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'Egyptian Project' means quality time with the kid and a cat

shannon howell column

Date published: 6/17/2008

YESTERDAY found me purchasing big, black hoop earrings--not for myself--but for my daughter's papier-mâche Egyptian cat.

If you've ever had a second-grader in Stafford County, you have helped with the "Egyptian Project." This always seems to come at the end of the year when I am the least ambitious regarding school projects.

Celia had a list of things she could do, like paint hieroglyphics, make a pyramid, make a sphinx or my favorite--dress up like an Egyptian.

I was thinking that would be easy. I have makeup, jewelry, and I'm sure I could scare up some flashy shirt and belt to wear as a tunic.

But, alas, my children do not take the easy way out. Celia wanted to make a sculpture of a sacred cat. That is how I ended up, at a time of severe hormonal upheaval, wielding a very dull knife, trying to coax a cat shape out of Styrofoam.

This has been the story of my life as the parent of elementary-school children. Notice I am using the singular form. My husband has many talents, but they do not include making projects.

Occasionally he is called upon to help straighten out computer problems, like the time my son made a video about scorpions. He was not content to make a diorama. He had to make a movie that had minimal facts and lots of noise and funny (to my son) things.

Getting the movie from the camera to the computer was new for us at the time. Then we realized, of course, that the school did not have a DVD player. So I had to lug ours to school and get all the cords hooked up with about 27 kids, who could probably hook the cords up in two seconds, staring at me.

The movie went over well. The kids might not have learned anything, but they laughed a lot.

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Date published: 6/17/2008