Stations - Part 2

Yesterday I got a last minute call to help out at Katie's school. I did 'stations' last month as you may remember when I had to teach the kids card games. This time it was going to be an activity with pennies and I had no choice but to bring Will along.

We got the call about 8:45 and had to be there by 9:00. Stations start promptly at 9:15. So I grabbed Will and ran out the door. We got to the school, gathered our supplies and began to read through the activity around 9:05.

Usually there is very little setup that must be done beforehand. We read a story, ask questions, do an activity. Here are the setup steps for my activity to 'Clean Pennies"

1. Cut 20 pieces of string, each 2 feet long.
2. Fill one bowl 1/4 full with water
3. Fill one bowl 1/4 full with salt and water
4. Fill one bowl 1/4 full with vinegar and salt
5. Tear off 20 paper towels
6. Set up 10 spots with a glue stick, scissors, 1 red star, 1 white star, 1 blue star.

Oh yeah, and you have 10 minutes to do this before 20 kindergartners descend on you. (Plus you have a 2 year old to entertain!) GO!

I SCRAMBLED! Luckily I was able to get most everything together. We were to drop a penny in each bowl and observe what liquid made the penny shine. It was supposed to be the vinegar and salt, however it did NOT work - so I cheated and grabbed an already shiny penny to show.

Then we read a story and talked about what's on the pennies. Then each kid cut out stars, glued them together, taped a penny in the middle and we tied all the strings into necklaces. After that I passed out magnifying glasses so each could get a close up view of their pennies. WHEW!

Honestly, I think teachers request parent volunteers so that we are less likely to criticize them. It's VERY difficult work and I felt like I was scrambling for 90 minutes straight.

*Note - after we got home, Katie decided that we need to clean all of OUR pennies too. So I got a mixture of vinegar and salt together and ours worked MUCH better. I'm thinking they didn't add enough salt to our mixture at school.