I think I’m going to fired as room mom for my older child’s classroom. I planned a Harvest party for them (because you can’t call it a Halloween party). Said party included a Mad Scientist’s lab, bobbing for pears (food allergy in the class to apples), and decorating cupcakes. The premise was this: Why does Mentos and Diet Coke explode? What happens when you mix vinegar and baking soda? What are the ingredients in Diet Coke that make in explode? I also mixed up a potion using cornstarch and water that appears to be neither liquid or solid and threw some Kool-aid in it so that it looked and smelled cool. The kids also made slime from Elmer’s glue and borax.

So right at the start I demonstrated what happens when you drop 4 mentos into a 2 liter bottle of diet coke. I had tested this the night before out in the street and it shot up about 18 inches so I felt comfortable doing this on top of a desk in the classroom. (On Mythbusters it shot about 40 feet into the air but I figured they used a whole pack of Mentos.) Scientific rule #1: Also run more than one test before you demonstrate in front of 26 children.

I dropped in 3 Mentos and before I could even get the fourth one in, it shot up and just missed the ceiling by about an inch. I was doing a lot of praying at that point. The kids went absolutely nuts. I mean nuts! I bet they could hear them on the other side of the school. I expected them to be very scientific as I provided caffiene, aspartame and soda water so that they could test the individual ingredients to see which interacted with the Mentos. As it turns out, the kids were only interested in what explodes the most violently and thus began a frenzy of just dumping everything together to see how high they could get the explosion. Some of the kids put their mouths over the exploding coke and drank it. EWAH! Mint Mentos and Coke. They went absolutely crazy. I knew it was going to be messy so my gym donated an entire garbage bag of towels and those went fast. Half the kids were soaked to the waist down from bobbing. A few parents walked in about a half hour into the party and the look of shock and horror on their faces was priceless. The room looked like a bomb went off. The kids looked like they were involved in the bombing, soaking wet, covered with baking soda and purple cornstarch. My son had food coloring smeared all over his face and even after a bath still went to school today with a blue nose, check and ear.

I had known it was going to get wild and messy, but wow, it got a little wilder and messier than I thought. I spent an hour after the party cleaning coke out of kids’ desks. I apologized to the teacher and said “You’re going to fire me now, huh?” She just smiled and said “Oh no, that was fabulous! The kids had SUCH a great time!” As I left, the floor of her classroom was in shambles. It also had paint stains from the last time I was in the classroom, teaching art. I’m pretty sure I’m going to get a pink slip today……