Dry Ice!

And as for my science club, I did my most epic class of the year, if not of all time: DRY ICE!

Not only a dry ice party, I Halloween Dress up dry ice party!

I spent all morning running to Lethbridge to get it (the man was super kind. I told him I wanted 20 lbs and he said that would be $70 and I was crest fallen, so he asked what it was for and I said it was for classes to to science experiments with kids, and he gave it to me for $20.) You have to go to a welding supply store in Canada to get dry ice. In the US you can get it everywhere.

I had tons of moms and Dustin helping me, and we did it all: we did huge bubbles and small bubbles and even "boo" bubbles, we did fake liquid nitrogen to freeze gummy worms in 30 seconds, we made a carbonated drink and ice cream, we put out fire, we wiggled coins, we had floating bubbles, we "carved" a pumpkin in an instant, and we blew up balloons (I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the stuff we did.)

But not only did we do all that, we did it TWICE! There were almost 40 kids in total. Crazy

The only thing we didn't do twice was....ummm...a dry ice bomb.

Not sure the neighbours appreciated that.

Don't you love the endermen? Maxwell made that hat, and its eyes glow and can hold speakers for the endermen song to play.

States of Matter and Polymers

And as far as extracurricular that I'm in charge of, science is going great. THERE ARE SO MANY KIDS! There were 20 (TWENTY) kids in my older class one week. That's as big as a "real" school!

One day we did a club about the three states of matter. They were pretty cute when they tried to blow up a balloon that was in a glass beaker. They turned very red in the face:

 The kids' favourite day is, of course, polymer day where we play with oobleck (cornstarch and water) and make our own slime. We also put pencils through plastic water bags and skewers through balloons among other experiments.

And this week we did the changing states of matter which had exploding film canisters, lots of ice-water-steam demonstrations, and the BLOWING UP OF A MICROWAVE. yep.

Well, my microwave is actually still intact. But the plate I put in it is shattered. I was trying this experiment:

But I didn't watch the video in preparation, and I thought I would just put this entire bar of soap that's at least 4 years old in my microwave and that it would work. Yeah, it didn't, so I thought it needed more time....then more time...that bar of soap is all dried out and just shattered my plate which sounded like the microwave exploded.

But at least blowing up balloons with baking soda and vinegar worked (Just look at the delight on William and Abraham's faces!)

The Atom!

And the first classes that got off the ground was robotics and science. I have TWO science classes, and Cayleen does TWO robotic's classes. We do them at the same time. While one of us is teaching the Youngers, the other is teaching the olders, and then the school bus (Peavoy's van) comes and we switch. It's worked out really well so far.

There have been about 30 (THIRTY!!!) kids in total!!!

Here's my older group that are mostly veterans of our clubs:

Our first week we introduced the atom. I finally made a video of my song I made up 15 years ago (I'm getting old!)

And we talked about the magnetic properties of atoms and got rid of some electrons on balloons and showed how they repelled each other after that:

FYI you might see some blurred faces in some photos because moms want their kids off the internet which I totally understand.

The next week we learned more about the atom and it's parts, so we made atom models out of candy! Shockingly they all thought that was a hit.

Circuits and good bye

For science we had our last electricity lesson. We focused on circuits and we played that game where you try and not touch the wire because we don't want to close the circuit and make the light go on.

Electricity

This week we learned about electricity even more. We learned about insulators and conductors. And I had every child tell me the basics of electricity and how it relates to magnets:

Even William was getting the hang of it a bit:

I'll have to have Hyrum do some brain pop stuff about magnets and electricity since it's what fifth graders are "supposed" to know.

Magnets and Electricity

The first week, we had an introduction to magnets. We had to quickly explain atoms again so that magnets could be properly understood. We talked about lining up the atoms with in things. We talked about opposite attracting, and what elements were magnetic.

The next week we talked about the magnetic poles of the earth. We talked about compasses and made our own compasses from pins that we had rubbed until they were magnetic.

The next week we introduced electricity. We talked about how magnets made electricity and how electricity made magnets. We even made our own electro magnet!!! I was so proud. 

We talked about how electrons moved. We had everyone sit on the couches and move over so one kid could fit on and one kid on the opposite end fell off, and then they would move in the same direction again and the kid that had fallen off would move to the end that was waiting to get on the couches, and made our own "direct current" with our child "electrons." Then I had the kids make a "alternating current" by changing direction each time they move over a space.

We of course learned about lightning and static electricity as well. The good ol' rub-the-balloon science experiment never gets old.

This is my crew this year:

Weather, Crazy Weather

As for science:

Weather, crazy weather.

We had one lesson that focused on how hot low pressure and cold high pressure effected weather. We did this AWESOME experiment. One of the coolest ones I've ever done, where we made a cloud in a bottle out of evaporated alcohol!

The next club we talked about extreme weather. We made cyclones out of pop bottles joined at the bottleneck, and we made static electricity with balloons and made thunder sounds, and we made storm surges by sucking out air from a upside-down bowl in water, but I think my favourite experiment was when we made an inversion.

We put hot/yellow water in two jars and cold/blue water in two jars. We put cold on the bottom in one stack, and hot on the bottom in the other. In the one with hot on the bottom, the water immediately mixed=green, but in the one with cold on the bottom, it did not. We talked about how this happens with air sometimes.