Snow again

Well, I'm glad I got out and enjoyed the past few beautiful days. This is what it looked like outside my window this morning! Ugh! I'm SO ready for spring. "OK now (this is me talking to myself), it's only February. Spring doesn't come until next month. The snow is pretty. Warm weather will be here soon enough." That's what I have to keep telling myself.

Yesterday I spent a good portion of the day working on MY DAUGHTER'S project for school. Yes, the homework subject again. She's doing a presentation about The Diary of Anne Frank and her project is the music of the 1930's and 1940's. She wanted to buy songs online to make a CD. Well, I'm not buying any songs, so I went to the library and got the Cd's to copy songs from. I decided it would only save me time by going while she was in school, so I only had to take my 4-year old, instead of ALL the kids. Even though SHE was doing the project, it was constant questions about who she should pick, does this look good, did she make any mistakes. I like the projects that are done in school. Then the kids really do it by themselves. What about the kids who don't have parents to help them at home? My daughter told me, "It's too bad everyone doesn't have a mom to go to the library for them and get Cd's." My daughter has a friend who not only has no money, her mom has no car to take her to the library. She has no computer at home. She even has a mom who once made her stay home from school to clean the house. Kids like these are at a real disadvantage when it comes to doing projects at home.

On the bright side, my daughter is really learning a lot from this activity. She's heard a couple of the songs that were popular back then, but she's never heard of any of the artists. She never heard of Doris Day or Bing Crosby! She's printing out pictures of the singers, so she can put a face to these names, too. Like most projects, getting started is the hardest part. Now she's so interested in this and is trying very hard to get all of the 100 points it's worth. So my philosophy on getting through this with her:

1. Help her. She needs some guidance in how to get started and some tips along the way. I don't want her to just rush through it because she's frustrated and doesn't know exactly what to do.

2. Show an interest in what she's doing. My daughter's a big talker and likes to know I'm interested.

3. Get her motivated. Last night we talked about how we think the easiest way to help your grade is to get an A on a project. The teachers usually give a detailed list of what they want in a project. Follow every step exactly, and maybe even add a little extra to it. This project is worth 100 points. Tests are usually 30-50 points, and it's easy to think you know all the material, then get confused when you get the test. What about pop quizzes. Those are easy to mess up too.

I always say, it's more work for me when the kids are in school. They always need something for school. They need help with homework. They need me to pick them up from after-school activities. Everything is "Hurry up!". OK, now I'm looking forward to summer vacation!