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No Can Do!
A Mom's Defiance Against School Craft Projects By Karin Kasdin
I have gotten so loony over this that occasionally I add this to my nightly prayers: "Lord, I don't ever want to be a widow, but if you must ever take my husband from me, please don't do it until the fourth grade Conestoga wagon project has been completed." After seeing two sons safely through elementary school in our town, my husband has become a crack Conestoga wagon builder. I could never – well, I simply refuse to think about that.
The point is, we may fail our young by working ludicrous hours, but we must not embarrass them by forcing them to assemble their own projects and actually demonstrate third grade capabilities in the third grade classroom. This does not occur in any other area of our children's over-programmed lives. You may prep a child for a test by force-feeding him facts, but when the time comes to show his scholastic mettle, the battle is a private one between he and the multiple-choice fairy. And face it, you can be the Michael Jordan of your county's over-40 basketball team, but if your son is to follow in your foot-long footsteps, he has to be the one to sink the shots. You can't win a game by having your dad shoot the ball from the bleachers.
I own neither a sewing machine nor a hot glue gun, two apparently essential weapons in the arsenal against homework humiliation. I concede that these tools would have helped in any one of the following projects I was called upon to execute in the past year. (Costumes, for me, count as arts and crafts projects.)
- Turn a clothespin into a doll that resembles one of your ancestors.
- The aforementioned dinosaur diorama.
- Dress up as a medieval soldier.
- Design a coat-of-arms for your family.
- Make a castle out of toilet paper tubes.
- Dress up as one of our Founding Fathers.
- Dress up for Halloween.