Shiny Little Rainbows

               We did an experiment to create rainbows this week. 
                You will need nail polish, water and black paper.
  
Let a single drip of nail polish fall into a container of clear water.  Quickly place a piece of black paper on top.  Lift the paper and turn it over to see what happened.
                     
                                         A rainbow!
You may have a problem if you take too long to put the paper on the nail polish.
            
    If you wait too long the nail polish will form a skin on the water. 
                        Don’t worry because you can still use it. 
    
                          Slip the paper under the skin and lift it up.
    
             
        We only used black paper but after seeing this child’s rainbow,
which he made on paper painted green, we should have tried a variety of colours.
                 
          To check out where I found this idea visit The Science Kiddo.

An Awesome Fire Hall Tour

This morning we toured one of our local fire stations, it turned out to be extra exciting.
                
We started the tour meeting Firefighter Greg.  He told us some rules for our tour.  When we enter the truck area we would be meeting on a mat and if the alarm was to go we were to stay on the mat to be safe.  We would learn later that this was a bit of foreshadowing.

Greg was teaching us about fire safety, matches, burns and smoke detectors, when the fire alarm rang.
                    

We watched as the firefighters quickly prepared and got in the truck.
       
It was exciting to watch the firefighters come out of their dressing room and rush out to the truck.  Watching both men and women getting ready offered us the chance to have a discussion about why we say firefighter, instead of fireman now.
                      
We had just started back to learning about the fire truck when a second alarm rang.
 
We safely walked back to the mat and watched more firefighters get ready.

Both firefighters that were giving us our tour had to quickly dress, get into the second truck and leave.
                
               
                 
Luckily another firefighter stepped in and let us tour through the truck.

By the time we finished touring the truck the second truck called out returned and we were able to see a demo of all the parts of their uniform.

 
Before moving outside to play with the hose we practiced “Stop, Drop and Roll”.

                    
Then time for the most fun part of the morning, using the fire hose.  We learned how to turn it on and off and aim it at a truck parked in the lot.
                    
When we were ready to leave firefighter Greg gave each of the children their own fire hats to take home.  It was a very memorable tour.

Rainbow Squish and Smooth

                   
This is an activity that we’ve done before where we put paint between two pieces of plastic.  This time we started with a rainbow and I added hair gel with the paint.
   
The families were tentative at touching it.  It looks wet because of the shiny plastic (I used a clear shower curtain cut down to fit the size of the table).
 
Then they realized that they could manipulate the paint without getting messy.  By adding the hair gel under the paint it made it slippery and the paint moved easily under the fingers.
   
As each day passed the colours blended, changed and covered the whole table.
   
There was also an air bubble under the plastic and it allowed us to push the paint around and into piles.
 
            We pushed it as far as we could and then a bit more.
                
               Under the pressure it did drip through the tape a bit.
      
Several parents used it as an opportunity to make marks and show letter formation.
              
                      This is what it looked like by the end of the week.
 Clean up was easy, I just pulled off the tape, lifted both pieces of plastic and
                                      threw it in the garbage.