Another thing that COVID, or perhaps the COVID reaction, has trashed is the 6th grade science fair. Most of the California schools will be holding these as virtual events, which most likely means, more work for the parent putting together all the presentation that they will upload to the virtual fair site. I remember all those times I spent with my father doing Science Fair projects. Erupting volcanoes to building telescopes, my Dad got the brunt of that. They do not tell you about this in parenting school. Take the number of kids you have and count the number of grades they will be in school, now multiply that together and that will be the number of weekends that you will be spending on “projects.” Yeah, this is a pay it forward thing. My Dad “helped” me with mine, and now I get to “help” my children with theirs.
I have built 6 California Missions, created a diorama for 12 book reports and I am now on my 6th science fair project in the last 10 years. You could say that I have become quite an expert. My daughter’s school even had a competition over Halloween pumpkin decorations. I have created fairy houses, hot air balloons and various other consolation prize award winning designs. One of them, the fairy house, went viral on Pinterest with 22 views. I am almost glad the woke brigade canceled California Missions and burned father Juniper Serra at the stake because I am now off the hook for doing any more Mission projects. Creating a primitive “teepee” representing indigenous peoples of California is a whole lot easier than mission walls made out of Styrofoam and toothpicks.
The one I am the most proud of is the sea creature display. I took a card board box, spray painted it pitch black inside, colored two small “eyes” with iridescent paint, put a small black light flash light in the corner, cut a peep hole and called it, Deep Sea Creature. Award wining, believe me. Do not get me started about the days when the “Leprechaun Trap” craze hit California Elementary schools. I think the woke police, are really just parents pissed they have another project to do. They canceled that one too because of the worry that Irish Americans would be offended. As if an Irish person would ever be “offended” at anything. Nothing that can’t be settled over a good pint of green beer. At any rate, we moved on from those projects.
So I am spending my weekend doing more “projects.” Doing an experiment on what dog toys our dogs like the best and for some crazy reason I am helping my other daughter cut out a giant pig pen and snow man figurine out of plywood for her calculus final. We have yet to do any math for this, perhaps that is coming. I cannot wait to see what that is. I will probably find out on some Sunday night at around 7pm that it is “due tomorrow.”
Not sure why this topic became a blog post, oh I know why. When I did my 365 commitment down, all I had time for today was to put down the line, “help girls finish school projects.” Honestly, I am not sure I can think of anything better to do with my Saturday?
Guy Reams
