Whose name?

Yeah. Whose name should I put on the back of this ridiculous science project. You guys should know this about me already, I do not "do" his work for him. I'm involved with him while he does his work, but under no circumstances do I do anything besides guide and passively help. I will never tell him answers, or cut things out for him, or tell him where to glue the pieces. He's very self sufficient, when it comes to everyday work.

Last year, they made it mandatory for all students 3rd grade and up participate. THIS year, they're making everyone 1st grade on up participate.

This is 6 year olds, doing exhibits. Fucking mandatory.

It's simple, in idea. They have to do a 'habitat' diorama thing, choosing between the ocean, desert, mountains, forest, etc. Still sounds simple, right?

Find a box. "Alden, find a small box, or a shoebox. You have about 30 in your room. One that isn't too destroyed, please."

After producing and discarding about 10 beaten to shit ones, he comes out with a xerox paper box. "This one" he says. It's the size of well, yeah, it's huge. After an hour of box hunting, and arguing, I relent, and go pick one out for him. I'm already losing the "I'm not going to do it FOR you" battle.

I thought we would cover the outside of the box with his crayoned representation of the ocean, and what he thinks lives there. I offered suggestions, I showed him how to hold the crayon to the side, and use broad sweeping strokes to color the whole paper with blue. He's using huge newsprint. I said "you make two or three ocean murals, fast, just draw a bunch of fish and shells, and coral, and we'll see what we can do with them"

4 hours later.

The arteest was having oceanic block. He made one and a half. I grabbed up some various shades of blues and greens and started making ocean. It's a slippery slope, folks. I didn't draw anything, though, I just filled in the background.

Then, I had to wrap the inside and outside of this box with all this colorful paper. The outside is all mural, it looks nice, and all the surfaces inside but the very bottom are bluey-green swirly ocean, with a sandy colored bottom. But, try to imagine a 6 year old, even a really skilled and creative one, cutting and gluing paper, like giftwrap, to cover the whole inside and outside of a shoebox. Yeah, so I did that too.

They want stuff inside this box now. Interesting stuff.

After wrapping and gluing, I summon the child. I hand him some card stock, and I say "Draw nice fish, like this one *draws an example* big enough to cut out, and color. Draw some things from the ocean, we're going to cut them out" He's doing that now. It's been an hour and a half since I wrapped the box. The arteest has 4 fish, oh, one crab, one axe, and three smily faces. I stolidly refuse to even cut-color one thing.

We've got some frondy looking dried plant material for seaweed. Some playsand for the bottom. As soon as I get paper for my printer, we're gonna print out some nice pictures of coral, and shells and cut them out too.

"Alden's" project is tiring me out.


It really pisses me off, though. Mandatory? MANDATORY. They're going to have a science fair, where these projects are judged and graded. JUDGED. GRADED. He's SIX. I've done the bulk of it. It's all his art, though, and all his ideas. I'm just assembling the thing. But still, jesus christ in a corvette, he's got no interest in competition. He doesn't care if he wins or loses. They're forcing these kids to compete.

My point. A)Science fairs should be voluntary. This is the first time I've ever seen them force kids into it. Young kids.

B) Science fairs should be left to older kids, who can handle something as elaborate as a diorama, or whatever.

C) If he's being forced to participate, don't fucking TELL him what to do. I would have had him try to grow plants in the dark, or something, and write a paragraph on how plants need sun to grow. Draw pictures of the plants, have the seeds there, have some seeds that were sprouted in the sun. That's *just* the speed they're at in science, right now.


Furthermore, I know certain other mothers *cough*Harriet*cough* are spending loads of cash on little toy models and tons of scrapbooking paper, foam cutouts of stuff, etc, at the craft store. I flatly refuse to spend a penny on this. The boy needs to learn to use what he has, and be industrious. We have a megafuckington of craft supplies, and a megafuckington of imagination.




**Disclaimer: I never get this aggravated over normal work. I love helping him with normal projects and school stuff. This is sorta ridiculous.**