A Magical Day of POTIONS

This week we were with our old friends from Summerhill Primary School Maghull for a day of shows and workshops themed around POTIONS.
The show is full of magical colour changes and dry ice fog.
Dressed in our magical science costumes we set the scene with rhyming instructions from the potions book:

a sleeping potion is in this flask

how shall we wake it I hear you ask!

a quick shake of the bottle turns the clear liquid bright pink!

These test tubes are filled with a liquid that's clear

add the green magic and watch colours appear

a rainbow of giant testubes coloured with universal indicator

And so the show continued with disappearing magic wand and black cat ( made from polystyrene and dunked into acetone) and an umbrella that changes colour when wet.
Then Helen created a huge fireball with milk powder and we set off the whoosh bottle.
The finale was all dry ice - cauldrons of fog, crystal ball bubbles and lids popping all over the place.

It went well.

We squeezed in a short hands on session with reception before we did it all again for KS1

In the afternoon we worked with year 3 and then year 4 letting them get up close with some of the colour change kit - heat sensitive paper and colour change straws and finally decked in gloves and safety glasses everyone got very close with the dry ice making banana smelling fog and blowing up some of the gloves with carbon dioxide gas.

a quick update: just look at the awe and wonder in the faces of these two young ladies

this is why we do our job

Valentine Science Ideas

There is just time left to organise some Valentine themed science for your classroom.
A quick browse of Pinterest brings up HUGE quantities of glitter slime, red hearts and love heart sweetie science so it is well worth having a look yourself.
Just a point in the US they call them conversation hearts and I think the recipe must be different to our love hearts which are made here in the UK by Swizzels
Here are just a couple of ideas I have found that are a little bit different.

The creative people who are Little Bins  have a great set of web pages with ideas for love themed science especially this very simple but effective oil and water experiment.

Using the fact that oil and water don't mix, beautiful art can be created with just a couple of ingredients

You will need to use baby oil to get that lovely clear effect and a couple of love themed colours .

The images tell the story - well done to Little Bins  for a great idea.

You can find more of their ideas here: https://littlebinsforlittlehands.com

                                          

Inspiration Laboratories have a brilliant site with lots of ideas that are just a little bit different but you will also be able to find your favourites there too.

For Valentine's day they have collected lots of ideas which you can find here:

https://inspirationlaboratories.com/valentines-day-science-experiments-activities/

I like their  idea of using heat sensitive paper to make bookmarks. There are a couple of suppliers in the UK that sell it. Obviously the pink one works well but our pack also had blue which turns white when warm, green which goes yellow and purple which goes pink. So something for everyone

And finally from The Best Ideas for Kids a brilliantly simple love themed take on our own Art on a Plate.    Using full fat milk, a heart shaped cake tin, red food colouring, a little washing up liquid and a cotton bud. 

Pour a small amount of milk into the cake tin and add a few drops of colour. Then touch the surface with the cotton bud dipped in the washing up liquid and watch the results. Amazing and well worth getting the video camera out.

 here is the link to the Best Ideas website for more ideas

https://www.thebestideasforkids.com/valentine-science-experiments/

Have fun and enjoy Valentines Day!