Science Fair

I'm extremely nervous about my kids looming science fair projects for several reasons.

1) Betsy signed up last year, but her plan to test hula hoops filled with water never came to fruition and she dropped out. We can't drop out this year or we become "that flaky family". Trust me, I work at a school, I know how these things work. Ssshhhh!! They don't need to know that we ARE that flaky family!

2) At the school a few weeks ago they had a bulletin board up to honor all the children who had signed up for science fair and not only were both my kids' names up there, but in a school of 850 kids, there were only about 40 names. I had just assumed everybody did it. Now I feel incredibly ambitious to have signed up not only my 4th grader, but my first grader as well.

3) Betsy is a MAJOR procrastinator. I will either have to threaten and/or bribe her to do her project or end up doing most of it for her.

4) I am really, really determined NOT to do it for her.

5) I know I'm a teacher and I have to help kids all day, but I believe this to be true about myself: my patience is finite. I'm pretty sure most of my patience has been used up by snotty 7th graders (not all of them are snotty, but they are the ones who've depleted my stores) and my own two kids are lucky they are pretty nice and pretty smart because I would probably have them taken away by children's services and lose my job or become a heroin addict if they weren't.

6) Betsy's project involves fabric dye. Lots of it. This is going to make a mess. It is inevitable that there will be dye on the carpet. I will have to throw at least 6 conniption fits about that both before and after it happens. I'm pretty sure I will make my kids cry (hey, they need fodder for their novels!)

7) Ian is going to be working with electricity. I'm really glad it will be low volts because when we asked my dad the physics major and my uncle the electrical engineer for advice, they started talking about electrons and ohms and things that made me want to plug my ears. He's in first grade. I tried to explain what an electron was, but first you have to start with an atom. Try explaining the concept of an atom to an overthinking first grader. Let alone electrons. And the idea of the electrons flowing in a river from the copper to the zinc. We're just going to stick to our question, "which kind of fruit makes the best battery?" Our prediction is lemons because we have heard people talk about battery acid and lemons are really acidic. Is that sciency enough for ya'?? I majored in math where there are no applications - we just play with pretty patterns and hope the scientists might find them useful.

8) I have a lot of ideas about the cool things they could do to make their projects super awesome. If I can't let go of my super cool ideas, I will end up doing them. That would be a bad mommy thing to do. I will get super frustrated hoping my kids will stumble upon my great ideas in their own heads. They will get super frustrated trying to think of ideas and not thinking their ideas are cool enough. I will have to hold back my own and will have to literally bite down hard on my own tongue to keep it from spilling out. My vision of science fair wonderfulness will exist only in my head. The actual projects will be slapped together at the last minute and look like it. Again, I will have to bite my tongue and be proud of those disasters. Doing that, even thinking that, I am already a bad mommy.

In conclusion, there is absolutely no way to participate in science fair and not be a bad mommy. However, all the moms who didn't let their kids sign up, or raise kids to think science was so cool that they couldn't resist signing themselves up are worse mommies. We are all bad mommies.

There is your dose of Catholic guilt for the day. Take. Eat.

Really shouldn't be writing blog posts at 3 am. Really isn't going to add to my patience level in the morning and I'm pretty sure I'm talking a lot of crazy talk. As I tell my 7th graders, not EVERY thought you have needs to be expressed. Some are better if they just stay inside your head.