The classic example of this was the 100th day of school last year. Amelia had to glue 100 of an object onto a sheet of provided posterboard. As assignments go, this should have been a no-brainer. We could have chosen any object to glue, and it would have turned out great - buttons, ribbons, pennies, hard candies - they all would have been fine. But, we chose marshmallows.
If we had purchased mini-marshmallows, I still might have been able to save the project. But, we walked to Von's after dinner only to find out that they were inexplicably out of mini-marshmallows. Not wanting to walk home, get in the car, and drive all the way to Target, we bought three bags of the full-sized kind and called it a night. That was our first mistake.
Marshmallows are huge. One hundred of them simply didn't fit on the tiny piece of posterboard Amelia had brought home from school. We kept having to squish them together to make them all fit. When we did that, we lost count. And, when we lost count, we started eating the marshmallows. Naturally, that made our count even worse.
Adding insult to injury, marshmallows melt when they get wet. So they started to disintegrate the second they were glued down. Like a genius, I decided to use my hot glue gun so the glue would dry faster. That was my third mistake. Marshmallows swell and burn when they get hot.
In the end, I wrote a note to the teacher explaining that the posterboard was probably full of 100 marshmallows, but we weren't really sure. I took full responsibility for the failure, and hoped for the best. Fortunately, the teacher was either very sympathetic or didn't want to double-check our count of 100 burnt, melting marshmallows. Amelia got an "E" for effort, and I vowed never to glue marshmallows onto anything ever again.
 |
| She had to carry the project in a box top because she didn't want to touch it. Most of these no longer legally qualify as marshmallows. |
.
Fortunately, family-participation projects have been few and far between since then. Until now. Last week, Amelia brought home an outline of a turkey with instructions to disguise him so he'd get through the Thanksgiving holiday uneaten. (Is anyone but me more than a little creeped out by that concept?) The provided instruction sheet informed us that past turkeys have been dressed as "football players, farmers, hula dancers, and Elvis."
In fact, this seems like a fairly common assignment. There are entire web sites devoted to disguising your turkey. Hilariously, a lot of them disguise the turkey as a food product, which defeats the purpose of the disguise. We immediately rejected dressing him as a hamburger, a corncob, and a slice of pie.
Naturally, Pete latched onto the concept of "football player." I seemed stuck on puns, and suggested disguising him as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turkey, a time TURner, and the Turkish flag. But Amelia was determined to create (drumroll, please):
Spider-Turkey!
 |
| Spider-Turkey, Spider-Turkey. Does whatever a Spider-Turkey does. |
Here he is without his mask:
 |
| Is he strong? Listen bud, he's got radioactive blood. Look out, here comes the Spider-Turkey. |
His mask is a patch I made on my embroidery machine, although we could have easily made him a paper or felt mask. I helped Amelia sew an elastic loop on the back of the mask so he could wear it through Thanksgiving.
 |
| If you even mention Spider-Man, she starts to climb. |
She brought Spider Turkey to class today. I don't know how she'll do on her assignment, but I have a feeling it will go better than her last family assignment since nothing was melted or burnt. Although, I do miss pigging out on marshmallows.
No comments:
Post a Comment