"Mad Scientist" Day

That's right! It's "Mad Scientist" Day! I wanted to come up with a fun way to teach my children science. We headed down to Lakeshore Learning and purchased two, $20.00 science kits (one about energy and the other about chemistry). Then we headed to Walmart and picked up two plain white, button up, collared shirts to use as lab coats... $20.00. Finally it was off to Sally's Beauty Supply for some white (wash out/temporary) hair color... $4.00 with a coupon.

We started the day off by getting dressed up as mad scientists, which the kids thought was wonderful. Once dressed, we were ready to begin. The kits we bought came complete with a book and supplies (it also requires some household supplies like batteries and baking soda to be purchased separately... if you don't already have them). When everything was out and ready we decided we would start with energy first.

We learned about distance, force and work.

We discovered Kinetic energy.

We came to understand how Potential energy works. We realized that we could change potential energy into kinetic energy. And finally we learned that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

Then it was onto having even more fun learning about chemistry with water and gas. We also talked about what matter is and how "matter matters."

We read about matter and learned that it was everything. We discovered liquids and found out they take up the same volume no matter where you pour them, because they take the shape of the container.

We studied gas and realized that we use air to make gases with our body all the time. Then we found out that gas spreads throughout the container (or space) it is in, because gas has no definite shape or volume.

We had a very busy, but very exciting day. I knew learning science could be fun, just not this fun. I really hope you get a chance to do a "Mad Scientist" Day with your kids. I will definitely be doing this with them again come Halloween. What fun! And we still haven't finished our kits. There is still so much to do. They want to do another science day tomorrow. We probably will... just skipping the hair coloring part, because we ran out of spray and I don't want to do any permanent damage to their hair. But for one day of fun, where dress up meets science. It was worth it.