Knowing the difference between guiding/teaching your child and doing too much can be very challenging for parents. Kids need their parents to help them learn the principles and steps involved in science fair projects. However, when parents are (with good intentions) too involved in the project the children may struggle to explain their project to the judges. Finding this balance is a learning process that parents often don’t get quite right the first time. Be patient with yourself. Like everything else, it gets easier with practice! The following points are designed to help out figure out how to find that balance and how to help you and your child have fun with being a part of this year’s Science Fair!

Safety: Make sure the project is safe for both the student and anyone or anything involved with or around the project. Information on what is considered acceptable for a science fair project can be found in the Information Packet. You need to consider what is safe for your student based on his/her ability, knowledge and maturity.

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Helping vs. Doing: While the project is primarily the responsibility of the student, parents are encouraged to help their children along the way but not to do the project for them. The background work and design (reading, asking questions and planning), experiments and data analysis should be done by the student and not the parent/guardian. Where a parent can become involved includes:

Helping the student obtain or understand the background material (helping them obtain books at the library and understand material pertaining to their project);

Guiding the student during the design of the project (“Do you think that it is a good idea to mix those two items?” or “Are you sure that you want to use that material to make your project or would a stronger material be better?” or “I don’t think that testing the explosive capacity of different volumes of gasoline is a good idea.”);

Supervising the student during an experiment to ensure they are doing things safely;

Lending an extra hand as needed;

Helping the student with the more mundane parts of creating the display (typing or making figures on the computer for them but making sure that the analysis, words and design are their ideas and not those of the adult).

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Fun: Remember that this is supposed to be fun for the student. If the student is not having a good time doing it, they will think less of science, learning and doing extracurricular events in general. This is opposite of the goal of the science fair. If your child seems discouraged because things are not going as planned, try to encourage him/her by letting him/her know that this happens to scientists all the time. Many times things do not go “as planned” in science; if they did, why would scientists even bother to do the experiments? Results may not prove the student’s hypothesis. This is not uncommon and may lead to a greater understanding of the project or a much more interesting discovery. Groundbreaking discoveries often come about as a result of things that were NOT expected by everyone. That is what makes doing science so interesting. Finally, remember that doing the science fair project will need to be broken up into several different work sessions so that the student has fun and is not pushed beyond his or her attention span or interest level.

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Time: Be sure that your child selects a project that can be completed in a reasonable time. Students can have a lot of things that fill up their day (school, homework, sports, music, chores, fun time, etc…) and adding another activity can be tough. Nothing can be more discouraging to a child than to not have enough time to do all of the things that he/she needs to complete or to feel that he/she is being forced to do something. As a parent, it can also be hard just to find the time to work on the project with many other things going on. Nagging your child day after day that he/she has to work on his/her science fair project can be frustrating. You can help your child to think of a project that is interesting and limited in scope and time. A quick experiment that demonstrates an understanding of the Scientific Method and knowledge in a subject is better than trying to cover a large amount of material with many experiments and never having the time to complete the project. Remember to start working on the project early because it is something that will need to be broken down into manageable chunks of time and can’t be knocked off in a day or two.

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Developmental Issues: The physical and mental maturity and scientific knowledge can differ dramatically and it is best for the parent to think about this as you will best know your child. Talk about what he/she would like to do for a project before he/she gets too involved in it. Do you think that your child has the patience to complete the project that he/she is proposing? Does your child have the physical and mental ability to SAFELY perform his/her science fair project?

Try to break up the project to chunks of time that are reasonable for their age. While a 17-year-old student might be able to concentrate on something for an hour or more, a 10 year old might need to work in 15 or 20 minute sessions. Help your child to organize the project into manageable sessions. If you are unsure, guess at a good session length and keep an eye on his/her interest level. If his/her mind begins to wander or he/she is getting really frustrated and stuck, set a shorter time for the next session. Wrap things up, discuss what your child learned, and prepare for the next session.

Teach the Scientific Method: Help your child learn about what makes a good experiment. Teach words like hypothesis and procedures. Make sure he/she understands that a science fair project isn’t just building a model of something (you can’t just build an airplane!) but actually testing at least two different situations and then comparing the results. Help your child learn about the idea of “controls.” Make sure you both review the Information Packet to learn more about the Scientific Method.

