School projects

[czechsonofagun]

I have to say I am getting pretty tired of them. Over the last few years I built, with some help of the kids, of course:

- long house model
- tipi model
- vulcano
- globe - twice
- Egyptian pyramide
- musical instrument - twice
- cage for a grasshopper - twice
- map of Virginia twice
- fake Titanic journal
- map of personal progress
- Jameson Fort model
- hundred day projects (one piece for each day of school)
- timeline of life

Sometimes I have some fun doing it - like the volcano model I shaped like a really pretty boob or the Jameson settlement was almost artistic.

Overall, I am worn out and there is still my youngest to go through the list, yikes

 

[EddieWalker]

I'll trade you.

Mine have reports to write that go on forever. We have reeding and spelling words to work on, then there is the math problems. I won't even get into some of the social studies assignments, but to say they are painful. Our kids like to rush through their work, so we get to review it and then battle with them to do it right. Hopefully one day they will realize that it would be easier to do it the first time and not deal with us, but so far, it's a battle of who's the most stuborn. Steph and I are still winning, but it takes it's toll.

I WANT TO MAKE A VOLCANO!!!!!!!!

Eddie

 

[LMTC]

My apologies while I try to hide my snickering. BTDT with three boys. My wife probably bore more of the brunt of special projects than I did, but we fought the homework fight, the "I wanna dress like so and so" fight, the "I wanna do what so and so is doing" fight, and more other fights than I can count. There were many times when we both thought "what's the point?", knowing eventually we would lose control anyway. Wrong. Oh, so wrong. While 2 of the 3 took a couple years around 19-20 to thoroughly set me off, they came back, quickly, compared to their peers. They matured much better than most of their peers, they learned far, far more from our stubborn dogged reinforcement of rules, like homework must be done, and relatively early curfews (no way does a HS student need to be out until 2AM), than we ever would have imagined. And while we were 99% rigid about 99% of the rules and policies, one thing we learned is that properly applied mercy can sometimes have dramatically greater impact than any punishment ever would.

So don't give up, it is worth it. Every minute of it.

 

[MossRoad]

I love my kids' school projects.... I always get an A+

Just kidding... we make them do the projects. School and 4H fair. The only parts I have ever helped with is the safe operation of power tools and lots of heavy lifting. They do everything else.

Want to hear a funny project story?

About 4 years ago, my oldest daughter was doing a 4H project. She was 12 years old. It was model building. She assembled a really cool 30's Ford. For paint, she picked a really nice yellow Japanese lacquer in a spray can. So, we're out in the garage and I showed her how to spray with a can with some cheap primer on some practice parts then turned her loose on the car with the lacquer. She's spraying all the parts that we hung on little wires over some cardboard. I'm watching and giving encouragement. She is doing a fantastic job and I am so proud of her. After the first coat, she turns to me and says, "Dad, what's getting high mean?" I look at her and she has kind of a goofy grin on her face. DOH!!! I smack myself in the forehead. "Let's go!!! Outside! Breathe deep! March around the yard! Get that fresh air in there!!! HUP TWO THREE FOUR!!!!"

Man, how stupid could I be? I'm over 200 pounds and felt absolutely nothing, but the kid was lucky to be pushing 75 pounds. Anyhow, I guess those D.A.R.E. classes paid off because she knew something wasn't right and told me about it. Yikes!

So, we got a big cardboard box and put the shop vac hose into the back of it and made a spray box to suck the fumes out of the garage and had a nice talk about being careful around fumes and destroying brain cells. Must have not done any harm as she was top student in her grade school the following three years, top student in the diocese 8th grade year and is doing very well in H.I.G.H. school.

 

[Bird]

Mine have reports to write that go on forever. We have reeding and spelling words to work on, then there is the math problems.

I thought (hoped) I was all through with that when our two girls graduated from high school and the older of the two graduated from junior college. But then the younger one decided to go to college while in her 30s and expected me to help with the same two things you mentioned, Eddie. (reeding?)

Well, she graduated, with high honors, in May, 2007, and once again I figured I was through with that chore. She'll be 40 next month and is about to go for a Masters Degree and told me, day before yesterday, that she'll need my help again.

So don't count on getting your kids' projects behind you some day.

 

[actionaj]

I love doing school project with my two girls. They tell me that I sometimes go a little overboard and make their project bigger or overcomplicated then what they originally planed. But we always have fun.

 

[2manyrocks]

Some of my best memories are working with my Father. One time in high school, we had a small sapling that had taken root in the creek below our bridge. He decided it needed to come out so debris wouldn't hang on it and back up to the bridge some day. So here I go with the pick drying to dig this sapling out of the creek bed. Of course, everytime I used the pick, the water and mud splashed all over me. What a mess. How he didn't laugh his head off I don't know.

 

[rox]

Prokop- he part I enjoyed most in your post was when your wrote "twice" That made me really chuckle. Since my husband was a chef and always working at night all homework and school project fell on my shoulders. What killed me was when they have to do a science project for the science fair and they buddy up and my son or daughter always voluntered that the team should do it at our house. I made my kids do 90% of the work but I have to confess tha at times when it was midnight the night before it was due it was me sticking on the stick on letters on the poster board. Nowdays you can jsut print up in big font the primary points and tape them to the poster board.

For really long reports or stories if it got to late I would have them sit beside me and say word for word what to say including the punctuation and I would type it. Then print it up, they would read it and make changes and I would type it, but it was 100% what they said.

I think our finest science project was on something I don't even remember the word for any more. It wasn't distillation I don't think, or maybe it was. It was the concept of taking raw oil, heat it up to vapors and how at different levels you can extract different substances out of the vapors with I think gasoline being near the top. Part of the experiment was measuring density. I remember measuring the density of beer, and vodka and water. Now that i think of it probably wasn't such a good choice of test material to measure for a 5th grader. I think we were trying to show that depending on how much alchohol was in the liquid it would be more dense or less dense. We had to build the measuring instrument and it broke. Gosh it was like the never ending science project. It took a FULL Saturday and Sunday to complete.

I am soooooo glad my kids are grown and I don't have to do science projects and homework with them anymore. I am DONE! Now my daughter has twins and she can do her kids science experiments with them. I think it would have been easier if my husband was home and we could have shared the load but with his job it wasn't possible and I knew that when I married him so I never complained about it. That is jsut the way our life was.

Sometimes I think the teacheers just plain give to much homework. I did learn from my daughter who early in her teaching career taught at the worst school in America per the front page of the New York Times. Do you know that in poor schools the children are NOT allowed to take their books home at night? To many kids loose them and their parents never pay so the school won't lwt them take thier books home. Thus the teachers have to mkae thousand nad thousands of copies during the year in order to assign homework. That is really sad isn't it?