WordPress Development

I have allowed myself only 4-5 hours to complete this week's assignment <insert travelling, work, parenthood, snow storm excuses here> and I have now used up the allotted time I allocated.  I cannot understand how to complete this assignment.

The first tip was to use child themes - I read the suggested material and created a child them based upon my existing parent (a custom template developed using the tool Artisteer - which I love).

I then used FireBug plugin for FireFox to identify which CSS reference is defining the look and feel of the post on my primary blog page.  I deteremined how to change the background color of the post, and pasted that specific code in the new styles.css file for the child theme.  I confirmed that it is working properly by toggling between the parent and child themes and I can see the change to the article background color.

NOW - I am trying to determine how and where I need to tell the Theme files to select which template based on the category ID.

• I do not know how to read or code in PHP.  I barely understand the basic premise, though I do understand database technology and structure, and I understand very basic scripting language.
• I do not know how to decipher all of CSS, despite taking a very rudimentary tutorial on same.
• I enrolled in this class under the premise that I did not need to know those things. 

I have tried the in_category logic, and the get_template_part logic, but have no clue how to edit them for my specific purposes (do I need to tell it where the template is located, directory structure, or does it just know to look for the directory name?) or where in the code to put them (I can "find" the loop, but do I need to modify existing code, or insert the If... else logic for the category?) and (does the category "hook" exist, does my index.php know which post is in which category?)  I have NO CLUE.

What I like about this class:

• It gives me assignments of specific functionality I wouldn't seek on my own.
• It gives me scheduled assignments to give me a target of what to learn and when, causing me some sense of urgency for learning.

What I have trouble with:

• There is no actual "instruction", I am left to read comments of other students and research results.  This is how learning works in the workplace after there has been some actual instruction. I am a blank slate every week, as I would be without a course.
• Students come from all different skill backgrounds, so some level of knowledge is assumed, leaving students without the right underlying skillset frustrated.

I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't read a Wordpress book first, and then re-enroll in a similar course?

Please help.