Jimmy's Science Fair Project

I realize that I haven't posted in a while. Just really haven't had anything to post about. Unless I wanted to complain about realizing I'm not as young and in shape as I used to be each time I get on the treadmill.

Today is the school's Science Fair. Most of the month of December Jimmy would tell us that he needed the plants for his project since the science fair was toward the end of January. Silly thinking on my part, but I assumed he was wrong and the science fair was toward the end of February. Luckily we finally took him and got the plants he wanted. He decided to get three plants and use one for a control and the other two he would talk to and measure their growth to see if the talking actually had any effect on them. One of the two he would say only positive things and the other he would say only negative. He also made sure that when they needed watering, he always watered the same amount to each plant and watered them at the same time. Knowing that even indoor plants tend to go dormant during the winter months, I worried that he wouldn't see any results.

Being a family of procrastinators (for the most part), we waited until last night after dinner to even go buy Jimmy the display board for his project and get putting it together. Which meant we were up a bit past bedtime getting it done. Surprisingly, the girls actually fell asleep earlier last night than they usually do so it made it a little easier.

Russ helped Jimmy measure the plants when he first got them and again last night to show the final results. After measuring them, Jimmy came up to me convinced the project had failed. I asked him if there were any changes in height this time. He said that yes, the one he talked negatively to had gotten shorter, so surely it had failed. Asked him about the other two. He told me that the control stayed the same and the one he talked positively to had grown a little. I told him that those all showed results. I think he got more excited about that project than he had at any other point as he worked on it.

Jimmy then typed up all of the information for each plant and his hypothesis and conclusion and printed them up along with photos of each plant. Apparently they didn't want them to bring anything other than the display boards, so he did need the pictures of the plants. Still not having found my camera, we took pictures with Russ' cellphone and sent them to the computer so he could print them up.

I thought his board turned out well. Especially considering the late start we got working on it last night. I did help him a little with it, but my help mostly consisted of reminding him which information he needed to show and cutting out the pictures and things and helping him glue them on the board. He really did the work for it.

The open house for the Science Fair is tonight. They will give awards there. I won't be sad if Jimmy doesn't get an award for his project. I just hope that he gets a decent grade on it.

I find it interesting to think of the results he found even in a shorter time than he would have liked to work on it. These are plants. They aren't self-aware like we are. Yet the one he said negative things to actually got smaller. Makes me think of the effects negative and positive words have on each of us.

Along the same lines of Jimmy stuff, Jimmy told me yesterday that he moved up to a higher math class yesterday and they took a spelling test in his class and he was the only one who would have gotten a 3 on it (3 basically being an "A"). He said everyone else would have gotten 1's, so his teacher didn't record the scores and they will do it again. He also was one of the two fastest typists in computers.