One Big Mess

Today Bryanna and I FINALLY finished her science fair project. What a task! When she glued the final piece onto her board, I looked at her and said “YAY!! You are all done!” She looked at me with her big brown eyes, took a deep breath, and said “I never thought I’d hear that word! You have no idea how good it feels to hear the word DONE!” She really worked hard on this project. I am so proud of her and her work!

We started the process a little later than we wanted to. The month of December really threw our whole schedule for a loop. So “Us Two Girls” have been busting some major butt trying to get this project done in the past couple of weeks.

Before I go into all of the fun details, I just had to share this picture. I happen to see this drawing in Bryanna’s notebook when we were cleaning up our science project explosion that we created in the living room today.

Part of me had to laugh because I remember despising science as a kid. I’ve learned to enjoy it more over the years but honestly, it’s not my favorite subject. What I find so funny about her drawing, is that she claims to hate science but she’s so dang good at it. Ever since she was in second grade, she became fascinated with the world around her. One of her favorite activities that she still talks about to this day was the science bags she brought home every day. Those bags opened her eyes to a whole new world of learning. Bryanna started questioning things. Her curiosities lead her to new learning experiences. Of course her favorite subject matter usually revolves around plants, animals, or the planet.

This year Bryanna chose to focus her science project on the oil spill. She was devastated to hear how the oil spill was affecting the ocean and all of the sea life. The more she learned about it, the more upset she got. Although she is a California girl at heart, she took pride in moving to Louisiana. She was so sad to see how the people were being affected. The whole ordeal really had an impact on her.

Is there any way to help clean up oil? With one question in mind, a whole experiment came to life. The purpose of her research was to see whether laundry detergent or dish soap could break apart oil. If so, which one would break it apart first. She learned all about the differences between laundry detergent and dish soap and then came up with her hypothesis. She spent a week observing, writing down information, and taking pictures. She also spent a lot of time reading articles and watching videos about the oil spill. After a week full of observations, she gathered all of her information, wrote out her conclusion, and then moved on to write a full research paper. Can I just mention that she is in 5th grade! A full research paper (MLA format) with all of the bells and whistles and an abstract paper to boot! Not to mention, she has to prepare a 3 minute speech in order to present her project this week. I don’t think I did half this stuff until I was in college!

Creating her board was the fun part. I learned last year to let her be creative and to just have fun. She worked so hard on the research, the writing, and the preparing portion of her project that when it came to piecing the board together, I just wanted her to have fun. As you can tell, she loves to be very colorful with her creations =)