My first grader was assigned a biography project a couple of weeks ago. When she was first told about the project (two weeks before that), she read all of the biographies she could get her hands on in order to pick a historical figure. Much time was spent reading. Much, much time. Many, many books. So that was two weeks.
In the last two weeks she read about seven short books and one 200 page book on her selected figure by herself, and then I started reading the big book with her from the beginning. Because she didn't understand all the historical context, we did a huge timeline of seventy years of personal and historical events. Then we started reading a second 200 page book that she wanted to read. At this point, this was all initiated by her or offered by me and encouraged by her.
But the second long book was really repetitive. So we read one little section that she hadn't read before and quit. Research over.
Now we're doing the project. She's still game. But she's getting tired, and I'm worried about that. She should be tired. She's done an immense amount of work in the last month. But instead of trying to make it easier on herself, she keeps making the hard choices. She was supposed to do a short biography (has to be handwritten), I encouraged her to a short one, but she wanted to make it longer and said the teacher said it was okay. Fatigue sets in halfway through. I encouraged a short powerpoint presentation. She wanted a long one and said said the teacher said it was okay. Fatigue is setting in halfway through.
She has until Monday to finish this, so there is time. But if she's going to practice her speech, she can't wait until the last minute. This thing is huge and it is going to be a long mess if she doesn't practice. And she's a normal first grader when it comes to a giving presentations, so it will not be easy for her to make herself understood.
I need to figure out where or if to encourage compromise. Do I:
1) Push her to finish the project tonight/tomorrow with time to get repetition on the speech over time? I feel like she's starting to tire and dragging this thing out might just make it feel like she's working all the time. But she will DEFINITELY feel the burn today and it won't be all child initated, that's for sure.
2) Do a little every day at the risk of really dragging it out?
2) Encourage her to skip working on it during the week which is already full of school and do it all this weekend (not dragging out, take a break, but no time to get practice on the speech)?
I know the answer is to ask her, but I feel like she's seven years old. What does she know? I think she's working way too much on it and that scares me and I do need to make sure she actually finishes. If she didn't want to go to bed at night, I'd just tell her to go to bed, end of story. But when it comes to doing a project, I don't feel right saying, "No! You must work less!" Which is what I feel I SHOULD be doing.
So now we are here...
Even though she's tiring, she still says she loves history and she's okay with all of this (except for the moments when she's doing the grunt work--which is massive and the part that is left) I just feel like it's too much and want it to end.
Thoughts?
