Customer Reviews

Prize-Winning Science Fair Projects for Curious Kids

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I stumbled upon this book in a local store and got the chance to look it over before I bought it. It took me less than 20 seconds to decide: "This is a GREAT book!" and buy it.

Prize-Winning Science Fair Projects for Curious Kids is a wonderful resource for elementary school (4th/5th grade students) science fair projects because the book is fun and engaging. Project names like "Bow-Wow Blood Pressure" and "Yeast Feast" catch your child's eye and then grab their attention. That spark of interest catches fire and you're off to the Science Fair with a great project that was fun to do.

The first part of the book talks about science fairs. What the judges are looking for, how to be successful with your project, an 8-week checklist, what is a 'scientific method' of research, how to turn a topic into a question and how to write a good report. Graphs and tables are discussed, and examples of each are shown. LOTS of good, clear information for both students and their advisors.

The next part of the book is all about the 52 projects in the book.

-Biology (20 projects)with titles such as "Moldy Slices of Life" and "Pooch Smooch".

-Physical Science (18 projects) with titles including "Parachute Power" and "Popcorn Fever".

-Chemistry (15 projects) including "Shake It Up Baby!" and "Yeast Feast".

Each project clearly outlines the problem or question to be answered by the experiment, experiment summary, what you need for the experiment, experimental procedure, how to formulate your conclusion, display tips and thought-provoking questions for varying the experiment. Fun photographs and drawings accompany the information which is laid out in way that's easy to read and understand.

I highly recommend buying this book for any child who is interested in doing a Science Fair project or wants to simply have fun learning about simple science.

As soon as this book arrived from Amazon, my fifth grade son started reading it just for fun and telling me about the "cool" experiments he could do for this year's school science fair. The book is full of kid-engaging ideas e.g., whether dog saliva or human saliva has more germs; how talking on a cell phone affects performance on a car driving video game. It's also got lots of colorful photos and clear kid-friendly descriptions of the necessary materials and procedures.

This book is great! It has a wide range of science projects from testing the accuracy of horoscopes to comparing the bacterial content of dog v. human mouths. All experiments can be done with inexpensive and readily available materials (some of them may need to be purchased, such as an agar plate for growing bacteria, but are available on Amazon.com ;-). The book has an excellent introductory section on how to design a good experiment and how to effectively present your experiment at a science fair.

My 5th grader was very excited about most of the projects in this book and settled on the one that required a friendly dog since we have three of those. The instructions are easy and the projects are not run of the mill. I would recommend.