All's Fair....

I completely forgot to post about our recent science fair - oops! Our local homeschool cooperative runs three learning fairs every year: biography, science, and international. Participation is optional, non-competitive and open to all ages.

Nightowl particpated in last year's science fair by creating a poster of the solar system. She was game this year as well. The topic she chose: shells. She had found a large cache of shells in a basket in our garage. She's been examining them for the past few months and was eager to share them with others.

In preparation we talked about what a science fair is, what she'd like to learn about the shells and what she'd like to present. Then we were off to the library for books, and the craft store for a display board.

We looked at the shell books together - but apart from that this was her thing. She decided she wanted to know:

1. What lives in a shell?
2. What color are shells?
3. What are shells called?

She discovered answers to these questions in our reading time together and created a display - on her own. I was called in to help with spelling but other than that I was hands off (the observer is never an easy role for me so I learned a little lesson too). As you can see she pulled it off and even felt comfortable taking questions from the audience:




Now she is excited about the International Fair. She's already selected her topic: The Philippines. She's into cooking right now so for her project she will be learning to make three different, traditional Filippino dishes. I suspect that I'll be called in to help decipher the recipes and handle the heat source. Sounds good.