Dino-Diorama

The second graders have been studying Dinosaurs for the last few weeks and Grant got the assignment to create a dinosaur diorama. The assignment specifically stated that the project was supposed to be child generated. . . but that turned out to be much more difficult for me than I expected. How much help is too much? How much is too little? Do I provide all the materials and then say get to it? Do I sit next to him and do it with him? Do I make

my own diorama and then tell him to make one exactly like mine? The main problem was that this assignment seemed like a lot of fun to me, but Grant had zero interest in it. Grant is a creative little tyke, but not very detail oriented- he uses more of the slip-slap-slop method to his art projects- and that is when he is interested in them. My fingers were just ITCHING to make my own adjustments to his project. I couldn't help but suggesting things like don't you think it would be great to add some shells? how about painting clouds in the sky? or wouldn't it be neat to have bubbles coming out of his mouth. . . . etc. etc. It was driving me crazy and I finally had to pass on the diorama parent facilitator job to Dave. In the end I think they did a great job- even without my help.

This is Grant's Plesiosaur- who he named Pleo. He wrote in his report "I think plesiosaurs are cool because The Loch Ness Monster could be a plesiosaur. What do you think?"