Diorama Extravaganza

During the middle of January, Daniel discovered at school that you can take the information you find for research, and create a physical representation of that information. In the form of a diorama. This lit the fires of his creative imagination in ways I have never seen. He is not my 'artist' or my 'color-er' . His art must have a purpose. A craft he can sink his teeth into, a coloring book not so much. A activity book will provide endless entertainment until he finishes it, a blank page offers little for him to work with.

However, this link between science, research, and art has bridged the synapses in a way I haven't seen before. So, although they are big and bulky, we are holding on to these for a while. They've now found a home/space in his room, (out of the living room) and are still occasionally taken out of their stacked positions to be thrust into action for smaller stuffed animals and action figure adventures.

So, here is a run-down. The first day brought home two dioramas. The first, a WOLF habitat, we felt could be expanded (not knowing there were many to follow) so began discussions of different ways we could add some new elements to what was created at school. The second of the day was a dog diorama, which was declared finished by its creator.

The Wolf Diorama

The Dog Diorama

The next day brought two more:

Mark's favorite item is his phonetic spelling of Chocolate.

And, the final day brought another two, for a total as seen below:
At this point, I thought a quick email to Mrs. Law was required. Averaging two a day, and noting Daniel's attachment to the work, I thought it important to have an understanding of how many more might be coming home. Luckily Mrs. Law found that the same information could be made into a research mobile... although only one or two of those have made it home since. She did warn me that the students are simply waiting until we find some 'smaller boxes, like shoe boxes' which made perfect sense to me.

I hope to post some more detail shots of the dioramas soon...