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How Parents Can Help Their Children
Parent involvement in science learning is essential. There are many ways a parent can assist their child learning science.
Supporting your child throughout a project
Simply being aware of your child’s interests in science, mathematics or engineering and nurturing that interest is the first level of involvement. Children find pleasure and enjoyment in pursuing a project of their choice. Parents can guide their children through a project by offering support, help with editing the final project, being a “gopher” for supplies, driving to the library, etc. You can help keep your child on track by helping him/her set up a calendar for the project.
Be aware of the needs of your child. Very young children will need greater assistance than older children or middle or high school age students. Let the child guide you in how much help he or she needs. Sometimes all you need to do is be there for support and guidance, or to spell-check or proofread. Other times you need to help you young child set up a time to work on the project and be there to help them through the entire process. Remember that your young child may have difficulty manipulating tools or equipment. You may help them with experiments and data collection as long as you are not telling them how to collect the data or what data to collect. It is very important that the children take ownership of their project.
Parents of very young children or those who struggle with handwriting can feel free to script for their children. As long as you are writing down your child's words you need not worry about "helping too much." You may also word-process your child's words. Be careful, however, not to edit what your child tells you, or choose to use words your child does not use or know.
Parents can assist at the school level
Each school should have at least one parent liaison. If your school does not have one, offer to support the teacher liaison and the fair experience at your school. Offer to guide another student through the process who may not have an adult available to help. If you have a science background or work professionally as a scientist, offer to be a mentor.
Parents can assist at the district level
Ways to assist include judging science fair projects (training will be offered to help you learn how to do this), being an on-site assistant during the fair, organizing science presentations during the fair or supervising a booth at the science fair where attendees can participate in science activities.
Contact your PTO representative to offer your support, or call the Science Facilitator’s Office at 213-6100 x3921 and speak to Christy Nickel.