Science Fair

Ryder's teacher told her students that they only had to participate in the science fair if they wanted to, so of COURSE Ryder wanted to!  He'd been watching Mark Rober's videos about making elephant toothpaste and was just dying to make some himself, so he began making lists of things I needed to buy for him: namely, a flask, hydrogen peroxide, and potassium iodide.  (Thank goodness for Amazon.  Otherwise I have NO IDEA where I would have found that stuff.)

He spent a couple different Saturdays experimenting with it all while Craig filmed him.  (I had to buy both ingredients again when he decided what I'd gotten wasn't potent enough.)  And then Craig also helped him write up his findings and lay it all out on a tri-fold.  It was a pain, but Ryder's enthusiasm never waned.  And Craig did the bulk of the work with him, so I can't complain (too much).

In what can only be described as a labor of love, Craig also put together a video montage of the various experiments and looped it, so Ryder could have that playing as part of his display, so that was very cool.  My way of helping was to drop all of this off at the school so it wouldn't be subject to the abuse of Ryder's classmates (one of whom managed to punch the trifold before he even got it home (???)).  And then I hung out at the park with Colton and Camille enjoying the unseasonably warm day...

Usually I'm either hiking or kayaking here, but just sitting and reading a book is pretty nice, too!

We met Ryder in the evening for the actual fair and enjoyed seeing what the other students had done-- things like seeing if crickets ate more while hearing different music, or what happens to eggs when you leave them submerged in various substances, or can people tell the difference between the scent of a real lemon and a fake lemon scent?  We wandered around looking at all the displays while smugly patting ourselves on the back that Ryder's was definitely The Best. 

They had judges come around and talk with each kid about their project, and then they came up with awards for all of them.  Ryder's award was something about being very poised while explaining his project to the judges, which I thought was great.  Evidently Ryder did, too:

As we were driving home, Ryder told us that as far as he was concerned, he had totally won the science fair.  This, in spite of the fact that there were clearly NO winners and everyone got a medal.  I love his confidence!

I'm glad the teacher made it so fun for everyone!  And I'll be even more glad to not be scouring Amazon looking for high concentrate potassium iodide any more!