For our first Family Fun Night of the year, we had a night of science! I moved the time slightly later in the evening, and changed how we marketed the program, so I had no clue how many people or what ages to expect. But it was great! We had large group, and families with kids ranging from 1 to 10. The best part was watching the parents engage with the kids as they worked through the different activities.
Here’s what we did!
Bubbles
I had a few different kinds of bubble solution, plus dish soap and water for kids to make their own. We made bubble wands out of pipe cleaners, and they had a lot of fun trying to blow bubbles in different sizes and shapes.
Marshmallow + toothpick building
This station was a hit with the older kids especially, who ate handfuls of marshmallows even after I stuck my hands in the bowl to demonstrate how many germs were one them. Oh well.
Shadows
I turned on the projector and put out black paper and popsicle sticks to make shadow puppets. Some kids were pretty talented at making shapes and animals with just their hands.
Fizzy Painting
This station comes straight from Kendra, and it was a BLAST. We had to adjust amounts of liquid since kids idea of a spoonful is a lot bigger than mine, but they loved this one. My program room still smells like vinegar four days later.
Make a boat!
I filled an aluminum tray with blue water, and challenged the kids to create a boat that would float all the way across. A couple kids had little mini animal erasers, so they made boats for the animals. A few of them tried the origami boat, which turned out great!
The whole program was lots of fun, and I can’t wait to do it again!
