Chemical Reactions

Our first "intense" science lab was today.  Both the goggles and safety aprons were pulled out of the closet.  I haven't used them in two years, so some of them still had masking tape name tags on them... the tape had gone gooey and was super gross... They're clean now! A little bit of wet-wipes and paper towel action did wonders on the goo.

My class had so much fun with the lab.  They used pipettes to squirt two different liquids together and then watched to see if a chemical reaction occurred.  There are four different signs this has happened: bubbles, a precipitate forms, the temperature changes, and/or there's a color change.  Of course at the end of the lab they wanted to dump everything together and see what happened.  Not a whole lot! Just a little fizzing.  Then came clean up time... blech. All the substances we used were dumped in one pail (and then dumped in the woods).  This includes: lemon juice, vinegar, baking soda, salt water, milk, and egg whites.

After school was dishes time.  Our last volleyball and soccer games were today, so lots of kids stayed after school.  One of those girls LOVES doing dishes, so she washed pretty much everything for me! The test tubes, beakers, spoons, buckets... now it's all drying on the lab table.

Our games went well.  We played Immanuel Mankato; they only have one team, but they had enough players to put mostly littler girls in first and then the big girls for A squad.  Their girls are super tall! So B squad got creamed.  A squad, on the other hand, played amazing! And we won both games!  Woohoo!  One of the coaches got cookies and frosted them to look like volleyballs (and put the girls' numbers on them).  She also got them a box of candy for having such a good season.  The mom of the only 8th grade girl brought her flowers and a balloon for her teammates to give her.  It was quite the festive night!

So now, volleyball is officially over.  And the volleyball drama with it! (hopefully).  Now on to the next thing!  My next big hurdle is Camp Omega.  We finally picked our classes; the guy had typed my email in wrong, so I never received the email.  But that's straightened out now.  The toughest thing is going to be finding chaperones... I've had one potential nibble as of now and a tentative bite (if no one else volunteers).  So we can go for sure, I just don't know who our other chaperones will be.  It would be nice to have some firm yeses though!