Tips for Parents on the Science Fair

Set your child up for Success

Your child will be more likely to have a positive Science Fair experience if you follow these tips:

• Be positive about your child's work.

• Be aware of the boy-girl syndrome; girls CAN do science projects also.

• Be aware of the "perfect project" syndrome; allow yourself and your child to make mistakes. Edison made many before he came up with the right answer!

• Be honest with your children: If you don't know the answer, tell your child.

• Look around for ideas: take youngsters to your garden, library, etc.

• Seek out people to help you, friends who could "assist" your child.

• Get books for your children, join and use the public library.

• Collect and save materials; free and inexpensive materials found around the home often work best.

• Work with materials; allow your child to "mess about" with materials without your direction.

• Allow your child time for thinking, exploring, and doing the project.

• Save time especially for repeating the experiment many times.

• Stress "how to" skills, e.g., observing rather than memorizing facts.

• Examine issues with moral consequences, e.g., animals being harmed for experimental purposes.

• Help children to keep a daily log of their research activities.

• Help children write a report of their science fair research.

• Go over the results of your child's research with your child in order to help him/her practice explaining their research.

• Go to the science fair with your child and take pictures of projects that you are all interested in. These will serve as a resource for future research ideas.

• Talk to your child about future science fair projects that they would like to do.

• Keep a log of ideas as they come up throughout the year.

• If the experiment "didn't work," discuss with your child why this is so. Encourage your child to explain the results and ENTER the project anyway!

• REMEMBER, this is a learning experience for you CHILD. Projects should be done and understood by your child. You are welcome to guide.

• There are many websites that have science fair ideas in many topics. Go to Google.com and type in "science fair projects" and several sites will appear.