Science Fair

Tonight was McKinley's annual science fair. It's mostly for 3rd-, 4th- and 5th-graders, but Rachel decided she wanted to do a project, so Drew and I have taken her to the library the past two Saturdays and Sundays to work on it. Her topic, which she came up with herself, is "Who invented language?" (Not exactly a science experiment topic, but Drew was very firm about letting her do most of the work herself; he explained tonight that he doesn't want to be one of those parents who does the science fair projects with minimal help from their children).

Rachel got a couple of books from the library and tried to pose the questions as a hypothesis and conclusion. Unfortunately, the conclusion was that nobody really knows, but she made up a poster board anyway, and tonight it was on display in the school library. There were a bunch of fun projects the kids could go, like make a bracelet strung like DNA, which Rachel did, and pick up some turtles and snakes, and spend some time learning to code (which Rachel did NOT do, alas, and very few girls seemed interested even though the project involved Anna and Elsa from "Frozen"). We were followed around by Sidney, who apparently came over to dinner tonight (I was in D.C. meeting my friend Charon for a quick drink after a day of baking challah and making chicken soup for an early dinner for Drew and Rachel). I'm getting tired of Sidney and Rachel squabbling, so I wasn't exactly cheerful about having Sidney along, but tried to hide my exasperation.

Rachel noticed the other projects and told Drew that she was ashamed of her own project. "The others look so nice, they're all printed out and I just wrote mine," she said sadly. "Well, sweetie, most of the other projects are by 3rd- and 4th-graders," he said.

As they were heading out, Drew overheard Dr. Wentzel, the school's vice principal, say to a parent, "His daughter," (meaning Rachel), is in first grade and she did her OWN science project and came up with the question herself -- "Who invented language?

I was glad to hear that, but next year, I told Drew, we're going to start preparing for the science fair in, oh, December or January.