One thing Parker was bummed about missing in 4th grade in public school was getting to do the wax museum project. So of course we just incorporated it into our curriculum! In public school here they choose someone from Arizona and research them and then they have a “wax museum” where parents get to come and push a button for each “wax figure” that makes them come to life and they get to give their speech they have prepared. I don’t see much benefit from learning more about someone just because they happen to be from Arizona so we decided to switch it up and do different themes. This year we chose: authors!
Look how cute they look up there! Our oldest was bummed she was going to miss their presentations so we took video which I’m so glad I did because it will be fun to watch them over the years. Parker was a ham and after his presentation he “powered down” and froze again, it’s fun to see them have fun with these projects.
Anyway, I had them fill out these simple forms so they knew what type of information was most important. Simple but gets the job done.
Here is the download if you want to print copies:
The next step was to write out a summary in first person and then practice, practice, practice. Finally, they chose costume and we did the presentations. We chose authors on Monday, researched Tuesday, wrote out summary on Wednesday, practiced and chose costumes on Thursdays and Friday morning and then had the presentation on Friday afternoon. You could easily drag this out and have them read a book by the author and stuff like that but I wanted this done sooner so we could move on. Next year we are going to choose a scientist so I’m hoping to drag it out more then so we can learn more details about each of their accomplishments and maybe do some experiments ourself. I’ll probably have a list of scientists for them to choose from so I can have a general idea of what to expect.
Final reveal of this years wax museum:
Parker was Dr. Seuss
Andi was Lucy Maud Montgomery.
All in all it was a huge success and we’re excited to make this an annual thing. We learned a lot of interesting things about these authors but most importantly it instilled a curiosity in our kids about authors in general. We have been doing quite a bit of googling “Why did _______ write the book ______?” or “Interviews with ______” to learn about the personalities of different authors. I love seeing our children crave learning and want to take the time to look things up for the themselves. It’s one of the greatest blessings that come from homeschool, less “I’ll learn what someone else tells me is important to know” and more “I’m curious about this, lets learn about it”. It’s the best!
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