I always prefer the projects where there is some personal reason that the child does it, some reason why they are interested in that topic other than just because of the science fair. Then it's usually easy to talk to them and get interested in what they did. When they're doing it because it is required, often everything just feels like pulling teeth and I'm sure it felt that way at their home too.
I judged once and a girl was about 2nd grade, she did a very nice project about galileo thermometer, but when asked why this subject she answered "I don't know, dad bought it" :-)
I wrote before that I really enjoy the experiment part of it. I even kind of like the tension my kids have when things are not going the way they thought (mean mom :-) I think that they learn tons. Putting up a display board - hate it! My kids generally are finished with the experiment way before the projects are due and they procrastinate terribly with the display. Ghost has been on his own with producing a display (we still help with glue and give advice on how to arrange it so it will "catch the eye" so to speak), but it was the first year DD was on her own. She did not even think twice, went to the basement, dug out last years display and used the same lettering :-) But of course, due to the unforseen printer trouble, I still had to drive DS to Kinkos at 9:30 at night!
DD's problem this year - do ants built the same tunnels over and over again or are they different each time. (no personal reason to think of at all :-)
DS's problem - what is the best Angle of Attack for lifting the most weight. He had a difficult time writing it out in laymans therm - one of the criteria was that mom had to understand what he was talking about :-). Huge personal interest in this one and I hope that it showed.
