Our Blessed Nest: Book 'em.

It was a beautiful day here. Nearly 80 degrees with Fall colors all-around. Church was awesome, we went for a bike ride, I ran for the first time in over a month...so many blessings to be thankful for!

This afternoon Nathan also finished up a book project due tomorrow. Every month his teacher assigns a book report to be completed at home. I've appreciated these projects so far. It helps us encourage Nathan to read good books, and it also helps Nathan to stretch himself creatively.

So, this project is from September. The assignment was to read any book of your choosing, and then place five artifacts in a brown lunch bag that represent the book. The students also had to draw a scene from the book on the paper bag and draw a picture of the main character on an index card. Once completed, you brought in your bag and gave a presentation to the class.

Here is Nathan's complete book project. Can you guess the book?

Nathan read The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein!

We had read the book as a read aloud last year, but he had never read it on his own. Matt and I made requirements about the books that he could choose from. This is after all a school project and we didn't want him reading anything too easy or that would be considered "twaddle". Unfortunately a lot of books Nathan would like to read, we consider twaddle. The only down side to The Hobbit was that Nathan didn't decide on it until the week before it was due and it's 300+ pages. He loves reading and it wasn't a big problem, but he could have used a few more days to get the project done (read, he did stay up until 10:30 finishing up his artwork the night before the project was due...not exactly my best parenting moment!)

Here's a closer look at four of the artifacts. He took Gandolf pez, a dwarf pez to represent Thorin, a "gold" ring, an eagle, and he also drew a picture of Smaug the dragon (pictured later).

The pez is actually from Lord of the Rings. We tried to convince Nathan that it would be okay to just call the dwarf pez "Thorin". He couldn't do it though. So when he presented, he said this is Gimli which represents Thorin...honest Abe!

He also recited the prophetic poem about the ring from Lord of the Rings (and maybe Hobbit too? I don't remember). It was his idea, and I thought a very lovey touch.

Here's a closer-up photo of the lunch bag. He drew a scene from the book where the dwarfs are captured by giant spiders and Bilbo has to rescue them.

I'll be honest. This wasn't the first attempt. Nathan struggles with doing things slowly and paying attention to details. We gave him the bag and told him to spend twenty minutes on it (at least). He came into our room about three minutes later claiming to be finished. He was, but it was "not his best artwork", as were the instructions. It was a struggle for me. How do you gently tell a child I think you can do better, without crushing his spirit? And do you let them fix it, or hand it in and get a poor grade? So, we talked with Nathan, and in the end I ran to the store and bought a package of brown paper bags. I am that mom.

However, the good news is that Nathan and Matt then sat down and Matt gave him direction on how to improve his drawing. It was basic instruction like "don't draw stick people" and use more than one color, as well as more complex techniques like how to make things appear closer or farther away. Matt was so patient with him. Nathan did it all on his own and was very proud of his finished result. I think it turned out great!

He also wanted to include a dragon to represent Smaug. However, he couldn't find a little dragon, only a large Lego dragon, so Nathan decided to draw a picture of him too.