Day 131, Year 9: First Grade Science Fair
Date: Friday, February 28, 2014
Weather: Blue Skies and Sunshine, High in the 20’s F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
Today was the First Grade Science Fair at Sam’s elementary school. Ollie and I went to story time at the library, headed home to eat lunch, and then drove to the outskirts of Boston to pick Mark up at a T-station. Things did not go quite as smoothly as hoped as I followed the highway signs to the T-station while Mark went to the next T-station at the end of the line. This is where we thought the highway signs would direct me, but not so. But even with the mix-up, we still made it back to East Falmouth just in time to see Sam’s science fair project in the short 2:30 to 3:00 pm window. We got there at about 2:55—barely in time, but we did get to see his project as well as the projects of some of his friends. Sam’s project was ‘developed’ while we were in Culebra. On Flamenco Beach, the sand was so fine and Sam decided that it must come from shell and coral. He noted that back home on Cape Cod, the sand is ‘lumpier’ (his term) and must come from rock. He brought some Flamenco Beach sand home and compared it to sand from a local beach under a high powered microscope. He then put some sand from each environment in a jar of water and added vinegar. He knew from previous experiments that vinegar can dissolve shell but not rock. He was right. The jar of sand from Culebra fizzed and got cloudy when he added vinegar, but the jar of sand from Cape Cod had no reaction to the vinegar. When I arrived in the early morning before Sam and Jonah left for school, I helped Jonah set up an experiment as well. We put an unpeeled Clementine in a pitcher of water to see if it would sink or float. Jonah thought it would sink, but it did not. I then asked him what he thought would happen if we peeled a Clementine and put it in the water. He thought it would float. It did at first, but at the end of the day the unpeeled Clementine was still floating and the peeled one had sunk. We have to do some follow-up to help him understand why this happened, but the important thing today was to give him a science fair ‘project’ so he didn’t feel left out. Ollie got into the act by adding individual pieces of Clementine to Jonah’s water pitcher. Now everyone was engaged in scientific activity.
Heather invited us to stay for an Indian dinner feast. Jed picked up the Indian food on his way home from work and we all did our part to devour it. Tomorrow Sam takes his Science Fair project to the high school where first graders from across the city are bringing theirs for display. Heather, Jed, and boys are then headed to the Outer Cape for tomorrow night and Sunday. Heather has to moderate a panel discussion after a film that WCAI is sponsoring on Sunday afternoon and the housing is offered as part of the deal. Mark and I hope to take Sam and Jonah to a live owl presentation tomorrow afternoon that is on the way to their overnight destination and then meet up with Heather and Jed. Unfortunately the program is not for children under 5 so we can’t take Ollie. But hopefully he will spend that time having a good afternoon nap.
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| 140228 Day 131 Cape Cod, USA–Science Fair at Sam's School |
