Recycle, Reuse, and Redecorate

Experimenting has been the theme of my week; in preparation for our upcycling day camp we have tomorrow, we have been crafting our hearts out. We have been rolling newspapers up for the kids to use to make baskets out of, cut Ale8, Root Beer, and other glass bottles up for the kids to sand to make pencil holders, and we have also melted plastic bottles strips with blow dryers to make example beads for the kids to make bracelets. This week we have been testing out all of our crafts that the kids are going to be making and seeing that everything will be able to run smoothly.  After helping prepare everything for the day camp there is a very good possibility that I may be more excited for the day than a lot of the kids. Today Heather, Andy and I all went and did a “Mad Scientist” program for the Clark County Library. Our program was all about balloons. I taught a segment on blowing up balloons without using air! We mixed together vinegar and baking soda and the kids were amazed. After blowing up the balloon we took another balloon and talked about static electricity. We took fabric and rubbed a balloon and picked up rice crispies with the static electricity.  The kids really enjoyed it, and since the best way to test to see if there was static in the balloon was by messing up everyone’s hair I enjoyed it quite a lot as well. The next few days are going to be filled with preparing for camp!!!!!!! I cannot wait we leave on Monday and we are finalizing all of our details and getting ready to go! North Central here we come. These past weeks I have learned a few new skills to add to my resume; glass cutting, mad scientist, and very poor photographer.  More importantly I have learned to get kids excited about learning, and how to accept not being great at things and delegate those activities to someone else.