We the People

This is one of the neatest projects I've seen in a long, long time...

Here's the deal: this year, our history studies picked right up where they left off last year-- with the founding of our country. On day 1, we plunged right in with a review of the Declaration of Independence and our Founding Fathers, and then we quickly zoomed ahead 11 years to the writing of the Constitution. In our co-op, we did the same thing (with a cursory glance at the Articles of Confederation)-- we studied our nation's new form of government-- 3 branches and all-- and stressed to our students that it is still at work today. We memorized the Preamble (thank goodness for Schoolhouse Rock!), and then to cement it all, our wonderful-- and I mean wonderful-- art teacher, Lisa, pulled a project our of her hat that. just. rocks. Let me tell ya-- she worked her magic in a most impressive way-- I'm still in awe!

Here's the skinny:

To each child (1st-5th grade in one class; 6th & up in another) she assigned a brief phrase... a word or two or three... a snippet of the Preamble to the Constitution. And then she handed each student a beautiful copy of his/her personal selection, written in calligraphy. For a week the kids practiced writing their phrase (at home), and then during the following class Lisa handed each child a strip of crisp white paper. On that strip each child wrote-- in his/her very best calligraphy-- his/her practiced words.

Bub loved this project and never once complained when I asked him to work on his words--"...this Constitution for the..."

It was quite the lovely treat!!

(now if I could only get him to apply that same enthusiasm to the rest of his studies :)

As for Noh-man... he loved it, too,

and practiced "domestic tranquility" over and over and over again...

to get it just right :)

In fact, the entire class had a ball with this assignment...

especially our family's budding artist... this pretty girl-- one of my very favorite nieces :)

So... when all was said and done, Lisa collected each strip, glued them one by one to a long sheet of white paper (slightly larger than 2' x 3', I'd guess),

dashed to the printer, and some time later, received the final product.

It looks like this~

The Preamble to the United States Constitution,

written in each child's hand... on parchment.

It's really quite remarkable--

I can't wait to see it framed at the students' art show this spring!

Oh, and to top it all off, Lisa even printed out notebook size copies (all on parchment)

for each student to keep~

Pretty neat-o, huh??