Helping the kids with school reports and assignments is something I’ve never had a lot of time to do in the past.  Or maybe that’s just a convenient way of saying I was bad at making it a priority– man, what I’ve been missing out on.  I’ve discovered just how creative and savvy these little buggers are.  I’m proud of them– and realizing now that I need to be more engaged before the time and opportunity is gone…   

Initially I got involved in the Mars Rover project to focus and guide the formatting aspect– large colorful pictures, bold text, clean layout, and lots of white space.  Cole loves language and order like I do, so I don’t dumb-down anything down when instructing him.  I speak to him like I would to any grownup that I work with– I use all the big words and jargon, and he eats it up.  It makes him feel more on my level, and he starts thinking like– well, the incredible little man that he truly is.  (It was his idea to use different fonts on his poster, and it was a good call– makes your eye travel.)  As he started rattling off all these crazy facts he knew about the Mars Rovers, I felt like I was being schooled by a third grader– because I was.

Below is an awesome video on Mars Rover that Cole found and was going to show his class as part of his report– complete with a soundtrack that includes Soundgarden & Ben Harper.  That’s my boy.