Project Nellie Bly

I'm a little floored that this just happened, but totally excited about it!

Sunny decided to call "a school meeting" this evening after dinner at the school table. That's out of character for her, so my curiosity was up. She had a Judy Moody book in which Judy and her friends do a project about Nellie Bly, and she wanted to do one too. What got her attention was the country studies done in the book, because what made Nellie Bly most famous was that she replicated the fictional travels of Phileas Fogg in "Around the World in 80 Days." She had asked me the other day if Nellie Bly is a real person and she is - Sunny has been talking about Nellie Bly for a couple of days now so I'm not too surprised that this is her focus. What I am surprised about is the extent of the project that she mapped out.

After a couple of minutes of talking with Sunny, I pulled out the whiteboard and started making her list of things she wanted to do. This was all her with very little parental input. I just acted as her scribe. The "meeting" lasted at least a half hour - I wasn't really keeping track of time, but we were at the table for quite awhile.

PROJECT NELLIE BLY

1. Read the book "Around the World in 80 Days" by Jules Verne out loud together. We'll do this during reading time. (See our schedule in the last post.)
2. Watch the movie "Around the World in 80 Days."
3. Read a biography about Nellie Bly.
4. Read a biography about Jules Verne.
5. Study countries that Nellie Bly traveled to: England, France, Italy, Egypt, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Japan.
6. Get a world map and track Nellie Bly's trip on it.
7. Put together a puzzle of the flags of the world with Dad.
8. Make a school newspaper.
9. Attend the homeschool international fair in East Windsor on March 15.

If you can help in some way with one of the countries, that would be great! Help = we email you some questions and you answer them, or send us a package with something from the country.

We'll start tomorrow with emailing some people I know who have at least traveled to some of these countries, and chapter 1 of 80 Days. This could be all kinds of awesome. I've read the book Project Based Homeschooling but have never been able to figure out how to translate it into real time for us. This is definitely our first shot at it - this is exactly how I would have done it myself. I love that Sunny chose a strong woman to study, a journalism angle (my pre-mom life), and a lot of geography and international culture mixed in. PERFECT.