The Kindy 500

One thing I really hate is assignments for Mom's. I went to kindergarten, I even graduated, I still remember the day, I wore a blue dress with little strawberry looking things on it. So I just don't know why I have to be given an assignment by Ryan's Kindergarten teacher. For the life of me I can't figure that one out (she doesn't have any kids - I think this is a pretty important fact in the solving the puzzle.) She told us in January that we needed to start making a car out of a card board box. The directions suggested we let our 5 year old do as much of it as possible with a little help from us. The thing is they showed the movie from last years kindy 500 - I am no fool I know those cars were not made by 5 year olds. My 5 year old has a hard time drawing a recognizable car with a crayon let alone take a toilet paper box and transform it into a jeep he can ride in.

In January I showed Rick the assignment and suggested this would be a great Father son activity. He whole heartily agreed and planned to get right on it. Well he was still planning to get right on it when last Monday came around- so with 4 days left before it was due a little mother son time was in order. Rick had helped Ryan pick out what kind of vehicle to make, a jeep, so we at least had an idea to work with. We searched the Internet for images we could use for a design and then started construction. The first thing we had to do was cut the box. I had Ryan bring me a knife, he successfully carried it into the living room without cutting anything. That success didn't last long. So for the sake of all of our fingers and the carpet I made a rule I was the only one who could cut. He tried holding things for me and he fetched and carried but that wasn't his favorite job and I can sympathize since that is Rick's idea of a suitable job for me when we work on a project together - and it drives me crazy. So I sent him off to play and cut and folded card board for the next several hours till I ran out of ideas, and duct tape so I had to call it quits. I had managed to fashion a somewhat recognizable jeep. The jeep needed tires and a paint job so I took Ryan to the home depot and let him pick out some spray paint. He did a good job with that part. Next we stopped at DI and got some records to use as wheels. That right there was the most educational part of the assignment for Ryan - he now knows what came before tapes and cd's.

Later that night after getting the rest of the kids to bed I took Ryan out to teach him how to spray paint, but after realizing he wasn't so good at pointing the spray nozzle in the general direction of the jeep I gave up. By this point it was pretty late, my bed was calling me and my patience was long spent so I just did it myself.

Next came the tires. We thought the tires needed to be a little thicker than a record so we searched for something that we could attach to the record that would help it stand out a little and kind of look like a tire. We hit upon the idea of Styrofoam but had a hard time finding some. At walmart I spotted some pool noodles. Pool noodles could be bent into a circle and painted black, the texture was even similar to the tread of a tire. Perfect I thought. Well pool noodles are kind of hard to attach to anything - even themselves. They don't sew well, even liquid nail is no match for them, finally a combination of duct tape and hot glue seemed to do the trick.

Well a few more coats of paint and a few lights later the jeep was ready to go. Which was a good thing because it was due the next morning. I had Ryan try it on and take a few pictures which went great. He looked good and so did the jeep, a few minutes later it was time to load the jeep into the car and head over to the school. The tires, all four of them, immediately fell off. Apparently hot glue does not hold pool noodles together as well as I had thought. Well with only a few minutes to go I decided I better screw them in. I got some big screws and shoved them through the tire and into the cardboard box. This worked well - only problem was that it left 4 very long, very exposed, and very sharp screws inside the box where my son would be standing. That made me a little nervous but it was late enough the only thing I could do was pray we wouldn't need to make an emergency trip to the ER for some stitches before the day was out. All went well. The program was cute, Ryan loved his jeep, the wheels were still attached when I picked him up after school and most importantly no flesh had been cut. So all in all it was a success, and when Ryan gets his kindergarten diploma in a few weeks I will know a little piece of it is mine.