Science homework

A while ago, while my daughter was still at primary school, I wrote about how challenging I found her homework.

Perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, I can report that this gets much, much worse at secondary school level.

A good example - science homework - construct a molecule model or a DNA helix.  What?  How?  We didn't know where to start.  We turned to the great oracle of our times and 'Googled' it.

Once we knew what a molecule model looked like, daughter chose titanium nitrate to construct (not sure why!), and we decided to head to The Range.  The Range will have all we need, we said confidently.

The Range did indeed come up trumps with polystyrene balls of various sizes, plus cocktail sticks.  It failed on a larger size ball though, needed for the central component of the model, so we bought a polystyrene rose bud (who even knew they existed?), and then husband shaved it until it was spherical - we're nothing if not resourceful.

Then daughter sat, for most of a Saturday afternoon, colouring in the polystyrene balls, while trying to stop the ink coming off on the carpet and warding off the dog who thought the balls looked like great fun and he'd really like to carry one off and chew it thoughtfully in front of the fire.

When she'd finished, and the cocktail sticks were also partly coloured in, the titanium nitrate was constructed and indeed looked just like the one Google had shown us.

It took pride of place on the dining room table so it didn't get damaged before it was due to be handed in, and it was out of reach of the nosy Labrador who found it all terribly intriguing.  Carrying it on the bus to school was tricky, I hear, but thanks to a large bag-for-life it survived the journey relatively intact.

I then heard that some people had just bought kits from Amazon and handed those in, but that's not quite the spirit is it?  There's nothing like a bit of 'Blue Peter' ingenuity - now where's my sticky-back plastic?!