Monday, May 23, 2011

The Giant Pacific Octopus

Last week Luke got to present his very first report. He was totally excited about the whole project. He got to pick an animal - any animal - that he wanted to research and then make a visual to go along with it. He could do anything - again - that he wanted for the visual. Draw a picture, make a poster, use clay, whatever!

It took us about 2 seconds of talking before he said he wanted to do his project on the giant pacific octopus.

What?

I didn't even know that such a thing existed.

But Luke did, and this was his animal of choice. I tried to talk him into something "easier" - you know like a bunny (thinking we could use a picture of a bunny rabbit and glue cotton balls on it!), but nope... HAD to be the GPO (Giant Pacific Octopus)! As it turns out he saw something about this octopus on some PBS show - the Wild Kratts. So off we went on the thinking trail of the GPO! When it came time to talk about what he would do for the visual part, he decided he JUST HAD to use clay to make an octopus! Oh my goodness, this was getting harder by the second!!!

I pulled up a couple of web sites and Luke and I looked at pictures (if I was gonna make one, I had to know what I was dealing with!) and found the information we needed to do the report. He loved every minute of the research part and asked every day if we could make the model. We finally made the trek to Michale's to get the supplies.

Luckily for me Crayola makes this wonderful stuff that's kind of a mix between clay and play-dough. So we got a couple of bags of that stuff and we were ready to make the model.

Luke did very well with helping to make the actual octopus, and here is the final outcome.



I thought it was very cute (if I do say so myself). He also did a great job with the presentation. I was a proud Mommy!

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