Sweet Little Scientist

A few weeks ago, a paper came home in Bug’s school folder.

Now, if you have kids you know that approximately 10,000 papers come home from school each week. Literally, the sound I hear when I open their folders is the sound of thousands of trees dying. It’s terrible. 99.9% of these papers go directly to the recycle bin. They do not pass GO, they do not collect $200. They are the bane of my existence and it seems I cannot throw them out as fast as they accumulate.

And don’t even get me started on the fundraisers. Seriously, they should give parents the option of donating $100 at the beginning of the school year to opt out of ALL FUNDRAISERS. I wouldn’t even think twice about writing that check.

So, anyways back to this paper. It was green. And said something about a Science Fair. It was half-way to the recycling when Bug shrieked “NOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo! Mama! Don’t throw that away! I have to do the Science Fair!!! PLEEEEEEEEAAAAAAASSSSSSEEEEEE!”

Really? You want to do the science fair?

“Oh YES Mama! It’s going to be SO FUN! We just HAVE TO DO IT!”

Yeah. Mmmk.

I put the paper aside, thinking I could toss it later when she wasn’t looking. But two days later she was still asking about the Science Fair. And one week later she was STILL ASKING about the Science Fair. And TWO WEEKS LATER, when she was still asking about the Science Fair….I caved in, and registered her for the Science Fair.

Bug had gone on a trip to the Natural History Museum with her Grandma and Grandpa recently for her birthday and so she knew just what she wanted to do for the Science Fair: She wanted to make fossils.

And so, one week before the Science Fair, I went to the library and got some books about dinosaurs and fossils, and one book in particular even had an activity all laid out to recreate how fossils are made.

Score!

Grandma even had small toy dinosaur skeletons at her preschool that we could use to make the imprints.

Double score!!

One quick trip to the craft store and we were ready to get our science on.

Clay. Dinosaurs. Plaster of Paris.

We took photos from her trip to the museum and put them on one side labeled “What I Saw”.  In the middle we put the process for making our own fossils and labeled it “What I Did”. And on on the other side we wrote a few facts she learned about types of fossils and how they are made and labeled that “What I Learned”.

And Saturday morning she was off to the fair!

I was expecting….I don’t know like 25 kids maybe? I mean, it’s elementary school and it wasn’t MANDATORY.

But I guess we live in OverAchiever-Ville, because the place. was. packed.  The entire gym was packed with projects, the entire cafeteria too!!

It was science-mania!!

Here are the girls with Bug’s project. Vi didn’t want to do her own, but she did help make a few fossils for the display as well and was quite pleased with herself.

Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Thomas came by a little later to see the fair and hear Bug’s presentation formally.

We walked around and saw all kinds of neat projects and fun experiments, some simpler and some much more complicated than our own (from a potato clock to a robot that could solve a Rubik’s cube!) It was a really fun morning, I have to admit.

(Vi’ took this photo with my phone, so cute!)

(Bug with her best buddy from her class, Aspen!)

Are they the sweetest, cutest scientists ever, or what?!?

Who knows, maybe I will actually look at papers in their folders from now on. Perhaps they don’t all have to go straight in to the recycle bin. Perhaps other fun surprises await us this school year!

(But I’m STILL not doing any fundraisers.)