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I think I post this every year, but I just want to praise the Science Olympiad competition as an excellent way to get middle and high school kids engaged in science. It is a huge amount of work to coach a team (15 kids) to get ready for 23 events, but if your school has one or two will teachers and a couple willing parents, it is worthwhile. Our school has this as an afterschool activity and kids stay for 1.5 hrs a few times a week (Nov-Feb)to prepare.

The events range from building things (robots, towers, gliders) with very specific requirements, to amassing information (anatomy, astronomy, amphibians/reptiles), applied demos (bio process lab, forensics, metric mastery, food science). Kids get experience working with a partner to prepare and competing.

It is always nerve wracking for me (as a volunteer parent/coach), but I love how exciting it is for them--I've watched hundreds of soccer games over the years, and this is the one time I can cheer for their academic ability.

Our team just placed 3rd in the region and will go on to the State competition. Last year we were 5th in the state--not bad for a public school of only 60 kids, competing against some private mega-schools with a coach for each event.

Cym-

You do make it sound fun! Good luck at the states! How long will you have to prepare? CAN you prepare, or is it all impromptu challenges at that level?

It's definitely prepare. The kids study for informational events, build things for those events, etc. They have one month till state (Feb 23) and will probably work 3-4 afternoons/week (plus some at home in the evening, like my guy who won't leave his robot at school for fear of sabotage). We will not win state; we all know that. The winners are the homeschool association that are sponsored by Boeing and coached by Boeing PhDs. They can work on it all the time. I don't begrudge them at all. I only wish we had some high powered coaches and more time during the day...for us, it's to get kids excited about science who never would have thought they could do that. It builds confidence, drive, interest, etc.

My DS 11 and DS 13 competed in regionals. This is exactly the kind of thing he loves. He could spend all day building robots or gliders or towers or trebuchets.