I dread the time when teachers start sending stuff home for the annual science fair. I mean REALLY dread it!! Why you might ask, 1.)I am not very creative to come up with a project for my kids and 2.) I am the one that gets to help with put it together in the end. So when Tanner said that he HAD to do this year, since his teacher was in charge, I panicked. Then he surprised me by saying that he had an idea in mind and preceded to tell me what he wanted to do. Yippee, I didn't have to come up with a project for him! He wanted to do the water cycle and use different liquids to see if they all would have the same effect to produce the water cycle. He knew how to make the little green houses that we would plant some grass in, with some liquid in the bottom and watch to see what happened. We started collecting small bottles, think SoBe bottles, because we would need about three per green house and we were making three green houses.
We started the project a month before it was due, giving us plenty of time to hopefully have some grass growing in the greenhouses. Unfortunately there was only a few sprigs of grass growing in two bottles in time for the fair. (Although now in the water greenhouse we have tons of grass growing, only a week LATE!) He watched and journaled every week, to see what was happening in the greenhouses. If the other liquids worked like the water worked, then there would be condensation in the top of the bottle and then it would drip down and water the grass seeds and start the whole process over again. After the four weeks all of the greenhouses were working and doing the water cycle, he just didn't have a lot of grass growing. But he did find out that other liquids will do the water cycle and that it doesn't just have to be water.
These were the greenhouses that he made. You can see that we have a one that is water, soda, and juice.The night of the fair we arrived and right off he noticed that his project wasn't were it was during judging time earlier that day. That could only mean two things, a win, or an honorable mention. He couldn't wait to eat dinner and had to go find his project, it was on a honorable mention table. He got a honorable mention for "Best Life Science" project. He was so excited!!! And I was quite surprised, it was really wasn't a hard project.
Here he is at the Science Fair with his "winning" project!I am so proud of him, he worked really hard on it!!! Way To Go Tanner-man!!!
*On another note, Tanner also earned his Bear badge in Cub scouts last night!!!!
