Ha's Science Fair

Yesterday(3/2) was the first annual science fair at Ha's school. At the end of January, we knew about the science fair, and I wanted to encourage Ha to participate. It was not an easy job for me because the participation is voluntary, and Ha hated to do any extra work unless it's necessary; moreover, the students need to present their projects to classmates, other kids and other parents, and Ha was not comfortable at doing it. I tried hard to talk him into it, and he agreed to do a project, but he still didn't want to say a word in front of people on the science fair day, and I told him that it's up to him. As long as he agreed to do some work, it's better than nothing.

I helped him to think of some ideas,(we didn't want to choose the topics from the books, but we wanted to do our originals which he would be interested) and he chose that he wanted to do an experiment about the relationship between battery's life and size. With my Dad's help, he got a good battery/lighbulbs layout board, and he did the experiment by himself after we came back from Taiwan.

Doing the experiment and recording the results were not very hard for him, but making a display board was a challenge. I was afraid that he would refuse to write so many words because writing was not one of his favorites. However, things went better than I thought. Ha and I discussed what to write, and I taught him how to spell, and he seemed to be interested in doing his work to write and to decorate the board.

On the day of science fair, I didn't mention anything about presentation; instead, I told him that he would be good at showing people how his project works by connecting the lightbulbs and batteries which he had no problem doing it.

In the afternoon, when I went to pick him up, he told me that people asked him questions about his project, and he answered them, and he wanted to go there at night for the whole hour to answer more questions. (previously, he planned to go to the keyboard class from 5:45 to 6:30 and then go to science fair, which was from 6pm to 7pm) It's a good opportunity to strengthen his ability to communicate with people, so I talked to his keyboard teacher that he couldn't be in class this week.

In the science fair, I didn't stick with him; instead, I walked around to see other people's projects while my eyes were on Ha from time to time. I saw people going by his display and talking to him, and I saw him answering the questions, too. He was excited about the science fair, and he would like to participate again next year.

To me, the whole thing was like a miracle, a mission impossible, but we did it. Ha is a sensitive kid, so I was 戒慎恐懼，moving slowly at each step because I knew that if he had a bad feeling about this science fair, he wouldn't participate any more in the future; on the other hand, if he did good on this one, it would be a huge encouragement to him to move forward. Thank God for giving me enough wisdom and strengh on the process of guiding him through this science fair. I'm so glad that they only have the science fair once a year, so I can take a little break.