You have to make what?

My sweet children are given a TON of homework most days.  Sometimes, it's math, a reading assignment, something out of geography or history but at least once or twice each week my kids are asked to create projects like the ones in the photos below.

For this assignment they were told, "make a diorama of a region. pick a region."  No further instructions were given and of course there is no grading rubric which is unbelievably common.  Talk about frustrating.

However, our 4 dioramas turned out awesome in my opinion.  Here we have the polar region and above is a tropical jungle.  Clearly we took advantage of some Happy Meal toy figures and a few plastic animals.

Sometimes they are asked to bring in volcanoes they've made out of clay or musical instruments, and I think each of my 5th graders has been asked to create a poster board project full of pictures and information at least 10 times this semester alone.  It's more work for me and Sammy than it ends up being for our kids.  But Sammy always says, "my kids are NOT going to be the kids who go to school with something half done or not as good as the other kids."

So there you have it - orphans make school projects just like "normal" kids.