It's Party Time!

Mad Scientist Party Time, that is. Yes, we are once again doing a Mad Science party for Halloween. We had a blast last year and are looking forward to another fun time. The beauty is that all the planning is done (yay me!). I tweaked the Monster Lab sensory story I wrote last year just a bit (comment if you want a copy; my 4Shared account closed because I didn't use it enough). One of my paras is donating some very cool decorations to the cause and everyone is busily preparing their costume ideas.

In preparation for the Big Event we are taking a brief break from our Unique unit on ecosystems/biomes to indulge in some monstrous fun. Today we watched a couple of episodes of the Goolies on YouTube. Tomorrow we will start reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein on audio book (courtesy of iTunes). Wednesday we will design our own monsters with both Boardmaker and as an art project. Thursday we are spending the day cooking/preparing the food and decorating the room for Friday (and having a birthday party for one of the kids while we're at it). And then there's FRIDAY!!

This year we are going to do the sensory story, do a couple of experiments (probably cornstarch/water goop and vinegar/baking soda explosions since most of my kids this year can see), dissect a pumpkin, play with the sensory toys I purchased last year, design our own costumes (complete with make up and hair dos), and jam to some appropriate Monster Mash music. If we have time we'll watch one of our Mad Scientist videos (Igor, Young Frankenstein, Little Shop of Horrors, Mad Monster Party, Flubber, The Nutty Professor, The Absent Minded Professor). As an aside, we had to cancel our pumpkin patch trip because of rain/mud so went to the video store to rent some fun, campy "B" "horror" movies. Can you believe the store didn't have anything? No Blob or Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (or anything else that wanted to attack in weird and funny ways) to be found. We finally found an old copy of this obscure movie which we all about fell apart laughing at. The kids LOVED it and so did the adults. Made for a very fun rainy afternoon. I'm going to have to go hunt for more by these people (evil laugh--evil laugh--evil laugh--I sleep now --watch the movie, you'll get it).

Menu for this year is:

Sloppy Joe (poor Joe, I hope there's enough of him to go around)

Monster Fingers and Toes (green beans)

Wiggly Pumpkins (one of my paras has a jello mold shaped like a foot so we might use that)

Pumpkin Mouse (minus the tails of course)

(If you can't tell, I love Taste of Home recipes; most of what I cook at home and what we cook at school comes from these wonderful people; there are lots of classroom friendly recipes available so go check it out!)

Still More Mad Science

Thought I'd share our mad science preparations in this post so the next post doesn't get so long. This is our classroom door. Found the door curtain at Oriental Trading.

We spent the end of the day transforming our "work" area into a "Laboratory." I don't know who had more fun: the kids who were watching the video Young Frankenstein (a couple of the kids were doing awesome imitations of the monster noises and then laughing and laughing; another kept activating step-by-step that had various screams recorded on it; it was all too funny!) or the adults who were playing with a variety of solutions and mixtures and concoctions to create the lab (more on that later). The cabinets and table are covered in white shower curtain liners left over from our sensory room make over.

Here is the "Nevermore" raven I found at Party City keeping watch over the tray of monster parts for the sensory story. Below are a bunch of sensory bottles (more info below) and other creepy lab experiments including Alien Slime (awesome stuff! It's even scented!) and a variety of test tubes and beakers (really intended for sand art but for the price they were perfect for us).

Another view of our "experiments" including the Mad Lab Kit, and a color changing brain and heart. I picked up the electo-static ball years ago at Wal-Mart. I stuck one of our other "mood" lights up there too, just to add to the effect.

The large flask has green tinted water with ping pong eyeballs. The flask on top of the "burner" has purple tinted water with dish soap suds.

A closer view of the sensory bottles and Alien Slime.

I got the idea for the sensory bottles from http://www.kinderfriends.com/discoverybottles.html and then went my own direction. They are concoctions of various combinations of water, Karo syrup, baby oil, dish soap, and hair gel (the orange ones) with food coloring, glitter, confetti, and small objects added in (the orange bottle in front has hair gel and rubber eye balls). One or two just have loose beads inside so they rattle. We used the same technique to fill most of the flasks, beakers, and test tubes. They turn out really cool and the kids have fun manipulating them and watching what happens when you turn them over. I used Gorilla Glue to secure the lids to the tops of the bottles for safety. I left the flasks and test tubes open so we could recycle them but the kids won't get to play with most of those.