Coasting through life

A month ago Hannah brought home a school assignment which instructed her to make a "Lit Kit". She had to choose a book and then write a four panel illustration of the title, beginning, middle, and end of the book. Inside the kit she was supposed to put 3-5 props to help her re-tell the story to her classmates during her book presentation.

Back when she first received the assignment she chose her book and started reading right away. She chose a Judy Blume book called Soupy Saturdays with Pain and the Great One. Luckily she read the book right away because I completely blanked on the assignment until about 3 p.m. today when Hannah, Tracy, and I were hanging out in the pool. I sent her in to work on her assignment and she came back out a little while later to tell me it was done. This is what frustrates me about her. She is a brillant child. She's incredibly intelligent but I truly think that she realizes that she can coast through her academics without too much effort. Her assembled project was awful. She put absolutely no thought, time, or effort into her project.

I sat down to read the book to see if I could help her with the project. She told me that she had absolutely no props that she could use to tell the story, which I knew was a total lie, so as I read the book I would throw out suggestions. For example, at the beginning of the book one of the characters is afraid to get his haircut so he decides to grow his hair out long and his sister offers him a pony tail holder and a barrette. I said to Hannah, "how about putting a hair tie in as a prop?" She did. Then the girl in the book has a pink princess party for her birthday and they make jewelled tiaras. I said to Hannah, "you have tons of tiaras, how about packing one of those?" This is what sent me over the edge. Hannah couldn't be bothered to go upstairs and look for one. One she found down here was "good enough". What pissed me off is that it was a purple tiara with no stones on it and the one in the book is pink with jewels. Yes, it was good enough except for the fact that SHE HAS AT LEAST A DOZEN PINK JEWELLED TIARAS!!!!!! She just could not be bothered to go look for one.

Once we finally got into it a little more she started to get a little more excited and now she's doing a great job practicing her presentation. I just really hope that she realizes that she can't coast through life just because her teachers know she's smart. The week before last she was supposed to create a flag based on her heritage and the one she turned in was so half-assed the teacher sent it home and told her to try again. To follow that up with her original Lit Kit would have been a disaster. She is so much better than that. And she LOVES school. I just don't understand why she suddenly stopped putting any effort into it. When she did her diorama earlier this year she was so excited. I hope we can figure out what changed because this is not a trend I'm appreciating.