Science teachers can spot a "parent project" a mile away, and the grade will be marked down because of it, so it is not even worth trying. They appreciate hard work and original work. They would much rather see a simple original science projects that are well thought out, that follow the directions they gave and where their students learn something rather than a super sophisticated project that no one, even the student does not understand.

Original does not mean that it has never been done before

For any science fair project, the reason for the assignment is for some hands on, experience based learning. There are certain concepts science teachers wants explored, so of course there will be many ideas used over and over again. That is what is supposed to happen. What makes original science projects is that the student will go about it in their own way, make their own choices and twists and in particular how they present their results. So having a parent step in and come up with amazing ideas to make their child's project be the most original, just defeats the purpose.

Parents and Science Fair Experiments

It is pretty common these days to find project directions online, that meet the assignment requirements. What these will do is give the outline of what to do. Originality comes with how the student goes about using these. First of all, the parents need to let the kid do the online search. For the very young, they can do a pre search and find websites that will have appropriate projects, but in general parents need to chill and let the kids choose. They absolutely can help veto the dangerous ideas, or ones that do not follow the assignment directions, and once they pick one give several ideas of how to jazz it up. But beyond that, parents choosing the projects based on what will create the most buzz at the science fair are not doing anyone any favors. It will be obvious to everyone that it was not the kids project.

In class demonstration science projects

This is one area where parents are doing the most disservice if they create a super project with bells,whistles and some magic thrown in to impress the class. The experiment may look good, but will the child be able to explain what happened? Part of ay demonstration project is questions and answers session, and you can bet your life that at one point when the student can't answer yet another question they will say, "I don't really know, my dad/mom just told me to do it."

Bottom line is just let the students do their own versions of original science projects and forget about the rest.