Creative Science Investigators

Mr. Jones and I volunteered three mornings over at Calvary Church this week. They sponsored something called CSI: Creative Science Investigators. Children from Kindergarten through Grade Five were invited to spend the morning at church having fun with science. I worked with crafts (my specialty) and Mr. Jones was in the nursery (his specialty). The children were divided by age and each separate group of 6-8 children had a group leader (adult or high school age). In the craft room, there were 12 tables set up with six adult craft leaders. So we had plenty of help ~ but there were a lot of children too! I met some really nice women this week (the other craft leaders) that I didn't even know existed a week ago.
Tuesday morning, we helped the children make these fossils. It's difficult for me to describe this concoction, but it was equal parts of coffee grounds and flour, mixed with salt and then just a tiny bit of water. The children got to mix the ingredients, pat it down onto foil, and then pick out an insect (plastic!) to press into their mixture.
On Wednesday, we did sand art. The kids had so much fun with this! It was interesting to watch them making designs with the sand. Some of the younger kids just wanted to pour the sand into their bottles and shake it all up together to see what would happen; but most of them did a striped pattern of some kind. I think they turned out very nicely.


Thursday, we used fabric crayons. Every child was given an outlined picture of the organs of the human body (heart, lungs, liver, stomach, etc.). They colored the picture and then we ironed their finished product onto a white T-shirt. I didn't even know there were such things as fabric crayons! And they worked really well IF you outlined the picture first in black, and then were careful to use bold colors and pressed very hard. I forgot my camera Thursday, so I can't show you how they turned out. Altogether, there were more than 200 children that came through our craft area at 20-minute intervals; so it was fast-paced and a lot of fun. When they weren't with us in crafts, they were in the lab participating in science experiments, or they were studying rock formations and other cool things like that. There was also a chapel session to start the morning off where one of our youth pastors, Brian, got the kids excited about God being the Creator of everything!
Mr. Jones took care of the babies of the adult helpers. He had about five assistants, who harrassed him constantly. We made him exit the nursery the same way the little kids do, through the gate in the castle. We had a great time being involved with CSI. Next week, we get to help out at a thing called "Kids Games" downtown at Martin Luther King School with Urban Family Ministries! How blessed are we?!