It's beginning to look a lot like

... Mom homework.  So I admit it, I'm getting pretty annoyed with the "fun family project" homework coming home from school.  Over the last couple of weeks I've, ok my kids, been assigned two pretty big projects. 

From the 1st grade class came, what I consider busy work, a "blend" assignment.  This entailed finding 4 pictures for each of 24 constant blends. For those of you not familiar with consonant blends let me refresh your memory:  br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, tr, bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, sl, sh, sm, sk, sp, st, sw, tw - AND - for good measure the "H brothers" also known as th, sh, ch, wh.  If you are counting, which I am, that is 24 total blends which means a total of 96 pictures.  Let's pause for a second and take that in... 96, yep 96, still 96.  Hmmm, for a 6 year old this might as well be 1 million.

Here is the completed poster, fun times...

I helpfully pointed out to the 1st grade teacher that perhaps 96 might be a bit much, when I complained spoke to her about the assignment the next day.  I repeated 96 several times just to make sure that she really understood my point, but it didn't help.  The teacher responded that it took her only 4 days to complete the project and I had 3 weeks.  Not very helpful.

When Nadim came home that night I complained to him about the stupid, busy work assignment and he famously replied "That sounds like fun!", so I put Nadim in charge of the assignment.  Perfect!  The "fun" assignment lasted until he couldn't find any more pictures with the blends he needed.  So good Dad that he is, he sat down, made himself a list of all the words Daughter needed, googled them, and printed them out at work the next day.

"H" brothers side of the poster

When all was said and done, Daughter's part of the homework project consisted of writing the words underneath the pictures.  I'm really not sure how much educational value this had.  Now the poster board gets to live under my stairs for the next two weeks until it is time to turn it in.