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1st Grade Science Fair ProjectsAt this age science projects resemble either simple games or magic tricks. Then unlike the magician you should try to explain what's going on. The goal of parents/teacher here is to help with organization of the project and experiment setup, provide simple explanation of the science project subject, and - entertain kids! There are few fundamentally different types of science projects for this age and this is how they are sorted. Some of the projects may require a little online research for others you'll need to do a field trip. Either can be fun. The most of experiments on this page should be conducted by parents/teacher! You
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Hobby
or Collection.
Leaves Collection.  The goal of the project is to
explain the concept of biodiversity,
and find out how many different species of trees and bushes grow in
your backyard (your street, neighborhood, nearest forest). Next time
you go for a walk with kids carefully collect few leaves from each
different tree you find in the investigated area.When you back home it's time to do some sorting. Arrange all the leaves on the tabletop. See how different they are! Collected leaves can be sorted in number of different ways: by shape, by size, by leaf venation and leaf type. It's also good time to tell children about this differences and why they are important. (We recommend you check the links above before going for a walk ;)) Now you can count how much unique leaves and therefore tree species you have in the backyard. Collected leaves can be turned into herbarium, labeled and used in science fair display or presented to the class. You can go further and find scientific name for each species. Another possible extension of this project is to collect leaves of all kinds of plants in the investigated area. Then you can find how many grassy plants vs trees are there. To the top of the page. Fossils.  It's
hard to imagine that millions of years ago this animal imprinted in
stone was alive. It was crawling the bottom of shallow sea among other
similar creatures. Then something happened and it was buried in the
fine sand which become hard rock few millions years later. Until
someone
found it. There are many ways to collect fossils. The most exciting way is to dig them up and kids most likely would enjoy it but perhaps it make sense to do such project in some higher grade. The simplest way to make a fossil collection is to buy them online. There are many sites dedicated to fossils. Most of them sell pretty expensive specimens for serious collectors but there are some companies that sell small collections of common species. The specimens are belong to the different periods of Earth history. When you have your collection check which geologic time it belongs to. You can find what kind of other animals lived at the same time. What kind of animal or plant become the fossil? Was it predator or prey? In which environment it used to live? At this age going through the full earth geology timeline may be boring even though some children do get it very well and remember the names of the eras and periods better than grown ups. So how fossils were formed? To explain this process better you could do fake fossil project. To the top of the page. Sea shells collection. This 1st grade science fair project is similar to the leaves collection project. It'll require a little bit more time and probably few field trips to the shore. You might want to collect shells in good condition and from different locations. Make sure you're prepared for an educational field trip. Ideally you make more than one collection of the shells from the sand beach, from the rocky pools and from the pebble beach. Species that live in this environments may be very different. Another important parameter is the water salinity so try to find the beach near the river estuary and check shells there. There are good chances that shells will be different from a place that further away from the river. Every time you collect the shells you should record where and when they were collected (you could simply write it on shell with a marker!). Don't forget that you can collect shells in the rivers and even in your garden! Shells are produced by mollusks and there are some mollusk species in pretty much any habitat. You'll find one major difference between collected shells. Some shells will be a gastropod shell (much like garden snail shell). This gastropod article gives a pretty good overview of this kind of mollusks. Another major type of shells belong to bivalve mollusks (you usually find only halves of their shells). Occasionally you find some other things that may look line strange curved and twisted shells. They belong to different kind of animals. It could be remains of some "houses" of bristle worms or it could be endoskeletons of some mollusks. For the first grade science fair project we won't dig into details of ecology of mollusks, their anatomy and lifestyle. Making a good collection is enough - but see, there are the possibilities for extension of this project for the following years! To the top of the page. Creating a Model.Model of the Earth - Moon System. This is primer on astronomy. The goal of it is to explain how Moon rotates around the Earth and how moon phases and eclipses are working. For this model you'll need
