Glow in the Dark!

This was by far an easy and FUN program!  The kids were on Fall Break, so even our normally hyper after school group was nice and calm and our numbers were a little lower, but that didn't stop the kids from having a great time.

We started by discussing the book, The Day-Glo Brothers by Chris Barton.  I read a few pages of the book describing to the kids how fluorescent paint was developed.  Then the kids moved on to the waiting stations.

We have a large room for our story time programs that can be divided in two.  Usually we keep the divider open so we can easily monitor both rooms at the same time.  However, for this program we wanted almost complete darkness for our games, so we kept the divider closed and turned off the lights.  I stayed on the craft side, while my partner stayed on the game side.  It took me a while to figure out how to take low light pictures with our work camera. Once I did, I was able to get much better pictures of everything!  I don't know if I'd be able to recreate it, but it worked for the evening I needed it.

Game 1: Glow in the Dark Bowling

Game 2: Glow in the Dark Tic Tac Toe

Game 3: Glow in the Dark Ring Toss

We also played some fun music for the kids and handed out glow sticks for them to wave around while dancing.  Here are some fun photos I was able to capture, once I figured out how to get the shutter speed on the camera to slow down.

On the lighted side, the kids could do three different crafts.

Craft 1: Fluorescent Collages
We put out a whole range of materials.  We had some sticky collage sheets left over from a previous program that the kids could use, or they could use regular paper.  There were fluorescent stickers, pipe cleaners, wiggle eyes, pom poms, feathers, ribbon, buttons and paper.  The creations were awesome!

Craft 2: Fluorescent Painting
Kids had yellow, orange, pink, blue, green fluorescent/neon acrylic paint at their disposal.  They also could use glow-in-the-dark paint.  They could choose between leftover circle paper (again, from a previous program) or use plain white.  Most chose to use the circle paper.

Note the completed k-cup night light.

Craft 3: K-Cup Night Lights
Over the summer we had collected and cleaned a huge number of k-cups for a program, but ended up using regular white 3 oz plastic cups instead.  We decided to go ahead and use the k-cups for this neat craft, especially since our program fell so close to Halloween.

From: http://handmadekidsart.com/glowing-lantern-halloween-crafts-for-kids/

However, we didn't want the kids to feel like it had to look Halloween-ish, so ours was much more generic, which meant the kids did the same.  They used sharpies to decorate the k-cup however they wished.  Since we had so many k-cups, the kids were able to create more than one, although they only got one battery operated tea light (which we purchased at Dollar Tree).

Evaluation:
Super, super fun and easy low-key program to pull together, especially as it utilized some left over craft supplies.  The games were a huge hit and inexpensive since I purchased the bracelet glow sticks at Dollar Tree  (20 count tubes for $1--I purchased blue, orange and pink) and Big Lots (2 50 count pkgs for $5).  We were able to send each child home with an unlit glow stick bracelet.  The evening group could take already lit ones home for siblings.  Luckily we already owned a bowling set (from S&S Worldwide) and ring toss (also from S&S).  The crafts really helped extend the program.  I only wish we'd invested in a black light to view all the fluorescent stuff.

Attendance: 27, 18