The Science Fair

This year Brandon wanted to enter his class science project into the district science fair. When we went to the school fair and saw his projects next to the other kids in his grade, we were very impressed. As was his teacher. She left various notes throughout the journal of his report commenting on how well he did in all of the areas he covered. But at the district level.....wow. These kids mean business.  He was pretty bummed out when he didn't win anything. We told him that he just needs to work harder next year. We practically had to beat the kid to get him to work on what he DID get done. So hopefully he's learned that if he really puts the effort into it next time around, he might do better. We're still so proud of his work though.

Chris brought Brandon, signed him in early in the morning, and waited for the judging to be over. Then after the judging I took the younger boys to the science fair to meet Chris and Brandon for the awards ceremony. Before they gave out the prizes, they had the Pacific Science Center there to put on an electricity in action show. But there was far more there for the boys to explore and they couldn't be bothered by what was being presented on the stage.

They got to dig around in boxes of dirt and compost to find worms and other bugs to examine through nifty little observation devices.  There were rubber tubs that contained pond water filled with pollywogs, mudfish, water skippers, and crayfish. The kids were allowed to play with the creatures and examine them too. The poor things were getting manhandled by tons of little kids. I felt bad for them.

Then they got to make air rockets out of paper. There were launching stations set up outside where the kids could send their creations sailing through the heavens. They ran back to shoot their rockets over and over and over again.

The boys had so much fun. I was really suprised at how much they had there to do. There were a bunch of booths that they didn't have a chance to get to. They didn't seem to mind though. It was a great (free) way to spend an afternoon.