<p>Our elementary school eliminated the “build a mission” project. Replaced it with writing a report, including writing the mission with a request for information. </p>
<p>And yes, this is standard 4th grade state history in California.</p>
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This one made me laugh. People do that? </p>
<p>The science fair issue reminded me of a 3rd grade project my youngest d had to do about mountains. The info that came home from school explicitly stated that it must be entirely the student’s own work, and d reminded me of this every time I asked if she was working on it. She called her step-grandfather about an 8000 meter peak he had climbed back in the day (interesting guy!), went to the library and cobbled together a few facts about the mountain, printed off a few pictures, and turned in a thoroughly 3rd-grade level 2-page report.</p>
<p>Flash forward 3 weeks, when parents were invited to see all the projects. I was stunned, and my kid was mortified. There was a model mountain with a working waterfall, spiffy bound reports with vocabulary that raised this old English major’s eyebrows, and even a selection of foods from a mountainous country. It was just beyond belief that these could have been accomplished with NO adult help, except maybe at Hogwarts. </p>
<p>I also know parents who exaggerate their kids’ awesomeness, and sometimes this may reach the point of being a lie - then again, the parents really seem to believe what they’re saying. So many examples of this to share, and so little time.</p>
<p>I have helped my elementary and middle school grade students to organize materials or ideas for projects… or to better understand their homework, when they ask. But my kids have worked completely independently since entering HS… with the exception of me proofreading their college app essays, and recommending gramatical/word choice edits.</p>
<p>My oldest son has a neighbor friend whose mother routinely edits all her kids’ papers, essays and projects before they are handed in for a grade. This practice has continued through high school and college for this young man… as a college senior, he still emails all written work home for her editing. It is mind boggling to me, becase the young man is a bright and motivated student. IMO, it’s a an issue of control for the mother.</p>
<p>My boys’ Pinewood Derby cars for Cub Scouts were essentially painted blocks of wood with rounded corners from sanding. It was laughable to see some of the highly engineered and finished designs that came to the races.</p>
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<p>Same in my household.</p>
<p>I don’t remember my parents ever helping me. I don’t think it ever would have crossed their minds. I don’t remember ever having a project that was so detailed that I needed help. </p>
<p>I DO remember being required to do a bunch of religious stuff with my parents. They were required to do every activity in some book with me before my First Communion. I remember being frustrated that my parents weren’t Catholic and couldn’t help me. </p>
<p>I also remember some of the science projects. I went to a private school and many of the parents were quite wealthy… and the projects definitely showed it. I also remember thinking that there was NO way that the student made that. I had a fabulous science teacher though that was able to pick out the projects made by parents and she gave the parents quite the lashing.</p>
<p>Just about to get the last kid out of the local public school. Now that retribution is impossible, I am dedicating the next few years of my life to forcing a change in policy regarding “projects.” Henceforth, projects will be completed only in school, during regular school hours, and under the direct supervision of the teacher who assigns the project. I suspect the number of these useless exercises in gaming the system will drop astoundingly.</p>
<p>^ Ugh, I would hate that. I’m not the kind of person who gets much work done in class. It has to be on my terms. I like working late at night. It’s where I thrive. In-class projects were always the worst for me.</p>
<p>I think there’s a difference between parents doing the work for their kids and helping the kids with an idea that they already had.</p>
<p>In sixth grade I decided that I wanted to make a 3D 5-foot coelacanth puzzle with a display board and paper mache; my mom cut out the puzzle pieces I drew with an ExactoKnife. Sometimes kids have aspirations greater than their own capabilities and require a little help, but still came up with the idea and process entirely on their own. In this case, I don’t think there’s any problem with a parent having some part in the work, as long as it’s a reasonable amount and the kid still holds the reins.</p>
<p>That said, a parent should never write or plan a child’s essays, reports, etc. for them.</p>
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I taught my oldest how to use Excel when he was in second grade. He spent much more time than I ever did playing with graphs and charts. I’m sure parents thought that what he did was my work, but it wasn’t. </p>
<p>That said, when my other school’s middle school teacher did a magazine project where 90% of the work happened in the classroom, I did a happy dance.</p>
<p>I helped S with a project in 3rd grade. He was doing a report in the form of a poster plus some item from another country, and he chose France and wanted to make croissants. I helped him through the process of making croissants from scratch. He did the actual hands-on work. He had to read the instructions in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but I supervised. I think that was reasonable.</p>
<p>The following year, they had to do a project involving biomes. The night before it was due, I was at some school-related event, and some of the parents mentioned that their kids were at home working on their biome display. I remarked that I had no idea what progress S had made. The local Tiger Mother admonished me “Well, you had better get right home and get started on it!” To which I replied, “Why? It’s HIS project, not mine.” She was obviously highly disapproving of my slacker attitude. I saw lots of projects that obviously had major parent work involved. But I can assure you that the teachers knew it. :)</p>
<p>I helped S edit his college essays, making suggestions for cutting and tightening because his drafts were too long. He wrote them, not me. I see nothing wrong with that, either. (That was the first and last time he let me edit, or even look at, his writing. He is very independent.)</p>
<p>Neither of my kids had schools that had science fairs.
They did do classroom projects. Older D’s school had teams of three, present posters on health topics in 6th or 7th grade.
She was paired up with two friends ( who were male) Their topic was sexually transmitted diseases. With pictures. I hadnt known anything about it until we came for science night. This was in 1994, I expect today it would probably be a slide show presentation or even interactive & in 3-D!</p>
<p>This is a huge pet peeve of mine. A few months ago, D’s English class was doing an in-school research project worth a large percentage of their grade that quarter. They were told it was to be done completely in school because it was an assessment, and were given plenty of time to complete it. Since that was the way it was handled when my older two did it, I didn’t question. But I came to find out that other kids had taken theirs home to be edited etc. by their parents. I said something to the teachers about it at conference time, but they just shrugged and said it’s hard for them to stop kids from e-mailing things home or putting it on a memory stick and taking it home. D did OK, but would have done much better if an adult had helped her!</p>
<p>As for projects, my kids always do the academic aspects of it, and as much of the crafty nonsense as they can manage and have time for. But I am not above drawing, coloring and glueing for them if they are swamped with other more important work. Also, my youngest has some documented visual-spatial impairments, but was just declassified and refused a 504 plan for that (don’t get me started!!!). So, I will admit that last night I spent several hours searching for internet pictures she could use as models and traced and colored some things for her. It doesn’t look like her work, but I don’t give a hoot, because what they wanted the kids to draw were really complex things.</p>
<p>But after being around parents for so many years, I can assure you that plenty of them do lie and exaggerate about their kids’ grades, accomplishments, and abilities, as well as about what good parents they are. When I was younger and more naive, after listening to those moms and dads I used to feel that I and my kids were inferior. But high school rolled around and it all came out in the wash!</p>
<p>My parents did this once… I am not sure what their motive was, as they were never the type to feel the need to brag about me. We had to make dioramas in third grade and I’d done all the research for mine and written the report, but my mom went berserk and made the whole thing with my aunt and wouldn’t even let me help. I was extremely upset at the time. They had never done anything like that before and never did it again. I think my mom thought the project was age inappropriate… Looking back, I think most other kids parents had done theirs, too. Mine didn’t stand out as that shockingly better than most. I wanted to do the project myself and was disappointed that I didn’t get to help… this kind of behavior is so out of character or my mom, in hindsight I have to wonder where she got the idea that they had to be so good that no third grader could do it. It was just a bizarre experience.</p>
<p>The next year we had to do dioramas for the 4th grade class, and I’d been absent the day they were assigned and was never told about a certain rule restricting the use of certain craft items in the diorama. So I brought mine on presentation day, done completely by myself, and I got yelled at, lost recess, and wasn’t allowed to participate in the presentation which was a fair for the whole school. I am not sure this experience did much to improve mom’s attitude about dioramas.</p>
<p>But on the flip side, in fifth grade we didn’t do dioramas anymore but we did have this really cool fair with booths… I worked like crazy on my project and got only very minimal help from my parents, and people were storming out of the fair angry that my parents must have done the project for me. Now THAT made me mad. That project was done on the subject that eventually became my major. 
It was a presentation on the constitutional convention, and I had dyed a piece of paper with coffee grounds to make it look like old parchment to make a replica of the constitution, and I’d wired a slab of wood to make a light up trivia game. That was the kind of stuff I did for fun growing up.</p>
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<p>Only to myself.</p>
<p>Son in HS, and teacher wants all the objects drawn by hand. I asked why they couldn’t use computer images. After all, this was not an art class. If it didn’t look pretty, they lost points. Learning computer skills seemed more important to me. Fortunately, times have changed.</p>
<p>This was 8years ago.</p>
<p>I don’t know if this is lying, but I proofread both girls’ college applications and essays, both of their professional resumes and cover letters, and will proofread papers if asked. Generally they only have asked me to look over papers that were written over a period of time as a set of fresh eyes to make sure nothing slipped by their having read it repeatedly.</p>
<p>I proofread too, zoosermom. Usually parts of a paper that DS can’t get to sound right, or is not sure if it is too confusing to the reader. </p>
<p>I am in the my son is much smarter than me category too…he is very advanced at math, and everyone assumes that my husband and I were the ones that helped him get that way. My husband went to a tech school, and I went to CC for nursing. So I have limited math skills.</p>
<p>A friend of mine is a teacher’s assistant and is very crafty and creative, and she tells this story: When her son “Timmy” had to do an animal diorama in the first grade, she helped him quite a bit with his project. During the open house a week or two later, each child described his diorama to the parents gathered in the classroom. She sat there with a big smile on her face when Timmy’s turn came up. However, her smile quickly faded when Timmy proudly started describing the project: “First, MY MOM did so and so; then SHE painted so and so; finally, SHE…” Boy, did she learn her lesson…</p>
<p>Ugh projects were the bane of our existence. it was helpful for time management lessons only. I have a friend who I know did his kids projects (helped ha) and an award winning science fair project. I dont think its an effective way to teach.
My h can spot a grammatical and syntactic error a mile away, being a nurse I have lost my writing skills. We write in very succinct sentences. He does proof read their essays, occasionally they will ask me to brainstorm to get a topic going.
I have not dont anything to make my kids look better. what kind of message does this send? “You arent good enough?” 'You cant do a good job without me?" in fact I think my kids are awesome. I dont brag about them enough. They have both shined in HS, are self motivated, nice kids.</p>
<p>BTW curiousmother that is priceless! love it!</p>