School projects - how much did you help your children?

Being a teacher myself, my help with school projects was to listen to what DS or other youngsters said he intended to do, suggests books that were relevant, check for spelling mistakes or factual ones, but leave it to them to suggest the corrections.

I once had to expend enormous tact while requesting two mothers of school-leavers not to help their daughters by writing their essays for them.

Both my DCs amd DGCs were/are pretty motivated where projects are concerned. Lots of encouragement and ideas but they had/have to pull it all together themselves, with great success I might add.

I remember the dreaded geography project when we were about 14, involved contours, soil samples, bark rubbings and interviewing farmers. I enjoyed the map bit, loathed the rest. two of us got together and rode our ponies around the allotted area, not much going on about geography. certainly no help from parents then.

My grandkids don’t do homework... parents have told their schools that it’s a no- no and unecessary... the parents are both child psychologists .... the school accepted their statement and nothing else was heard. The kids lose marks on their report cards/letters.... parents dont care!

I helped a bit but usually it meant taking them to library or to visit a museum or something. I did proof read DS's dissertation to check spelling etc but the subject was well over my head.
I remember my mum pulling down & re-knitting the hat I had to make for my doll in primary school. I still hate knitting!

P.S. When I was a Teacher, I would have expected the Parents of a Disabled child to support their child appropriately, of course.
I do think children are over burdened with projects and homework. They need time to relax and recuperate. The half term holiday especially needs to be kept free. Maybe a very small piece of homework but not a big project. Little ones in the long Summer break need to be encouraged to keep reading too.

I don’t think that the schools should set that kind of homework as it’s totally unfair to the pupils whose parents are unable,for various reasons,to do it for them.
In fact it raises the question about the need to set homework for children of all ages . In countries such as Finland youngsters do not have homework and the educational standards are one of the highest in Europe!

Shame on all parents who do their child's projects for them!

Encourage, help find resources, help with some suggestions if the child is completely stuck, but never, ever do their work for them. Better that they have nothing to hand in than to cheat. Anyway, it is obvious from the Teacher's viewpoint when a parent has done the work and not the child.

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!

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-.

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 !

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!

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

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.

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!!!

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.

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?
??

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.

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.

jamelia

Totally great idea

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

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

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

ps I have a matching coaster

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.

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.