One Hundred Days Of School Project

I didn't know whether to post this in this blog or in my Arts and Craps blog. It was a toss-up.

I'm keeping Emma this morning because she's not feeling well. She came home to me yesterday with a fever. Maggie was sick earlier last week, so we figured it would pass to Emma sometime. Anyway, she was telling me that since the 100th day of school was coming up soon, she had a homework project to finish.

The project involves gathering 100 things. Ok, I can help with that. No problem. We'll just gather 100 little things and toss them into a paper sack and we'll be done. How hard can that be? It's a no-brainer. My craft room has thousands of little things in it.

We went around the craft room and picked up a brad with an "E" on it, a bead, a piece of ribbon, a nail file, a scrap of paper, bobby pin, safety pin, tack, a butterfly sticker, pen, crayon - well, you get the idea. We were counting as we went, but soon discovered that we needed to write down the number we were on, because for some unknown reason, she was counting wrong! I'd hand her a button, saying "25" and when she took it from me, she'd say "26". See my eyes rolling up in my head! Ok, ok. Give the kid a break - she's 6 and sick.

We went downstairs and opened the kitchen junk drawer. Loads of stuff in there. Comb, eyeglass repair kit, dummy credit card, keyring, paperclip and a lot of other little stuff. Now we were up to 82. As we're going back upstairs, she told me she thought she'd lost count. She didn't have 82 things in her hand! I reminded her that we'd left all the other stuff on the table in the craft room. That's what a fever will do to you. It'll wipe out your short-term memory.

Back upstairs, I started to put these items in the bag. "Wait, Nanny! It has to be glued or taped to a piece of paper." What?!? How can you tape this stuff to a sheet of paper? It's going to be hung out in the hallway, she tells me. We can't possibly get these 82 things taped to a single sheet of paper. AND we don't even have all 100, yet, I tell her. Then she tells me that it could have been 100 same things, or two of 50 things, or ten of ten things. Now she tells me.

She wants 100 different things, though. After all, it's her project. I did manage to get her to spell her name out with foam sticky letters - that's four things, right? Now we're up to 86. She's not sure we have 86. She wants to count them again. Fine, count them while I find some stiff paper. Ah, ha! I have several sheets of stiff watercolor paper. That's perfect.

Since pulling tape from the dispenser is difficult for a 6-year old, I supplied the tape and she taped everything to the three sheets of watercolor paper. We managed to find 14 more things and VOILA! We were done!

She's lying on my bed, covered up because she has the chills. Coughing and shivering. Sometimes homework is just too hard.