Our first History Fair

Jaden and Jerah are preparing for their first ever (and my first ever) history fair scheduled for this coming week. In all my years of schooling I never had to prepare display board, so this is a learning experience for all of us.

Jaden has chosen George Stephenson for his subject. I've been having to restrain myself from doing the project for him; I'm a perfectionist (as my family can attest) and get extremely frustrated when my kids don't "get it" right off the bat. So when Jaden struggles to summarize a paragraph, or can't seem to organize his thoughts, I have to consciously tell myself that "he's only 10!" I'm coming to the conclusion that my expectations are too high, that I expect him to operate at a cognitive level more on par with a college student. Is this a normal malady of homeschooling moms? Is this why we constantly compare our children's progress with other people's children?

Jerah's chosen subject is Sequoyah, creator of the syllabary for the Cherokee language. She's been working on her project for quite some time, but I'm afraid that the thoroughness of her research bears a striking resemblance to Swiss cheese. Again, I've had to refrain from doing the work for her. In reality, she has learned a lot about Sequoyah, and that's really the main reason we're doing the history fair in the first place. It's given her the chance to do independent research about a topic of her choice. In that, she has succeeded.

We're going to be working on the actual display boards tomorrow. I'm a little apprehensive about this part of the project as I am really going to have to force myself to keep my hands of their boards and let them do it themselves. Perfectionism can be such a drag!