It can be difficult to come up with original science fair project ideas if your child is in grammar school. The problem is simple: most serious projects are going to be way over their heads.

The fact is, you need to keep a grammar school science fair project very simple, very fun, and very educational in order for it to be a true learning experience for the child. If it's too hard for them to understand, or just not interesting enough, then you'll lose their interest and end up doing the whole project yourself. That's not a very good situation for you, or for them.

To avoid situations like these, it is always best to ask the child what kinds of topics they had in mind for the science fair. It is their project after all, and the majority of children will tell you right away that they want to do a project on a certain theme. Here are some general topic ideas which they can focus on:

• Magnetism
• Plants and Animals
• The solar system
• Volcanoes
• Rivers, Lakes or Oceans
• Electricity

The thing to always remember is that research-only style science fair projects are not going to cut it anymore. Today, science fairs are about creating an experience for the child (well, technically, having the child create their own experience, but we all know what really happens). There should be some sort of modeling, or a contraption to go along with the knowledge. Certainly, the research is important, but when your child gives their presentation, they should be able to say that they've done much more than just reading a few books, or a website.

You also want to make sure that you are not doing something too simple or boring. This is especially true in third grade science fairs, all the way on up. Once a child reaches that stage of development, they should be looking at a data collection process involving some simple math, as well as a real-life project not based on impossible situations.

At no point should you be doing the baking soda volcano science fair project, or creating a solar system model out of styrofoam balls. These projects have been done before, and they're not particularly engaging, so just skip it.