Science fair projects for 1st grade

What to expect

At six or seven, a child can change one thing and watch what happens, but measuring with a ruler is still new. So the best 1st grade projects have an answer you can count (pennies in a boat, bounces, shadows marked with chalk) or see (which floor, which bag, which plant leans). Three tries at each level is still the goal, because it's the habit that matters, but a judge at this age is looking for the question and a picture of what happened more than a perfect table.

A grown-up does a lot of the reading and the writing down at this age, and that's fine: most elementary fairs say the words on the board should be the child's own, even when an adult held the pen. Pick a project that takes one afternoon, do it together, and let your child say what they think will happen before you start. That sentence is their hypothesis.

Counted from the projects on this page: 6 about how things move, 6 about water, ice and mixing, 6 about growing and weather; 7 using kitchen things, 6 using paper, tape and toys, 5 using the outdoors and some seeds. 14 are free with what most houses have, and the rest cost about $3 or about $2 or about $1. Testing takes from 1 to 12 days. 3 have a step a grown-up does, marked on the page.