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Janice Campbell
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Articles:
Designing a Home School Project - Raising Rabbits The first project on my daughter's list is raising rabbits. She has been waiting some years for this chance to leverage into reality her desire to have some rabbits. "It's school, Dad!" So how can I make raising rabbits into an educational project that is fun, successful, and a learning experience? First, she must learn a fair bit about caring for rabbits, and we must fully prepare the rabbit's home, before we buy them. So, I type "raising rabbits" into Google. All kinds of good stuff appears. She will study these and take notes in her "Rabbit Project" journal. I will get a book or two for her. I type "raising rabbits" into Amazon and see several good ones. I will show her where we will build the rabbit hutches and how I intend the general layout to be. She will then design the rabbit hutch. I will help her and make necessary adjustments, but she must research it out herself. She will figure all the materials she needs and their cost. My daughter will then build the rabbit's home. I will assist her as needed, but it is her project. She will study and take notes on rabbit feeding and rabbit problems and all the things that can go wrong with rabbits. Finally, when everything is ready, we will buy 2-3 rabbits. Because of my own interests, I will point her in the direction of choosing a rare and unusual breed of rabbit. She will communicate with the owners in order to know what to expect. She may even join that rabbit breed association. We will buy all the equipment and tools she needs to care for the rabbits, and she will learn how to use them. When the rabbits come, she is committed. They are her responsibility, and application to the task lies on her shoulders. Once they are in that cage, she cannot "discover" that she really doesn't want to take care of them. While she is doing all of this, she will be recording her time on task in a journal. She will be taking notes. She will keep a running record of her observations and how each rabbit fares. Because she is also doing a project on learning to sketch and a project on writing short stories, she will study Beatrix Potter's rendition of rabbits into some of the most beloved artwork of all time. This bit of research applies to all three of these projects. She will read Watership Down by Richard Adams. And, we will get a book on the natural study of rabbits in the wild. So, besides the joy of caring for and interacting with the rabbits themselves, my daughter is reading and writing about rabbits. She is learning practical research for present needs. She is designing and figuring amounts and costs. She is learning about rabbits in history and in their natural habitat. She is studying the anatomy and diseases of rabbits, and making them better when they are sick. She is studying rabbits in art. She is operating the tools and equipment needed to care for the rabbits, and she has the continual discipline of caring for those rabbits every single day. No shirking allowed. At the end of a year, she will pull everything together into a photo album of her rabbit project and publish it on the Internet. She will also have her own hard copy, which, I suspect, she will keep for many years. [This does sound almost like a college course, but I will scale all of this down to the level of a twelve- year-old.] All told, she will journal somewhere around 100 hours of total time into this project. It is one that will continue through all twelve months of the year. And if the rabbits produce little ones and they grow up strong and healthy, she may even be able to sell them to some other home school child, starting a rabbit raising project. And see a return on the money invested. This is project-led learning. If you need further information about project-led learning, contact us through http://www.YguideAcademy.com/ProjectLedLearning.html We would love to help you develop your project ideas into meaningful learning experiences. Help your child build his or her own business with Micro-Business for HighSchoolers, a nine month course that guides step-by-step in the creation of a real-world business, while learning a whole lot. This course could easily become a central part of your child's high school education. Check it out at http://www.YguideAcademy.com/MicroBusiness.html Copyright 2009 by YGuide Publishing, Inc.. Freely use without changes, including links. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daniel_Yordy
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