive the community was and the enerosity they displayed. All of the money that was raised went to help the Luchin family, who experienced a horrible tragedy just a week prior to the event. I understand that they raised over $2,000!!
Braxten did a great job, he memorized his speach and was totally confident presenting it to anyone, except Tristen, she would make him laugh! Anyway, here are a few photos of Dr. Seuss! By the way, the most interesting fact I learned about him and everyone seemed to enjoy, was that although he wrote numerous children's books, he never had any children of his own because he was slightly afraid of them!
