The Dreaded School Project

This is really for the moms of school age children, but you should prepare yourself if your children are ever going to go to school.  School projects are a nightmare.  Seriously.  Especially if your child tells you about the project the day before it is due.  This is a great motivator to always clean out the backpacks, there is a wealth of information in the backpacks.  Due dates are in the back packs.

Just recently, after I came home from our Ladies Christmas Tea, where I MC'd and helped plan and set up, I was met at the door with, "I need balloons for my art project, and I need to take them to school tomorrow."  Really?  Surely I have some kind of balloons somewhere in this house.  Leftovers from some party, something.  I actually considered small things in foil packages, if you know what I mean.  Nothing.  Not one thing.  So I trekked out to Rite Aid at 11:00 at night to get balloons.  That in itself was a quest because they were down some aisle on a little hangy thing in the middle of the aisle.

I have spent forty dollars on figurines and "craft" sticks at Michael's for the dreaded "Jamestown in winter" project.  Can you make a little triangle thing that a tiny pot has to hang from over a fire made out of tissue paper?  Do you know that desperation can make you do funny things?

Tatum had to make a Lakota Sioux indian village.  I considered whether or not a My Little Pony qualified as an Indian war horse.  I mean, they have jewels in their manes and stuff.  I spent fourteen dollars on a figurine to put in that little project.  Authentic Lakota Sioux figurine.   Then, getting on the bus, she dumped the whole thing.  Crying ensued and we put it back together as best we could.  She did get an A.

I have been to hobby stores looking for Civil War figurines (they do exist).  I have made things out of cardboard and construction paper.  Amazing what you can come up with at midnight the night before a project is due.  

I will say that I make my children do most of the work.  They have to learn responsibility.  I have helped, but never done their project.  We have all witnessed the first grader's science fair project, a fully functional nuclear bomb, complete with Einstein's theory of relativity, typed double spaced.  Who do you think did that project?  I would say the physicist father or mother, but that's just me.

So, what did you have to make out of flour/water/newspaper and pipe cleaners?  Share the love.

God bless you and yours.