Pumpkin Guts

Happy Hauntings OSC families!

We've had a spooky last couple of weeks at OSC getting the kids into the Halloween spirit! Your little ghouls and goblins have been getting crafty and made some eerie lanterns featuring pumpkins, fairies and dragons with Carolyn.

 

As I'm sure some of you know we had a big buddy pumpkin carving activity on Wednesday where some of the Seniors came over to West to help out some of our Juniors carve their scary pumpkins. The kids had a great time squishing  their fingers around in the icky, sticky pumpkin guts.  I'm sure you found dried pumpkin all over the kids and the floor when you picked them up, and I'm sure we will be finding pumpkin seeds around West for weeks! The kids used the tools of the trade to carve their creations into the pumpkins.  We were all super proud of the Seniors for being amazing big buddies and making it really special for the Juniors. 

 

Another exciting event this week was the Lantern Festival! The volunteers from seniors were super excited to man the cupcake walk station with Carolyn and spread the spooky spirit around! We hope your October will continue to be magical, we're counting down the days until all hallows eve! 

Stay Spooky,

Mackenzie 

Bad Weather Board Games

Hey everyone!

With all these rainy days hitting us, Sarah C had an awesome idea to keep the kids entertained indoors. What better game is there to play than one you make yourself? That's what we did this past week; “make your own board game.” The kids started this project by choosing a theme. Then from there, designing the type of game and the rules along with it. With all access to the art supplies the kid’s creativity was astounding. Using supplies such as cardboard boxes as the game boards, and even baking clay to mold game pieces and characters, this made a unique variety of games.

Malia - Created a version of the game “life,” but played only with cards she designed herself.

Emma – Started with a Harry Potter theme in which the purpose of the game was to escape the forbidden forest.

Adrianna – Made two different games, one about a veterinary hospital and another game similar to snakes and ladders but instead of using a dice, she drew symbols on a ping-pong ball, which you used to move around the board.

Cole, Alden, Andrew, Brant, Carolyn – They all worked together to create a game called pokeMOMs. This was an adventure type game with a pokemon theme, were you began as one of the three starter pokemon (bulbasaur, charmander, squirtle) and you had to find their “MOMS,” (Venusaur, Charizard, Blastoise).

AND MANY MORE…

In the end this was a great activity for the kids, not only for them but also for all to enjoy. I’m really excited to try these new additions to our game collections. Hopefully there will be more to come very soon. If you want to hear more about these games, please don't hesitate to ask or to join in!

Corey

Exploding Science with Brianna

On Thursday afternoon, nine brave scientists (and two safety supervisors), ventured into the field at Gilmore with a bin full of supplies to see which combinations would make the best explosions.

We started simple. Vinegar was poured into a Ziplock bag and baking soda was wrapped in toilet paper before being added to the vinegar. The bag was quickly sealed and thrown on the grass for observation. The best explosion from this experiment was the bag that exploded mid air. After all science is all about big messes!

The next experiment was two-fold. We all sat down and poured diet-pepsi into four different cups.

We then added a variety of things into the diet pepsi to see what the different reactions would be and how strong the reactions were.

The most popular ingredient, Mentos, was then added to the remaining pop in the bottles for a bigger "ka-boom".  This lead to one of the more rememberable moment of the afternoon.  The Mentos reacted so quickly that it ended up erupting all over Brianna. What a mess!

Last was the most complicated experiment of them all. After carefully following instructions, measuring ingredients, and waiting patiently (we discovered not all explosions happen suddenly), we got to watch elephant toothpaste make the biggest mess by far. We made the toothpaste in both a bottle and a bowl to see if there would be a difference in the reaction. The bottle was chosen to be the more exciting method for its volcano-like reaction and providing the chance to make a bigger mess by jumping on the bottle.

            

That was all the experiments we managed to do before the rain started. Thank you to photographer Shaiyaz for his awesome videos J

-Brianna

Annica's New Favorite Game

Hello everyone!

This is my first blog post; how exciting!

I just wanted to share a fun little card game that I played with a few of the kids on friday—Exploding Kittens.

This is a pretty weird and creative game for 2-6 players. It consists of 4 different types of cards: exploding kittens, defuse cards, action cards, and fusion cat cards. To win the game, one has to try their best NOT to draw the exploding kitten cards, which can only be countered with a defuse card. When a defuse card is played, then the player can put back the exploding kitten card anywhere in the deck. If they don’t have a defuse in their hand, they are out of the game.

Every turn, a player draws one card and/or plays a card if they can. The game keeps going until there are no cards left to draw.

The cards we played with seemed fairly new, but it seemed like the kids have been really into this game for a while! It was a really interesting concept and they taught me how to play as we went along. It was so addicting that as time went on, more kids wanted to play, and we played for a solid hour and a half! When it was only down to two players left, it became intense. Strategy could only go so far, so you have to rely on pure luck!

As the day came to a close, and Exploding Kittens was put away, I still heard the kids chatting about it.

“My favourite card game is Exploding Kittens.” – Cole

I jumped in and asked, "why do you like Exploding Kittens?"

“Because there’s exploding kittens!!!”

My favourite part, on the other hand, were the funny little drawings and descriptions that each card had. They are very imaginative, and never fail to make the kids laugh!

Annica