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?

We used to make the actual topic book, sewing the pages together, making a hessian spine binding and then making front and back covers using oil printing.

One on ghosts, one on Paraguay

Yep.

Projects were big in the 60's and 70's.

I (along with the whole class) did one on oil. Wrote up to the companies for brochures and everything.

I think I might also have done one on travel involving heavily disingenuous resort photos but that is lost in the mists of time

I still have my Nature one, and my Jungle one (rainforest not music genre). Also loved doing the Tudors but haven't got that anymore.

Here's the cover (done with those little metal ink sprays), and a page with a leaf preserved with 'Marvin medium.' Remember that? Sounds like a dodgy fortune-teller.

'Keeping a Horse' - I secretly hoped my parents would read it and be inspired to buy me a Horse. They did not.

'The Secret Seven' - I was an avid reader and Enid Blyton books filled up a big section of my bedroom bookcase. The project got bigger than planned as I was inspired to set up my own Secret club roping in my brother and neighbour's children. We had badges and a motto and everything. All planned out and recorded in my project book.

Yes! We called them mini-projects and would work in pairs often. We did one on Switzerland once.

Yes! I remember doing one on dolphins, and I think one about the Romans too.

We used to do this when I was at primary school in the 90s, we called it Projects but the topics were always either chosen for us or we'd be given a shortlist of topics to choose from.
We had some where we had to write to organisations for info: I remember we once had to write to somone (WWF I think) regarding an endangered animal species, and another time we had a choice of writing to various foods companies (e.g you could do a project on sugar and write ti Tate and Lyle or a project on chocolate and write to Cadburys - as well as the leaflets they also sent you a cocoa bean but it was marked "do not eat"!). There was something quite nice about receiving these things in the post.

I also remember lots of projects using reference books, encyclopedias, etc - they were actually a bit stressful in comparison (God the internet has made things so much easier!!). I know it taught us good skills and all that but you could end up with the sort of situation pp mentioned where you need to travel miles just to find the one book on Luxembourg!
The worst was when we were expected to use Encarta (encyclopedia on a CD ROM) and the teachers assumed we all knew what it was, all had it, and all had computers at home. I didnt have a computer or any access to one and I'd never heard of encarta so I assumed it was a physical encyclopedia like all the other ones we used for projects, so I went to the library and a bookshop asking if they had an encyclopedia by N Carter and of course they said no. I cant remember what topic the project was about but I remember being unable to complete it without encarta and getting in trouble at school for this but not quite understanding why.

😂

I do remember having to phone the local railway station to ask for some historical info, which we did using the pay phone in the school.

This was obviously in the days before centralised numbers so we did call an actual guy in the actual local train station office. We asked him a series of questions and he was super helpful, if a bit bemused to find himself being questioned by two nine year olds. The last question was ‘how long have you been open’ and he replied ‘since 7am this morning’ to which we fell about laughing and he probably repeated to his family for the next 20 years.

I used to love doing these.

Class ones - cheese-making. The Romans.

Individual - Horses, Yellowstone, Elizabeth Fry.

I’ve remembered another- must have been early secondary. A project on stately homes in my county at the time, Derbyshire. I can remember the pointlessness of it in my view, copying stuff out of books and never having visited any of them!

I did Switzerland, volcanos and pirates!

I remember doing one on fashion (in Elizabethan times) and one on Spain. I don’t think either were ever finished. I can also remember reading about them, being fascinated, but having great difficulty writing everything down in my own words. I was quite good at writing stories but absorbing this kind of information was a step too far. I gave up and copied chunks of text. I don’t think anyone cared.

(In my defence I was about 9 at the time).

I did one on Aeroplanes and Air Travel when I was 12.

I did a whole book on a tap! A bathroom tap... I even silver leafed a drawing on the front. I was a strange child!!

We did group ones and somebody was supposed to be Leader. Remember doing one on Egypt and one on Planets . Nobody wanted to do any research or writing . Just a bunch of pictures of Nefertiti and Saturn . I think Leader was not impressed as she ended up doing most of it by herself .

The Spanish Armada

Yes.

ask me anything you want to about Dumbarton Football Club.

I grew up in the English Midlands 🤷‍♀️

Aww there was a time when there was nothing I couldn't tell you about....penguins 😅
Also remember an amazing class project about the pilgrim father's, can still remember most of it now!

I did one on flags and one year I just decided to make a whole project about my holiday and showed my teacher. It wasn't even set as homework. She bought me a pen with a digital clock in it because she was so impressed! Wish I could say I'm now a high flying something or other but that was probably me at my peak.

When I worked in the local library we always knew when one of the local primaries had given the kids a holiday project, because the first gimlet-eyed, sharp-elbowed mummies would be in, trying to clear every last book on the Tudors or Vikings or whatever it was, off the children’s library shelves. It wasn’t unusual for them to take 8, all with much the same info, and for quite a while we weren’t allowed to restrict them.
Eventually we were allowed to limit them to 3. And 2 would TBH have been plenty.

I remember a project for our class (1980’s) where we were asked what we thought the future in the year 2000 would be like.

I can’t remember exactly what I wrote or the pictures I drew but I do remember the ideas of us wearing silver or metallic shiny space like clothes, flying cars, solar powered cars, world peace, environmental issues and climate change solved by planting more trees etc.

The year 2000 seemed so far away, futuristic and now I’ve surpassed it and time has flown. We haven’t achieved world peace, we are still facing climate change and need to do much more than planting trees (though I do believe planting trees and reforestation is still beneficial). Oh, and no flying cars, but we do have electric cars (not sure if any of them have solar panels though).

This thread has been really enjoyable. Thank you.