Science fair projects for kindergarten

What to expect

The first ten here are written for kindergarten: one question, an answer you count or see, and eight steps at most. Which ball bounces the most times? Which ice cube melts first? Does a bigger foil boat carry more blocks? Nothing is measured with a ruler, so your child counts bounces, blocks, crayons or heel-to-toe steps, and colours a box for each one. That stack of boxes is the graph. After them come the 1st grade projects a kindergartener can stretch to with help.

These are held to stricter rules than 1st grade's, in code, not just in words: a grown-up does every step with water or ice, there are no balloons and nothing small enough to swallow, nothing that isn't safe to touch, and no knife or anything that plugs in, even in a grown-up's hands. At this age the grown-up holds the pencil and reads the steps aloud (every step has a 🔊). Your child's job is the guess before you start and the telling afterwards: ask "What do you think will happen?" and write their words down exactly. Each kindergarten project has a one-page picture board to print, with a box to draw the test, the counts to colour, and "I found out" to finish, and most kindergarten fairs ask for nothing more.

Counted from the projects on this page: 11 about how things move, 8 about water, ice and mixing, 9 about growing and weather; 10 using kitchen things, 11 using paper, tape and toys, 7 using the outdoors and some seeds. 23 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. 7 have a step a grown-up does, marked on the page.