The first part of my plan was to get him caught up on any outstanding assignments. I asked his teacher to let me know what assignments he was missing or late in turning in. She readily supplied the list. After reviewing the list, I realized that we'd caught the problem in time. There were only two assignments that were overdue and they were nearly complete, and then two projects that would be due within the week.

I helped my son tackle the incomplete assignments first. I explained to him that his job was to get this work done as fast as he could and that because he was already past deadline he would have to do the project instead of playing or watching tv. When those assignments were complete, we moved on to the two with deadlines that were coming up fast.

The first assignment was to collect together eight different leaves from trees in our neighborhood. We took a very enjoyable walk around the neighborhood gathering the beautiful fall leaves. We then went home and looked up the leaves on our state's conservation department website to identify what leaves we had found. The next part of the assignment required a rundown on the tree, along with some background information on where it could be found and what the wood could be used for. Using the Google search engine, I showed my son how to find this information, searching by keyword. I helped him to assemble his information and bound it into a paper folder to turn in to the teacher.