Senor Parrot's Perch

It’s science fair time at my daughters’ school. Science rules. Science Rocks. Science fairs are the quintessential science education experience. When I heard this yesterday evening, I was pumped, ready to spring into action and make…whoops, I mean, guide, my third-grader in her science fair project. I had it already picked and designed in my head. We talked it over and agreed to make several demonstrations on electricity, creating our own electric dynamo and powering it in various ways. As a side project or maybe, after a bit of research, we’d do a solar power project and maybe something fun like a potato battery. In two minutes I had about twenty books held on reserve for her to read and glean from. Then the stunning news.

My wife burst both our bubbles when she told us that parents had complained about all the work they’d gone through in previous science fairs. It seemed that parents do all the work on these projects while their kids plug into TV. Can you believe that? So, now, it’s a group project where the kids get placed in groups, select a project from a pre-qualified list and then work together. Ugh! How am I supposed to engineer some high tech learning and bonding time with my girl that will dazzle the judges and get her a scholarship to UW-Madison? I got dem science fair blues.

Personally, I work in a fantastic team at my place of employment, for the present. It isn’t always that way. I’ve been on teams with total slackers and been stuck with all the work. In my classes, I’ve seen student teams nearly torpedoed by one or two slackers. Without controls and penalties, along with the rewards, I’ve never seem teams work well. Even families are failing as teams in these science fairs, unable to get their kids to do their share of the work and learning. Epic failure.

Well, our science books will be waiting for me at the library by Saturday morning. Me and my third-grader will just have to learn how to power the future by ourselves. Our science fair demo will be for just us, with maybe a video posted on youtube for the family. My daughter will be as pumped as I am about exploring the world of nature and science power, and we’ll have a really good time.

I.N.K. stands for Interesting Nonfiction for Kids. It’s a blog for writers and educators, focusing on kid’s nonfiction. I’ve read it from time to time and found it very interesting, and I returned to it again this morning. The I.N.K. blog is a good place to connect to kid’s nonfiction writers and educators and to listen into their conversation about their craft and their books.

Kid’s Nonfiction is important because it seeds the fallow ground of our kids’ minds and produces much different results than fiction. Unlike learning magic, nonfiction actually empowers kids to see the possibilities within themselves and it works like much like the yellow brick road to Oz, taking kids to a place where they can grow wiser and find answers to their questions.

After eating out last Friday night, the girls wanted to shop. It’s a still a little too close to this past Christmas to start in with shopping again, so I turned them down. Driving home, though, I remembered an ad (really a sponsorship on Wisconsin Public Radio) for a new store in the Madison, WI area called I’m Board that specializes in board games. We’d never been there so we went looking. Good idea, too. The girls got to shop and we discovered a fun, new store.

We found it fairly easily and went inside to find board and RPG games for all ages, but primarily for teens and adults, with lots of really cool games I’d never seen or heard of before. After spending about 30 minutes or so here we left with two games and a Game-On attitudes.

If you live in the Madison, WI area, I’d recommend looking for I’m Board. It’s on University Avenue in Middleton, just west of Middleton Cyclery on the same side. They have an open game room with many games available to play and scheduled times for other games where kids and adults from around the area can meet and play.

I also really like I’m Board’s motto: Unplug * Interact * Reconnect. It’s true. We have more fun, connect more with each other, and share in lots of fun and create more memories while we play these games together. What games did we buy? Poo (a card game where monkeys toss poo at each other) and Say Anything.