Mission Complete

It's done.  The report is finished and the scrapbook project complete.  The lot went to school on Friday morning (hopefully never to be heard from again).  I'm not bitter.  Here are the pros and cons of a project like this:

Pros

•Mom and daughter got to spend a great day together at a beautiful historic place

•We gathered tons of photos and souvenirs to help us put the project portion together

•Heather and I both learned a bit about California history

•Heather was able to type the body of her report and use the Google search function

•Heather learned a little bit about the scope of a project like this and how much time it takes

Cons

•No nine-year-old could ever do this on their own; even if you have a smart nine-year old, there are so many details that due to their age and life experience, they are bound to miss something.

•There is no way my daughter could skim the amount of information I had to skim to pull out what we needed

•Guilt -- I didn't like feeling like it was "my" project, and I saw that had we started two weeks earlier, Heather may have been able to do more of the project assembly

The list of cons isn't that long, but kind of says it all.  Heather was very much apart of the field work and typing, but the poor girl doesn't know how to write a report.  I had to frame it for her and keep pulling information out of her.  She couldn't research on her own; there is just too much information to sift through.  A lot of my guilt came when we went to assemble the scrapbook.  I know she could have been more involved in that, but we didn't have time.  The mission visit was done on May 2, twenty days before the project was due.  The report was written bit by bit each day the week before the project was due.  That left a week to assemble the scrapbook.  My bad.  Heather missed school on Monday and had mounds of homework everyday on top of the project.  That left the scrapbook assembly literally until the day before the project was due.  

I'll know better for next time.  This was my first project as a mommy.  The teacher did want the parents involved (she told me that after the project was turned in), but I think it would have meant more to Heather to put her own scrapbook together.  She may not have done it as neatly, but she would have been proud of her work.   I couldn't wrap my brain around it all until that last week.  I will have to force myself to wrap my brain around her next project earlier so it can be more of her thing.

Well, if you've read this far, thanks for listening.  I needed to journal all of this to figure out what I need to do for next time.  I can't remember how I learned to do reports and projects, but it was probably very similar to what is going on now, so I won't beat myself up too much over this one.  I'm glad I've had this experience so that I will know how to plan next time.