Science Fair

Becca has asked for the last few years if she can do a science project.  The problem is that she asks the day before it's due...until this year.  She finally decided to take the time to do a project right.  I told her she wasn't going to turn something in that is rushed and horrible, so she finally got the idea that she should ask me about it while the school was on winter break.

It began with an idea.  She wanted to google a good project, so she started there.  She liked the idea of letting food rot, but I couldn't deal with that.  She moved on to the idea of a recipe and changing it to see what happens.  I asked her what she wanted to make and the googling started again.  She found a YouTube video of a guy who made super balls and got stuck there. 

The confusion began.  She wanted to work with a partner, but she didn't clearly talk to her partner about doing it.  In the end, it was still less than a week before the project was due that they actually started.

Becca and her friend, Reina, came over to my house to do the experiment.  Over and over they made these balls and bounced them, then changed the recipe and bounced again.  They worked and worked for hours. The next day, they came back to start putting their notes together in a notebook.  They decided that they needed to type it.  This would have been no big deal to me if it weren't for the fact that they took 20 minutes typing the title page.  They asked if I would type it for them.

I began to type.  The girls wrote what they wanted for a while, but when I was typing a lot faster than they were writing, they started to dictate what they wanted on the page.  The temptation to correct them at times was overwhelming!  I figured I could ask questions to make them think about what they were saying, but I wasn't going to give them the answers.  In the end, there were so many grammatical errors, I made them read the thing aloud to each other so that they could hopefully figure out what was wrong...it mostly worked.

They went to school to turn in their notebook and it was sent back immediately.  They did too much work.  They were told to cut some things out of their experiment.  I went to the teacher in charge of the science fair and asked about it.  I asked her if it would be okay if they split the project and turned in both so they didn't have to throw away work that they did.  She loved the idea.

Another afternoon in my house!  They split the project up and then made their boards for the science fair.  My cricut got a workout that day.  Want to see a picture of their boards?

 I really wish I would have known when the science fair was, but there was no announcement at the school, no papers that went home with dates...nothing.  The few kids that came had parents that were teachers, except one who found it on the district website. In the end, Becca still got an award.

Sorry about the quality of that pic. It was an unexpected moment and all I had was my phone.  We were in the school office and I happened to be there to volunteer in Ali's class that day when Becca was called to receive her award for 1st place.  Reina got 2nd.  They didn't get sweepstakes and move on, but this was good for the first time.  Now I know what questions to ask for next year...like when is the science fair?

Now we are off to celebrate!