Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2005 | ||
Bad Links? | Twins put in a big day at schoolThe morning of Jan. 11 started out just like any other Tuesday for twins Will and Emma Kearney of Peachtree City, both eighth-graders at Flat Rock Middle School. Rising at 6 a.m., they rode into school with their mom, Sherry Kearney, who teaches mass media at Flat Rock. It was going to be a busy day. Will had a geography bee that morning. Then there was the interview for their science fair project in the afternoon at the LaFayette Educational Center. And that evening both of them were participating in the regional academic bowl competition at Whitewater Middle School. Will had earlier won the right to represent the 8th grade at the school-level National Geographic Geography Bee, and took to the stage in the cafeteria that morning to vie for the opportunity to represent Fayette County at the state-level bee in April. The oral competition was intense. Two wrong answers automatically eliminated contestants until only Will and another student were left for the final round. After answering two of three questions correctly, Will was declared the school winner for the second consecutive year. "It felt really good, he said. I like geography." Will took the written test last Thursday to see if he qualifies to advance to the state competition in April, but he thinks he did just fine. "I did pretty well. Afterward, I looked up the questions I was unsure about and I only missed one or two," he said. But the day was just getting started. With the geography bee under his belt, both Will and Emma headed out for their interview with one of the judges at the Fayette County Science and Engineering Fair. The twins worked together on a project that researched the affective and psychological responses to color and color memory. More specifically, the project looked at the connection between how people memorize words written in color versus black and white. Emma was the mastermind behind the research. When she was younger, she struggled with Attention Deficit Disorder and using colors helped her remember spelling words. "I would write the syllables in different colors and that helped me," she recalled. Although the project seemed rather straightforward, Will and Emma said the judge who conducted their interview had a hard time understanding it. Needless to say, they were a little shocked to learn later that evening that their project won first place. "We couldn't believe it when our mom told us we won, said Emma. I was afraid the judge's not understanding would cost us." Their project is among 24 from Fayette's public middle and high schools that will advance to the regional competition in Griffin March 3. That night, Sherry Kearney attended the science fair awards program on behalf of her twins because they were busy helping Flat Rock's Academic Bowl team win the regional tournament at Whitewater Middle School. Flat Rock beat all the others by over 500 points, putting the school in the lead both in the number of wins and points. Both Will and Emma are in the gifted program at Flat Rock and excel at their academic studies. Although they have the typical brother/sister relationship where they butt heads from time to time, they said they never feel the need to compete with each other. "Will has his strengths and I have mine, Emma explained. He might have a higher grade in social studies than me but there are other classes where I'm better than him. We just accept that about each other." Will's favorite subjects are science, social studies and geography; Emma's is literature. The twins credit their father, Phil Kearney, for their book smarts. When the family first moved to Peachtree City, Emma said her father built floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the dining room and filled them with books. The twin's bedrooms just happened to be next door so they spent a lot of time reading. "We had books all around us at a very young age. We learned a lot from reading those books," said Emma.
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