Science Fair

The long awaited science fair has officially come and gone.  Our big homeschool group had one last yer, but we just had too much on our plates at the time and didn't participate.  I rather regretted it and made resolves to be involved this year.  A couple months ago I asked the kids what they wanted to do.  They all were really enjoying things they were currently studying, so it was an easy choice to make.  Oh, I guess I should say it was a science/history fair.

Isaac was trying his hand at chemistry.  He had done some neat chemical experiments and was rather proud of the fact that he was learning to balance chemical equations.  His favorite equation he balanced was photosynthesis, but we couldn't really demonstrate that well.  We looked online for awhile, but it turned out to be a little tricky.  We needed safe household ingredients, so a lot of the flashy ones were out.  We ended up going with baking soda + vinegar + water yields sodium acetate + carbon dioxide + even more water and used it to blow up a balloon from a 2-liter bottle and also to pop a bag.  He made a great display and did a thorough job of explaining how you can tell a chemical reaction has taken place and why the molecules have to be balanced.  He brought supplies to blow up two balloons and several bags and always gathered an audience to watch.

Makenna chose rocks.  Her favorite lesson during a geology unit was about how to identify rocks by their hardness.  She painted her main poster with her title and put an example of Moh's Scale of Hardness.  Then she dictated the why and how to me.  She also had an audience pleasing factor.  She had 5 different rock samples and a penny so people could try and identify them by seeing which ones scratch and which get scratched and then find the samples on the scale.  

Jess wanted to do flags.  She was just learning about Betsy Ross in history.  I was rather glad.  When she was really little she loved flags.  She used to point out everyone she saw, and driving around on base, there were LOTS.   So she painted a flag like the original and a current one and wrote a few sentences about it.  It was just perfect for a kindergarten project.