Third-Place for the Science Fair

I am so proud of my daughter. In spite of my pushing her all weekend to tears, in spite of the disorganization and no real idea of what she wanted to present in her project, she received a third place ribbon for all second graders.

For those of you that don't remember, we worked all weekend on this project. We started with only an idea of "energy" and "erosion". Short of constructing a whole village on a sand table and demonstrating erosion with a water stream, we were stuck. Courtney ended up using her rock tumbler to demonstrate erosion of the rocks in a stream bed (smoothing of the rocks) by the action of water carrying other rocks and sand. Then she used sandpaper and a block of wood to demonstrate the action sand carried by the wind has to create the beautiful natural arches that can be found in Arches National Park in eastern Utah.

I did not get to see her presentation, but her teacher said she did "excellent". And surprise, she called me on the way home from school yesterday to tell me about her prize. She was so excited.