What is a good science fair project idea for first grade?

Answer 1

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. 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.

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

• Straw or bamboo skewers.
• Apple
• Walnut.
• Flashlight.
• Little bit of plasticine or Blu-Tack.
• Thread

You can eat some parts of this model after you're done with the science.

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.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I was in first grade I did does your hart beat faster after you run? I got second place. what you need is a timer or watch, a stethoscope, paper, pencil, any thing to color with, and index cards. I got every 1 in my family and listened 2 their hart beat for 10 sec. then they run in place for 1 min. I repeated the 1st step and then made a double bar graph with help of my mom. next I drew pictures of each individual person running in place and wrote their name above the picture. finally i found a place for every thing on my board. Hope it helped!