I was speaking with D1 today. She was complaining to me that GD1 had to do a project about her Asian heritage. They were informed this Friday and it was due on Monday. D1 said, “they usually give us a lot of notice. I bet you they forgot she is Chinese.” 
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But why would they assign her Chinese heritage if they didn’t know she was Chinese?
My daughter got these kind of assignments all the time and she would either do things about China she’d learned at Chinese camp (dumplings, bamboo, tea) or from books we had at home or she’d just do stuff about Irish heritage. It really doesn’t matter. Family tree? How would they know if it was true or not?
Other daughter did her ‘Star of the Week’ poster in Kindergarten with her ‘pet’ the horse she took riding lessons on. Everyone thought we owned Dan, which we did for 1 hour per week.
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And…that’s what dogs are for! 
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Talking about introducing foods to babies. I babysat my GD during Covid so she could age up a bit before day care. My son and DIL both worked from home. One day, I guess she was 6 or 7 months old, I was sitting with her and suddenly she just heaved and heaved lots of throw up. I called the kids upstairs. She seemed a bit “off” to me but still smiling, but she was kinda “drunk”. A few days later it happened again. She had had oatmeal for breakfast both those days. Turns out she had/has FPIES. Determined to be triggered by oats. Thank goodness she never had anything else come up. (Pardon the pun). She’ll be 5 on Tuesday and needs to be retested but that means literally giving her oats, in the allergist’s office, and see if she responds. But they haven’t been able to get an appt. for that. Hopefully she has outgrown it.
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I’m guessing the assignment was to report about the child’s family heritage. Our kids had to do that, but the teacher didn’t assign the specific heritage. That was up to the family to choose (sometimes there are multiple ones)
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I live in a neighborhood with oak trees like an arch over every street. I developed an allergy to oaks, and have been getting shots for a few years.
This won’t affect your granddaughter yet, but I can no longer drink any wine nor alcohol that’s been soaked in barrels. I am limited to only white items like vodka and Prosecco. I miss my old fashions and most wines.
Anyway, I no longer eat breakfast bars. I gave away all the wrapped bars for a food drive. I was In my 70s when I was diagnosed with the allergy. I really really hope your Granddaughter Outgrows it as many Youngsters do.
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This is Asian American and Pacific Heritage Month. I think the school asked kids who are Asians to do a poster (or something) of their heritages. They probably contacted other parents earlier and on Friday realized they forgot GD1 is also Asian. The school is fairly organized. D1 didn’t think they would email her on Friday and said it was due on Monday.
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Our processed food supply additives are getting trimmed back a lot.
DD1 with 5 children ages newborn to age 7 has been very careful doing a lot of home cooking with few additives, careful on vaccination schedules of the children and has a pediatrician that works with her (DD1 has BSN and has educated herself to how to raise healthy children). Grandkids are very active and healthy.
As we age, our immune system is not as robust. At age 60 or so, I started needing two nasal sprays and some meds to help with allergies, and neighbor who is a few years younger actually also has to have some injections as well – she had such loss of respiratory intake that she couldn’t do the hiking she was in condition to do.
The kids do eat a breakfast bar sometimes with rush or to hold them over (and the younger two get cooked breakfast at daycare but have a breakfast bar on the way since they are up for a time before they get their 8 am breakfast).
We did have cooked meals with the kids growing up - not often eating out. DD2 was thanking me for limited McDonald’s (maybe one happy meal a month) because at college she had a few friends that craved the fats/sugars/salt with the fast food.
I avoid carbs/starches/sugars with processed food. I have only eaten a nut/protein/snack bar on airline travel with carrying me over until a meal. I also travel with apples to snack on. When you are hungry, it helps to not grab less healthy alternatives.
Having seasonal/environmental allergies can limit outdoor activities - a shame but when everything is blooming out, allergy people suffer.
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We used to say that these schools would do “horn of the unicorn” assignments. “Bring the horn of a unicorn by Monday”.
In particular, with my kids going to Jewish school, we’d get these requests like, “please bring in samples of two biblical grains not including wheat or barley”. But my sister says that secular school was the same: “Oh no, you can’t bring in apples for fruit-salad community day; Chelsea is doing apples. You have star fruit.”
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I was actually laughing at D1 when she was telling me about it, because I lived through “building a pyramid,” “make a native Indian doll,” “dress like a pilgram”…I used to say, “who did they think were doing those arts and crafts?” One kid in D1’s class had her father’s construction workers build a pyramid using real tiles, meanwhile my kid was using marshmallows and toothpicks. D1 was so sad when she came home (this was in 3rd grade).
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DD2 had to do an igloo - this was probably 2nd grade or 4th grade (DD1 had same teacher at same school but thankfully didn’t have this assignment). DH thought up of cutting up Styrofoam and using glue, and DD2 and he had the workshop project. I went to arts and crafts for some small suade/leather for her to craft with sticks/other things for little scene in front of igloo (plywood wood base). One family used sugar cubes. We were pleased with how DD2’s came out - but again, how a teacher thinks through about this being something ‘constructive’ (no pun intended) and integral to the student’s education.
