steelhive

Last week someone asked about good college science fair ideas so I thought this might be a good place to ask about 5th grade science fair ideas. The neighbor boy has asked me (being the neighborhood geek) for a good science fair idea. He's a bright kid and could tackle a somewhat complex project. The complication: it's due Wednesday, he asked his mother to call me about it two weeks ago and she didn't - until one hour ago. So, any good ideas that can be done on such short notice?

I've been extorted into introducing the neighbor's daughter (and possibly her slightly younger brother) to programming concepts this summer. She will be entering sixth grade (middle school) in the fall. I'm aware of a few possibilities which have educational materials:

- Storytelling Alice (Windows only, I'm Mac).

- Scratch, built on top of Squeak by folks at MIT (I'm currently leaning towards this).

- Squeak itself.

- Hackety Hack, for Ruby. (Currently Windows only, and apparently on hiatus. Looks really neat though).

Any other recommendations? Where's "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" when you need it?