First of all you should explain that Earth and Moon is the planet and satellite pair. Moon called satellite because it rotates around the Earth. There is a reason for that - Moon's mass is only 0.0123 of Earth's mass! Compare weight of the apple and the walnut. Walnut is going to be Moon and apple will be Earth. Tie apple to one side of the skewer and walnut to the other side of it. Tie another thread to skewer above the apple. It's good idea to connect walnut to the stick with two threads so that it would not be able to rotate. This is the way our Moon behave - it always turned to Earth with one side. Adjust the connection point so that the whole system would be in equilibrium (see reference picture). Hang it to the ceiling or any other convenient place.  Now we have our Earth - Moon system ready for some experiments. With and without flashlight you can demonstrate:
To the top of the page. Model of the Earth Structure. You can use some fruits, or marshmallow-hazelnut and melted chocolate to demonstrate/make model of Earth inner structure. Watermelon. If it would be a planet it probably would not be Earth. The internal structure of watermelon does not have small and heavy core, but it does have
Avocado and mango make much better models. They do not have as perfect spherical shape as watermelon, but they have big single seed in the center that would represent core, softer "mantle" and hard "crust". For marshmallow model use marshmallow as a mantle, put hazelnut in the center of it for the core. Bath it in melted chocolate for a second to form the crust. Edible Earth for the first grade science fair project is ready! To the top of the page. Model Airplane. You can build complex paper airplanes, simple paper airplanes and explain why airplanes can fly. To the top of the page. Model Fossil. For this project you'll need couple of leaves, glue, plaster, some plasticine and water, medium size stone with one flat surface. How to make "fossil".
 To the top of the page. Laboratory Demonstration
"Naked Egg". |
Tips:
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You can try another simple experiment. Add drop of the clean water on the dry clean glass surface. On the same surface add another drop that contains soap.
What is the difference between these two drops?
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States of matter
This is one of 1st grade science fair projects that everyone can do at home. You'll need
- Ice cubes.
- Pot.
- Teapot.
- Bottle with cold water.
- Cup.
- Some plastic wrapping.
- Small stone or marble.
Water is amazing substance which exists on Earth in three different states of matter: solid, liquid and as gas. Liquid is the most usual state of water. To demonstrate two other states we'll need fridge and teapot.
Let kids pour water in the ice cube tray and put it in the freezer. Wait till water turns into ice. This is first change of the state of matter - liquid matter become solid matter.
Put ice cubes in the pot and put it on the stove. Watch how ice melts.
Put some water in the teapot and boil it. Hold bottle with the cold water in front of the teapot nose (be careful, steam is very hot!). Watch how steam turns into water on the surface of the bottle.
To the top of the page.
A bird in a Cage - Tricking Your Eyes
This easy science project demonstrates how deceiving our visual perception can be.
You'll need:
- Piece of paper.
- Scissors.
- Pen.
- Blu-Tack.
- Thread.
Hold the thread in front of you with two hands and twist it so that paper circles are quickly flipping the sides. You will not see images of the bird and the cage. Instead you'll see image of a bird in a cage.
Two frequently changing images fused by our brain in the single image. Same kind of magic happens in the movie and video demonstrations when multiple frames with incremental phases of motion fused in the continuous motion on the screen.
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Solar Energy Absorption.
This easy first grade science project deals with solar energy. You'll need three small plastic bottles, black paint, white paint and thermometer (optional). The goal of this experiment is to show how color of materials affects absorbtion of energy from the sun light.
Procedure: Paint one bottle with black paint and another one with white. Third bottle should be left transparent. Fill bottles with tap water and put them in direct sunlight. Leave them in the sun for 10-20 minutes. Then measure temperature with thermometer or compare temperature of water in the bottles just pouring water on your skin.
Water from black bottle is warmer then water from transparent or white bottles.
Try to do the same experiment mixing paint with water. Is there any difference in results?
Check for more solar power facts and easy experiments on solar power and electricity for different age groups.
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