I haven't exactly had the best of luck with school projects this year. The ones that were done on time were sent home with the stamp of "unsatisfactory" and the sentiment of "You can finish it over the weekend and turn it in on Monday, but it's going to be counted as late." Seriously? This stuff has been intense. Then there are other projects that I had limited or incorrect info on. They received the same sentiment of "You can do the project over the weekend, but it's late and will be graded accordingly."
Then came the book report presentation. We worked so hard on that thing. Adding more and more words. Rambling on about nothing because you weren't allowed to give away anything important. Dude, they're 10. What kind of books could they be reading that they could talk about for 3 to 5 minutes without giving anything important away? We drug it on. I got him up to 4 minutes JUST in case he talked too fast in class. Hopefully it was long enough to still be over 3 minutes.
We worked on delivering the speech effectively. It was stated that they were not allowed to just read from the paper. They needed to be looking up. HAHAHAHAHA! Are you kidding me? Please tell me you're joking. No? Are you sure? You're serious? CRAP! I wrote it on cards so that he could use the moment between changing out to look UP not necessarily AT people.
He talked faster in class, but still got over (barely) 3 minutes. He must have looked up just enough. He had all of the papers required. NO deductions! Not a single one. A perfect 100%. We so needed that. It's been the only 4 week project we've nailed.
Which brings us to the Science project.
I decided on something very simple. Just testing out magnetic fields. We have the North and South Poles emitting a magnetic field. What materials does that field travel through? Does anything block it? So, we go small scale. Got some magnets. Rounded up different types of materials. Then we tested to see if the magnets were still attracting to one another through the material.
We had all of our notes done. Our tests done. Pictures taken. Now we just need to print it all out and get it on our board. Easy right? o.O
So, I get my printer out. I have a really nice printer. It does all kinds of things. It even prints out pictures on picture papers. Since we moved it's been sitting in it's travel bag. It came with a travel bag! Right before the move I had changed out the ink. All is ready to go. Just have to plug that kitten up.
Yeah. No. All the papers came out blank. And no amount of troubleshooting, cleaning, taking apart and putting it back together was helping. In fact. The more we cleaned and the more we troubleshooted the less and less ink I had.
So I go over to the grandparents house and use their computer to get everything typed up and printed out as well as getting the pictures done.
Back at home we get everything cut up, and we have our construction paper ready. I tell Tyler to get a glue stick (spreads on smooth and clear). He comes back with a bottle of regular glue, swears up and down there is no glue sticks (I still can't believe that but I've seen no evidence proving otherwise). Someone has run off with all my glue sticks. Great. So we use the regular glue to glue all of our papers down to the construction papers.
BUT regular glue leaves visible streaks through the papers and they dry a bit curled. Fine. Whatever. Let's just get this done. We were going to include the magnets and the materials so that people could test it themselves as they looked at it. Yeah, but that's when Tyler lost the magnets. All SIX of them.
Just.forget.it. All that's left is taping down the papers to the board.
*insert running out of tape*
I begin telling my sorrows to Mama when from behind me I can hear a VERY naughty kitteh. *looks over shoulder* Anakin is sitting with his back to me on top of the board that is sitting on my bed, and is SHREDDING one of the papers that hasn't been taped down yet. ARE.YOU.KIDDING.ME?!?! Forget it. The scared paper will add character. Right?
Oh well. One perfect project is all one really needs.
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