When Emma's school
first announced at the PTA meeting that there would be a science fair I was pretty excited. I went right up to the lady in charge and told her I wanted to help. As time passed I unfortunately grew less interested in helping the school and more interested in helping Emma. I had every intention of doing the bulk of this project during Christmas break. Well that came and went and so did the idea of getting it done during the break. Finally a few weeks before I borrow a book from a friend that was on age appropriate projects. The picture on the bed was the start of all of it.
Brent, lucky for me, jumped in and helped me out. I think all in all Emma
had a good time doing the project. She was interested in what was happening and wanted to do everything mostly on her own. The night of the science fair had been a long day for me and I was in a sour mood. Emma on the other hand was so excited I couldn't settle her down. Brent took us to go get dinner and a little caffeine which helped considerably with my sour mood. The MPR was packed full of people and you could hardly move around. We stayed long enough for Emma to present her project to passers by which was mainly parents who had kids with projects close to Emma's and a few wonderful women from the ward. After she got her awar
d for participation we hung around for a while longer and then left. We left early because we were all pretty done with being there and Emma was not feeling really well. When we got outside Emma said she was feeling better but she went home and crashed so I know she was beat! There were a few things about this project that made me very happy. One was the fact that none of these projects were a contest. There was no first or second and everyone received an award with some coupons for restaurants. I liked this because you knew parents totally helped with projects.
Granted some were obviously not helped much while some were quite visually obvious that the parents did most if not all the work. Another reason I liked that there was no contest is because I'm pretty sure with everyone there that Emma's would have not come in first and then we deal with a 7 year old not understanding that she didn't come in first. I'm not saying that competition is unhealthy but I think at this age it just needs to be limited. The other reason I thought the science fair was good was because it showed me especially Emma's strengths and weaknesses. I felt that as a parent I learned WAY more through this process than she did and not about celery! I glad we did it and I'm glad it's over. I'm just not sure we are going to do it next year!
first announced at the PTA meeting that there would be a science fair I was pretty excited. I went right up to the lady in charge and told her I wanted to help. As time passed I unfortunately grew less interested in helping the school and more interested in helping Emma. I had every intention of doing the bulk of this project during Christmas break. Well that came and went and so did the idea of getting it done during the break. Finally a few weeks before I borrow a book from a friend that was on age appropriate projects. The picture on the bed was the start of all of it. 
Brent, lucky for me, jumped in and helped me out. I think all in all Emma 
had a good time doing the project. She was interested in what was happening and wanted to do everything mostly on her own. The night of the science fair had been a long day for me and I was in a sour mood. Emma on the other hand was so excited I couldn't settle her down. Brent took us to go get dinner and a little caffeine which helped considerably with my sour mood. The MPR was packed full of people and you could hardly move around. We stayed long enough for Emma to present her project to passers by which was mainly parents who had kids with projects close to Emma's and a few wonderful women from the ward. After she got her awar
d for participation we hung around for a while longer and then left. We left early because we were all pretty done with being there and Emma was not feeling really well. When we got outside Emma said she was feeling better but she went home and crashed so I know she was beat! There were a few things about this project that made me very happy. One was the fact that none of these projects were a contest. There was no first or second and everyone received an award with some coupons for restaurants. I liked this because you knew parents totally helped with projects. 
Granted some were obviously not helped much while some were quite visually obvious that the parents did most if not all the work. Another reason I liked that there was no contest is because I'm pretty sure with everyone there that Emma's would have not come in first and then we deal with a 7 year old not understanding that she didn't come in first. I'm not saying that competition is unhealthy but I think at this age it just needs to be limited. The other reason I thought the science fair was good was because it showed me especially Emma's strengths and weaknesses. I felt that as a parent I learned WAY more through this process than she did and not about celery! I glad we did it and I'm glad it's over. I'm just not sure we are going to do it next year!
2 comments:
I'm glad you were excited about it. I'm not looking forward to science fairs . . . not at all!
how fun! i get to do a class science project with my first graders and looking forward to it! love ya Emma!
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