Museum

One of the biggest blessing that came from our move to the Detroit Metro area is finding Jack's school. It is a wonderful, small co-op school that insists on heavy parental involvement, the only one of it's kind in the state of Michigan. It has been running for 40 years and has a very unique teaching system that I just adore.

One of the things that the whole school participate in is a called Museum. The school bases a lot of it's ideals off of Jean Piaget's style of learning. So, each student will pick a subject that they are interested in and would like to study and they do a complete research project and presentation about it. It can be anything that they are interested in, no matter what they are studying in school at the moment. Pre-K through 8th graders all participate.

The day of Museum, all of the kids will either present their studies or sit by their presentations and answer questions, like the kindergarteners did.

Jack chose to study Fire Safety.

He is my old soul, and wanted to learn how to be safe, how to get out of fires, and so forth.

He created his board on his own, he did all the paper mache on his firetruck and painted it. He created his own survey, asked his classmates and the elementary students and than created a chart.

His question?

"Do you think a house fire is more than 100 degrees?"

The majority voted yes, fyi.

He than researched and found out that house fires reach up to 15,000 degrees.

All of the kids did such a great job. There are 10 students in Jack's kindergarten class and the topics varied from Fire Safety to Dinosaurs, Lemonade Stands to Octonauts the Disney Jr. cartoon.

Math, reading and writing were all involved in their projects. They had to go to the library to get books to support their project.

Not too shabby for Kindergartners.

Ryan made sure that Jack had at least 10 books. He wanted to make sure his works cited was complete and accurate ;)

It was such a great way for the kids to be able to learn about what they are interested in, all the while learning how to present, create and process information.

The Kindergarten room  was bustling!

Jack was very serious about his topic. He wanted to make sure that people know how to Stop. Drop. And Roll.

 

We just adore Jack's teacher, Miss Venee. She has helped him come out of his shell, while not forcing him into activities till he is ready.

Here he is talking with her.

He just adores her, as do we.

I feel so blessed to be able to send him to school each day, and be excited to hear about what he is learning.

I didn't think I would ever feel confident and o.k with his schooling being done by strangers, but I have not had one moments doubt.

Jack is perfectly placed, and they let him flourish in his own way.

It was a fun afternoon, full of learning and knowledge. The kids were SO proud of their work and the parents were excited to learn from everyone.

I look forward to going again next year. Jack will be in 1st grade and will have to do an actual presentation before his peers and the parents. I wonder what his topic will be next year?