Do you remember doing project books, on random topics, in primary school?

[PleaseYourselfandEatTheCrusts]

I was talking to my 8 year old, earlier. At school I can remember times where we could just pick a random topic that interested us. We would research it in the school library, and make up a whole project book about it.

I can remember doing ones on windmills, lighthouses and ancient Greece. I am sure there were more that I made though.

My 8 year old wants to have a go at making a project book of his own.

If you remember doing similar, what was yours about?

I did one on the boyband East 17

I was pony mad so i did one about ponies, to nobody's surprise. Mostly it was copied out of a book my grandmother had given me for Christmas.

I haaaaaated project work at school. The way we did it, the whole class had the same project and it went on for what seemed like weeks. Even if, at the start, Ancient Egyptians seemed quite interesting, by the time you'd done geography lessons about the Nile and Egyptian weather, history lessons about Egyptian death practices and hieroglyphics, maths lessons about building pyramids and weighing stones for pyramids, English lessons imagining the life of an Egyptian slave, science lessons about building shadufs, and so on and so on, I was utterly fucking fed up of the Egyptians.

I had to do mine in French and French was my second language. I did mine on "Les constructeurs de bateaux" . My uncle owned a small boatyard so I got a lot of stuff from him and it was an excuse to get away from my mother. My aunt and uncle were lovely. She used to make the most amazing Crêpes Suzette.

Omg yes. I did one on all different dog breeds from around the world. One on bird species from around the world, one on the solar system and one on The Egyptians. We were able to pick our own topics so it was whatever I was interested in at the time.

Wish I still had the dog project book. It had the cutest pictures in that I spent all summer holidays collecting from magazines etc.

Yes the Tudors

I can’t remember my project book, probably because it was rubbish, but my friend did one about a Tudor girl, basically her alter ego, and her family.. so like a pretend ancestor. Rich obviously 😁

I did one about different sizes of paper.

Fuck me, I've bored myself even just writing that.

I used different sizes of blank paper to "illustrate" it.

I remember doing projects about France, Italy, the Tudors, the Stewarts, the 1950's, World War 2 and the Great Fire of London. We were given the topic by the teacher. She would give us an empty A4 exercise book to fill up. No internet, just whatever books you could get hold of.

I did one on Foxes and one on Sweden - I am sure they are in a box in the garage somewhere!

Elephants and Mozart

Oh yes! I’m sure I did dinosaurs and Ancient Egypt (not in the same book obvs, that would have been quite the rewrite of history).

We had a full set of the Junior Encyclopaedia Britannica, probably from the late 1960s. My mum still has it, must check to see how outdated it must be by now.

I can remember each term there would be a general topic and we'd work in pairs on something connected. I can remember having to pick a country for Europe, I chose Poland because it's quite an easy shape to draw and it was when Lech Walensa & Solidarity were in the news so I knew there'd be plenty subject matter. Other things I picked were fashion through the decades for 20th century, Mary Queen of Scots for Scottish kings & queens & witches for local history. I was in a very small rural school with the same teacher for 4 years. She used to tie lots of lessons into the term theme, we used to love first day of term to find out what it would be.

In primary school I remember doing one all about children across the world and tracing pictures from a library book of the children in their national costume. I really believed the children dressed like that all the time !

In the last year of primary I managed to skive the 'topic groups' lesson by doing the teachers' washing up.

Can you tell I went to school in the 1970s?

Yes, we did this at primary school and they called it 'Topic'.

I vaguely remember doing something about horses and ponies, which was my thing at the time. Ny friend was good at art and she did fashion.

Whereas if you called it 'Wild flowers' it wouldn't seem that odd.

I'm sure i alternated doing Dolphins and then whales for like 5 years, i was a bit obsessed. We did book style and also remember a huge poster board one, my mum spent ages shading it blue for me using the old pencil and sandpaper trick.

I loved 'publishing' when a small group of the class got to spend time in the publishing room making a book either on a project or a story they'd written. Getting to use the computer was exciting (showing my age) and we got to pick the shape of our book and use the binder etc.

I remember doing one where half the class did Russia and half did China. Nobody had a fucking clue. But it is where I learnt about crop rotation so it did have some impact. Communism though - no idea what that was so we all completely ignored that bit of it.

I did one on snails-goodness knows why! I did enjoy a project I did in the Guides for my Commonwealth badge though (that dates me!) I had to choose a Commonwealth country and produce an information book on it-I chose Canada, and got lots of travel brochures to cut out pictures.

We had a topic each half term so we had a topic book. It was a plain A4 size book, unlike the other books which were lined or squared A5. At the start of term we’d do a special picture which was stuck on the front.

It was definitely called 'Weeds' but this was the 80s.

Fucking topics. At least with ordinary lessons, if you hate the subject it's half an hour or an hour before you get to do something else instead. With topics, there's no escape — all day, every day, Tudors Tudors Tudors for time without end, as it ever was and ever will be, forever and ever amen. Or at least until next term, anyway, and when you're eight that might as well be the same thing.

I loved this! We could pick any topic. I did one on exploiters. Researched it in the school library.
Another on light. I still have that one.

We did many in the last two years of junior school, so 1984-1986. You could pick anything at all - one of mine was way too braid and I really should have been made to narrow it (‘Music’!!) and I got the piss ripped out of me for another one ‘Dental Hygiene’ ok, quite niche, but I was really into it at the time! The teacher actually said something g along the lines of ‘oh that’s typical you, choosing Dental Hygiene, when most people would have just said ‘Teeth’’ (and not in a complimentary way 🙁).

I still remember loads of what I put into my Pond Life project, like that a salamander is an amphibian!

Wombats!!

Cacti and succulents 😂