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!)

Look Out! It's a Mad Scientist!

The promised photos of a group of Mad Scientists. We had an absolute blast all day!

Check out those intestines!

Alien Slime and sensory bottles

It's a brain!

Flubber experiment

Playing with "oobleck"

For those of you who are curious, I took most of the photos so this is the only one I'm in. I'm the one with the wild hair third from the right.

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.

More Mad Science

I just finished doing the powerpoint and script for Mad Monster Lab and it turned out too cute! Many thanks to my wonderful husband for showing me some of the tricks to powerpoint 07. I will post it here as soon as I figure out file sharing. It was unbelievably easy to do. Link to powerpoint.
Link to script (in Word) You'll need both documents. My kids are controlling the powerpoint using either the Smartboard or a jellybeamer. You could also add fun with messages on voice output devices (ooh, that's scary; look out!; what gonna happen now?; I'm scared; that's creepy; etc.). Have fun! Just a note: when I tried to download the powerpoint to another computer using 4Shared not all the sounds came through, which kind of ruins the effect. When I checked the presentation the sounds weren't even listed. If you can't get it to work correctly leave me a comment with contact info (or email me) and I'll send it to you directly. Try this link to the powerpoint to see if it works better.
Well, that didn't work either. The download still leaves out 4 of the sounds: storm, lab, shock, and Monster Mash. Works just fine on the original on my PC so not sure what's going on (I'm not that tech savvy, sorry). Here are the links to the missing sounds so you can add them yourself. I found the first 3 on http://www.findsounds.com/ and Monster Mash in http://www.ilovewavs.com/ :
http://www.4shared.com/file/68310396/25693eae/labclip.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/68310662/a3572493/Monster_Mash_Music.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/68310615/727227f7/ShocknScream.html
http://www.4shared.com/file/68310366/a2f12261/thunder2.html

Here are the words to Spooky Hooky:
Put your [body part] in
Put your [body part] out
Put your [body part] in and shake shake shake shake shake
Do the hooky spooky and
Wave your arms around
Then make a Halloween sound!

We use finger bones, foot bones, leg bone, arm bone, head bone, and the favorite rear end bone as well as whole skeleton.

I have a body parts PCS board already made for the Hokey Pokey that the kids take turns choosing from. Ahead of time they get to come to the computer and choose a spooky Halloween sound from my collection of wav files and record it on an AAC device (either tablet PC or step by step). Makes for lots of noisy fun as they don't usually wait for the end to activate. :-)
We also do "wave your arms" instead of turn around because our space is limited and turning around gets really challenging with all those wheelchairs!

I also have a copy of the song "What Do You Like About Halloween" by Sue Schnitzer (search her name on itunes; awesome stuff; I also like Oh the Bats, great use of a balloon and really just everything on her Halloween CD) that I just did a board for. I tested it at ROCKO this Saturday and it was a huge hit.

What do you like about Halloween?
What do you like about Halloween?
[child selects button that says "I like ___"]
[Child's name] likes [selection]
That's what we like about Halloween.

I put the board in Boardmaker/Speaking Dynamically on a tablet PC that we pass around to let the kids choose. My scanners can either step scan to their choice or use a non-tech mode to tell us what they want before we sing the verse. Now that I know the tune I can think of infinite ways to use the song: holidays, seasons, the weekend, working with our SLP, shopping, ....

