Candy Explosion!!!!

Our theme for Spring Break this year was candy! We had a performer who did a Willy Wonka performance, we showed the original Willy Wonka movie, and a program focused completely on candy. This was my special program. It was entitled, “Candy Explosion” Eat candy, make things with candy, and decorate with candy! It will be a Candy Explosion!”

My coworker and I try to actively avoid registration programs, but I knew this program could easily get out of hand and limited my registration to only 25 kids. All my spots were gone by February! I also had a lengthy waiting list right before the program.

I outlined program as:

Experiments
Crafts
Candy

EXPERIMENTS
1. The kids and I did several experiments. Our first experiment was to chew spearmint gum for at least two minutes. We then ate a piece of orange. We talked about why spearmint affects our taste buds.

2. We placed jolly ranchers on ice cubes to see how the ice would melt:

3. We tried to make taffy boats. The kids really did not grasp the idea of how to make a boat out of taffy. I had to show a few of them what I meant. Others just wanted to eat their taffy:

4. We tested colors. We dropped an orange or yellow m&m into water. The kids tried to mix the colors. We explained how the density of the colors does not allow the colors to mix.

5. Our final experiment was to place a lemon drop into some water. We talked about how the bubbling signified acid.

CRAFTS
Once we were done with the experiments we transitioned into our craft section. Our department has a TON of old candy and this was a perfect way to get rid of the candy. I set-up a little store and each child got to go shopping for their pieces. They then created their own artwork.

FOOD

I finally rewarded the kids with candy they could actually eat! I felt a little bit bad that I was returning these kids back to their guardians completely sugared up. However, the kids had a blast.