Arthur Milnes
Northern News Services

NNSL (Feb 03/99) - So, your child walks in the door after school one day and makes the following announcement: "Mom, dad, it's science fair time."

As an adult, you have two choices -- panic as visions of volcanoes exploding in your kitchen dance about your head, or, get all excited and take an active part in your kid's project and have a lot of fun along the way.

A group of parents at N.J. Macpherson school want you to do the latter and they've put it all on paper, producing a parent's guide to science fair projects for their school's adult community.

"Science fairs can be a lot of fun or the 'S' in science can stand for shivers and cause no sleep in your house," says Mabel Wong, who approached school principal Pam Petten about working on such a guide last fall along with fellow parent Shannon Fraser. "We started working on it in the fall for this science fair (held this week at the school)."

Fraser says it is important for parents to become involved in such activities.

"The children need a lot of encouragement," she said. "Be there for them."

Bonnie Fournier, and teachers Chris Philpotts and Arlene Yaceyko also worked on the project.

The 10-page booklet walks adults -- who might have forgotten all the ins and outs of science fairs -- through the whole process. It explains what a science project is, provides a sample project planning chart, advice on choosing a topic, information on observations and results and it even provides a sample judges' report.

Wong also says proper interaction with your child's teacher is important when dealing with the annual science fair.

"Always have a good dialogue with the teacher because we're all working together," she said.

As you can see from this, there's a group of parents at N.J. Macpherson who know this well.