Whose project is this anyway?

I was being interrogated last weekend by my mom and my brother, Adam. The subject was my son’s last school project and the line of questioning they persisted in asking me was how much I let him do on his own. They also wanted to know his expected level of participation in the solar system project we would be doing the next day.

Here is the thing about school projects: they can get expensive and I don’t have a ton of extra time that I can devote to destroying my living room with massive craft experiments on tri-fold poster boards. If something needs to be completed that will be graded, then I want it done right the first time with no extra trips to the store required.

After defending myself and getting a little frazzled about my control freakishness and inability to delegate even the most miniscule of tasks, my mom laughed and said, “Who do you think made that volcano for you in the 6^th grade? It certainly wasn’t you.”

I remember the chicken wire and plaster of Paris structure, but I don’t remember my involvement in helping with it outside of informing my mom the night before it was due.

The solar system project sounded fun until I read the requirements which were transcribed by my boy. I wanted to see printed instructions because I had a hard time trusting that he copied all the necessary information. For instance, did we need a tri-fold board or could we use a flat poster? Did we need a poster at all? Why couldn’t he answer my questions?

As far as he could tell, the requirements were that the size of the planets in relation to each other had to be represented and the Asteroid Belt, moon, sun, and orbits all had to be shown. Pluto was optional.

After stops at Walmart and Michaels, we were $50 into this project. I had to get creative with the planets because the boxed Styrofoam solar system set was not an accurate representation of planet size. In reality, you can line up about 11 Earths side-by-side to equal the diameter of Jupiter, but in the boxed set, it was more like 2.

Since I didn’t have the planet measurements with me at the store, I had to guess at the sizes of Styrofoam disks to purchase. When we got home, I looked up the information and used ratios, a handy nursing math tool, to determine the sizes to use. Saturn ended up being our only inaccurate planet, measuring too small by ¾ of an inch.

While I pasted and painted and chatted about Jupiter’s moons, my son walked around and generally stayed out of my way because I was obviously in the zone. Every now and then I would shout out questions about the solar system and he would answer them. He even corrected me on my insistence that Neptune rotated on its side. It is, in fact, Uranus that does this. That was a proud moment. I don’t mind being wrong if it means he has been studying.

When I finished, he was impressed. I asked if he thought I would get an “A” and he said I most definitely would.

The science fair is coming up, but like last year’s crayon melting project, I will not help with that. I have to draw the line somewhere. Of course, if he asks me for my assistance concerning artistic direction of the display, I may feel compelled to give him a few pointers.