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September 25, 2006
Project: Shelters
Ashley’s class has been assigned to make Indian (Native American) shelters. She has to construct four different types of Indian shelters at home and be creative with the entire thing for a grade.
In my opinion, this didn’t sound too bad until Ashley started repeating what she had been told about how tough each shelter would be evaluated.
Apparently, the village needs to be sturdy enough to withstand a tornado. I am being smart-alecky here, but you get my point.
We spent hours on Saturday shopping for the materials needed for this project. The local “super center” didn’t have near the items needed, so we headed over to Lexington to shop in Michael’s.
We spent around $20 on materials there, but they didn’t have brown crepe paper, which was suggested on the instruction sheet. Therefore, we knew we would have to go somewhere else. (We are trying to have Ashley follow the instruction sheet as much as possible in hopes of her receiving a better grade.)
As we headed for the checkout in Michael’s, the heavens opened up for a torrential rain. With our $20 in materials well protected by bags, we headed for the truck, and then on to Garden Ridge to see if they had brown crepe paper.
No luck there.
We then headed for the party store. I figured if anyone had brown crepe paper, they would.
Nope.
We bought white crepe paper and figured Ashley could paint it brown. That didn’t work though. Crepe paper is much thinner than we thought and it tore with each brushstroke. Kevin is considering having Ashley glue the white crepe paper onto the shelter and then spray painting the whole thing brown. (The crepe paper is supposed to simulate bark on a Longhouse.)
Kevin has been helping Ashley with this project and he says there is no way a ten-year-old could construct all of these shelters without help. If a ten-year-old did do all of this alone, the grade in the end would show that.
We still haven’t found real-looking Indian figures …
Posted by tami at September 25, 2006 2:16 PM
Comments
I understand where you are coming from. The teachers these day expect too much. I was at Hobby Town on Sunday, they had a tube with cowboys and indians in it. Wal-mart, dollar store and dollar tree do not carry them anymore. I looked a few weeks ago to decorate a cake! Tell Kevin to have fun! ^_^
Posted by: deanna at September 25, 2006 2:27 PM
Thanks for the tip! We will go to Hobby Town this weekend :)
Posted by: Tami at September 25, 2006 2:31 PM
It's nuts how some of these school projects are graded. I bet it'd be hard to grade them, too, especially knowing some are completely done by parents. Ugh.
Posted by: GW at October 2, 2006 11:49 PM