Mad Science

Well my oldest baby turned 7 yesterday, crazy. For his party this year he decided (with a little encouragment from me) to have a Mad Science Party. One day when I was at the doctor I picked up Family Fun Magazine and on the cover was a mad science birthday, so I got some ideas from there, as well as some from my big sissy Andrea (who did a science party a few years back), of course some ideas were from my birthday-go-to-source birthdaypartyideas.com, and some I even came up with all on my own. Here are the party details if you want them, if not just scroll down and look at the pictures. I am writing down the costs of everything, so that if you want to do a similar party you will know how much each thing cost.
Invites:

This is what I did for the invitations. I printed this out in 5 by 7 inch size on cardstock. I rolled it up and slid it in a large test tube (baby soda bottle found at stevespangler.com) and filled the test tube with homemade confetti. The big expense for this was the test tubes, which were $10 for 15. So in total the invites cost me $10.

Costumes: From Family Fun I got the idea of making costumes for each of the kids which included lab coats, safety goggles, name tags, and rubber gloves. For the lab coats I bought plain white tees at a $ a pop and just cut them down the front, easy. I bought the safety goggles for $ and the rubber gloves I got at the dollar store, I bought mad science name tags on clearance from Oriental trading for $2. The costumes were the biggest expense, but totally worth the $28. Check out the picture of these MAD SCIENTISTS.

The Cake: I gave Tanner the choice of what cake he wanted I told him I would do a science flask or an eyeball and brain. He chose the flask, this I found on Family Fun. You bake 2 bundt cakes, place the first bottom-side up and frost then put the next cake bottom-side down on top of that. You put a paper towel roll (wrapped in foil) in the bundt cake hole. Then you just frost to look like the flask. You can get details on familyfun.com. I am not good at making frosting smooth so that part was a bit tricky for me. Also, you put blue cotton candy in the top of the paper towel roll to look like vapor. The only kind of cotton candy I could find was from the dollar store and it was not light and airy like you would get at the carnival, so it did not acheive the exact look that I wanted. But all in all it turned out and Tanner thought it was great. Total cost for cake and frosting $5.

Mad Science Word Search: As a gathering activity I painted the words MAD SCIENCE on a big piece of butcher paper and then wrote 75 different science-ish words very small. The idea of the game was to find as many words as you can using a magnifying glass, the 2 who found the most words got a big box of Nerds (because scientists are nerds, right?). I bought little science notebooks for about $4 and magnifying glasses for $3, Nerds for $2, I had the pencils and the butcher paper and paint. So in total this game cost $9.

Test Tube Lava Lamps: For this we used the same tests tubes I used for the invites. The kids used droppers (also purchased from Steve Spangler for $4 for 50) to fill the test tube 3/4 of the way full with oil and then the rest with water. In the end you add several drops of food coloring. We then used super glue to keep the lids on and then you just rock then back and forth and you get the look of a lava lamp. This experiment cost about $15.

Drops on a Penny: Next we used the same droppers as before and slowly dropped water onto the surface of the penny. The water will form a big bubble on top of the penny (pretty cool), I was able to get 42 drops of water on the penny. The kids just had a good time squirting water on the penny.

Diet Coke Mentos Geyser: This is a pretty fun experiment. You quickly drop 7 mentos into a bottle of soda (Diet Coke works best because diet has no sugar = easy clean-up). What happens is the soda erupts out of the bottle and goes very high. If I can figure out how I will put a very short video clip on of it. This experiment cost me about $15 for soda and mentos.

Cornstarch and water: The kids got to mix cornstarch with water. If you have never done this before you take 2 parts cornstarch and add 1 part water. The mixture will react differently to metal, plastic, wood, rocks, etc. Sometimes it is a solid other times a liquid. I spent $2 on disposable containers to mix in and $3 for cornstarch. In total $5. Cheap and easy, just make sure not to pour the mixture down the drain, it can mess up your pipes.

We ended the party with cake and ice cream which I served with Capri Suns ($2), then we opened presents. Everyone left with a goody box filled with candy and things from the experiments we did. The cost for those were about $10 for candy and $2 for the boxes (on clearance from OT).Everything went well, it seemed like all the kids had a splendid time.

So sad, no more parties till November.