Science Fair 2011

The Heartland Homeschoole group of Lincoln hosted a Science fair for grades kindergarten through seventh grade.  I asked Jocelyn if she wanted to participate....even though she had no clue what it was.  Of course she said yes, like she always does, so we embarked on the journey of preparing a science presentation.  I gave her several options of what she could do and she decided to see what type of water helped green bean plants grow the best.  Here are pictures from her experiment followed by descriptions of what she did.  The results of the competition...as well as her video presentation are at the end. 

She planted 3 green bean seeds in 18 different cups. 

She then watered the cups....she had 6 different types of water-- kool-aid, purified water, tap water, miracle grow water, distilled water, and salt water.  She watered each of these types of water in 3 different cups so she could have controls.

After 7 days she started measuring the growth.  Her tap water cup was the first to have growth.

 

Each day she recorded the growth of each plant.

 A picture of her plants...1 week prior to the Science Fair.  

The winner of her water experiment was tap water...Sean thinks we have something in our water since we have well water....miracle grow water didn't grow very much...kind of surprised by that.  Purified water and kool-aid had growth in two different cups and distilled water only one.  Salt water had no growth.

Her booth at the Science Fair.

Making goop at the Science Fair...they had lots of exhibits...this one was from Things to Do in this Town.  They had the zoo there with animals to pet; Pioneers Park with a puppet show, some exhibits from the Nebraska Historical Society; Edgerton Science Center from Aurora with an electricity ball, and musicians playing.  45 students had booths at the fair.

 

Jocelyn answering questions from her judges.

 

and the winner is.....well they all could have gotten the same ribbon....so there wasn't a 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on.  Jocelyn did really well and got a blue ribbon.  She was downgraded a few points because she didn't have a data book.  They asked her about that and she said she put it on her demonstration board...(the measurements she recorded) but apparently they were looking for an actual book.  Who knew?  Oh well.  The other big ribbon was for Kid's Choice.  All of the participants were given a voting card and the kid's voted for Jocelyn for the best exhibit in the K-2 grade category.  She also got a bag of sour gummy worms (I believe she liked that more than the ribbons).

Kid's Choice Winners:  I guess she didn't know she was supposed to hold up her ribbons

 

When we were leaving she said she was so glad that she did the science fair.  She has never done anything like this before and we were really proud that she followed through and enjoyed herself in the process.  What a great learning experience!

And the moment you have been waiting for..............drum roll please.......since most of you missed her presentation.....you can watch it!!!!! It got kind of long, so I didn't video tape the very end.  The judges asked the kids a lot of questions.  She wanted to use notecards, but in the end she didn't use them at all.  They interrupted her about half way through, but she was able to answer their questions.  Enjoy!