I hate projects!

A has a project to build a model and write a paper for one of his classes. This is turning into a LOT of work, for A and unfortunately for me. When M took this same design class 3 years ago, they had to draw out a house plan for a specified situation (so much money, so big a family) and they did it all during class time.

Now, when A is taking the class, they are writing a paper on a building. Now, they did do some of their research in class, but they had short class one week due to conferences and they had no class at all last week due to a furlough day. So, he had chosen a building and done some (but not nearly as much as he should have ) research. Therefore, all week here during break, I have had to assign him tasks at the computer - go over the assignment with him and break it down into parts. ie, now write a paragraph about Frank Lloyd Wright's background, now about when and where and why he built Fallingwater, now about some other famous buildings he built.

Yesterday and today have been all about trying to build a model of Fallingwater. My word, but that building has a LOT of ins and outs! We found some plans online and D managed to blow them up and print them out. Then I helped A to trim the pages so we could tape them together. Next we traced the footprint of each level as well as the footprint of interior space on each level. Then pinned the level on some foamboard and cut it out. A did a reasonable amount of each of these, but some of them took more than 2 hands, and the cutting was a bit tricky. He did some of that, but the foamboard is a bit tricky for him to cut all the way through. He did much more of the cutting on the styrofoam by himself. Then he started gluing pieces together.

More gluing to come tomorrow. I need to remember to get him to glue the 3rd floor together before church, so it can be dry by afternoon. Then we can try to match up the 3 floors and try to glue them all together. Or maybe we need to figure out how to get the whole thing up off the board a bit so the stream can go underneath.

I will be SO HAPPY when Thursday comes and this project is done. Of course, between now and then, he still has to finish the paper, practice his presentation, and finish the building!

I imagine that the teacher didn't really intend for the building to be quite this involved, but I can't figure out how to make something that looks at all like Fallingwater otherwise. I did see that you can buy a Lego model kit of Fallingwater, but I'm not spending $100 on an elementary school project. (plus its backordered even if I had been tempted).