School Projects

When your child leaves a project to the last minute and expects you to make things fine, it can be a major pain.

To start with, a few weeks ago I noticed on Scott’s teacher’s web site calendar, that his mini-book was due for presentation on the 9th of March. I looked up at the calendar (it was the 18th of February) and realized that he had only two weeks or so to completely get this done. When he got home from school that day, I asked him what book he picked out this time (this is his 3rd mini-book). He looked up at the sky and just mumbled a few words and after some specific questions he finally responded that none of the books in Mr. Brown’s library were interesting to him. I then had Scott look at the calendar and let him know that from the fiasco of the last mini-book, he had promised me that all the reading, the writing, and the artwork, was to be done one week before the presentation. That would give him a full week at school to get everything scanned in and the power point ready. That meant that he had to get all this done in only 10 days…and he hasn’t even picked out a book!

Ok…so this Mom sent him upstairs to look at some books in her bedroom. I didn’t think any of them were appropriate, but I wanted him to be the one to decide that. These are books that the children no longer read, but I as a mother was not ready to depart with.

Anyway, he did come down and verified that they were not the right kind of books to review. Instead, we headed up to my library, which is a sitting room off the master bedroom, also being used as Steve’s office. Two of the walls in there are lined with shelves and full of books. Some of those books I have collected over the years are juvenile books. We sat down and went through them. Both he and I vetoed the Little House on the Prairie books. He vetoed all the Star Trek and Star Wars books I had.

We finally got it down to two books, read the synopsis on the backs and he chose Fog Magic. It had only ten chapters and for him that was totally doable.

The process of making a mini-book is that he is to read a chapter, then write a couple of sentences about that chapter…read the next chapter, write some more sentences and so on until the book is finished. Then he is to draw some pictures, one for each chapter and a picture for the book cover he creates. Next he comes up with some questions about the book that he presents to the class when he is doing his presentation. He then gives a prize of some sort to the student that correctly answers his questions.

Well, after some cajoling and begging and threatening to keep his DS for forever, the work finally got done as scheduled, one week before presentation. (He surprised me by wanting to type all his sentences into the computer directly instead of writing on paper first and did it quite well...I didn't know he was typing that well!) I sent him to school on March 1st with strict instructions to get everything scanned in and onto his flash drive (we don’t have a scanner here at home). He comes home on Monday stating that he got the power point stuff all set up and the first picture scanned, but there wasn’t enough time to finish up all the other pictures. And he also came up with 4 of his required 5 questions. That was pretty good, so I didn’t complain about that. Then on Tuesday, he comes home and tells me that he still didn’t get to do any scanning. I’m still not worried as there are still 3 days left of the week. Wednesday, he comes home and said that he had had a substitute, so no time at the scanner at all! Thursday was a field trip day (I had it on my calendar as a completely different day), so that day was lost too! Now I’m panicking! Friday, I was at the school in the morning doing Bank Day hoping to see Mr. Brown…but no…another substitute. I asked Lori, the school secretary, to please notify the substitute that Scott needed time on the scanner to finish his mini-book. Scott got home, no scanning. Me? I’m ticked! All this hard work we went through to get everything ready a whole week in advance and still not done!

So, early Monday morning, I had Scott with me and we camped at the door to the classroom waiting for Mr. Brown before school started. We had half an hour to get the last pictures scanned and into his power point presentation. It took a little longer that I liked, but before I left the classroom, Scott’s presentation was DONE!

He came home from school totally pleased and said that he got more compliments than usual!

There is another mini-book assignment for next month, so Scott has been told that he has to pick out his book this week! We may even spend some time at the library picking one out!

Now…if only we also didn’t have to contend with teaching Stephanie how to make time lines for her projects either! She came to me last Thursday and asked me to look on line in Family Access to see if I could see when her current project was due…tomorrow! Well, short story here…it wasn’t turned in on time, but she had to spend all her spare time this weekend working on it…and even then it wasn’t very good…but she turned in what she had on Monday…

And you wonder why Mom went on STRIKE on Friday!