Are you smarter than a sixth grader? Well, I'm not. And I've repeated the sixth grade three times. Do the math. My husband and I had a six-year break before our youngest child went off to school. Our daughter's first three years of school were A+. But once she entered the fourth grade, the school curriculum changed. In other words, no more water color drawings of blue skies, smiling suns and Play-doh figurines of Mom and Dad. It was homework time.

Repeating grade school this time around … well, let's just say, I feel like Billy Madison returns to school. To think I once rallied for year-round school. Now I count the days when summer begins. Why? No homework! And I can have playdates over on weeknights!

Nowadays, parents try to keep up with the Einsteins. Not me. I don't care if I have a rocket scientist in the family. I just want my kids off the Kopulos payroll someday. I don't remember my two older kids ever asking me the value of 1,927 divided by x, or asking what are the positive and negative effects of microorganisms? And if they did, I would've told them to go ask one of their smart friends. I remember saying to them, "Go do your homework," and that was it.

Part of me wants my youngest daughter to grow up FAST, but only academically — this mom can't handle another year of math and science. My forte is English, art, music and phys ed — fun classes. Every day after school I ask my daughter, "Do we have any homework tonight?" I pray to Thomas Aquinas, patron saint of students and Timothy, patron saint of stomach disorders, please no math or science homework.

"I have 80 math problems to do … oh, yeah, and I have a science project due tomorrow." Open a can of Red Bull, it's gonna be a long night.

When it comes to math I'm numerically challenged. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have 10 fingers, 10 toes and a calculator. I stopped helping my daughter in math after the second grade, then my husband took over — he quit this year when he could no longer find the answers over the Internet. "This is beyond my math capabilities," he said. So, we hired a tutor. A woman who has a Ph.D. in math and, God willing, will tutor our daughter through high school math and, if needed, will move to college with her.

This year's science fair at my daughter's school nearly sent me over the moon. She was up against experiments ranging from gene splicing to human genome research. Initially, she wanted to conduct an experiment on whether blondes have more fun than brunettes. She planned to make me the blonde variable. I told her she would have a false positive reading, and I persuaded her to do an experiment using Kellogg's Rice Krispies. "I'll even make Rice Krispie treats."

However, experiments can backfire. My daughter's problem statement became my problem: making Kellogg's Rice Krispies' cereal snap, crackle and pop for a long period of time. The conclusion, Mastercard priceless — I now have a dozen trays of Rice Krispie treats in the freezer and neighborhood cats clawing at our backdoor for more milk, a $30 digital timer, six new plastic cereal bowls, six bottles of glitter glue, 50 felt-tip color markers and three 100-packs of various size stencils. Oh. And I learned a valuable lesson from all this — always ask for the tutor's hourly rates. In the end, I snapped, crackled and popped over the grade B- our daughter received ( we deserved a B+) and the project costing $250!

Next year's formalized hypothesis: If science fair is related to irritability, then exposing Mom to science fair will result in severe changes in Mom's behavior.

For now, I'm singing to the tune of Alice Cooper's song "School's Out For The Summer." Come on! Break it down!

School's out for the summer

For moms and dads

No more homework

No more kid's dirty looks

No more late night trips to Walgreen's for posterboards

School's out for the summer!

To find out more about Mimi Kopulos and read her past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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