When I was young, several times I participated in a large science fair. To try and come up with a creative and different science project for those fairs was always a challenge. After a couple of years of trial and error, I hit upon the key to being a successful childhood scientist.

When I became a home school mom, I developed experiments for my son that would be fun, interesting, and most importantly, educational. In our classroom, science is about three things: exploring the world we live in, researching the things we are interested in, and learning scientific skills that are useful in every aspect of life, no matter what profession my student eventually chooses.

If your student will be participating in a science fair this year, I highly recommend our HOW TO WRITE LAB REPORTS FOR SCIENCE FAIRS AND CLASSROOM EXPERIMENTS course to help your student through their project from beginning to finish. This consumable textbook is chock-full of all the information I have learned in my experimenting as a kid and parent, as well as in my many years of working in biology, chemistry, and engineering.

Many parents are faced with the dilemma of how to find good science experiments that really work, teach their student(s) important science concepts, and help their student(s) enjoy experimenting. Here are several steps for you and your student follow so you will have a successful teaching and learning experience when experimenting.

1. Some textbooks come with experiments while others do not. For courses or your own unit studies without experiments, you may purchase books that contain a variety of experiments. You will then have to sift through the books and types of experiments to find ones that you can pair with a concept in your student's science course or your own unit study.
2. Choose each experiment with care so that it is age-appropriate and doable in the time you will allot.
3. Assemble all of the lab supplies needed for each experiment weeks, or even months, before each lab day.
4. On the day before and the day of each lab, make sure you and your student have independently read through the experiment thoroughly before beginning. Then discuss with your student what he/she is going to do by reviewing the steps of the experiment together.
5. Have all of the lab supplies and equipment set out beforehand, or factor enough time into your lab period to have your student help you.
6. Have your student work on his/her own as you watch and monitor the lab's progress.
7. Help your student discover answers to questions, but don't always give the answers yourself. Your student will learn more from his/her own discovery than if you simply supply the answers every time.

If you feel uncomfortable with all of the work involved in finding experiments, you can order our pretested, prepackaged LAB KITS. They contain enriching, fun experiments. Each kit includes not only instructions, but also all the lab equipment needed, except common household products. Answers are also provided to help you with guiding and evaluating your student's lab results.