My daughters, still in public school, came to me for assistance with their 
science fair projects. Participation in the science fair is mandatory (at 4th 
and 5th grades). I wasn't too happy about that, not being a very scientific 
person, but decided to go with the flow.
We decided that cooking is science, and probably the most fascinating science 
that we all enjoy. My oldest loves to bake, so we came up with the question:
    Which bread rises better: bread made with eggs, or bread made with yeast?
    Her teacher thought that was a fantastic idea for a project. Tomorrow, 
we'll be baking bread to find out.
My younger child also likes to play in the kitchen, tho she isn't ready yet 
to bake completely on her own (like the older one does all the time). We're 
doing a take-off on one of the projects mentioned on the idea sheet: we're 
going to mix a batch of peanut butter cookies. We'll bake some before we add 
the eggs. Then we'll add the eggs and see what differences the egg makes.
For the projects, they have to use the scientific method: devise the question 
they want to answer, how they are going to proceed, and give a hypothesis 
about the results. My youngest child decided that cookies without eggs "would 
turn out so hard that the dog won't eat them". (Considering that Sassy is a 
90 lb garbage disposal, they'd have to be *really* bad.)
I'm mentioning this in case any of you get stuck for science ideas: look no 
further than your own kitchen.
                                 -donna
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