Mad Science

I will be the first to admit, I love Halloween and always have. Some of my fondest memories from my childhood are of making my own costumes and going out on crisp fall nights to trick or treat, watching the Walt Disney Halloween special, and trading candy with my brother. Now that I'm all grown up, and don't have kids of my own, I generally get my Halloween fix with my students. I have a huge box of props, manipulatives, and toys. I think I must own every Halloween-themed kids' CD out there (my paras counted today and I think they came up with 10; that doesn't count what I've downloaded to itunes). We typically do lots of Halloween-related activities like going to the local pumpkin patch, carving a pumpkin and playing in pumpkin guts (fun!), designing our own costumes (last year's favorite was a pirate complete with a pirate ship-stroller and a treasure chest treat box, oh, and the parrot, can't forget the parrot), and having a Halloween party. This year we have decided to have a Mad Scientist party instead of the more traditional Halloween classroom party. This came about for several reasons. First, Lon Thornburg of No Limits to Learning fame is sponsoring a "Mad Scientist" theme for October's Assistive Technology Blog Carnival and I really wanted to enter it so got "inspired." Second, I have at least one student whose family does not "do" Halloween so we always have to adapt. I've been fortunate that these families have not asked me to restrict the Halloween fun for the other students (and staff), but they prefer that their child do non-Halloween activities. Third, at the middle school level we are constantly striving to "age up" the kids' activities. So often they seem "stuck" at a preschool interest level and to some extent we allow them to appreciate their favorites (tops right now are Handy Manny, Tigger and Pooh, and SpongeBob). However, we also expose them to as much of the pre-teen/teen culture as we can. The Girls and I all agreed that a Mad Scientist party would not only be fun, but could work to meet a lot of our goals with the kids and still let us enjoy Halloween fun without tromping on anyone's beliefs. I mean, what middle schooler wouldn't want to dress in weird clothes, listen to loud music, and play with weird concoctions? Pretty much an average day around our school.

We had to get creative with our activities to accommodate the kids' sensory issues, especially with science experiments. The exploding volcano project (which would be cool coming out of a beaker) just would not be a big hit with so many kids with vision impairments and I don't think anyone would get the rubber chicken bone thing. Here are the activities we have planned and the assistive technology we will use to support the kids in all the fun:

Ahead of time
Reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in audio book format

Watching Young Frankenstein just for kicks (that will be on swimming day) complete with our own versions of the sound effects or "movie watching" social scripts programmed onto Step-by-Steps (Chloe and I would rather do a fun interactive version of Rocky Horror Picture Show but somehow I don't think that would fly real well; maybe I'll snag her and go to the Orpheum Theater in Wichita to do the real thing)

On the day
Dress up as mad scientists with wigs, gloves, and other props (we have a nurse and a trauma surgeon in our parent collection so I'm sure we'll get some good donations to the cause)

Sensory story on the Smart board based loosely on The Monster Lab Game and work by some folks in the UK (The Advisory Unit Plasma Screen and Whiteboard Room is definitely worth a visit!); the kids will have step-by-steps for appropriate sound effects, use the Smartboard or a jelly beamer to turn the page on whichever software product I decide to use (Boardmaker, Intellitools, SwitchIt!, or powerpoint), and explore all the smelly and ooey gooey props that go along with the story. This will take the place of our usual Morning Meeting activities

Play with a host of "Laboratory Equipment" like a static ball, different light toys, exploring sound effects and creepy music, and "beakers" with different things inside

Cook lunch which will probably be spaghetti and meat sauce (so we can use some of the spaghetti in the sensory story of course) and our favorite pumpkin pudding; I'll have to come up with an appropriate name of course. Hey! Green beans would make good "fingers," hmmm...

Do a Mad Science Experiment, probably making "oobleck" with bright colors (3 parts cornstarch to 2 parts water; fun stuff to play with); I think a mixer (adapted with powerlink) will work with this stuff; guess we'll find out!

Create our own "Frankenstein's Monsters" or robots and use our communication devices to make choices, adapted scissors to cut, etc.

Do the "Spooky Hooky," our version of the Hokey Pokey. The kids use either pictures or step scanning to choose what body parts to shake shake shake

That will probably fill up our day. I doubt we do any "trick or treating" as most of the kids either don't eat by mouth or have dietary restrictions that mean no candy allowed. We'll also create the right "atmosphere" with one of our creepy sounds CDs playing through the surround sound (including the itunes visualizer on the wall) and props set around the room, given I can find some "on the cheap." I'm sure the science teacher next door and the school resource officer will also make an appearance. They go all out for Halloween. At least they don't Vaseline my door handle anymore (learned their lesson after one of the kids ate the stuff! Kid is OK, adults a little sheepish).

I will post photos after the Big Event but wanted to get the initial post done in time for the Blog Carnival (submissions are due Oct. 27). Who knows? We might inspire you to have some Mad Science fun, or maybe you have some ideas to contribute to make our day even better. Consider submitting your own entry to the Carnival. It's painless and NOT SCARY AT ALL. It's a terrific way to share and to get word out about your blog.