poppy and rye

You might recall that my little ladybug has a knack for creativity ... well, today her final 'IRP' was due at school.  The last of 3 book reports assigned throughout the year - a book chosen by her to enjoy and write a report about afterwards. But in addition to the written report, there has been a creative component to each one as well.  And this is where my baby truly shines.  The first one was a "story in a can" ... a coffee can that was to be decorated and filled with 10 items relevant to the story.  For that one, she painstakingly recreated the cover of the book out of model magic on the lid of the coffee can to amazing results:

The second IRP's creative component was to make a homemade hat that was decorated with some sort of relevancy to the story.  Hers had actual mechanical moving parts that depicted a scene in her book (The Penderwicks on Gardam Street) where the family dog took off running while his leash was tangled and attached to a red wagon with a child and her stuffed animals still inside.  It was an amazing effort ...

who takes an assignment to make a hat and turns it into this?!

Well, the IRP due today was to be the most challenging creative assignment of the three ... the task?  To create an original game board designed around the story.  Each child had to create the game, the board, the pieces, the concept, the rules, etc.  The book this time?  Poppy and Rye, the 3rd in a 6-book series about a family of forest mice that she has been loving this year ...

You can see above that Poppy wears an earring and that Rye's ear is scarred from a scuffle with an owl.  So what did little ladybug's game pieces look like?

I'm sure you can see Poppy and Rye are the first two mice in the lineup - so how did the game board turn out?

No detail left behind, this game board depicts the part of the book where the mice must rescue Rye from the beavers (see dam at bottom left corner, complete with a beaver inside!).  The starting point is the great rock where the mice live in the forest ... the players travel through the forest and across the colored squares and pick cards (1, 2, 3, or 4) that will either speed up ("get a ride from the hedgehog, advance 3 spaces") the journey or slow it down ("thunderstorm - lose a turn").  You can see the shore of the river marked in sand that she collected at the beach ... and the homestretch of the game is a trip down the river and into the beaver dam (made from crumbled sticks from our yard).  The winner is the first to reach the beaver inside!

And as if the game she created wasn't enough effort, she took it one level higher by creating this amazing box for the game ... an exact replica of the book itself ...

4th grade has been the best ... a great age developmentally and a year filled with an unbelievable amount of learning ... not to mention the wonderful projects and assignments from one of the all-time best teachers on the planet (no joke - the best).  What a wonderful year it's been.  What I wouldn't give to put a lid on all of this and bottle it up right here ... truly magical ... so proud of you, my little ladybug!