'Slime'

Lukie has been talking about making slime for a couple of months...he'll see the kits at Target and say that we could buy them.  I've always told him that my 8th grade students make it to model glaciers and that we'd go to school one day to make it (where I've got the supplies that I don't need to buy) and today we finally decided we'd go make slime...

We ran it just like I run it with my 8th graders...I put the 'recipe' on the big screen and we walked step-by-step through the process, with Lukie and Lex doing all the work, me just watching...

Step 1 - they had to measure out 175 mL of water using a graduated cylinder.  So we got to talk about what a graduated cylinder is, what a mL is and how to measure them.  (Side note --- I gave each of them a 100 mL graduated cylinder and marked two lines, one at 100 mL and the other at 75 mL and said fill it to there).  They did great!

Step 2 - pour 8 ounces of glue into the 175 mL of water...

When the glue is in the water, they had to mix it to a consistency of milk...

They were having fun...

Step 3 - they had to measure 115 mL of water (I marked the graduated cylinders again like I did in step 1) and measure 10 mL of Borax to add to the 115 mL of water and then mix.  To mix the two, I gave each a glass stir rod to which Lukie said "Yes! more science tools!"  Trust me, I've never had an 8th grade kid as excited to pick up a glass stir rod...no pictures of this step...

Step 4 - add the Borax/water solution to the glue/water solution and just start mixing the two...

And just like 8th grade kids, the giggles, shrieks and screams come roaring out...

After a couple of minutes of mixing, they get a mix that they can hold in their hands...

Once they've incorporated as much water as possible into their 'glacier model' (that's what we use it for in Earth Science) they can do all sorts of cool things...

This is going to be used for the next couple of weeks....