Science Birthday Party

I decorated our front entry for the month with science-related things.

Ethen turned 9 today and is loving all things science.  I mean like REALLY LOVING SCIENCE.   He memorized the periodic table this summer, and that just sparked a whole new world of questions and learning paths.  He totes his dad's college chemistry books all around town, and loves to have his dad teach him.  So far he has learned to balance chemical equations, a little trigonometry, and who knows what else.

I like to think that my creative side balances out his dad's intellectual side, so he gets the best of both worlds.  Ethen originally wanted to invite his friends to the Museum of Natural Science, but I convinced him that I could throw a pretty great science party if he'd let me.  After all, we only have a few years of elementary birthday parties left.

I prepared a larger than life periodic table to adorn the wall.  He started helping me type it, but I was much faster, so he read the info while I typed.  He then put it all in order for me while I stuck it to the wall.

I also hung various signs around the house to create a laboratory atmosphere.  I put a clear shower curtain over the doorway to the laboratory with restricted access.

The safety tape came from Amazon.

These signs are free on mysafetysign.com

Along with the invitation, I sent each kid an ID badge that allowed them past the front door.  The adults weren't allowed to come any further.

Syringe pens are from Oriental Trading.

The kids read and agreed to the safety rules before beginning.  I also got this awesome fingerprint scanner for the iPad that analyzed their print and either granted or denied access.  For only 99 cents, it was a super fun addition.  They totally thought it was real.

Each kid got safety glasses, a lab coat I made out of old white mens' dress shirts, a pen, and a folder of classified experiements.

Colorful folders are from Office Depot.

I scoured Pinterest and the internet for some really cool science experiments that were kid-friendly, but had a little "wow" factor.  I printed all the instructions in their file folders.

I had all the materials prepped and ready to go upon arrival.

RAINBOW WATER
This was a density experiment making each color a little more dense by adding salt.  I got the density just right with a little practice beforehand.  Then they slowly layered the water in a test tube with a syringe.

LAVA LAMP
We made our own sodium bicarbonate colored bubble lamps.

IODINE WATER
They marveled at how Vitamin C water takes the color out of iodine.

DISSOLVING STYROFOAM
They used pure acetone to reduce styrofoam to a plastic blob by removing all the air.

ELEPHANT TOOTHPASTE
For the last experiment, we used 20 volume hair developer (strong hydrogen peroxide), dish soap, and yeast to make a great foam explosion.

THE FOOD
Because this party had lots of chemicals and experiments, I kept the food simple.



We had cupcakes, grape molecules, and donut hole atoms.

Ethen helped me put some bacteria sprinkles on the jello petri dishes.

And this little science cutie was a sweetheart and napped during the cacophony.