Last Saturday, K participated the next round of the Science Fair AKA Western Reserve District 5 District Science Day. Of course, this was the ONLY weekend that I'm out of town as a buyer for work. Hubs handled this one. He was able to take off work. I felt guilty. K told me not to. After the day was over, M said that he was glad that I didn't do the haul back and forth from Columbus like I had originally considered.
K had to be at the university at 7:45 AM with her project set up and ready. She was to stand with her project until the judges released her.
The child was with her project until 12:30 PM.
M wasn't allowed to leave the two floors of the student union, and we were quite fine with that.
K said that if she needed a drink or to use the loo, one of the kids beside her had to cover her. If they walked away and the judges appeared and they weren't there, they were disqualified.
K said that the judges came and asked her a lot of questions. She talked with them for about 10 minutes. I'm sure that after standing there for over 4 hours, she was nervous and there were some questions she said that she didn't understand. She called me in tears. She felt defeated.
They went to the awards ceremony which M billed as "extremely tangential and long winded." She found out that she hadn't moved on and while that was fine with all of us, by the time she hit 5 PM of the same ole thing, girlfriend had hit a wall. That was when the tear filled call came. It had been a LONG day and I wasn't there. She missed me and that didn't help.
We also found out that she was the ONLY 5th grader there. The next oldest kid was in 8th grade.
A few days later at school, her certificate and score sheet showed up. I thought that it was wonderful that they sent a personalized certificate and that the score sheet came along. To have K score an Excellent made her very happy. She didn't know what she scored on Saturday and she felt like she did a horrible job. Turns out, baby girl did a great job and earned the equivalent of probably a B+. Her teacher made a big deal out of it and frankly, that was kind of nice.
She learned a lot with this experience. It was a nice boost for her to have done well and though the journey with the green beans has ended here, there are many more scientific journeys to come.
She opted to change the ribbon of her medal out to a U of A lanyard. It's a nice touch. :)
Who knew that she needed to do measurements in metric? I laugh because it took me 2 days to figure out that the measurement that they were talking about was temperature and that she didn't list it as Celsius.
I thought it was a nice touch that they had the back engraved with the occasion and date.
An experience for all. Hopefully, an experience to have again.
