Friday, February 26, 2010

There is No Stickiness in Space

I mentioned earlier that Jac and Mia are both really in to space right now. Well, we seem to have hit the crescendo. This week at school Jac studied space and was really impressed with the solar system model that his teachers brought in. He also had Alien Day at school, which required that all the children bring in some sort of alien head gear that they had created (with mom and dad's help) and decide what their alien's name was and what planet they were from. Jac wore a foil covered bike helmet with 10 eyes and a weird mouth, his alien name was Pollup Kadop from Jupiter.

Amazingly enough this all corresponded with our church's science night. So Jac and Mia got to see through a real telescope and play with real robots. Too cool.

Their favorite was the robot display. A big robot chased them and they held hands for support, or rather Mia grabbed Jac's hand. Then they got to drive some smaller robots via remote control. Mia could have stood there all night playing with the remote control, but it was funny because she just held down on the lever and the robot was heading across the gymnasium, so I am not sure she had any clue what she was doing.

They enjoyed seeing "outer space", but not as much as I would have thought. When Mia saw the moon through the telescope she didn't believe that it was the moon because it was so large. She said, "I didn't see the moon, but I saw something." It took some convincing but I think she got it. Every time she would hop down from one telescope (these were big telescopes that required step ladders for the little ones to get to) she would say, "I saw outer space."

The one big fat failure of the night was the Polymers display. I think it was successful for everyone but us. Some middle school kids had a display that if you knead glue and starch together for awhile it would make silly putty. I always encourage Jac to do the messy projects because I am scared that he is going to become OCD and not be able to have anything touch his hands. He is very neat when eating and playing. So this required you to roll up your sleeves and get messy but the end result was a cool ball of silly putty and for the most part everyone's hands were fairly clean.

Well, I guess there is a bit more science behind the making of a polymer. Jac started off by sort of stretching the sticky mess when in fact you need to roll it around a bit in your hands to get it to do it's thing. His never really turned into silly putty it just turned into sticky white gloves coating the front, back and sides of his hands. He never complained and he kept trying but you could tell he wasn't enjoying himself. So we finally gave up and went to wash it off, easier said than done. It took us a good 15 minutes to wash off all of the mess, it truly was sticky stuff. But that is okay, he is no worse for wear.

I love that they are getting old enough to ask questions and be interested in the world around them. This is a great age.

1 comment:

Mary said...

LOVE the alien head gear!

Even Josie didn't want to 'mush' the silly putty into submission... my hands got sticky.

Josie's reaction to the Moon through the telescope was very similar to Mia's. Funny!