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

June 17, 2008 12:15 am

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.

My daughter Maggie did a project about coyotes. We did a lot of crouching about the field behind our house listening for howls. We also searched the same field during the day for signs of coyote footprints.

We ended up with a photo of something resembling coyote footprints. I have a feeling those footprints might have belonged to a big black-and-white, fuzzy coyote who sleeps on the floor of my bedroom and sometimes on unauthorized chairs.

My personal favorite project was Maggie's podcast on Elvis Presley. It was my favorite for many reasons, with the second biggest one being that I had no idea how to make one. As a result, her brother, who has moved beyond needing parental help with computers, had to help her.

Of course, the biggest reason it was my favorite is that it was about the King. Who wouldn't love that?

Despite my complaining, I can't blame my children completely for taking on more complicated projects. They get it honestly. I'm guilty of wanting to give every project that little something extra--like real black earrings.

And don't you know, when I came home and looked at the picture on the Internet of the cat we were basing our sculpture on, Celia and I realized it was wearing gold earrings. King Tiki, named for our not-very-sleek-like-an-Egyptian cat, went to school today wearing one of my gold hoop earrings.

My friend's daughter is one of the top graduates of her class this year. My friend said she felt like kids have to do it themselves, but you have to give them the tools to do it. She described all the ways she enhanced whatever her kids were studying by going on field trips and doing "projects."

And she is right. We've learned a lot by doing the dreaded "projects."

And we've spent a lot of quality time together. Sometimes it involved tense times when things didn't work, but mostly there was lots of laughter or pronouncements of "that's so cool."

So if you see my cat walking around the neighborhood wearing black hoop earrings, just know we are working on another project and having a great time.

Shannon Howell: shannonh34@ yahoo.com