February 2010 - 100 Days Project and the Science Fair

Caitlin has now been in Kindergarten for 100 days. To mark this day, the classes are asked to make a poster using 100 items of the students choice, in a creative way, to help them understand just how long they have been in school. Caitlin decided that she wanted to use 100 Goldfish crackers! She wanted to make four smalls "suns" and one big "sun" in the middle. We worked with Caitlin to divide the Goldfish up for each sun then had to find items to make the circles. A baby bottle ended up being the perfect size for the smaller suns, and we used a big clock for the larger, center sun. Goldfish aren't flat, so it wasn't very easy to get them glued to the poster, but Caitlin finally got it done.

Caitlin also chose to participate in her school's Science Fair. The idea for her project came about when I sent a banana to school with her in her lunch bag. The banana was perfectly fine when I put it in that morning, but by lunch time Caitlin said it was much too brown and mushy to eat. This made her wonder what other places might cause bananas to turn brown and mushy. She placed bananas in various locations/conditions throughout the house, then observed and took pictures of the bananas every day until she deemed them to be brown and mushy. We all had a fun time with the project and Caitlin did a great job writing out all of her data and helping us arrange her poster board. She was very proud of it and really enjoyed seeing it at the Science Fair at her school. Projects are not judged until the students are in 2nd or 3rd grade, but Caitlin felt very special when her project was part of a scavenger hunt that was set up for all of the Kindergarteners.