1st Ayr Beavers Science Beaver Badge

Written by Mark Hammar, DCC Program for Central Escarpment Council.

When my son Sam, who is a white tail at 1st Ayr, first got his beaver map he was immediately excited about the science beaver badge and wanted to work on it. In our family was all love science and have done some fun activities ourselves, and he thought that doing some experiments with dry ice would be fun for the beavers and everyone could learn something about safety in science and how much fun dry ice was.

Sam was very excited to share his knowledge about the subject, so here was how he did the Plan-Do-Review for the badge:

Plan

My son came up with a plan of what he wanted to do with the beavers so that they would learn and be safe. Here is the plan that I emailed to the scouters for “approval”:

  • Safety message with making the quarter scream
  • Demonstrate making a big bubble on a bowl of dry ice in hot water
  • Demonstrate making a bubble on the bottle after adding hot water and dry ice
  • Each beaver will get a bottle and can do step 2 on their own in supervised groups
  • In groups, they will get a chance to try to hold a bubble with soapy hands

Do

The night of the experiments went well.

  • Met at our regular meeting hall
  • Sam gave his safety talk (mostly, “don’t touch the dry ice”)
  • He and my wife did some demonstrations and then the beavers each got to do dry ice in a bottle to make bubbles. (supervised by an adult)
  • Each group of beavers got a chance to come up and try to hold a bubble by getting their hands soapy

See some of the photos from the night below (I actually remembered to take them this time) and you can see making bubbles in bottles, the big bubble on a bowl, trying to stick your finger into a bubble and more. Enjoy!

 

Review

  • We discussed as a group what they learned and some of the common answers were that they learned about how dry ice worked (it is frozen but is a gas at room temperature), as well as that they need to stay safe while doing experiments.
  • Discussions with Sam indicated that he thought it went well, but in the future, he would practice the speech he was planning to say as he worried he forgot something.

Overall it was a successful dry ice experiment night. Sam learned a bit about what it takes to be a leader for an activity, that it is important to keep everyone safe, and the preparation is important. The colony had a great time making smoke-filled bubbles and learning a bit about how chemicals work. There has been interest by other beavers into what they have to do to work on a badge of their own. I expect that we will soon see others come forward wanting to share information on a badge that interests them so that the colony can learn more.

[flickr_set id="72157679933167151"]