Family Art & Science Night at Mirada
Register to participate.
All 4th graders will display a project at the fair and must register in advance through this online form. We strongly encourage early registration in order to reserve your space. Final registration deadline is April 30.
Projects should be student driven with parent supervision.
Project ideas should come from the students, and the project should be driven by them. Parents should use their best judgment in deciding when to get involved, such as when there is a potential safety issue. For especially young kids, parents may provide some guidance, but it is important that the kids be able to call the project their own.
Independent Projects
The requirements for our science fair are to submit a project demonstrating your independent work. Make sure it's a reflection of your best quality work! Time will be provided in class for work on discussing the variables of your experiement and writing the report, however much of the work for this project will occur at home.
Need help choosing a topic?
When it comes to choosing a topic, the sky is the limit! What have you wondered about? The best topics come from your own genuine curiosity about how something works, or why something is the way that it is. But if you have trouble thinking of something on your own, the internet is full of resources to help you choose a topic.
We ask that you view various experiment ideas at:
http://www.education.com/science-fair/
Please understand that students will need to generate their own hypothesis to make sure they're testing different variables. This will allow for students to easily display results in a data table and then create graphs.
For example:
*Purpose/Question = What happens to gummy bears when they're soaked in different liquids?
*Hypothesis = If I soak gummy bears in water, salt water, vinegar and baking soda water overnight, then they will expand in size.
*Variables to Consider =
~~~~Control Variables (those that remain constant) =
time and brand of Gummy Bears
~~~~Independent Variable (liquids being tested) =
50 mL of water, 50 mL of salt water, 50 mL of vinegar, 50 mL of baking soda water
Once students have their topic chosen, register for your project on the school site. For those parents that are non-scientific please review this Non-Scientific Parents Guide
Judging and awards.
Our science fair goal is to encourage scientific exploration and discovery and promote a deep lifelong passion for science. Each participant will have an opportunity to briefly present their project to a judge. Our science fair judges will be using these rubrics to rate each project on the following criteria
We are planning for all to enjoy this evening! Awards will be given to 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th places as well as an assortment of other categories including: Honorable Mention (1 per class), Most High-Tech, Most Earth Friendly, and Most Resilient! May the odds be ever in your favor. Do your best and have fun!
Remember Photographs!
Pictures can be a very important part of conveying information. Try to take numerous pictures during all stages and happenings of your experimental procedures. These can be used on your display board and we encourage you to allow us to utilize some of them during the evening of the science fair. We will be displaying a slide show of photos and videos taken by you! Your photos can be uploaded through the link at the top of this page. Note: Some submissions may not be included in the show.
Past Winners!
Take some advice from our experienced Mirada scientists who participated in the Science Fair in previous years.
*Last year's top winner tested,"Does the amount of copper coils affect the amount of weight that an electromagnet can pick up?"
*One student experimented with, "Does the weight of a Rubik's Cube affect the solving time?"
*Caleb tested, "Which hair type shows the greatest effect by a Van de Graaff generator?"
*Brian asked, "Which public surface contains the most germs?"
Experiment Ideas
Students new to science experiments may be uncomfortable initially putting the whole project together themselves. www.Sciencebuddies.com has project ideas for all grade levels and are complete as a project.
4th Grade Ideas
If you're interested, here's a list of other web sites that might be fun: Other Web Sources
To keep the Scientific Method in your mind, please print out the Scientific Method flow chart as well as an 11x14 poster for your use.
Click on this version for a simplified version of what the scientific method is.
LET'S GET STARTED!!!
We are following the Scientific Method. We will try to break it down into the following steps. Follow the links for more discussion and for supporting documents, respectively.
Your Project Question
Background Research
Variables & Hypothesis
Experiment Procedure
Conducting Your Experiment
Presenting Data
Results and Conclusion
Project Display Boards Due 04/17
Use the rough draft project organizer available here (this is due back on two dates - Part 1 (#1-5) Fri. 4/13 and Part 2 (#6-7) Mon. 4/23!)
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