Project Stingray

Spencer just completed his first big project for school.

First, as an aside, let me just say something about school projects: I already dread them.  I know this is ridiculous since it is the child who is supposed to do all the work.  But any mom knows this is not entirely true.  Not that I did the project for him and not that I plan on doing the work on projects for any of my kids in the future.

However.

Someone has to make sure the project actually gets done and gets done well.  (Up to Madsen standards, at least.)  And quite frankly, I suspect that this is as much work as the actual project.  No - I know that that takes as much work!!

Anywho, I figure with this baby I have 18 more years of school projects to dread look forward to.  Tired.  So very tired.

Thus endeth my rant about school projects.  For now.

So, the first graders in this school do a big project on the animal of their choice.  For reasons unknown, Spencer chose stingrays.  Not that that's a bad thing - I mean, stingrays are pretty cool.  First he had to write a report about stingrays.  The kids did most of their own research at school and then had to write it at home.  This was the hard part.  Spencer HATES writing.  Loathes it.  Detests it.  Which is a shame because he's going to be doing a lot of writing during his future school years.

Well, you can imagine how fun that was.  And of course I was sick during the week it was due, so at least Lance was able to help with part of it.  But there was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.  But it was finished.

Then we had to work on the visual project.  We were going to make a big poster about stingrays, since I knew Spencer wouldn't be interested at all in writing a poem or making a sculpture.  But then I found this project in the most recent issue of Family Fun magazine and asked Spencer if he would like to make it instead.  He gave a resounding yes.

It was actually a really good project for Spencer and he did much of the work, with some parental help, of course.  For example, I don't know of any first graders who could cover the shoe box in paper, but he did a great job of painting that paper.  And he helped Lance do all of the mechanics on the inside to make the stingray move.  I cut out the stingray, but he helped draw the eyes and such and typed up and glued the signs.

Here's the bottom of the stingray.  Those are nostrils, not eyes.  (C'mon, don't you know anything about stingrays?)

Here's the top.  Stingray eyes are on the top of their body, and their mouth is on the bottom, which means they never really see what they're eating.  Just a little stingray fun fact for ya.

Here's the sign on the front, kind of explaining why the project does what it does.

Here are the instructions.

Oh yeah - here's the awesome stinger on his tail.  That was my idea.  *brag*brag*

And here's a short video of the stingray in action.  Doesn't it look so cool?  The stingray is swimming!

Fingers crossed we Spencer gets an A. :)