It’s really, really cold today. Usually when it’s this cold, I wish it would snow. But I don’t want it to snow this week or next. Why? Because if any school district in the North Dallas Regional Elementary School Science Fair is closed, they’ll cancel the whole fair.

I worked really hard on my science project this year, and I want to see how the judges at the regional fair like it.  I won the grand prize for my grade in the school science fair last week, and I got the judge’s feedback on Thursday night. So I spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday creating a brand new display that fixed all the comments I got from the judges at the school fair.

Here’s what the judges at school said about my original display:

• The display wasn’t well organized, and it was hard to follow.
• Too many small photos.
• Missing an explanation for why the data in one of the data tables was different from the trends in the other data tables.

For the regional fair, the display is better organized, and instead of using 48 small photos, I picked six larger ones and put the rest into my project notebook. I added some information to the data tables, and also added an explanation of what went wrong in one place where the graph looks “wrong”.

To get enough room to work on it, my grandparents helped me move furniture so I could spread it out on the floor to put it together. The presentation boards for the regional fair are six feet tall (I’m just 4 foot 8 inches tall).

Two 3-panel display boards are fastened together on top of each other to make the display.  I used packing tape to hold it together, and added extra strips of heavy cardboard to the back to support the weight. It wouldn’t stand up without the extra supports.  Once I had the two display boards put together, I tried four or five times to arrange everything on them so it looked good, and was well organized and easy to read.

The rules say that you can have a project display that is 30 inches deep, 32 inches wide, and 108 inches high. That’s nine feet tall, and two and a half-feet deep and wide. Mine is only six feet tall, and just 12 inches deep,and 32 inches wide.

I thought about making mine bigger, so there was room for more pictures, and more space between things, but this is just about as big as I can make it and still carry it myself. So I decided not to make it any bigger.

If it doesn’t snow and close any schools, I’ll deliver it to the regional fair on Monday, and find out on Tuesday what the judges thought of it. Fingers crossed that they like it! This is my last year to enter the regional science fair (I hope) because I want to go to an arts magnet junior high shcool that doesn’t compete in science fair. So I’d like to get at least an honorable mention at the regional fair this year. Wish me luck!