It’s been a little while since my last blog post, so I thought I keep you updated on where I am now with my project.
I’ve got a firm plan of what I want to do with my project and ideas for individual activities, although not fully fleshed out to the point I’m 100% they’ll work in a classroom environment. I want to try to take a multidisciplinary approach, including not just science but also language and other areas. I’m doing this through creating a Grand Wizard, who is on the search for the new generation of wizards, and so has some tasks for you to complete. I’m hoping that this will create a purpose to the activities, as well as drawing the children in.
The two main experiments/magic activities I had come up with for the classroom were a bicarbonate of soda and vinegar potion, and invisible ink for writing secret codes. I felt those experiments bordered the line of being fun and exciting, but simple to set up and with simple equipment needed.
Recently we also had to present our ideas in our course conference. I wanted to try to make my presentation as engaging and personalised as possible and so I decided to include some videos of the experiments I want to include. Doing them live would have been a bit tricky so I’m glad I didn’t attempt that.
However, while trying out the experiments in order to film them or get some good pictures, I came across a problem; my invisible ink just wasn’t so invisible. I tried a few different methods, with different ingredients and couldn’t find one that worked. Luckily it wasn’t an integral part of my presentation, and my bicarbonate of soda – vinegar potion experiment worked wonderfully, video linked below.
I’m very glad I discovered the problem with the invisible ink experiment sooner rather than later. I’m currently on the look out for any alternative methods (without heat), or perhaps an experiment that can go in its place. It does mean I will have to make some changes to my plans, but I prefer to do that than to have an experiment that doesn’t work!
A few days after my presentation, I had another meeting with my supervisors JC and Kay. Kay has replaced Brian as one of my supervisors, who retired during the winter break. With her fresh eyes on my plans she was able to pick out some small details of things to consider which hadn’t crossed my mind, such as considering that certain things may be irritants to the skin, and that letting children loose with food colouring near their white clothes wouldn’t be the best idea! I very much appreciated these things and I am looking out for alternatives, or fixes for them.
Another slight setback is due to the ongoing situation, it does not look like I’ll be able to collaborate with a teacher on this activity and have them host it in their class, at least not before my due date. Having some feedback on the activities from participants is really important to me, and so as a solution, JC and Kay suggested that I could trial it out with some of my friends. I think this would be a great thing for me to do, and so I’m hoping to organise a Wizard Fun evening with a few people, via Zoom, and if possible obtain some costumes from JC to dress up. I could record the activity and get some pictures taken of my friends making potions and trialing worksheets.
My goal right now is to have that set up for sometime mid-March, before everyone is too busy thinking about exams to want to participate! However, before that can happen I need to 100% nail down my activities, make sure they all work and make sure they are all kid safe!
See you next time,
Jen
