back to the computer

Spring break number one is over tomorrow, and the final summary for the first grade science report is due. My first grader transcribed her draft in very clean hand printing. Then we turned our attention toward the display board. I showed her the example conveniently printed on the cardboard by the Elmers corporation. Its layout strongly resembles the one in the handout from the school. (In fact, the major way it differs from a typical modern poster paper at a scientific conference is that it's not going to be a single huge PDF file in full color printed on 34-inch wide roll stock.) The wheels were turning in her head.

Fortunately for the first graders, much of this exercise is wrote repetition of something they've done in a previous draft with only a couple of added aspects of detail. In this case much of the display will be composed of components already written. She did, however, come up with her own original title. So I sat down at the computer with her on my lap, and I called up OpenOffice, but she did the typing of the title. Then we proceeded to the first bullet list. I set up the page and turned on the bullet mode, but she typed the title and contents.

There's a lot more bullet lists to go, and then the choosing of the photos and the gluing, but we have until Wednesday evening, or maybe even Thursday afternoon.

Well, I think it's cool.