What exactly would we be thinking about in our project over the next few weeks??

Locality?  Around Us?  Places we belong to?  Areas of interest?  Family history?  Home?

Well all of the above.  Last week we had drawn plans individually but the children also had to organise themselves into groups to make a group map.  The children naturally organised themselves into their locality – those who were nearest to each other and those who passed friends’ houses on the way to school.

Once again discussion with Ann was a central feature of our lesson.  Even though most of the children had never been involved in the project before they were not one bit scared of how to use the program and share their work with Ann.  This incuded taking photographs, colour matching and sharing map ideas and progress with Ann.

Once the maps had been drawn the children were asked to mix colour which they could use to create a wash over them.  We discussed the  discused the idea of a wash and how they could go about creating a wash on their maps.  In groups we went outside to take photographs of the grass so we could use the colour and match it for the maps.  Then the childen mixed their paint – some found this a challenge as they didn’t mix enough and then when they tried to mix more the colours weren’t quite the same.

Once the children began painting and working some of the maps began to take on their own shape and somehow colour was even added even though only a green wash and black roads were to be added!!  I’m sure this would’t be hard to mend – but look at those really proud faces – the girls were so proud of what they had achieved and to them the colour simply added to the map.

Today was exciting for the children as the parents had been invited in to see the beginning of the project and to talk to Ann about the whole process and the thinking behind the virtual aspect of the project.  This was also a fabulous opportunity for the parents to talk with the children about our locality and in particular the maps, which the children had drawn.  This worked really well,  as we had at least one parent for each group who shared some thoughts and information about the area on the map.  The parents really valued the project and all thought it was great to be able to see how the project worked and the kind of things the children were doing in class.