Mr. Rich, The Science Guy

After a very disappointing Pre-School Music Class at the Brentwood Library yesterday morning, we went to an awesome program at the Main Williamson County Library in the afternoon.  The music class lasted only about 15 minutes and a third of the class was spent doing a good morning song saying each child's name.  I had talked to the librarian that does storytime the day before and she said they hired someone with a music background to do the class this year instead of her doing it.  I think they made a bad decision.  We may give the class one more chance later in the summer, but I'm not sure they'll still be having it by then.

Anyway, the afternoon program we did was with Mr. Rich, The Science Guy.  The boys were a little younger than the target age group, but they paid attention and got into it.

The first set of experiments were about electricity using a Tesla coil.  My favorite (which you can barely see in this photo) was when Mr. Rich made the fourth kid's light up shoes glow (Mr. Rich is holding the Tesla coil to the light bulb and the four kids are holding hands).

There were several experiments using dry ice.  I'm not sure what Mr. Rich added to the dry ice here, but it made these cool bubbles that some of the kids (including Carter) got put on their heads!

It melted away after about a minute ...

Then there were some experiments with pressure and dry ice.

Rylan did not like the loud pops!

At the end of the program, the kids got to do a little experiment that made something similar to Silly Putty.  We decided to go check out some books and turn in our summer reading logs and then get back in line at the end.  It worked out perfectly.

We were the last people to do the experiment.  There were cups with some white paste and a drop of food coloring in them.  The kids had to mix this first.  Once it was mixed, someone would add a little borax in water and then let the kids stir the mixture again to produce the Silly Putty.  We got through the first mixing and I was helping Carter stir in his borax when the librarians yelled, "No!"  Apparently Rylan decided to taste his glue and food coloring mixture.  Mr. Rich was there to assure everyone that there was nothing toxic and he was fine (though he did have green lips for a bit).

Carter was very proud of his Silly Putty.

Rylan was a little traumatized by everyone yelling "No" at him, but he got over by the time we got into the car and wanted to hold his Silly Putty and stare at it for awhile.

For completing the Williamson County Library summer reading program, the boys each got water bottles, some restaurant coupons, and a paperback book.  We got "Where the Wild Things Are" and "Goodnight Moon", two books we actually didn't have.

Carter told me we already have "Goodnight Moon", though I had to correct him and tell him we actually have "Goodnight Goon", a parody of the original book.

After the library program, we picked Brian up from work and headed over to Cheekwood for Family Night Out.  This week they had "The World of Mother Goose" presented by the Nashville Public Library Puppet Truck.

I had packed a picnic and we got there about half an hour before the program was to start.  It was crowded though already and they weren't using very good microphones so the kids couldn't see or hear anything from where we had set up.  We ended up moving up front to the side of the stage area so the kids could at least hear and see some.

The boys were very happy to have Brian with us!

We stuck around for a little bit afterwards and showed Brian the treehouses.  We also discovered this huge snapping turtle in one of the ponds.  I remembered this morning that Claire (who works at Cheekwood) had told us last week that someone had released turtles into the pond without permission.  I'm guessing this was one of the turtles she was talking about!

The boys got to practice a little swinging under one of the treehouses and then we headed home.  It was a lot warmer than the week before and we were ready to cool off (or at least Brian and I were).

Next week is a band again which is much more fun for the kids!