Honorable Mention

On Thursday, February 19th, Mallory participated in the Akin Road Elementary School Science Fair. First graders are not required to participate, it is voluntary for them.  When the flyer came out just after the new year she jumped at the chance the be a part of it.  

Christopher took the reins on this one.  Mallory and Christopher brainstormed on what kind of project she wanted to do and they came up with how the size of the Earth compares to the other planets.  They spent a few weeks putting together their data and then a few days building their scale model.  They measured everything round in our house to try and find a right to size scale model for each planet.  Mallory used marbles, bouncy balls and a BB to represent the planets sizes.  I helped more towards the end to make the display pretty.

The night before the science fair we went up to school to set up.  This was nice because it was less crowded so we had a nice chance to look at some of the other exhibits.  There are some incredibly intelligent and creative kids out there.  

The morning of the science fair Mallory wanted to dress "professional" (her word) for the judges.  She picked out her outfit and I approved it.  She asked me to straighten her hair for her so it would look nicer.  She's just so sweet.  I think she totally looked the part! 

The judging occurred during school hours so we had no idea how she scored until that night.  We went back up to the school in the evening for more viewing and the awards ceremony.  Here is what Mallory's exhibit looked like...

There was no sphere big enough to represent the sun so Christopher took a piece of painters tape and stretched it out on the floor.  We had a lot of people stop by, ask questions and compliment Mallory.  The awards were at 5:30PM in the hallway outside of the gym.  We learned there were 27 first graders that opted to participate in the science fair.  They gave out a first, second and third place ribbon.  Next they said there were two honorable mentions to give out and what do yo ya know?  Mallory was the first honorable mention called.  She missed getting a third place ribbon by two points!  Naturally we were very happy for her and very proud of her for the amount of effort she put into this project.  She also received a participation ribbon in addition to her honorable mention ribbon.  Her smile was two miles wide.  

We are so pleased with this whole experience and would still be even if she hadn't won a ribbon.  The school works hard to make this a fair and fun event for the students.  Nothing negative when you are learning while having fun!