School projects - how much did you help your children?

I would encourage my children but never would I have "done" their projects. All decent teachers can spot a mile off if the work has been done by the child or parent.

Same with Grandchildren, encouragement and pointing in the right direction for research etc, but that is it.

I remember helping DD with a project she was doing in the sixth form, but it was only “cosmetic” help when she wanted something to add a bit of impact to the presentation. DS was away at school so I never got involved in his projects. As for my grandson, in his first year at secondary, he has been called upon to create various things (a nerve cell; a model of a building that has meant something in his life; in the latest he chose to build a football boot). He expands his ideas in discussion with his dad. Sometimes the results are good, sometimes they are a car crash (he’s not brilliant with his hands), but he learns from each one. I did provide a bit of guidance in a recent art project, but he did the work himself. He sent me a photo of the finished article - I was impressed!

I helped my children by making them do it themselves, when it would have been far easier to have done it for them.
I did explode once to their school, when they turned up on a Thursday evening with two pieces of sugar paper to use to make hats for the Christmas Party; glue, staples, crepe paper etc all at school, plus all my ideas for hats made in previous years. That day I had finished making hats with my class of 32 eight year olds.

When they were younger, yes, but when they were older and doing projects for exams then no, except in a minimal way.
We still do help the DGC if necessary because some of the projects are too ambitious for a small child. For instance, one half-term project involved taking photographs of a favourite beauty spot and writing about it - they first had to be taken there by car! The parents have made their views known to the school now and some projects are done in school - which means that every child gets a fairer chance too. It shows off the child's skills rather than that of the parents!

However, making them do it themselves is the best way as they get older - we won't be going to university or work with them and holding their hands all the way through life.

since I'm pretty competent at sewing I was very put out to get 'C+. Neatness and accuracy are 2 skills which you must practice.'


How insulting Witzend! C+ indeed!
You should have sent the report back with a red correction.

I do remember one of DD's projects in primary school - on the Industrial Revolution. It involved travelling some distance to a museum, taking photographs, finding out a great deal of information and writing it all up, accompanied by these photographs and drawings too. It filled a very thick A4 folder.
She was about 10 at the time.

DD3 is very designery (if that's a word) but useless at drawing. One homework for art was getting her really stressed out to the point of tears, not sleeping etc so DH 'helped' her. She got a really good mark but when she submitted her next drawing homework, done on her own, it was returned with 'You can do much, much better than this!'

My son had a project on Charles Rennie Mackintosh when he was about 8.So we took him to the Hill House in Helensburgh which he really liked and then to the Willow Tea Rooms (Miss Cranstons) for tea.He was very annoyed that the macaroni cheese was from a tin and no amount of trying to take his mind off it by pointing out the CRM designs all around him worked.He was quick to tell the waitress he wouldn't be back as he didn't get TINNED food at home.He did very well with his project though.

He was very annoyed that the macaroni cheese was from a tin.
That's shocking paddyann (no, really!!)

I like to drink my tea from a mug with a CRM design on it, about the nearest I have got.

ps I have a matching coaster

Our dd went on a school trip 2006. She loved it as it was an outward bound trip. All the other kids did huge projects but she was too knackered as had thrown herself into everything.

She told dh the one thing she loved was the ‘magic tree’ that stood outside her window. Her words. Her and dh went to the garden centre and brought a small tree. Then she attached labels onto the branches telling how much she enjoyed the trip. One was ‘we had pizza and a quiz it was ace’

She got an A and the first prize. Loads of other parents has sent in utterly ridiculous projects that clearly they had done and not the kids.

‘‘Twas a good moment

I must start a little notebook of Gransnetters' Good Ideas' for future reference!

Oh and yes had mother’s moan to other mums that It was unfair!! Utterly pathetic parenting

jamelia

Totally great idea

I only once helped my son with a project - on the Lancaster Bomber. He was and still is, passionate about WW2 planes but this was a time-related project, as were the other six he'd been given in various subjects. He just could not meet all the deadlines.