GS1 is in kindergarten in San Antonio. They have a big float festival in San Antonio at this time - big city festival, and their school for years has the kindergarten students craft a shoe box project, and they have an actual small float parade in their school hallway. Of course, it is a parent project to work with their child on float theme and gathering the stuff, but the child and parent come up with a theme and all the stuff for the child to have (so parents ‘shape’ ideas to what is doable/easy on the parents. GD1 was in kindergarten last year, so same thing. I just happened to be there when they started talking about it in the weekly teacher summary for the week this year – alerting parents with lead time so they could be prepared for the assignment due date. I am FB friends with one of the other parents (who have twins in kindergarten - boy and girl) and they had quite an elaborate thing for each child (mom is SAHM). A bit of a rite of passage with this school I guess.
DD2 (who is now 29) had a social studies project in 6th grade where she had to do a poster with timeline of another person and herself. So across the top she had herself with four pictures (including one of pet guinea pig and indicated on the timeline when she got Squeaker) and the bottom had her friend with four pictures, including when her friend got her cat Lager and her dog Bailey. We could color print 5 of the pictures used and had 3 of the wallet-sized photos used.
Learned something new with FPIES. Will be a future topic of discussion with DD1 (who has children and is a RN) - I never worked in pediatrics or allergies, but I have not heard of FPIES before (I received BSN in 1978).
Te : school projects
My kids always had the “ homely” looking projects in large part because both kids insisted they do the projects themselves.
One day when D was in 5 th grade I showed up at her school for a class program and as I was early I walked along the hallway and looked over some posters her class had done in school ( no parental help except sending in a poster board). There were 2 posters that looked really great- I realized one was done by a girl who is a very talented artist and to my surprise the other one was D’s.
So I think my friend who referred to the take home projects as “ parent projects “ was right!
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Not a grandparent but the discussion of craft projects took me back. When son was young, subject units involved a variety of learning techniques. It was explained that different children learned best in different ways. So each unit tried to involve seeing, listening, and physically creating so that each child could learn within their strength.
Also took me back to Pinewood Derby days when I was a Cub Scout den learner. The different levels of those cars boggled the mind. It was clear which ones were done by the scouts with some assistance, and which ones were done in the fathers’ workshops.
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I’m having some evil thoughts on the school projects. I hate, hate, hated those! Everyone in our rural school corporation was at least ~10 miles from town. What a pain! What a waste of valuable time.
Bonus points for the Pinterest worthy moms who had lots of time. That wasn’t us 
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I loathed school projects!!! Age appropriate ones were bad enough, but some years the kid’s school had a few that were well above their grade level.
Read a 100+ page book about a president, write a report, and create 3 worksheets to present to the class? At age 6?! And they had some ungodly similar project each quarter.
Or the 4th grade VA project… Granted they had from Dec to May to complete it, but older S worked so long during Xmas break and begged me to read what he had done. I looked and he had completed just a teensy portion of the list. I wound up doing a whole lot of it. I could research and write a 4th grade level report and find a picture of the state bird in 20-30 min. It would take him a couple of hours. And can’t forget compiling recipes, and collecting brochures from various places around the state… And then you had to print, organize everything in plastic sheets with sticky page numbers, with a table of contents. It was over 150 pages! I wound up spending 40ish hours on the blasted thing to his 80 hours. Stupid, stupid, stupid…
For younger S they finally abandoned it, and had more age appropriate projects. One per quarter. Of course, the first quarter involved doing the land forms in some kind of peanut butter playdough. Ants invaded the classroom after the first day!
I appreciated second grade. All projects were done IN CLASS!!! I would much rather teach them math at home. You do the projects thank you very much.
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3rd grade was the year of the million projects. I was so glad at the end of 3rd grade for my youngest
I don’t remember if DD1 was in 6th grade or 7th grade, but DD1 had ‘forgotten’ about having a bibliography done on a paper, and missing it would be a big portion of the grade. We were driving away from school, and I believe we would not have had access to classroom or to her paper (maybe the teacher had it IDK). The next day I waited to discuss with the Principal. It turns out he was in a long meeting with a school board member, but I waited it out - maybe 1 1/2 hours. Discussed with the Principal - and after discussing grade level, expectations, and deadlines - along with a severe penalty, he intervened and DD1 was allowed some grace.
DD1 had a new English teacher in 7th grade (she was ‘brand new’ but eventually ended up teaching at the HS level which was a better match for her), that had an assignment, which the teacher did not guide DD1 properly on the assignment. It ends up that the two-sided paper and the topic DD1 had made the assignment ‘impossible’ to be completed with a decent grade. I got the Principal involved, but also had a review of DD1 by IEP type committee at public school which I was a part of that meeting (there was a little coordination of this with our Catholic school). DD1 in early years had speech and language issues (and therapy with public school Speech and Language professional), and I wanted to be sure nothing else was cropping up. I was reassured that DD1 was fine - had contact with new Psychometrist who chaired the committee (who along with initial School Psychometrist/PhD) was excellent and thorough.
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