Students is grades 3 - 5 are required to complete a science project on their own.  These become their Science Fair projects. The students complete basic experiments on their own and present them to judges in an interview format.  It is a bit scary at first.  

Students in Kindergarten - 2nd grade are invited to participate but are not "judged" as the older kids are.  By participating at a young age they learn what it's all about and build an expectation for themselves.

I have the students complete Science Fair for a number of reasons.    

1)  The students learn to complete and document an experiment on their own. 

2)  They develop great communication skills.

3)  The confidence boost is huge when they have finished.

Science Fair starts in January.  Your child will receive a detailed packet explaining each step in the process.   They may choose either a traditional experiment or to create an engineering type of project.

In our daily classes students is grades 3 - 5 complete a weekly Lab Write-up that utilizes the Scientific Process.  This is the same process as a Science Fair project for these grades.  These student must ask and answer a question.  

For the engineering project students must follow the engineering design process that will use in class.