A Science Week!

It was a busy week for the Nortons.  And it was full of science!  At our school all 5th graders do science projects for the science fair.   Then the weekend after our school science fair, is a Shoreline STEM festival where they can present their projects again.
I sort of picked Libby's project and micromanaged her the whole time.  But she did the actual planting, the watering, the recording of data (she missed like 10 days in a row...), and wrote the text for her board.  I helped with the cutting and organizing for both Libby's board and Sarah's board.  (I can't see them go to all this work and have a terrible board...)
It was really busy on the day and night of the school science fair, and I didn't have pockets.  So I never got a picture of Libby's board.
But here are her plants...She was comparing organic fertilizer, Miracle Grow, and a plant with no fertilizer.  They are all pea plants.  A surprise to both of us, the control did better than the other two.  Significantly better.  This is good news, since we just did a big unit on how we need to keep chemicals out of our water supply--and fertilizers are a big problem.  Of course there could be other factors involved here.  But it was a  fun project.  I transplanted the peas to the yard yesterday.  We will see how they do outside.

After our school science fair in the evening, we had a STEM event put on by the district.  I manned one of the stations.  It was diving board dominos.  So fun!  You had to stack dominos and see how far out you could suspend them.  Derek got really into it.  He stayed until he beat the record.  He made it 17.5 cm out!

So the Shoreline STEM festival required an advanced application.  Sarah and her friend Malene wanted to do it.  Of course I said yes.  Malene's mom helped them with the application and then Derek and I helped with the experiment and the board.  It was kind of gross to have cups of stinky liquids and egg shells in our kitchen, but we survived.  But I forgot to have Libby submit an application.  So she missed out on the chance to present.  (Which she was really sad about, since she had to stay home and do LOTS of yard work for the morning.  We got there close to the end.)

Meridian Park got a participation award, so I got to help receive it.  Fun times!