This year, the day they sent home the announcement every single one of the kids came bursting through the door individually saying, "MOM, I am DOING the Science Fair this year." How could I argue.
And even though they could have totally done a group project, they each came up with their own idea. Of course. :)
It ended up being really nice that they did their own thing. I was able to spend time with each kid while they came up with a question (my only caveat to participating was that they had to use the scientific method, not google, to come up with a project), made a hypothesis, and came up with a test. And each kid did their own display entirely on their own (I printed pictures, obviously).
First up, Brigham. He did his about 3 weeks before the Science Fair, which was just awesome.
He was convinced that since a dollar bill is a "real dollar" that it would weigh more than any coins you'd add up to make a dollar. We have a big change jar and somehow lucked out to find several ways to make a dollar: Dollar bill, 100 pennies, 20 nickels, 10 dimes, 4 quarters, 2 50 cent pieces, and a silver dollar.
He made his hypothesis, weighed each group, and learned a lot!
His hypothesis was incorrect and he had fun learning why.
Next up was Chloe. She wondered about the boiling point of different liquids. She had only ever seen water boil, so she wasn't convinced that all liquids would boil. She made her hypothesis, gathered up several different liquids (milk, chocolate almond milk, carrot juice, lime juice, water with salt, and regular water -- you can tell we were scrounging around the house!) and started her test.
She was surprised to see that each and every liquid boiled and all at differing temperatures. We were especially surprised at how low the temperature was when the water boiled. 190 degrees, I think? High altitude makes such a difference -- and this helped me to think about why my caramels and fudge didn't work out at Christmas! Science. Cool.
Finally, Lily did her project a week before the fair. I thought it was only 2 days before, but I had the date wrong on my calendar. Ha! Thank goodness for friends who set me straight and hooray for being done a week early!
I had a little meltdown on this one because I was stressed that we were so close to the due date and I couldn't quite figure out how to help her understand the concept she was asking questions about. She wanted to know which things float and which don't and why. Well, I started in on this big discussion about density only to have Stanton come home and tell us that it wasn't density at all, but a complicated concept of water displacement (duh! I know this stuff, but seriously, I can't recall it when I need it!). I cried because I felt so stupid, Lily cried because she thought she was going to have to change projects, and Stanton swooped in and saved the day. They revamped the questions a bit and she decided to test whether water in a water bottle and oil in a water bottle would float.
They ended up having a really great time doing it and Lily was happy with the end result. And I got over my pride and had fun with them.
They made some fun discoveries as they added different amounts of water to the bottle and it finally sank when it was full. The weight of the water bottle plus being full of water finally made it too heavy to float. The oil, of course, floated no matter how full the bottle was. Lily was amazed that "fat" weighed less than the water it displaced.
Everyone had a great time at the Science Fair and I'm glad we did it. It's a huge pain in the neck, but it's pretty great to see the kids thinking, discovering, and solving problems. Worth it, I guess.
1 comment:
I totally talk my kids out of the science fair every year...it always seems to fall right around my midterms.
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