This was her first display board she's ever made on her own. (A prior one for our SOUTH AFRICA display for a geography fair she merely "helped" with, with me doing most of the planning, layout, and assembly, with her doing the LEARNING during our geography lesson time that month.)

A week prior, when she said wanted to participate instead of just attend, my one criteria for her was that SHE had to do it. She'd have to plan it and make it. In the end, the only thing I did for it was to print out the various headings and board title and staple all the stuff to the board.


(left hand side) On the board she has a write up of each of the characters along with a sketch. She described the characters very well.

(middle) Top portion is a watercolor of the main character in front of her dragon. Next to that she wrote about the character, conflict, and resolution. Below that is a map of Dragonsdale and a brief setting overview write up.

(left hand side)  At the top are two dragon sketches she made. These are representative of some of the dragons in the book. Finally, at the bottom, is a list of both human jobs and dragon jobs within the book.


She cut out and glued all the parts. It took her a while to decide exactly how to lay everything out on the display board... she wanted to get it "just so" ya know! (She was THRILLED that her selection of a black display board made everything "pop" just as she hoped it would.)


At the literature fair, in front of her display board she set up her "Snuffy" stuffed dragon and the book. As a reminder of the book I had whipped up some small bookmarks (address labels on cardstock) for passersby to pick up as they visited her display, so those were laid out in front, too.


One of the most fun parts of the literature fair was the various edible goodies people brought to represent food from their book. My DD knew right away what she wanted.... vegetable soup, bread, and cheese. Well, I opted out of the veggie soup (LOL) but did agree to the bread and cheese. Using a layered cake container I have she had cheese, two types of bread and some cinnamon butter I made. Suffice it to say there was NOTHING left after the 90 minutes we were there!

All in all this was a FABULOUS experience for her. I was so pleased to see her commit to this project and really hunker down with getting it all completed. Everything for her display were original writings of her own. I merely went through and wrote down spelling errors she had and she corrected them. She especially liked her watercoloring and we'll be buying a frame for it so she can hang it in her room. She wants to take all the other things from the board and put them in a fairy/dragon notebook she has and adds to from time to time. (So very glad I only STAPLED things to the board!)

This wasn't a "mind stretching" book for her by any means. LOL It was one she'd read in the not so distant past as fun, free reading (she loves fairies and dragons) that she enjoyed. It was the one she picked so I let her. She owned this project from start to finish and she just shined the evening of the literature fair, truly proud of herself and her work.

It was so fun to see all the kids' amazingly different displays. Some had models, some had simple typed, one-page write ups. Some kids dressed up as a character in their book (my DD did) and one kid even brought their dog! (Was representative of the main character, also a dog, in the book.) I especially enjoyed seeing the wide age range of participants. There was at least a couple of 6 year olds there (though two displays might have even been preschool) and some highschool kids. It was just so neat to see everyone jump in and share what they could/would/desired to... at THEIR level. Very neat, indeed.

My DD has already told me she DOES want to participate in the spring science fair, so I'll keep that in mind.