Easy Science Fair Projects

You don't need to have a degree in the sciences in order to help your child with science fair projects. All you have to do is look around your house. While it is very enticing for a parent to buy a science experiment kit, but I would advise against it. First of all, a lot of the science fair project web sites will charge you a fee for their basic ideas. Parents, you must remember a few of those ideas from your own past! To be honest, I think the best projects are those that are simple and inexpensive. Of course, you will need to confer with your child's teacher as to the guidelines for your particular science fair, so that your child's project will conform to the theme of the fair.

With most science fair projects, you must have at least a couple of experiments or variations on one experiment. For small children, these are the simplest and least dangerous science projects to employ. These three sample science fair projects are ones that my children used when they were in elementary school. They are easily handled by small children and are very inexpensive.

One project involves growing seeds. The best seeds to use are beans, because they are large enough to see and handle. You can grow your bean seeds in different environments, which is what my daughter did one year. She decided to separate the beans into different paper cups, and feed them differently. All of the bean seeds were placed in the same sunny window. The control beans were watered with plain tap water. One cup was watered with a fertilizer-based water each day. Another cup was watered with Coca Cola. One more was watered with coffee. (It sounds crazy, I know.) Each day, she noted in a small notebook what happened with the seeds. At the end of the week, she brought all of them to school for her science fair.

(Any guess as to which cup of beans grew larger? The answer will be at the end of the article.)

Another good science fair project is one you can find in your own back yard. My daughter actually did this one last year when she was a junior in high school. She sectioned off the yard into thirty squares as if she were a forensic anthropologist. In a notebook, she wrote what she found in each square, including any animals, bugs, and plant life. In a couple of the squares, she dug down either six inches or more to report on what she found under the grass and soil. Our house is 80 years old, so she managed to find some old rusted metal that was deposited some time ago.

Your left over meals can also be a great tool you can use for a simple science fair project. Of course, you will need to have a constitution of steel, but growing mold makes a good project. Put different food items into small and clear containers. (These are easily obtained at the grocery store, are fairly cheap and you can throw them away later if you are queasy about washing them.) Label them with the contents and date. Instead of putting the containers into the refrigerator, keep them out, hopefully in a place that is undisturbed. Every day, mark what changes take place in your notebook. Note which foods decompose quickest and the texture and color of the mold.

Once you have the results of your science fair project, you will need to display your experiments and the results on poster board. Many office supply stores carry inexpensive poster board displays, where your child can put photos of their experiments, outlines of what they did, and attach any artwork or parts of their experiments. Your child can print out nice titles with your computer and use Sharpie pens and other markers to make the display attractive.

Most parents will experience an overwhelming urge to take over the science fair project, especially if the child is very young. They want the end result to look professionally done, and of course, they want their child to win the fair. To these parents, I would say, "back off." A room full of second graders should display science fair projects that look age appropriate. In the case of my kids, I would purchase whatever materials they needed, after they figured out what project they wanted to do. Then they conducted the experiment, and did all the work. I actually had a teacher chastise my son because she thought he only worked on his project one day, when he'd actually labored on it a week. In comparison to the other kids' projects, his was the only one that looked like a child did it.

It's easy to find simple science fair projects. Most of the time all you have to do is look around your home.

(The answer to the bean cup and which beans grew best? It was hard to believe, but it was the cup with the beans being fed Coca Cola!)