How do you choose between the different options of science fair guides you can purchase for your student? Do you look to value, or do you look to the sheer number of options? Ease of use, or complexity? What will earn your students the highest possible grade?

The answer is simple. The best science fair guides you can purchase for your student is the one that gives you the most consistent projects, and the ones that most genuinely follow the scientific method.

You see, there are many science fair project guides available on the market today which do not fit the requirements of most science teachers. There are some which do not create easily reproducable results. That can mean that you would follow through all of the instructions and perform the experiment as given in the guide, but not get the required results each and every time. One of the hallmarks of a bad project is one that does not prove a result, and with off-and-on results, you cannot expect a good grade.

In addition to that, you must ensure that the project guide does a good job of creating the experiment in such a way that it follows the scientific method; the standard, accepted method of creating an experiment to prove a result. While the scientific method is too big a topic to cover in a simple article like this, suffice it to say that there are three things to consider. First, does the experiment prove the hypothesis or not? Second, does the experiment test only one variable? Third, does the data given by the experiment prove whether or not the hypothesis is correct. It is an unfortunate thing that many of the experiment guides available on the market today do not fit the scientific method, which can cause your student to fail his or her science fair entirely.

Some other things to consider with purchasing a science fair guide include the number of experiments and the quality of information they are including. There are some science fair guides that promise hundreds of experiments, while others will only give you one or two. In general, it is recommended that you purchase one that has only a few choices. Too many choices and you'll get analysis paralysis and have difficulty settling on just one to try. In addition, try to ascertain how modern the science fair projects are. Teachers want to see science fair projects which deal with modern issues, like climate change, new scientific discoveries, or new inventions.