The wild busyness of September had a moment to quell before the projects of October came into full bloom. I love project season. Projects incorporate learning with the girls’ innate creativity, and makes a crazy mess in my dining room. Spotless dining rooms are depressing.
Kelly presented her Angel Fish report this week, full of stripes and facts, complete with a wind up fish. She glued food and grasses to her report board to give it a 3D quality. Her class will hold a Virtual Zoo to present their projects to THE WORLD, and after much debate, Kelly decided she would wear an “angel fish mask” with her favorite striped dress. NO HAT MOMMY! OK Kelly, no hat. She loves the mask I chose, which will be “scaled” with large metallic sequins, and include a “dorsal fin” flying off the top in true Angel Fish style. She did the report, but I’m allowed to make the mask…BONUS! And a huge thank you to her teachers for videotaping her presentation. She was flawless until Q&A, when she made up her answers. Hilarious! I have NO IDEA where she inherited that gene. Ahem…
Sara is knee deep (almost literally) in her Dragonfly Diorama. She takes those things so seriously. Just the crafting of the clay is a week-long process. I’ll wait to share her report when it’s completed, because I’m not sure how many of her elements can make the box. In this picture she is sorting out non-aquatic insects from her bug collection. Dragonflies don’t eat scorpions. Now you know. She informed us last night at dinner that because a dragonfly experiences an incomplete metamorphosis, she feels its entire life cycle can be represented in a single vignette. OK? You know…I’m just going to have to take her word for it. I think we can all recall her Buckeye Butterfly Diorama from last year which required 3 vignettes. Not too worry, the dragonfly has more than enough “Wow Factors” to make up for the unvignettedness of her current project. Needless to say I was overwhelmed with joy when we finally located cattails today. They were on her “must have” list. Her Bug Unit culminates in an Insect-A-Palooza, and I’m being allowed to help with the snack table! I promise, I’ll try to reign it in. That’s just a total lie, because I found a 2 foot multi-colored gummy worm, and we can only be winning with that thing as the centerpiece. The Insect-A-Palooza is at the same time as the Virtual Zoo, so I’m going to make like an inch worm, cut myself in half, and grow into 2 Mommas.
Sara will also be in a musical in 2 weeks, for which I will be turning her into a simple zebra. Stripes and ears, nothing Lion King/Broadway-esque, I assure you. I was thrilled when Kelly was cast as a Zebra Fish in her musical, “Go Fish”, but last night the script came home and I discovered that Kelly is a mutated Zebra Fish. She has spots. If the requirement is for “organic” spots, I’m hoping I saved Sara’s Dalmation Costume from “Arf”. If not…I’m making that darned thing over again. And THIS is why I purposefully do a crappy job measuring fabric. How much black fabric is left over from Jakarta, the world’s longest snake? Enough to make a mutated fish and zebra, that’s how much.
I know I shouldn’t be so happy about all of this, but I can’t help myself. Education should be something you touch. Something you roll around in. Something that makes you stand up and take notice (somewhat like last weekend when Sara showed us how the visiting Beekeeper taught her how to catch bees, which she DID, holding bees by their feet and not getting stung…unbelievable). There are so many hard parts in the long slog of parenthood, but projects aren’t one of them. When I was checking out with our “stuff” at Jo Ann Fabrics, the check out lady laughed and asked, “May I ask, what on earth do you do for a living?”
I specialize in Vertebrate Costume Design and I’m an Invertebrate Culinary Artist on the side. It’s great work if you can get it.