Science Fair

Today was the science fair.  Parents were invited in the evening to view the projects and it was great!There were so many interesting projects.  My favorites were ones where I felt I could sense the curiosity and pleasure of the child in the project.  There was one about why you feel light in an elevator going up and heavy in a descending elevator, and another that tracked the progress of a mare's pregnancy.  I wished that they could be on display longer for the students themselves, because it seems it would be fun for them to "catch" each others interests in these areas as they do in so many others. 

The project that Moosh did was rich in learning for both of us.  When the notice first came about the fair, it raised the old spectre of all my unhappiness with school and I was tempted to opt out.  At her age, she hardly knew what a science project was and I knew that my involvement was crucial.  It raised the whole question of fostering academic achievement for me on a new level.  I decided it was important to see her participation as a great process to learn from and not as a pressure to achieve certain expectations.  The guidelines from the school seemed partly to be about limiting parental ambitions and making the activity non-competitive.  I liked that. 

As we went along, I realized that the way she felt doing it was important.  I wanted her to enjoy it and not feel anxiety about it, but she needed to be prompted: "Let's read this... Now tell me what you learned and I'll write it down." That sort of thing.  "Why don't you make a drawing that shows that?" Moosh's project question was "Why do bees die when they've just stung?"  Don't worry, it was not an experimental project; they were also allowed to do research projects.  We read books, she did an interview and watched a video and I found stuff for her on the internet.  She (we) made a notebook documenting her research and a display showing the results.  I was involved in all of it trying to guide and facilitate without imposing my ideas or expectations on it.  Seeking this balance was delicate and slightly exhilirating, as was seeing a man standing and reading the display with a look on his face like "Yeah!  Why do they?"  So sweet, the sharing of that simple curiosity. 

Another thing that comes as a sweet breath of fresh air:  the brown, clearly brown, skin in her drawings of embedded stingers and a bee that has just stung someone.  She did it without comment as if it were the most natural thing.

I'll post a few photos soon.