Sum of what I do

Darcy is studying a fiction book about Florida called, The Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith. It is an interesting story about a family who moves into Florida territory in the 1800's. This book is being studied in her Language Arts class as well as in her Humanities class.

She had to do two projects and take a test on the book. She didn't do well on the test and then had to write a 5 paragraph paper on the book. As I was reading the paper and thumbing through the book, my motherly instincts kicked in and I realized my daughter had not read the book! Apparently, some of the lower reading level children were in a group with the teacher who would read and go over each chapter with these kids. Darcy just made sure to sit close to the group and listen in...

So....we spent an entire Sunday reading the book aloud. Once that was finished I made her jump into her projects.

The picture above is her extra credit project. On the back side is the family tree of the family in the book. This side is Darcy's tree with four generations. I came up with the idea of a tree with pictures. Darcy did most of the research, calling her grandparents and quizzing her parents. Once that was done we took photos and scanned them into the computer into a print shop program. We had no problem with my side of the family as I had photos for everyone. Tom's side was a tad more complicated. We had Tom and his parents, but not photos of his parents' parents. A call to the grandparents did not help. They had photos, but no scanner and they live a good 40 minutes from us. We left that side blank while we pondered what to do.

Tom's helpful suggestion was exactly what I knew he would say.

Tom: "Who cares? Take some pictures of old people off the Internet and put them on it. No one is going to know or care who those pictures are."

I picked the scariest and ugliest people I could find. It didn't phase him. Only after that did we learn that after my phone call to his mother Tom actually, without our knowing, had gone up to his parent's house to fix some computer problem. Neither he nor his mother thought about GETTING THE PHOTOS.

In the end I took old black and white photos of his parents. His father, Roger, became his own father. Roger's sister became his mother. Mary Anne became her mother and her brother became his father. Because the siblings really do resemble their parents, no kidding.

So the tree isn't truly accurate in pictures, but the rest is history.