One advantage to having so many adults in the room is that my many student teachers and other support staff-in-training bring a variety of interesting and exciting opportunities to the students. The most recent of these was making "silly putty", a gooey, slimely substance that has students mixing water, glue and borax powder.
The student CYW in my classroom needed to plan and carry out a "therapeutic activity" as part of her practicum requirements, and we guinea pigs happily obliged. Granted, it was a bit of a messy experience in some cases, but overall, the students participated with a sense of wonder as they experimented with this strange substance that was part liquid, part solid. (This became particularly apparent later in the afternoon, when one student "shared" some of the slime with a friend from another class, but did not put it in a ziplock bag. The friend shoved the small wad into his pocket, where it promptly melted and began oozing out of his pants!)
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The student CYW in my classroom needed to plan and carry out a "therapeutic activity" as part of her practicum requirements, and we guinea pigs happily obliged. Granted, it was a bit of a messy experience in some cases, but overall, the students participated with a sense of wonder as they experimented with this strange substance that was part liquid, part solid. (This became particularly apparent later in the afternoon, when one student "shared" some of the slime with a friend from another class, but did not put it in a ziplock bag. The friend shoved the small wad into his pocket, where it promptly melted and began oozing out of his pants!)
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After the students had completed making and storing the slime, and cleaning up most of their work stations, we took the opportunity to practise a little procedural writing. The "How to Make Slime" paragraphs were very well written, motivated in large part by the fact the the 8-year-old authors all wanted to replicate the experiment at home that evening!
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