A friend mentioned that her kid is building a model of the Great Wall for school, and her husband is trying to keep from taking over. That reminded me of one of my favorite childhood memories.

When I was in maybe third grade, I had one of those projects and I decided to make a log cabin. My dad, who’s a model train buff, helped a lot - I think all the major ideas were his. We used a cardboard box to build the walls against. My uncle had just cut down a pine tree in his yard, and my dad took all the small branches and cut them into little logs, notched at the ends to fit together. I assembled them. He helped me figure out how to make a chimney structure out of more cardboard, then I glued on stones, and he provided sawdust that I colored with food coloring and used for grass and a dirt path. He designed and built the roof, which was removable, and I shingled it with construction-paper rectangles I cut out. Oh, I did contribute one idea which was having a window glazed with waxed paper. (I think it might have bugged him that the window frame wasn’t structurally sound, as it was added later and not built in.)

Mine was one of those projects that obviously was not done by the kid on her own (although I think there were one or two that were fancier than mine). But my parents still have it - who could bear to throw that away! - and I love looking at it and remembering all the evenings spent working with my dad on something we both enjoyed, and producing something pretty cool.

Posted by Amanda in My Life |