In which Neatnik earns extra credit

Neatnik's teacher offers the students extra credit for projects that they do on the subjects of the stories in their reading textbook. Last week, they didn't read a story so there was no project but Neatnik looked ahead and reported back to me that they were scheduled to read Two Tickets to Freedomnext.

This got us to talking about the Underground Railroad and the quilt code. Some quilt researchers are certain that quilts were used as signals on the Railroad since the escaping slaves wouldn't have been educated, the written word was useless to them. Quilts, however, are made up of pictograms and those images have symbolic meanings.

Neatnik decided that she wanted to make a booklet of quilt blocks. She researched online and settled on ten quilt blocks to reproduce in mixed media. I got to teach her how to use my sewing machine, Liquid Thread,an X-Actoknife, a rotary cutter,and PowerPoint,and Neatnik got to practice her computer and ironing skills. My other major tasks were ruler holder and paper positioner - because I didn't really see the need for any bleeding, I held the paper still while Neatnik cut.

Seriously, though, Neatnik was amazingly focused on this project and she spent over 20 hours on it between the research, the typing, and the crafting parts. Then she came home from school today and told me about visiting National Geographic's Underground Railroad web site today.

I am so proud of how much she enjoys learning and creating!