The Sunnyvale Sun

Letters & Opinions

Fourth-grade mission accomplished--twice

By Dave Kehmeier

We're done with fourth grade. Thank goodness. I don't think I could do it over again. If you've got a kid going into fourth grade, here's a piece of advice: Look for display boards on sale and stock up. And Costco has glue sticks that come in packs of 30.

Fourth grade is the "Year of the Project." Chief among these is the mission project. Ostensibly, this project is designed to get fourth-graders interested in how a bunch of Spanish padres developed choice pieces of California real estate, forcing the native Ohlone Indians to commute from places like Tracy and Modesto because they could no longer afford a single-family adobe in the Bay Area...or, something like that. Anyway, the theory is that if kids build it, the learning will come.

We all know better. The thing is, fourth-graders don't have what it takes to build a mission. Left to their own devices, they will happily construct shapeless blobs consisting of 5 percent cardboard and 95 percent glue that look more like trash heaps than missions. What's worse, they think these creations look great and will proudly turn them in, even though doing so would dishonor the family name for generations to come.

Faced with this possibility, parents' protective instincts kick in, and the mission project becomes, euphemistically, a "parent-participation" project. In other words, it's an all-out competition among the parents to build the best mission in the class while lying through their teeth that they had anything to do with it.

"Johnny did all the work. I just gave him some advice."

Yeah, right.

Our first fourth-grader, Emily, was on top of her mission project from the get-go. She's the sort of conscientious student who makes her teachers, classmates and parents roll their eyes a lot.

Emily: "Daddy, I have to get started on my mission project!"

Me: "Emily, you don't even know who your fourth-grade teacher is yet. Relax, finish your hamburger, watch the fireworks, and try to enjoy your summer."

When we finally let Emily start working on her mission, we were in the middle of remodeling our house, and living with my in-laws. Grandpa's hobby is building radio-controlled airplanes. He and I are both engineers. Needless to say, Emily had plenty of help. Despite our best efforts, she managed to do much of the work on the 1:72 scale replica, including aesthetic details such as flowerpots and palm trees that nerds like us would never have thought of.

We spent more than 100 hours on her mission. It was beautiful. Even our contractor thought so. "Nice mission, Dad," he said to me one day after Emily brought it home. "Oh, Emily did all the work. I just gave her some advice," I said. We both had a good laugh.

This year, our fourth-grader Will had the choice of doing a mission project or a Gold Rush project. He opted for the Gold Rush project. That was smart of him. I pretty much shot my wad on Emily's mission. I think he realized I didn't have another one like it in me.

Will's project management approach was a bit less uptight than Emily's.

Me: "Will, don't you think you'd better get going on your Gold Rush project?"

Will: "Relax, Dad. It isn't due until next week. You'll have the weekend to build it."

He decided to make a working model of a rocker, a contraption for processing gold-bearing gravel. It was a good choice. It gave me a chance to finally use some of the old fence boards I've been saving for no apparent reason that my wife, Ellie, can think of. By my calculations, there's enough wood left to build 50 more rockers. All we need now is another California Gold Rush.

It was a great father-son bonding activity. Power tools have a way of bringing guys together. We finished the rocker in a weekend, including a couple of trips to Orchard Supply Hardware to buy things we didn't really need.

The rocker looked very authentic and actually worked. It created quite a stir when Will demonstrated it at school. Apparently, he didn't make it clear to his classmates that the pieces of "gold" they found in the bucket of dirt and sand he ran through the rocker were really just pieces of lead, painted with gold enamel.

Now that it's all behind us, the kids are very proud of their projects and refuse to let me get rid of them. They're contributing to the pile that is preventing our garage from serving its intended purpose.

I'm OK with that. They'll come in handy when the grandkids are in fourth grade.

Dave Kehmeier is an occasional contributor to the Sun.