We spent the day at the Canadian War Museum on Wednesday attending the Ottawa Historica Fair. It was held in the LeBreton Gallery, where the projects were displayed in front of the many tanks and armored vehicles. Over 100 students, from grades 4-9 were participating. L13 was one of the four homeschooled students competing.

For the students the day was divided into three sessions. During one they were encouraged to visit all the other projects, to read the boards and talk to the students. Another session was spent in workshops creating morse code gadgets, clay sculptures or metal name tags. The remaining session was spent by their own project so they could be judged by two judges and answer questions from other visitors.

A11, B7 and I enjoyed wandering around the projects, seeing the many creative approaches and gathering ideas for next year. It was interesting to see the amount of laptops or portable dvd players which were incorporated into the displays this year. When A11 participated several years ago there were hardly any. I asked the children which projects impressed them most and they named those which had incorporated some kind of model along with their display board. The winner of the “Student’s Choice” award was a project on the history of the Giant Tiger chain of stores. I was not surprised as she had created an eye catching board, a fabulous model of a store and was very enthusiastic about sharing all her research.