Science Fair Projects - I started doing Science Fair projects with my children as soon as I could. Fortunately we had an outlet, our school group sponsored a Science Fair, and a deadline, always a good thing, so we got them done! We always started simple! For my Kindergartner, I always started with their taste buds. We’d study the tongue, we’d take a picture of their tongue, and then we’d map it. Where are all of the taste buds? Then we got to making cookies. We’d make salt cookies, sour cookies, made with lots of lemon juice, bitter cookies, made with dry mustard, and finally sugar cookies. I’d have them guess where they would taste it on their tongues. They would rub the salty cookie all over the sweet, bitter and sour tastebuds and they couldn’t taste it. But when they got to the salty areas, they could taste it. What a GREAT way to figure out how our body was designed, even as a tongue! Of course, we’d finish with the sugar cookies and everyone was happy! Then I’d have them make their chart of their discoveries and wah-lah, you have a Science Fair project! I’ve always tried to take things that they are interested in. They don’t have to be original or super deep. There is value to figuring out how their Thomas the Tank engine will pull their train car one way and repel it the other way! And for them to learn the terminology: hypothesis, method, data, just puts them ahead in the learning curve.
One year, I had my Senior, who was studying Physics, do a Science Fair project with his 1st grade
brother who was learning about gravity. Together, they built a crude ramp, and used Matchbox cars and books. They’d pile the books higher under one end of the ramp, the little guy would let the Matchbox car go and the big guy would do the measurement on the stack of books, time the speed per second of the little car, as if he were designing a mountain road. Of course, they both had tons of fun working together, and my older son got a ton of praise from all sorts of people that he was willing to work with his little brother.
As an encouragement, I let them do whatever they wanted. Much of the time they just wanted to build something fun, and I would let them, but they had to work within the Scientific Method framework. For instance, one year, my 7th grader and his buddy, Garrison, come to me and say, “We want to build a wind tunnel for the Science Fair.” I turn to Garrison’s mom, and she said, “Well, I told them ‘no’, but if it was okay with you, it is okay with me.” I ask them, “What question are you asking? And ‘Can we build a wind tunnel?’ doesn’t count. It needs to have a question, a hypothesis, something that you can repeatedly test and then find the results.” I’m thinking “limited resources, limited size, and how?”, but I didn’t say “no”. A week goes by, and we meet for Life Science lab. They say, “We came up with our question. We want to know which paper airplane design flies the best.” And, that becomes the wind tunnel Science Fair Experiment. Not only did they learn a LOT about drag, design, pitch and yaw, but they learned much more about regulating air flow.
Where are they now? Garrison is working on his PhD at Notre Dame in Chemical Engineering, after receiving his Chemical Engineering degree from USC; and Stephen, after receiving his Electrical and Computer Engineering degree from Norwich University, a Senior Military college, is serving in the Army, hoping to be placed in the Signal Corp next February.
What else have we done? We’ve figured out how glowsticks work and what causes the different colors. We’ve asked the question about the best way to freeze ice cream.
And found out that liquid nitrogen is the quickest. We’ve asked about the best recipe for slime.
What recipe makes the best bubbles? What is the best way to clean our hands?
What parts of our garbage do worms like the best?
When my eldest got to college, he mentioned to me that many of the students in his Science classes didn’t know the Scientific Method. He said after 13 years, he knew it inside and out, and it gave him a huge advantage while taking his Science classes.
So, maybe you didn’t get to start in the elementary years! It is not too late! Start participating in Science Fairs! Start getting involved in high school Science!
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