Science Fair is coming up and your kiddos probably are already (or should be) working on their projects. Project should have been picked at the the beginning of the year because there are some that might take a few months to investigate. I thought I would poke around the web looking for tools to help with those projects. And remember parents- it's not your project.
There are plenty of sites out there for science fair project ideas but here are a few I found interesting:
Science Buddies Awesome site!
As a student I can take a survey that will help me decide on an area of interest for my project. I love the first question in the survey "When is the project due?". Too many don't realize the time involved in a good project. The following questions are grade level, did your teacher assign a particular area of science or are you free to choose and then what is your reading level. I went with these answers: due: more than a month, area: free to choose, grade level: 7, and reading level: average. After clicking continue it gave me a list of 26 questions that ranged from if I liked plants, the space program, working with batteries to have I ever worked with computer codes on a project not required by my teacher. I now have 586 recommendations! I went back and re-evaluated my "sometimes" answers and now I have 583. As a student I don't see myself going through all of these so I need to narrow the list a bit. If I choose an area of science, like Earth Science, I now have 61 suggestions, a more manageable list. I can go through the list and select favorites to help narrow even further. Once a project is selected you are shown a complete description of the project including time requirement, cost, difficulty. You are also given background, materials, procedure, how to make it your own, help and resources to learn more. I could go on and on about this site. It really is an excellent site for anyone interested in science or to encourage someone to consider science. TEACHERS: the section for teachers offers lots of downloadables, including rubrics for all steps of the project. Create a free account to access some of them. If you teach science definitely go visit Science Buddies.
Discovery Education collaborated with Scotch brand products offer a niceScience Fair Central. It has a neat little widget that will help you choose a project. No personal survey here but it will lead you through some ideas. However there is also an Idea Finder that will give you more detail and choices.
There are resources for parents and the science fair coordinator. You can find a sample judges scoring sheet as well. You do not need a Discovery Education account to access all of this. I love anything from Discovery Education because you can count on the credibility of the material.
Some others to peruse:
Science Fair Project Resource Guide - contains many good links to other resources.Need to create a graph? Create a Graph make bar, line, area, pie and XY. Easy to use.
Online Chart Tool - no account needed to create and save
Timelines? Try these:
Timeline Maker from SoftSchools.com- can have up to 12 events- other good resources here also
Science Images- FREE images, photos, sketches, diagrams- free to print or download
Science A-Z also has "printable and projectable" science diagrams. Be sure to check out their other resources also
Hopefully this is a list of sites that might be helpful to anyone involved in Science Fairs. Once I started looking there are many to be found.
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