Solano County Science/STEM Fair

http://www.thereporter.com/general-news/20160415/science-is-cool-at-solano-county-stem-fair

So another year has passed and another Science Fair is in the books. This one was the best one yet and I hope that it indicates an upward trend for years to come.

There were two high schools entered, mine and another rival that we used to compete with years ago.  The quality of projects far surpassed my expectations.

There were kids from three local middle schools because the event is open to kids from 6-12th grade.  We had a decent turnout last night; less than expected probably due to the road construction which makes the 7 minute trip take almost 30 each way.  The date of completion is August 2016 and I'm not holding my breath that they will actually be done on time.  It's been a long year with greater than average absenteeism for students, probably due to kids missing the bus and parents not wanting to make the hour long trip to get them to school.  I can't say I blame them too much.

The newspaper reporter came out and made it sound like President Obama and I are besties.  He was funny because he said he only had a little time to stay and then ended up staying almost 2 hours interviewing me, the other teacher who helped me run the event and numerous students.  I guess he got caught up in the excitement.  He told a story about when he was in 9th grade, living in Turkey, and about the science fair project he did with algae and a microscope.  He had some vivid details from almost 50 years ago about his project and we talked about how something like this, even though kids complain about how much they hate it, can really leave an impression on someone for a very long time.

My youngest son entered the fair for the first time this year and was excited to win 3rd place in the Physical science division for middle school.  His project was right next to the 1st and 2nd place winners on the table.

He had a good time handing out all of the other prizes as the students came up.

Afterwards we spent an hour cleaning up all 270 projects and I had no trouble falling asleep last night.  It's too bad my UP band activity tracker's battery died on me, because I think I got at least a million steps in yesterday.