My son had to design an alien, and make a spacecraft, for his space project. I am a bit of an expert in spacey things.

“An alien in the atmosphere of Saturn would probably need to be able to fly,” I say, cleverly guiding my young protege.

“Rocket feet!” my son shouts happily.

“Hmmm,” I nod. “Rocket feet are probably unlikely to evolve in a biological species. What about some sort of buoyant gas sack?”

“Rocket feet,” my son repeats slowly, as if I hadn’t heard him the first time.

“OK.”

Later we begin to sketch out some ideas for his spacecraft. “So, let's start thinking about what we would need to carry out a space mission.”

“Finished!” he says, having scribbled some lines with a crayon.

“Hmm. OK. What are those things?”

“Solar panels.”

“Oh!” I say, pleasantly surprised. I think I can get on board with this design.

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“My goodness, that’s impressive!” The head tells us at the school gate. The juice bottle space-craft is orbiting a paper-lamp earth. Astronauts are doing a space walk, bobbing on the end of pipe cleaner life lines.

“Finally!” I scream inside, shaking an internal fist at the world. “Finally my genius is being recognised!”

Turns out the way to get your very well disguised genius recognised by the world is to pass your work off as that of a six-year-old. Yes, it was his ideas, but the execution is mostly mine!

There is no way he could have used the glue gun! It’s far too dangerous. Look at the quality of those glue lines!

Later my son comes out of school, beaming, carrying his spacecraft. “I got two merits for it!” He says.

“Yeeeeeees!” I shout inside. “Well done, son. I’m proud of you.” I tell him.