Yesterday was my first time going into the real world with my kits. I'm working with an afterschool program in a nearby town. I get there a little after my school day ends, set up, run some activities, clean up, and head home.
I got a group of 5, 4 boys and a girl. I'm not sure of the ages, but they looked to be in 4th grade. My friend who came to assist me helped to set out the tablecloth and water for the first activity. We started out with chromatography. We didn't explain it in too much detail, but at least the kids seemed to have fun. We then moved on to making glurch. As usual, there were some problems with me giving them the wrong proportions of water and glue. I am really bad at estimating. So some ended up with glurch that was really liquidy.
Especially because we put food coloring in the glurch, it got pretty messy. A lot of it ended up on the tablecloth and some ended up on the kids clothes. Next time I plan to bring work shirts, aprons, or at least something they can wear over their normal clothes to make them less messy. And since a lot of the glurch was too gloopy to take home, my friend started mixing up some more putty-like batches while I started Oobleck, our next activity.
The Oobleck went well (although it too ended up getting all over the place). Some of the kids even commented on their own how it was "weird" because they could pick it up but it would then melt everywhere.
We then moved on to something from the physics kit: straw kazoos (more on them in a later post). To wrap it up we did the classic baking soda and vinegar volcano. All the activities took around an hour. Some kids had to leave a little early, so they didn't get to do everything. Overall they seemed to enjoy it.
The clean-up took about half an hour. I brought the tablecloth home to wash because it was pretty messy. We had to wipe up all the spills and put everything away. For next time, I also plan to put the instructions included in the kits in plastic sheets to keep them from getting wet or covered in food coloring.
I got a group of 5, 4 boys and a girl. I'm not sure of the ages, but they looked to be in 4th grade. My friend who came to assist me helped to set out the tablecloth and water for the first activity. We started out with chromatography. We didn't explain it in too much detail, but at least the kids seemed to have fun. We then moved on to making glurch. As usual, there were some problems with me giving them the wrong proportions of water and glue. I am really bad at estimating. So some ended up with glurch that was really liquidy.
Especially because we put food coloring in the glurch, it got pretty messy. A lot of it ended up on the tablecloth and some ended up on the kids clothes. Next time I plan to bring work shirts, aprons, or at least something they can wear over their normal clothes to make them less messy. And since a lot of the glurch was too gloopy to take home, my friend started mixing up some more putty-like batches while I started Oobleck, our next activity.
The Oobleck went well (although it too ended up getting all over the place). Some of the kids even commented on their own how it was "weird" because they could pick it up but it would then melt everywhere.
We then moved on to something from the physics kit: straw kazoos (more on them in a later post). To wrap it up we did the classic baking soda and vinegar volcano. All the activities took around an hour. Some kids had to leave a little early, so they didn't get to do everything. Overall they seemed to enjoy it.
The clean-up took about half an hour. I brought the tablecloth home to wash because it was pretty messy. We had to wipe up all the spills and put everything away. For next time, I also plan to put the instructions included in the kits in plastic sheets to keep them from getting wet or covered in food coloring.
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