We started with ooze, slime, and molecule building. The boys particularly enjoyed the ooze (cornstarch and water with food coloring). Ooze is really cool because it behaves as both a liquid and a solid. When you touch it in the pan, it feels solid. You can even pick it up. But, as soon as you let it rest in your hand, it turns to liquid and oozes off.
Then we moved to the demonstration/experiment tables. I had 4 tables with 2 activities each. The first table was Sink/Float. We "tested" several items to see if they would sink or float, did some predicting, and compared predictions to actual results. Then I gave each child a clear cup with water in it. We floated cooking oil on top of the water. Then, they sprinkled salt on the oil. The oil absorbs the salt and gets heavier. It falls to the bottom of the cup in blobs that look a bit like a lava lamp. When the salt dissolves in the water, the oil floats back up to to the top. Very fun.
The second table was Magnet Mania. Again, we tested some items to see if they were magnetic or not. Then I put a mixture of sand and iron filings on the table and let them separate the filings from the sand with a magnet. They really enjoyed that one.
The third table was Acid/Base. I used red cabbage juice as an indicator, and we tested several household items to see if they were acid or base. If the juice turned any shade of red it was acid. If it turned any shade of blue or green it was base. We also tested soap which is very close to neutral and would show no color change. Then we wrote secret messages on coffee filters with lemon juice and revealed the messages by spraying cabbage juice on the filters. That one didn't work so well. I'm not sure what went wrong.
The last table was Suction. We did a really cool demonstration of the power of air pressure by squeezing a hard boiled egg into a jar with a narrow neck. Simple really. I used a Starbucks frappaccino bottle (that stuff is nasty by the way -- no offense to those of you who like it), filled it with boiling water, poured out the water, and set a peeled hard boiled egg on top of the bottle. In about 2-3 minutes, the egg was inside the bottle. Very, very cool. The kids loved it. I decided not to do the second activity.
Then we did cake and presents and watched a Bill Nye the Science Guy video on volcanoes. The cake is pictured below. I made a volcano (2 cake mixes baked in different sized containers and stacked to make the mountain). I hollowed out a place in the top and set a dixie cup inside (cut down to about 1/2 its depth). Then I put a chunk of dry ice in the cup, poured on some hot water to make it smoke, and lit the sparkler candles. Viv loved it, and it looked really neat!
2 comments:
Wow! Sounds like a very fun party! Courtney, you did a great job! Sorry we missed it. Wish we could've been there! Happy Birthday Vivian!
What a super birthday party! It really sounds like a lot of fun. You know you're setting a cumulative trend here . . . "Can you top this?"--year after year, child after child . . . But you're so resourceful & clever, it should be a piece of cake--Volcano cake, perhaps? So cool!
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