Science Fair!

It's March, and around these parts that means it's Science Fair season.  Season?  Why yes!  This isn't just one night of fun and festivities, folks. In fact, this shindig has been going on for weeks.  At least a month ago the note came home from school to sign up for this year's Science Fair.  There were loud moans and groans; I'm not going to lie.  And they weren't from the parents, as one would expect!  The twins were not at all enthusiastic about participating this year. However, participation in this event is not a choice if you are a Marshall or a Marks.  Mom MAKES you do this kind of stuff.  But here's the funny thing, as much as they moan and groan about having to do this, when it comes to actually making a project and then displaying it the day and night of the event, my kids glow with excitement and pride!  Funny how that works out.

This year's theme was "Inventions".  This meant you could research about different inventions or show how something that has been invented actually works. Or, as usual you could just do whatever you wanted, like make a volcano, but we did that last year, right?!  Anyway, Jack and Tim decided to come up with their own inventions.  We had a few days of discussion about what would be "handy" or "helpful" around our house.  Then after each boy came up with an idea of what they wanted to "invent", they had to figure out a way to "make them".  The balancing act has always been making it the "kids" project and not the parents! These ideas were all theirs!  And with some help from Dad, they were able to invent some cool things!

TWOOTH BRUSH

Jack kept changing his mind and we had to make him stick to his first design idea.  The idea came one night as I was nagging gently reminding him to brush his teeth for more then a few seconds!  Jack wanted a tooth brush like mine with buttons that make it vibrate and he decided it would be cool if a toothbrush lit up like a traffic light.  Green, yellow and then red.  It was hard to get a design that would include all three colors so he settled on green and then red.  He researched how long dentists recommend kids brush their teeth for (two minutes) and then he and his Dad made a giant tooth brush prototype with a timer and lights attached.  Jack wanted to add a clock and then decided he also wanted music and dancing chickens..okay not the dancing chickens..but he kept wanting to add to the design.

 

REMOTE LOCATOR

Timmy knew right away what he wanted to make and with the help of Dad he was able to get right to work making an actual "Remote Locator".  The idea behind this is really great!  You see, in this house finding the remote is sort of like an Olympic Sport!  It's incredible how often it gets lost and the obscure places it is eventually found.  Therefore, putting some kind of sound device in a TV remote that you can activate is rather genius.  We have one on our cordless phone, which also has legs of it's own and tends to play hide and seek most days, so it only made sense to rig one up to a "clicker".