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?

This thread is great. Thank you, everyone.

Explorers

not exploiting - that would be a concern!

I remember being out poorly and our theme was “insects”, I came back into school and the only book left was flies! Revolting but I know lots of random fly facts now.

DS, Y4, does project PowerPoint presentations now these days

I remember that Year 6 was the year of the project - we had to do one on Holland, one on the Rhine, one on a genus of British butterflies I chose swallowtails as there was only one... one on Israel and one on our family tree. I remember that we used to go to the travel agents to pick up brochures so that we could cut the pictures out for illustrations.

Australia- the pleasure has never left me. So much so that I have just started an Arts degree just I can do that - projects!

I remember doing a project folder on The Industrial Revolution. The folder was covered in bright orange wallpaper which was also on our chimney breast for many years

I did the Vikings, but only in reference to their invasions in Ireland. I was very good at drawing stonework and 3D round towers.

Also: sharks and Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the Fianna.

Topics!

Ohhhh, I bloody loved doing those. This would have been mid-70s.

The only one I can remember in detail was the one I did on the London Underground. I can even remember the front cover, where I picked out all the weirdest station names I could find, all coloured in beautifully, using my prized 30-pack of felt tips. And I even had a used ticket and a tube map to stick in (we lived in the Midlands, so it was a far-off exotic transport network to me).

How on earth we did these things pre-internet? Library books and cutting up magazines, I guess.

Tracing over drawings as well, and pretending you drew them.

(Can't have been just me ...)

I remember doing one on Australian animals and another on Italian buildings. I loved doing project books when we could pick our own topics. I think we were given the broad idea for a topic, eg pick a country and do a project on whatever interested you about it.

I used to love doing these! The only one I can remember now was about Switzerland. We could choose any topic and I have no connections with Switzerland and had never been there so I don’t know what was going on there…

Yes, I did one on the USSR! I was fascinated, in a morbid sort of way, by the Soviet Union as they had exiled my mum from her home country that they occupied. I remember writing to the embassy and they sent me a big English brochure of facts, figures and photos about the USSR that I variously chopped up and used in my project book.

I was born in 1967 and I absolutely loved primary school. One of my best memories is sitting on the carpet and someone asking about The Great Fire Of London. Each table got to investigate different aspects ; the location, how it happened, drawing different bits, making it !
As a pp said, longgg before the National Curriculum. I was shocked when I started teaching and was handed an actual script for a maths lesson once. I can speak !

I still remember that Steven Wilson in my class chose Monkey Puzzle when we all had to choose a tree to do our project on. I think of him every time I drive past one 😄

Never got to choose our own topic but I loved the class one we did on the Spanish Armada aged about 9, mainly because drawing the ships was really fun. Another class project at the same age was on tourism in St Lucia, which looking back seems a bit random!

Gymnastics (I still appreciate the scoring system and am good at drawing legs - have a huge respect for leotard manufacturers too), canals (understand locks etc) and a friend of mine did ‘ships’… alongside whole class projects such as Vikings and the Tudors…

I think this might have been the Golden age of primary schools. We were all engaged in our learning, learnt research skills (‘don’t just copy it out of the book!’) learnt how to reference andctrust sources, understood the importance of publishing, took pride in our work and used observational skills too… loved it!

Mozart, mushrooms, Turner (who I intensely disliked), Vikings.

My first primary school gave a Mars bar as a prize for the best one (circa 1972/3).

I remember doing my project on Ancient Egypt, and I did magnificent (?) drawings of the pyramids, and also Cleopatra’s Needle (not so Ancient). I got completely infatuated with hieroglyphics for about a year and my parents promised they’d take me one day. They never delivered 😫

I did one on the local rugby club and one on Chernobyl...

I loved class projects. We did random ones on the Baka Tribe and the Arctic Tundra. We were also split into 2 groups where we studied Windows or doors. All my friends got doors while I got Windows. I was devastated. But I remember going out and looking at all the houses with bricked in Windows from the window tax and have told loads of people about this tax since so it obviously sunk in.

We used to do pieces of work on our chosen topic which we would then mount on coloured paper using the big scary guillotine. Then our work would go on display and be put in books. Them were the days 😊

Yes! I did one on bread and one on ballet.

The one on bread was epic; my parents helped me write to the National Bread Board (or whatever) and they sent me tons of information and shiny little leaflets, and I came up with the idea of getting tiny sandwich bags (you know when you buy earpods, there's always a teeny tiny plastic bag with spare rubber covers) and filling one with raw grain, one with milled grain, one with processed flour, and one with actual bread, then stapling them into the book.

The ballet book was covered in silver foil for some reason and had a 3D pair of pink ballet shoes on the front, and it actually was chosen to be on display at our local library as part of some exhibit. I remember they'd told us a local celebrity was going to open the exhibit and I actually am from the same town as Elton John so of course a rumour went round that Elton John would be opening this piddly little library's "exhibit of local children's art."

Reader, it was not opened by Elton John.

I loved Projects / Topics - the ones I can remember doing are:
Henry 8th
Potatoes ?!
Victorians
Christmas

and I always did scrapbooks / diaries for holidays / trips!!

I loved them. A whole A4 plain exercise book to fill with what angle you fancied.

I think I also did weeds, plus China, Henry VIII, birds, another monarch and something else that escapes me.

There was a mass run to the local library to get the two or three thin non fiction (Usbourne?) books before the next person. I still remember the slight scandal when one of the boy's mums managed to get wind of it ahead of time and cleaned out the library resources...

Happy days. In some ways, it was more fun not having unlimited information to trawl through which can be a bit overwhelming with the internet.