OK, first of all I promise to get the finished picture of the patio as soon as it stops snowing for everyone who has asked us to post it. You would think I could get around to that considering all the effort I put into building it, but eh...
So on to Masons Reflections project. Every year students are asked to do a reflections project, and it is supposed to be a "reflection" of their personality/talents/interests/etc. So it is sort of a creative arts project. Anyone with kids in elementary will likely know what it is already. There are several categories such as Photography, Video, Choreography, Visual Arts, 3D arts, etc etc. A couple of the categories are local Utah only, but most are Nationally recognized. There are also age groups, and specific rules for each category. But the most important rule in each category is that the student must do all the work! Any adult supervision, must be only teaching the student how to do it, but whatever the project, they must do it on their own.
Anyway, Mason came home with the flyer for this and after asking him what he wanted to do it on, he said "Spiders." So we looked briefly through the rules, and asked him what categories, and we came to the conclusion that photography, and 3D arts were the only ones we might be able to do something with spiders. So we handed him the camera, gave a brief instruction on how to zoom and take pictures, and we were off to search for spiders around the house. We found a large black widow, and an even bigger catface spider (we had to look it up, and although it looked seriously freaky, turns out they aren't really poisonous), both females. He took pictures of them and their "homes" before we caught them.
So we came inside and put more effort into reading the rules, and he decided that a collage of photos was what he wanted to do. But the 3D category was tricky, because it had very specific things that could be entered. We decided the only way he could enter the real spiders themselves was to make them into jewelry. So we did some asking and found a resin you could buy at the craft store to cast them. Off we were, Mason and Kate went through the store found the resin and catalyst, and then looked for beads and such to make necklaces.
This posed another issue, as we were concerned that they might not believe he had done the work. So I said why don't we film it so if there is a question, we can just show them! Yes, I know I am brilliant. Moving on, when we told mason this he wanted to make a "How To" video out of it. So we came to the conclusion to enter that into the video category since we were doing it anyway. Again he had to do all the work, make the signs, turn on and off the camera, and most importantly edit it. When we finished (which took several days since it has to dry and such) we had over 45 mins of video (some of it repeats, extra stuff like Mason walking up and down to turn the camera on and off etc). Well guess what we read the rules afterwards and the max video length aloud was 5 mins! Again students have to do the editing.
So Mason and I sat down at 8 PM (the night before the project was due since it had taken several days to film it in waiting for things to dry etc), and began the editing process using windows movie maker. You can not really imagine how long it takes to trim out excess video and then speed up different parts of the video over and over again when you must sit back and instruct a 7 year old how to do it. Needless to say he may not remember how to bring the files in or save them to CD since we only did those once, but he can split a video, delete segments, and drag the double speed effect very well since we did those like 20 times. And at 1 AM when he could barely keep his eyes open, we finished (yes he had to go to school early the next morning, and yes I am a bad dad, but he loves me anyway).
Well to make a long story longer his project was a big hit, we showed a copy of the video to his class for show and tell, and afterwards the whole class mobbed his desk asking for him to make them one, and questions on who he did it etc. Of couse he made a couple, the black widow, the catface spider, a cricket, a wasp, and a smaller garden spider (maybe a baby black widow), and gave them to friends, and his teacher. It was also a big hit to the school, in fact so much so even though the rules ask for photos of your 3D arts instead of bringing the actual project in (probably for lack of space) they still called him down out of class and asked if they could take it (he was wearing it at the time and was so cute, he actually called home because he was nervous about giving it to them, cute little guy).
Since then several people have requested to see the video, so her it is.
Ok, so I finally took a picture of the Bistro patio. Sorry the fountain is off in the picture (it's cold now) and the leaves have already fallen off our discount Greenleaf Japanese Maple (it'll look pretty again in the spring).
