Update...

Today, 18 days after my daughter turned in her plan for her rat maze project, and 13 days after she turned in the extra form to use live animals, we FINALLY got the approval to use the animals. But, we still haven't gotten get back the original plan, which all the rest of the kids got back within a few days, with teacher's comments that are supposed to help them fine-tune their plan. I think the teacher forgot about it while waiting for the approval to use live animals (which had to come from someone at the county school district). So I just sent the teacher an email and I *hope* we'll finally have all the paperwork in place to start the project tomorrow.

More than 1/4 of the time my daughter had to work on this project has been used up by waiting to get her project approved. On this form for using live animals, which supposedly caused this huge delay, my daughter had to answer 4 questions, but it doesn't sound too bad all smushed together into one paragraph, so I'll do that to keep it simple:

We get rewards for doing well at school. Now I want to test how rewards affect animal learning. I will learn more about how different rewards affect animal learning. This could help in training any animal. Appropriate caging, food, and handling will be applied to care for my friend's rats. I am borrowing rats from my friend and my friend understand my project. My maze will be well designed and harmless. The rats have no other part in this project.
Would someone please explain to me HOW it could possibly take 13 days to approve those 8 sentences?!?

Anyway, about a week ago I basically said to heck with waiting for them and started having my daughter do the research and such that she was supposed to do after her project was approved but before starting actual experimentation. So we aren't quite as far behind as we would have been if we'd waited for approval before going on to the next step.

The good news is she is still very excited about the project! I was a little concerned that the delay was going to kill her enthusiasm, and turn the entire thing into a night mare.