2013 Science Fair

While one girl and her Momma have been invested in the fashion show of late, the other girl and her Dadda have been just as busy.

I was sad to see that this year's homeschool Science Fair overlapped with one of our Trashion/Refashion Show rehearsals, but such is life--one must choose one's commitments, and then commit to one's choices. However, having only one kid in the Science Fair this year made this year's Science Fair a fine project for just that kid and her Dadda to do together. I left it all to them--I incorporated some time for Willow to work on her project during our school days, and I helped her write a reference guide, and she dictated her report to me, and I helped her rehearse her presentation, but she and Matt did all the hands-on dirty work, which included making several paper airplanes, flying each of them 20 times and measuring each flight, averaging and line graphing all the flights, and making some pretty kick-ass graphics to represent the data. It's good to have a graphic designer for a father!

Here's Will rehearsing her presentation, the day of the Science Fair:


She was really proud of her project (as she should be!), and pretty excited to share it--

--and, okay, maybe a little nervous, too--

--at least until she's distracted by Matt:

We call this the Willow Death Glare. We are often its victims.

 I wish I could show you Willow's actual presentation, which she did an amazing job at, so comfortable and confident and focused in front of all those eyes, but there are a bunch of other kids in it. It's super-cute watching her coach all the kids through the making of the Dynamic Dart--I wasn't sure how this part would go, since I know from experience that students will get everything wrong that it's possible to get wrong when following instruction, with seemingly every student doing something uniquely incorrect all at the same time. And yep, that's how it went here, but Willow went around and helped kids who got stuck, and a couple of parents helped out, and in the end, everyone had their very own Dynamic Dart.

Fortunately, the other side of the conference room was free--a perfect place, really, for the flying of paper airplanes:

Across town, Syd and I finished our rehearsal, ran to the car, sped over to the library, screeched into a parking spot, and galloped inside, just missing the last presentation, but just in time for the socialization. Homeschoolers are a diverse bunch, and although we see friends from this group a few times a week, there are other friends that we only see at these types of events, so there's a lot of playing to get done in a short amount of time.

And, of course, a lot of smiles to let out:

What can I say? Science makes us happy!