Home School Science Fair

(click collage to imbiggen -check out the squirrel art by Annika!)

After months of preparation, Jeremy, Marissa, and Annika all participated in the home school science fair. It has taken me this long to recover from it so that I could write this post!!

Annika made a non-competitive display called "Squirrel Friends." We read a few books about squirrels, she colored some, and we printed some and made a nice display. She was so cute answering questions about squirrels at her display! We did learn that there are white squirrels in Brevard, NC, and they have a festival in their honor! She didn't care. She just enjoyed people thinking that she was cute!



She is cute!

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Marissa's project was entitled, "Vermicomposting: A Worm Taste Test." (No, we didn't eat worms!) Getting the worms was a big pain in the butt! I ordered some online before Christmas. As it turns out, they were in CA, and the post office would not ship anything live while it was cold in between here and CA. Well, it was December and January, and it was really cold pretty much everywhere between here and CA, so they worm farmer never shipped them. After lamenting the delinquent worms on Facebook, I had a couple of friends tell me that I could get them locally, so with less than 2 weeks before the science fair, Marissa got 1/2 pound of premium red wigglers from a worm farmer in North Raleigh. Good thing they are fast eaters!



Marissa set up an experiment to see how fast the worms would eat certain foods. It was gross. So we had worms (EWWW!), and then we had to measure the food that the worms had left. She loves worms, and even Marissa was grossed out by having to pick out the composting food and get the worms off and out of it (double EWWWW!). She did end up with an interesting project and now has pet worms.

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When Jeremy told me that he wanted to do a project involving bubble gum, I was very torn. I was happy that he had interest in something, but I also knew that over the years, the science fairs across out country had been bombarded with gazillions of lame bubblegum experiments. So, we put a twist on it. His project was entitled, "Strechi-densi-bility: Stretchiness, Density, & Water Solubility vs. Bubble Size." So, Jeremy's project actually had 3 experiments and a calculation with lots of data analysis.



We were having some major motivation problems with this one, and two days before the science fair, I was totally losing it (screaming, crying) while trying to get it across to him that he needed to finish his stinking project! After lunch, he realized that the science fair was *this week* NOT *next week*!!! AAGHAGAHAGAA!!! Jeremy did get it in gear and turned out an excellent report and an interesting project.

Neither of our competitive projects won any awards or moved on to the the next level, but we are so glad that we did it! The kids learned a lot about the many aspects of a science fair. There is WAY more to it than just running an experiment. We had to employ our math, writing, *time management*, and art skills too.

Next year, we will have some solid deadlines for every step of the projects! They WILL be great!