So I was only too happy to do all the research and preliminaries, using books he owned and then made a 3D cover for the file he was presenting. We got top marks.

As I rider to that, I told the school that if they did not regulate the homework projects better, I would stop my son working at 9pm as I wanted him to have some leisure in the evenings.

I don't think they'd realised all the teachers were giving out major assignments at the same time.

I used to help because my daughter always left huge projects until the day before they were due to be handed in.
I made sure she suffered for it though.
Lots of shouting, sighing, flinging things around.

Ha, MissAdvengure, mine always left things till the last minute, too, hence my frequent cry of, 'Why do you always leave everything till the last minute?'

However elder dd really enjoyed getting her own back once, when she was a bit older. I was doing an OU course with essay-type assignments, and had not checked the deadline date carefully enough (in the days when it had to be posted to your tutor rather than emailed) and realised at about 4 pm that it was due in by midnight!

Hence massive panic - luckily I had done a little preparatory work - loads of coffee, frantic writing of essay, finally followed at around 11pm by frantic drive from SW London to the outer reaches of N London to tutor's address - with dd in her pyjamas reading directions from the A to Z and chortling, 'Why do you always leave everything until the last minute?
??

living in the middle of nowhere - DD had a project on 'local bus routes to shops and why people shopped there". No buses serve our village and those without cars use the village shop. Quickest project ever.

No - occasionally if they asked for a suggestion as to where to find something I would help in that way, but they were their projects. Their homework - their job.

The only help I gave once was to a DD at uni - she is dyslexic, and we put our heads together with the book list to try and establish which topic would require the least reading.

Oh - and I wrote a "uniform essay" for one of the girls. It was such apiece of nonsense that I was not prepared to see her waste her young life on it. They were very impressed with it and it was read out in assembly! My DD felt so guilty that she fessed up to her tutor who laughed uproariously! In the end we had a few such essays up our sleeves to churn out for the next time - there was always a next time!!!

When I was eleven I had to knit a navy sleeveless pullover for myself. I hated it as it was fine wool and navy, a horrible colour to knit with. My mum finished it and the teacher said it was very neat work. I also had to make a picture with sewn on fish. Mum did that too. It did no harm as I grew up to love sewing and knitting. The worst thing I did was copy a poem out of a teenage magazine and submit it for my homework. The teacher raved about it and put it in the school magazine. I was in a terrible state for weeks, worrying that someone would say they'd seen it in a magazine. Luckily I got away with it.

My daughter is a mature student and I am still proof reading her essays. Learning a lot in the process.

My daughter went to a convent school run by nuns. She did not do her homework for religious studies and was still up at about 10 pm getting frantic as it had to be in next day. It consisted of one page stories from the Bible with a blank page next to each one for an illustration. I told her to go to bed and I would do the pictures. I spent about 2 hours drawing the scenes, eg Feeding the 5000 with loaves and fishes , Jesus standing on a mountain top directing people who were distributing baskets of food. Then I had to colour everything in. I quite enjoyed it all. The teacher gave her a good mark for my work.

I should add that I went to her school after the O level art exams, and looked through a window into the studio. There I spotted the art teacher touching up her pupils' work so that they would get a better mark! And she a NUN!

I would never do the homework for my kids and GC but would often just give a gentle nudge in the right direction. Give them the wings and watch them fly !

I remember doing my elder stepdaughter's Viking project. The one that was supposed to have been based on her school trip to the Jorvik centre. The one for which she had actually done absolutely nothing and which needed to be handed in two days after we returned from a holiday in Torquay.

I got A-.

Witzend. I was a Teacher when my elder two were doing projects. I was too busy or exhausted to help them. I did none of their work. There were a few notable parents who did all the project for their child and printed and bound it at their workplace. The whole thing nauseated me. How much did their DD's learn from Daddy taking their projects to work? Doing a project is about what you learn while doing it and how to organise self-directed work and how to do research. Parental intervention is not helpful beyond driving the child to the Library!