Yay For Family Science Night!

I am a huge fan of any activities that fill the gap between dinner and bedtime. By then, Clara and Trevor are tired of one another, and both are prone to fits of crankiness. Since crankiness is contagious, we would be best to quarantine ourselves in our respective happy places. Instead, we try to do things together, and Chad and I keep our referee whistles at the ready. Tonight, however, we had a special, no-whistles-necessary kind of evening. It was Family Science Night at school!

The whole cafeteria was full of cool hands-on stuff to make and do. One of our favorite activities was using a magnet to extract the iron from Total cereal. Another big hit was using static electricity to make pepper jump and a soda can roll. Lots of friends from the neighborhood were there (man, I love our neighborhood), and the kids just had a blast.

We had a nice, infrared family photo taken:
Notice how Trevor has a warm nose, which makes him look very chimp-like, and how Clara's baseball cap is very cool. Also, my chin is exactly the same temperature as the rest of my face, which makes me look very attractive.
The absolute coolest thing was something I can't believe I have never seen or heard of before: Nuudles! These are biodegradable foam cylinders, made from cornstarch. I think they were invented as environmentally friendly packing peanuts, but someone decided they'd be a fun building toy. And are they ever! When you wet them with a damp sponge, they stick together, and you can build anything. Clara made some nice, abstract designs, and Trevor made a "Magic T wand", which is only magical when you wave it and say a word that starts with T. All his idea, I swear! I could never come up with something that creative.

But even after all of that considerable coolness, the best was yet to come. Because just before bed, Clara asked if we could make our own Family Science Night at home every Thursday, and invite all of our friends, because,
"Science experiments really help you to be a good thinker and problem solver, and I just want to share that with everybody."


And you can all ignore this video, because I'm just putting it here for my former student, Jens, who taught me how to sing Row Row Row Your Boat in Norwegian, so that I could teach it to my class. Thanks, Jens! They won't win any singing contests, but here it is: