How much have you spent on a school project?

Parent Cafe
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<p>S made his own nutrient agar in middle school, then swabbed various parts of our house and grew the resultant micro-organisms. His teacher didn’t even want to let the project in the classroom, haha! That was a cheap project…the agar is made from kitchen stuff, the germs were grown in sterilized empty baby food jars (donated by friend with baby) and the organisms, of course, were free.</p>

<p>S just spent $12 on Krazy Glue for his physics bridge, but it’ll be worth it if he wins the citywide competition tomorrow.</p>

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<p>So, who needs a big model of the Panama Canal? A Little Tykes Dollhouse that is rigged up with electrical circuits with lights and bells and all that for a science project? a big display of all the steps of Disney animation? geez…I gotta go downstairs to see what other things there are (there are lots)…</p>

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<p>Did anyone ever have the one where they had to put a chicken back together bone by bone.
Our high school is big on projects. They are almost always a group. I hate them. If you don’t get a good partner. Last year my son had a partner who lived 45 minutes away and took the bus home each day. The kid could never get together. I think they eventually each did a part and put it together the morning of.
They always end up costing way to much money.</p>

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<p>That particular calculus project is one of the ones on my “oh for gods’ sake” parenting list. I would suggest to your daughter that recycled cardboard boxes would be cheaper… </p>

<p>I’m with WashDad on the robotics expenses, though. We had the entire robotics team at our house for 4 days, too. (They were amazing; when they left, the place was neater than when they arrived.)</p>

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<p>mom60, I am with you. They often don’t work out. My kids have had partners that come from divorced homes where custody is shared and they live far away for half of the week. Some kids wanted my kids to do the whole project and stick their name on the project. Some have just been unreliable. My kids usually just do 90% of the work, and stick the other kid’s name on the project. They find it easier, but it defeats the purpose of “cooperative learning”. I stay out of it.</p>

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<p>Well, the girls have switched gears. Bye, bye Piglet. They are hard at work at the kitchen table, making Humpty Dumpty from a easter egg form I got on clearance at Hobby Lobby for 53 cents. The base will be a chunk of florist foam from the dollar store. And everything else is coming out of those boxes of stored craft supplies in my basement. Last I heard, there were plans for an elaborate hat being made from a styrofoam bell. (Has to have atleast 5 unusual shapes to calculate the volume of.) There is a lot of giggling going on, as well as the diagrams and graphs and calculations. I think this is going to work.</p>

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<p>binx - good job!</p>

<p>Anybody have a natural habitat for a desert tortoise? My 8th grade son has to come up with one in a couple of weeks. He’s thinking he can just dump some sand in a box…</p>

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<p>I’ve got a Giant Peach and all the critters that live in it. The Roman villa I already mentioned, and the pond where Narcissus met his fate. I’ve got a pretty good trebuchet too.(It throws ping pong balls and golf balls - which goes further? I can’t remember). Most of the other projects were photographed and tossed.</p>

<p>Only $12 on crazy glue? You got off cheap, my younger son did the “Boomilever” project for Science Olympiad. He broke at least a dozen boomilevers in the process.</p>

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<p>For one project, D made a marimba. The wood for the keys was made of some tropical wood from South America or Africa that cost $100 per board! And that didn’t cover the wood required to build the frame for it…if it weren’t for a wonderful friend with power tools, we would have had to buy those too!</p>

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<p>for my Ds geomatry class, they needed to make something, larger or smaller, in proportion, and calculate whatever</p>

<p>well, she sewed a little version of her outfit, cost about 4 dollars</p>

<p>HOWEVER the tribochet from h-double hockey sticks, don’t know how much I spent on duct tape</p>

<p>After the 4th eggdrop project, well, old cereal and a baby wipes box quickly replaced the elaborate contraptions created before that didn’t work because the teacher’s pets loaded the eggs in wrong</p>

<p>guess the most we spent on was for a scrap book for a language class, D NEEDED to have the lovely lavender scrapbook…</p>

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<p>My D’s middle school is big on journaling projects. The latest I think is she is on the journey with Lewis and Clark. The first few times we went to the bookstore. But we have now discovered the secret place to buy great journals for only 4.99. Ross dress for less.</p>

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<p>As a high school teacher, I can offer some insight into the “project” issue:</p>

<p>1) Raises grades
2) Meets an accreditation requirement in teaching concepts with a variety of learning modes (visual, verbal, aural, and kinetic)
3) Shows students an application and thus squelches the “why do I have to learn ____? I’m never going to use it.”
4) Gives the teacher something to show at Open House instead of a really clean classroom. (Also provides discussion topics with parents who visit and want to know what their kid in the lower grade level will do next year.)</p>

<p>However, at our school projects got so out-of-hand a few years ago that we had to resort to a very strict schedule and rules. Now, there’s a calendar in the teacher’s lounge, where projects are scheduledwith each grade level color-coded. No grade level can have two projects scheduled to be due within two weeks of each other or immediately after breaks.</p>

<p>Now, some interesting projects I’ve seen in the past: bungee-jumping Barbies for Pre-Calc and Calculus classes to predict distance and parabola; physics egg drops (the students can use a shoe box and other materials to cushion the eggs; then they drop them off the top of the gym; if the eggs are still intact at the end of the drop, the student gets an A); comedic commercials for a speech class; bridge project for a beginning physical* science class; string art project for geometry class** (at least I learned how to hammer a nail in straight)</p>

<p>Projects I couldn’t see the point in:</p>

<p>shell collection, bug collection, anatomy poster, collages about the student’s life (not for an art class, so what’s the point?), poetry notebook**–100 poems typed (before computers) with pictures out of magazines pasted in (before the internet and color printers)</p>

<p>Good news–in college you get to do even more pointless projects for gen ed classes. Unfortunately, they’re usually group projects; and there are also one or two flakes in every group. :0(</p>

<p>At least the projects you do as an upperclassman are validated as “research” or capstone projects.</p>

<p>As a theatre teacher, our project is the all encompassing play. Not too many complaints there–except for the long hours.</p>

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<p>every year my D has to make a foriegn language scrapbook…we just recycle the “pretty” and add the required writings…and through on some glitter</p>

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<p>Great post, avcastner. I really like the calendar idea. My D has had 4 projects due this week and next. She got 3.5 hours of sleep last night. And she played a concerto in the county civic center on Tuesday. </p>

<p>Her Calculus project partner was here till nearly midnight last night, helping to finish the project and do the calculations. Then D was up all hours typing the report. I’m sure this project is intended to raise their grades. But she has her AP Calc practice test tomorrow, and I kinda wish she’d had more time to study for that! On the other hand, Humpty Dumpty looks really cute. My H had to drill the holes, and I helped glue the legs on. So I asked if I can say I’ve done AP Calculus now? (I’m the only one in the family who’s never had calc.)</p>

<p>Kids have done the egg drop a few times. All my kids have done the poetry notebook, too, but didn’t mind it. They all like poetry. I don’t think they had to have 100, though! That’s a bit over the top.</p>

<p>I remember a language arts project my oldest had done in middle school. Printed it out on our black and white printer, then spent hours with colored pencils, making it colorful (a requirement). Was frustrated that the two the teacher picked as best were two kids who had new color printers, and spent no time at all on the color portion!</p>

<p>Sorry to hear that this will extend to college. We did think about making these part of our college research:</p>

<p>Do students have to make anything with salt and flour dough?
Do students ever need costumes (other than for theater)?</p>

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<p>I guess it must depend on the college…I never did any group projects that resembled those that I was assigned in middle/high school…</p>

<p>The main difference between secondary education and higher education in my experience is that secondary education contains more projects that are hands-on make and calculate and higher education tends towards more lab-oriented projects. </p>

<p>Now I did (do) use my fair share of colored pencils in higher education, but that’s because as a geologist, you have to make lots of maps and diagrams!</p>

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<p>I haven’t had any pointless projects in college either. Sure, lots of projects, but none of them pointless. </p>

<p>The other big difference about college projects (at least in my experience) is that they’re usually very open-ended. It isn’t uncommon for the instructions to be something along the lines of ‘pick a project of reasonable scope, propose it, modify the proposal if needed, and do it’.</p>