Science Fair

Okay, lest I get distracted again and neglect to post this... ;)

So, last Sunday, we had our second annual homeschool group Science Fair. It was awesome. We had roughly four dozen kids participate this year and it just makes me so happy to see all the fabulous projects. Being as science is, um, not my strong suit by any means, I love, too, that I can do this with the boys. Like last year, I made all the kids little notebooks to go on their tables and folks left positive feedback as they walked around to see everything. Man, the boys love reading those after the fact. :)

This year, Micah insisted on having his own project (having helped his brothers last year (scroll down) but not receiving a participation trophy like everyone else since his name wasn't on the project). After much debate, we finally settled on "wind energy" as his topic. (He originally wanted to show how a hybrid car works, but since I didn't understand it as well as Noah and couldn't explain it to Micah as well as Noah and couldn't convince Noah to work on it with Micah...well, we switched, lol.) So. We bought him a little wind energy kit, which Nathan helped him put together. Then we just had him draw pictures with the simplified steps of how we turn wind into energy. Viola. (He is only four after all, lol.)

(You can click on the pictures to make them a little bit bigger.) Yes, blowing "wind" makes the light turn red. Even with all the boy's hot air, though, actually blowing wasn't enough...hence the blow dryer. ;) Micah was so excited.

For Asher's project this year, he did a little experiment to see which top spun the longest. He took tops that were identical and added weights to some so that he could test light vs heavy and skinny vs wide. He also gathered a good number of tops to show the many types:

Needless to say, we all had lots of fun with Asher's project! ;) Special thanks, too, to the owner of Science Toy Magic in Old Town Fort Collins (an awesome little science toy store just north of Ben & Jerry's) who not only helped talk Asher through the science of why some of his tops spun longer but also generously gave Asher a few tops from his own collection (no longer for sale in his shop, though we also have picked up a number of those over the past year or so anyhow, lol).

Finally, Noah. This year Noah did almost all of his project by himself. I assisted with punctuation and printing out the materials he asked me to print (to his specifications). He, though, came up with the idea, wrote out all the information (well, we let him type it this year), found all the pictures, designed how he wanted the project board to look and made all the molecule models on his own. His topic? The many forms of carbon. (The boy loves the elements.)

(The little blue tags are on anything that has carbon, btw. Totally his idea.) Cool, eh?

And that, my friends, was our Science Fair experience this year. The boys all received participation medals this year (which Micah wore around town the following day) and are happy. They're already talking about what they want to do next year. :)

Comments

[Michelle]

Very cool...reminds me of Project Fair when we were in school...Sarah and I did ours on Photography :-)

[nan]

Wow! Like father, like sons! very professional looking.

[kaitlin]

I love all of them! Great topics and beautiful presentations!