Science Fair, Baby!

The Boy won first place for his age group in his school’s science fair today! I’m so proud of him I can hardly stand it! He and his class partner chose to study water, space and sound. They came up with an experiment where they studied the effect that different levels of water have on the space they are in. So they filled different receptacles with water in different levels and then blew the same speed of air across the top of the receptacles and recorded the difference in sound. Basically they took the old game of blowing across the top of a bottle and making it whistle and turned it into a science experiment. But if you break it down like that and build in the fact that they had to do the scientific method throughout their experiment, it’s fairly sophisticated for a first grader in my opinion.

I mean we weren’t even doing science fairs when I was in first grade. We didn’t start school science fairs until I was in 5^th grade and my experiment was seeing if I could train a goldfish to come to the side of the bowl by tapping on the outside of the bowl and then rewarding the fish with food. All I ended up proving is that if you tap on the side of a fish bowl enough times, the goldfish gives up and dies. Ahem.

I’m a proud mama today. My Boy just astounds me. I mean he can pull this sort of thing off on the same day his teacher sends home a note saying that he has spent the last three days being in trouble for talking and/or not being able to sit still during class. He’s like this whirling dervish of brilliance. He spins and spins and spins but when he does sit still he pulls off these amazing things.

I wonder if he’ll ever learn (or want to learn) how to temper that kinetic energy that pulses through him every minute of every day. Or if he will learn how to make it his ally and fuel all of these moments of brilliance. I don’t know, but I’m a proud mama.