<p>Oh yes, the dreaded “craft” projects. It was easy with D who was very good at them, but torture for S. And he pointed out to me recently that he doesn’t think the students actually learn much for the amount of time put into them (and I am assuming he is not counting parent time). I have to agree with him.</p>
<p>Oh, Fall Girl. Aspie Son has always been uncoordinated and not “crafty” in the least. If neatness counted, I helped a whole lot. </p>
<p>Senior year he had to create a certain character from the *Canturbury Tales *in a three dimensional matter. I made a fantastic medieval Clerk (the poor student) costume for his old John Smith doll - what a work of art! It was my best school craft project ever!!! Everyone asked if he did it himself and he said that I’d done it and he still got a 100. The teacher probably realized that sewing doll clothes was beyond all the boys and most of the girls and just appreciated it for the masterpiece it was.</p>
<p>Missypie, that was a big factor in our sending the kids to private school. A religiously affiliated private school that had a blessedly old-fashioned and not progressive curriculum. The kids wrote- tons- and read- even more. No crafts projects except in the art electives. No parental time except for chaperoning events and mandatory meetings (drug education, college night.) Not the right decision for everyone but it was for us. Our public library often displays work done by the local HS kids and it’s frightening. A decoupage depicting the main characters and themes in “Pride and Prejudice”? A not very attractive or well done decoupage? And the poor kid who was tortured into finding a creative medium to express the book’s themes?</p>
<p>My all-time favorite craft project was one for Latin class in my son’s first year. They were assigned to make a “mosaic” out of little cut-out pieces of paper. I forget what the picture was of, or whether he got to choose what to make a picture of. But the assignment took him an entire weekend of painstaking, incredibly boring work cutting little squares out of colored paper (the maximum size was specified in the assignment–about a quarter inch square, as I recall) and assembling them on the page. Eventually we all pitched in, just to get it behind him, and he was still up till 2 AM or so Sunday night. It did absolutely nothing to help him master Latin, but it sure ruined a perfectly good weekend for all of us.</p>
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<p>OMG, our family had the identical experience, but at least it was for Art class. As I recall, it was kind of fun, the whole family sitting together for hours cutting tiny pieces of colored paper from magazines.</p>
<p>I’m a bad mother. I let ds2 handle that ^^^^ assignment on his own. 
It turned out nicely. Never occurred to me how tedious it was for him. What is it with Latin and mosaics???</p>
<p>Hah! Bad mother?</p>
<p>Yeah, son was up late…waiting in line for the launch of some new video game…sigh…</p>
<p>He IS working harder this year than ever though…</p>
<p>I was lamenting the fact that I seemed to have no elem. craft projects for child #3. I didn’t know whether to feel good or bad when she gently reminded me her IEP called for her speech time to replace art, and she hadn’t had art since 1st grade. Phew…at least I hadn’t pitched them all!</p>
<p>As for craft projects required for other classes (the last I recall being a snow scene with a sled dog and popsicle fences -Call of the Wild??). I HATED them. I rank them up there with crossword puzzles and the family’s personal favorite (not) word searches–all <em>major</em> time wasters.</p>
<p>I remember one search D had for 7th grade science. We passed it around the family - all five of us worked on it and there was still one word we couldn’t find. And what did it teach us about the scientific terms? I guess just that they could be spelled forward, backward and diagonally.</p>
<p>DS studied really hard last year, his junior year. Several all-nighters.</p>
<p>I probably shouldn’t tell you how much harder this first semester of his senior year has been! Adding in college apps and overnight visits has been just about the straw to break the camel’s back.</p>
<p>Parents, insist that your juniors work on college essays this entire next summer! I am not kidding. It will make their lives more bearable next year. Also, get as many college visits out of the way as you can.</p>
<p>MTA: I’m not trying to be a downer - I just wish someone else had told me this a year ago.</p>
<p>Junior year was really easy for me because I chose to drop APUSH in the first month. I was having a lot of family problems and couldn’t take the added work. Not taking APUSH, gave me another full period of electives so my schedule ended up being AP Eng Lang, Morality/Life Paths, Honors Chem, History of the Middle East/Web Design, Algebra 2, Church History/Mixed Media, and Spanish 3. My schedule was very easy but senior year has been a lot harder. </p>
<p>I can easily say that at my school no one enjoyed junior year from Jan to June. The day before mid-terms, a guy in my class committed suicide. Our school was devastated. We our a school of <300 people who know each and every person. The guy had an older brother who was a senior and a younger sister who was a freshmen. He was the nicest guy in the world who played sports and got good grades. No one knows why he did it. For a week we mourned his death and we still continue to this day. He was that kid that stood by my locker and said ‘Hi’ every morning. He was the kid who would make the comment in class that would make everyone laugh. He was the kid who would bring a group of teammates together on the lacrosse field. We couldn’t really get into the groove again. Junior year was not my favorite year.</p>
<p>^^^^ That must have been horrible for all of you.</p>
<p>It’s nice to see that we aren’t going through this junior year stress alone. Even with all the bad press junior year gets, I am still shocked at how stressed out my D is.</p>
<p>The craft project discussion is very interesting. Our worst one was fourth grade. For Valentine’s Day, the kids had to make Valentine’s mailboxes that “worked” in some mechanical way, with a Lewis & Clark theme. H was up all night fixing the Jean-Baptiste candy dispenser and it still didn’t work. He learned his lesson about over-helping.</p>
<p>To my relief, we aren’t seeing these projects at all in high school. It is a private college prep school. They write plenty of papers and do a variety of interesting activities such as historical debates, but they are relevant and educational.</p>
<p>Lewis & Clark-themed Valentine’s Day boxes??? That’s hilarious.</p>