On the way home from school, my sixth-grade daughter says the two words parents dread: “School Project.”
My mood sinks because I know the next few nights will be a flurry of trips to the hobby store, a house-wide scavenger hunt, hot glue guns, and meals eaten while standing because the kitchen table is in use.
Children learn best in three dimensions, the research shows.
Has anyone studied the impact of this 3-D learning on parents? Or homes? I personally have never encountered a school project that didn’t enter the house like a small hand grenade.
“I need to make Poseidon’s house,” she continues, “by Friday.”
“What’s his house like?” I ask, to get a grip on the hassle factor.
“I don’t know, but he lived underwater and was the god of horses and fire.”
“Oh, you picked one of the easy gods!” Here we go again.
I know houses are supposed to support – not suppress – the residents activities. But I can’t face another week of glitter glue and macaroni. I flash back on my patient mother, who endured my brother living at home while he was in architecture school. The kitchen table often housed a model under construction, so we passed the ketchup over the east wing of the Williamsburg Courthouse and the like.
In recent years, between my two daughters, we’ve made a California mission out of painted Styrofoam, a firefly (black nylons over coat-hanger wings and a mini flashlight tail), a Hopi Indian maiden out of a bottle of dish soap, a model of the newly discovered planet Quaoar, an imaginary island (painted salt dough on plywood), and an archeological “midden” (clear liter pop bottle layered with five distinct strata – think coffee grounds, flour, pudding and so on.
We made African rain sticks (good-bye leopard print scarf); a diorama of Jacques Cousteau with real fish; a habitat of the snowy owl (the owl being a wad of dog hair with a cashew beak) and a Plains-Indian tepee. My husband never did figure out what happened to his chamois. All of this in the name of learning.
Kids learn better with interactive projects that engage both sides of the brain.
But does it have to engage every surface in the house along with both parents? Yes, actually. Especially when a kid like Max is in class. Thanks to his dad, this classmate’s insect report had a bee that actually flew. And in the space unit, his Milky Way spun galaxy-like with the push of a button.
Poseidon’s house was less involved. It took the form of cardboard wrapped in sea blue cellophane, with a seashell-shingled cardboard house on top. Red cellophane flickered in its windows like flames. Plastic ponies paraded around the front yard.
A week later, I was still crunching fish gravel under my feet, but I can deal with that. Because as bad as school projects can makes the house look, when we roll up our sleeves and fire up the glue gun for our children, our actions say: School matters. And you do too.
Marni Jameson is a nationally syndicated columnist who lives in the Denver area. You may contact her through www.marnijameson.com.
