Rarely, with children, do I find myself saying "Well...that went better than expected." But my first foray into the world of elementary school science fairs went better than expected. I had a strategy: have Catcher pick a topic that he likes and finds interesting and keep it simple. You see, Catcher and I do not have the best "working" relationship (see: the time(s) I tried to teach him to ride a bike, etc.). I knew I had to have a good plan or else the science fair would haunt me for the rest of my adult life (or at least the parts of my life where I have children participating in science fairs).
With my fool-proof strategy at the helm, we were naturally led down the road of paper airplanes--show me a second-grader who doesn't like paper airplanes. Catcher folded, tossed, measured, added and averaged. I was simply there for the documenting (and, yes, I do fancy my paper airplane photography quite stunning, and I admit that a small piece of me will be disappointed if there isn't a special award for art direction/photography this year).
However, photography abilities aside, I've already come to the conclusion that second grade is about where my science expertise taps out. Once these experiments need complicated charts and graphs and multiple points of data to test a hypothesis...I'm out. Catcher won't need my help anyway; and he'll probably think my pictures are dorky.
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