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Choosing a Topic: Encourage your child to think about things that he/she enjoys doing or is interested in when selecting a topic. Put your child in charge of choosing what he/she wants to do but also guide him/her through turning the idea into a simple science project he/she can complete easily. When kids get excited about the science fair, they can have an explosion of ideas about all of the things they want to do.

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Some ideas may not be true science projects. Building an airplane or volcano or growing crystals from a solution show off technical skill but are not scientific experiments since they do not test anything. If your child is stuck, you can help guide the student’s thinking and help him/her turn that interest idea into an experiment. Growing crystals from one solution may not be an experiment but perhaps you can help him/her decide on some ingredient or step that he/she can vary so that he/she would actually be testing something. Different solutions, temperatures or humidity levels may affect how fast crystals grow, or if they grow at all. Remind your child that he/she need to collect data. They can measure the room temperature, the amount of ingredients, the weight of the crystals they grow, and how long it took. Suddenly, your child can come up with a hypothesis and test it –he/she is doing science. If your child wants to plant some peas, you might help him/her think of things he/she can test -- the effects of changing the amount of sunlight or different types of plant food on plant growth. Would a plant grow faster on a window sill or at the dark end of a room? Does plant food really help a plant grow faster? Does a certain kind of plant food work better than another for a specific plant? A simple idea can turn into one or many science fair projects.

Try to limit the number of conditions (tests) that are going to be tested without discouraging your child’s interest in the project. Testing a lot of different things could:

1) Make the project take longer

2) Result in more data than your child can analyze

3) Just be too hard for your child to keep track of.

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Have the child figure out how much data his/her project will generate - 10 different plant foods times 3 different light levels means 30 different groups of pea plants to keep track of for several weeks. Can the child make sense of all of this data, or should he/she simplify things a bit?

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Research: Help your child learn how to research a subject for the science project. He/she has probably had to do some research at school, but supervise him/her at the library to make sure he/she knows how to look up information on the chosen subject. Encourage him/her to speak with a librarian and ask for help so he/she will feel comfortable doing this in the future. You may want to help him/he stay focused as he/she combs through all the books to find the sections that directly apply to his/her project. Help your child work through what he/she is reading and figure out how it applies to the ideas he/she is developing. Your child may also use the internet to find information. Be there to help and supervise his/her time on the internet.

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The Experiment or Study: Supervise and support your child when he/she executes the experiments or gathers data. Make sure your child is not in danger of hurting self or anyone else. Remind to always record the date, the data and any observations. Be enthusiastic and encourage even when things do not go as planned. Things break, tests fail, or the whole project may suddenly seem confusing. And that happens. We may understand this but your child might not. Encourage him/her to try again. Be there to enjoy your child's blossoming scientific mind!

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The Results and the Display: Make sure your child reads through the elements of the display. Make sure your child uses it to check his/her work. Offer suggestions on what you think makes a display look nice (neat, organized, colorful, and creative). Help your child figure out ways to organize and display collected data using graphs, tables, and charts. You know what your child might struggle with. Maybe he/she needs help analyzing or understanding the data (teach them, don’t tell them). You can help type – but use your child’s own words. You can help your child make tables and graphs – once he/she explains to you what he/she is graphing and why. You can help avoid stressful math and handwriting challenges and still make sure your child is doing the work. If you have any questions about helping your child with his/her project display, please contact us at http://ccssciencefair.com.

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Sit back and bask in the glory of your child’s success! After you have helped your student prepare his/her display for judging, enjoy what has just been accomplished! The fact that your child has just made it through a science fair project from start to finish is fantastic! Many students get more excited about the science fair as they work on it and see that they are really creating something. They also enjoy seeing all the other displays and get ideas for next year’s project. Take lots of pictures and pile on the praise for your child’s hard work. Focus on his/her success in finishing the project. Remind your child that he/she is a scientist. Remind that while winning is nice, just completing the science fair project is a success because he/she did what it took to learn something new.