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I do.
I have a new home business idea.
Some enterprising arts-and-craftsy-type mom should set up a home business making projects for kids' schools.
You could have two tiers of service:
- you make the project
- you make the project with the kid
I said absolutely not.
So we made a Battle of Gettysburg timeline.
It's a good thing I spent a couple of years obsessed with desktop publishing and graphic design.
Another piece of good fortune: a couple of years ago I hatched a scheme to make my own wrapping paper out of butcher paper and potato prints. As a direct result, I had a roll of butcher paper lying around, so we managed to produce a stand-up Battle of Gettysburg timeline without making a single trip to A.I. Friedman's, Michael's, or Staples.
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the project methodtoga party
not very creative
9 comments:
Pictures?
I've been down that road with the wrapping paper. LOL
I have a history with those school projects. I get dragged into them kicking and screaming. I hate it that my kid's grade depends on how well I do the project--on whose mom is the most savvy and ambitious.
But in the end, after kicking, screaming and sometimes crying (I mean me doing all this acting out, not my kid) I like having done the project.
Also in the end I'm left with resentment over being told how to spend my quality time with my kid. And lastly, I'm left feeling like what was the big deal, did it really take that much time?
Very mixed feelings, as you can see.
Something must be wrong with me.
I simply hate these projects.
Never have a moment when I can stand back proudly and say, that was cool.
I am not artsy. My daughter is not artsy.
The whole thing is incredibly stressful.
We built the most unlivable African hut and our pilgrim boat would have never sailed had it ever hit water.
I don't care if they get a poor grade in elementary school on this nonsense. I make sure they know content.
Lynng--LOL! There's nothing wrong with you. I'm not artsy either, and some of the projects I hate through and through. I always end up mad and frustrated.
But once in a while, I learn something, and once in a while I discover that my kid kind of had a good time doing the project with me. That's all I was saying.
I want to do my own agenda with my kid, not one dictated by some educator who thinks I need an education. I say to that, "Educate THIS, honey." :)
Deciding how we spend our time with our kids is our perogative as parents, and we get that taken away from us by educrats who think they can be in charge of our private lives.
It's demeaning to parents to assign to them how to spend their quality time with their kid.
My favorite time was when my kid needed to make her own stola (toga for females) for a Latin project. They were to be graded on it. Of course no 11 year old could do such a thing.
We were about to leave on a week-long vacation to Disneyland, I was packing, I had arranged for this rare event of taking our kids out of school for a family vacation, and I find out that when we get back from vacation, my kid has to have this blasted stola done.
Worse, the instructions were on smeary, blurry, many-times-over-fotocopied paper.
In the presence of my 6th grader, I cried, and railed and screamed and declared I wasn't making this stupid stola.
Poor kid. It's not her fault. So after I calmed down, I ceased packing, had 3 people try and read the directions, and drove to the nearest sewing store, twenty minutes each waqy. The whole project was a nightmare start to finish.
The stola came out pretty nice, and my kid knew enough to say so. But at what cost?
Had I been able to muster a better attitude, my kid might have been able to enjoy the project. Instead, it left a bad taste in both our mouths for school projects.
I believe the kids are the biggest losers in this.
But I was a loser too. I ended up feeling guilty for blowing up.
It's demeaning to parents to assign to them how to spend their quality time with their kid.
I agree absolutely.
My favorite time was when my kid needed to make her own stola (toga for females) for a Latin project. They were to be graded on it. Of course no 11 year old could do such a thing.
Did you not feel you could tell the school you wouldn't do it without instruction?
I made a huge amount of headway this time around by insisting - and then insisting again - that neither the social studies teacher nor the ELA teacher is certified to teach art.
I don't think they'd ever heard that argument before, and it stuck.
One advantage of the special ed "instructional" class--less projects! We only had one at-home project all year--the cell model (which looked as bad as all our projects as NOBODY in my family has any artistic talent). It looks like they built volcanoes, designed roller coasters, and operated a "travel agency" soliciting new American colonists in the 1700's all on class time rather than my time. Of course that's not great news either. I would have had a full blown panic attack if a stola were assigned. I have zero art and zero sewing skills. I think that would have been a project that my mother-in-law would have had to make. I know my dad built an adobe house for my niece when she was in middle school.
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