Science Fair Made Easy (and Free!)

No school project strikes fear in hearts of kids, parents and teachers quite like the science fair project! It just sounds daunting! All those steps, the board, notebook, pictures! I remember quite clearly fretting over my own science fair projects in school, although to be fair, my first one wasn't until sixth grade.

Now, kids from Kindergarten on up are exposed to the process of a science fair project, at least at our school. I have to say, this would have been very helpful for me instead of trying to figure it all out on my own in sixth grade! And this was B.G. (before Google!).

At our school we have very specific expectations for each grade level regarding the science fair. Every teacher is expected to complete one class project along with some other student activity. In second grade, our job is to complete the class project and then have each student create a mini-show board of that project. I believe third grade does the same, but they add the notebook, so that by fourth/fifth grade the students have been exposed to and taken part in the science project process and it's not quite the fear-inducing assignment that it sometimes becomes.

I have a science project display board that I keep from year to year. It's a lot of work to re-create this thing every year and I really don't see the need to do so. We do the ol' flowers in food coloring experiment every year and the kids really dig it! I actually don't show them the finished board as we're completing parts of the project. We talk through the whole thing and I take notes on the whiteboard as we go along and take pictures of the flowers each day.

Then finally, I share the completed board with them - lots of oooh's and ahhh's usually! Then I give them the copies of their mini-project and we glue it all in place following the example on the big board. I try to convince them to keep it in a safe place until third grade to use a model when they have the option of doing their own project.

If you don't have access to a color printer, you can definitely print these in black and white and have the kids color over them. If this looks like something you'd like to do, feel free to download the mini student version {HERE} from GoogleDocs and you can find the full size version {HERE} to make your own class display board.

Hope that helps make the dreaded science project a little less dreadful!