Monday, September 27, 2010

A Science Party

It all started with the idea for a science party. My son loves to learn new things and what boy doesn't like to watch something erupt?  We found some wonderful invitations on Etsy by  Carli of Dimpleprints.  She will put all of your information in to a file and email it to you so that you may print it at home, or at a print shop if you prefer.  Fantastic for me to get them out to all of my son's friends at the last possible minute!  (What can I say, it's the end of summer and school started on my son's birthday!  I was a bit overwhelmed to say the least!  :)

I did a search for science experiments and came up with the Steve Spangler website.  A great resource for experiments, and inexpensive ingredients.  We purchased instant snow, glow in the dark powder, a geyser tube and magic sand

I had my husband bend a regular round cookie cutter into an erlenmyer flask shape and made cookies.  I added pearls for bubbles and sprayed the cookies with pearlized spray.

I found beakers and erlenmeyer flasks at Scientific Equipment of Houston.  We filled the small beakers and flasks with water and food coloring.


I found plastic petri dishes at Steve Spangler Science.  We filled them with Jello and put the sprinkles in to make it look like bacteria growing in medium.

We found a local store that carries dry ice.  I filled the large beakers and cylindrical vases (found at Michaels craft store.)  I filled the vases with Aqua Gems.  They come as small spheres that swell up when water is added.  I also purchased water proof lights and put them in with the beads.  Since the vases were glass, I put plastic containers in the top of the vase with water to drop the dry ice in.  (Dry ice can shatter glass.)  It looked so cool, especially outside on the table at night.  You must be careful that the kids can not touch the dry ice as it can burn their skin.

The kids enjoyed making "tornados" out of two liter bottles and a coupler from Steve Spangler Science.

I think this was the favorite experiment of the night - Slime!  We made it with white school glue, water, food coloring and borax.  We also added some glow in the dark powder for fun.  

It was a hot night, so instead of cake we had Rita's italian ice with sparkler candles.  It was the perfect treat to cool off with.  (And allergen free for our friends with nut, egg and dairy allergies!)

We also served Izze Sparling Juice for the kids.  It's made with juice and carbonation so a bit less sugar.  It went over big, since the kids thought they were getting away with tons of soda!

Carli of Dimpleprints created the design for the favor tags.  I made them into stickers too and used them on the tops of our slime containers.  On Escapade Direct's site, I found plastic test tube and rubber stoppers.  I filled these with the snow, sand and gel beads and put them in clear bags for party favors.  (Along with some great magnets I found at 5 below,  Pop Rocks and the erlenmyer flask cookies

We also sent pictures from the party to Dimpleprints for our Thank you notes.  They turned out great, and Cole wrote his notes on the reverse side.