help me get started

You mean help her get started, right? Science fair is for kids, after all.

As a has-been science fair dad the best advice I can give: pick a different project. If you want to build a voice activated drawing robot with her at home, go for it. Sounds like a wonderful time and a great project for a girl interested in robotics.

It’s a bad science fair project for a primary student. Science fair projects, first and foremost, need to be the entrants own work. They should be able explain the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of all the steps and actually be able to do them. “[Dad/Mom]…” can be an explanation sometimes, but not this time. Second, unless it is an ‘engineering’ fair, it need to contain a testable hypothesis that is, you know, tested. If your project does not primarily involve measuring something, it’s almost certainly not right for a science fair. Third, rein it in a bit. You have chosen a huge project. It’s the kind of thing that could genuinely take months of your time even as an experienced roboticist. At least for a young kid, pick something where the write-up is most of the work. You should be able to do 90% of the experimental work in an afternoon. It can take longer to finish, but in a ‘checking in’ kind of way; waiting for mold to grow or an egg shell to dissolve.

Not trying to be a dick, but I really believe sticking with this project is setting you both up for failure.

and there’s always weird ass bugs and issues and a ton of involuntary learning involved

The issue is not that Linux is more or less buggy/difficult than Windows. It’s that you’re conditioned to already understand Windows’ bugginess/difficulty. I dual-booted for some of xp, all of 7 and much of 10. I found once I got comfortable enough with both, there were perhaps slighly fewer deep problems on Windows, but they were always much more difficult to rectify.

But I understand if you don’t want to take the time to get to that point, learning isn’t for everyone.