Science Fair Season Recap

Science fair season is now over and my 10 year old had a great time.  For her project she chose to test glucose levels in various food items as a way of determining which foods have more sugar.  She used tap water as a control for low glucose levels and a glucose tablet as a control for high glucose levels.  She ran through three trials and in the end gained a much better understanding of which foods are higher in sugar.  In addition, through her background research she gained an understanding of why it is important to know how much sugar is in food.

My daughter's science fair poster.

She had a lot of fun with this project, and put in a lot of work.  Her efforts paid off when she earned first place in 5th grade at the school level, thus advancing her to the regional level.  At the regional level she earned third place.  The ribbons are great, but the important part of a science fair project is having fun with an investigation.  She had a lot of questions going in, answered some of them, and came up with new questions to test in the future.  That's what science is all about and science fairs are a great way to encourage kids to investigate a scientific problem and work toward a conclusion.