Kids school projects

Now that the big day is over, I can tell you about Catie's National History Day project!

This is our first year attending a school that participates in the National History Day competition, so this was a new, scary challenge for her. She had never even had to to do a long term project before her science fair project earlier this year, and I allowed her to do that as a partner project. She got really lucky in her science fair partner, and said partner did a beautiful job on the project... Catie helped a little...  

So when Catie told me that she wanted to team up with her science fair partner again to do NHD, I put my foot down. It was going to be a solo venture for her this time - she had to do all the work, or I'd worry that she hadn't done ANY of it. Now, there are different styles of project that they're allowed to do - a research paper, a 8.5 - 10 minute performance, an exhibit, a documentary, or a website. And of all the things to choose, she picked the performance! That meant she had to write a 1200 word script with bibliography, memorize it, and perform it in costume for the judges. I mean, I can understand if she had done a group performance (and I might let her do it that way next year) - performing a 10 minute script with up to 4 other people wouldn't be so bad. But she really made it tough on herself doing a solo performance - she had to have that whole thing memorized on her own with no note cards! And because she's my daughter, it took a little (a lot) of pushing for her to have her final draft done the week before so she'd have some time to memorize it. Catie is my penance for the things I put my mother through as a kid.

(She chose to focus on Clara Barton and the American Red Cross, so she's dressed as a WWI Red Cross nurse. Yeah, I had to sew. Sigh.)

I think she chose the performance because she thought it would be less work than the paper. AHAHHHAAHAHAAAA! Somehow she didn't realize that a 8.5 minute speech is around 1200 words to write, then memorize, then PERFORM.


There are some amazing projects put forth every year, so to be perfectly honest I just hoped she would get a decent grade in history class for this - it was required, and a fair chunk of her class grade.

The Big news? She got an A+ and is moving on to the regional level! We're very proud - she's a little nervous, because now this means she has to refine her performance and do it again!