Mad Scientist Birthday Party

I never know how many details you want from my kids’ birthday parties so today I will give you absolutely all of them.  And then I’ll give you more tomorrow, and the day after that as well.  Today’s theme: If You are Crazy Like Me and want to Plan this Party then Read this Post.

I made the invitations in Photoshop and added a picture of screaming Vincenzo, then finished them off with a gobs of glitter glue:

When guests came, they had to scan in:

Then they went to the bathroom to receive lab coats and name badges and to give themselves a crazy hairdo.  The lab coats were $1.60 each from Mr. Disposable, which was awesome…but s/h was $16, which was not so awesome.  I got the name badges from Oriental Trading.

Next the kids headed out to the deck where they had glasses of water and the food dye colors of red, yellow, and blue; their job was to create orange, purple, green, brown, and black.  Our deck is now also purple, green, brown, and black.

Once everyone had arrived we headed inside for an experiment to blow up balloons (I had prefilled balloons with 2tsp baking soda; we added some vinegar to the bottles then attached balloons and dumped contents.)

1..2..3!

I talked a bit about static electricity, then took the kids to the basement where we had scattered a bunch of tissue paper squares; the kids had to rub the balloons on their heads and use them to pick up the paper and put it into bowls.  It was freakin’ hilarious.  Pro tip: the balloons from the experiment didn’t work very well, but fortunately we had blown up a bunch the old-fashioned way and they worked fine.

While they were busy picking up tissue paper, I went upstairs poured some milk onto each child’s plate and added some food dye.

Then I called them all upstairs, talked for about 10 seconds about surface tension, and showed them what happens when we break surface tension (by adding a couple drops of dish soap).  Super easy/fun experiment to try with your kids even if you don’t throw a party!

Next, the kids gathered around a table where I had a tray of 12 objects, some of which were magnetic and some of which weren’t.  They each got a sheet of paper with pictures of the objects on it and they wrote “yes” or “no” by each picture based on whether they thought it was magnetic.  When everyone was ready, Vincenzo held each object up to a magnet to show.

For the next experiment we filled a bottle with hot water and died it black, then put a bottle of cold water on top of it (we had the kids make predictions about what would happen first).  The hot water moved up, which wasn’t quite as cool as the favorite prediction that it was going to explode, but it was still pretty cool.

Still with me?  No matter; I’ll keep going.  We took an experiment break for lunch, which included:

Punch with dry ice (huge hit), monster burgers, buggy hot dogs, eyeball Jell-o, and fruit molecules.

I totally cheated for this party and purchased the food labels and a few other things from Celebration Shoppe.  Well worth the $8.

Then I sent the kids downstairs for a Monster Mash Dance Party, where the fog machine, bubble machine, and a disco light (don’t ask) all came in handy.

We cleared the table and set out the cakes while the kids all drank beer and made out downstairs.  (Just seeing if you’re still paying attention.)  Ready for my favorite part of the party?

The cakes were shockingly easy to make.  Heh, heh—shockingly easy.

And of course, we couldn’t have a science birthday without the ol’ exploding volcano.  A couple weeks previous, we made 4 batches of play dough and stuck it on a Perrier bottle, along with a few dinosaurs we picked up at the dollar store.  We had to cover the whole thing with Polyurethane so the salt wouldn’t leech out.

Favors (test tubes also from Oriental Trading, tags from Celebration Shoppe).

Not the cheapest party in the world to throw, but it didn’t cost as as much as our wedding did.

I think.  The final bills aren’t in yet.