VENTURA : Students Get a Hands-On Lesson in Slime for Halloween

Take a little water, mix in food coloring, Xanthan gum and a pinch of sodium borate. Add a classroom of curious third-graders from Loma Vista Elementary School and presto: slime, just in time for Halloween.

Thirty-two third-graders at Loma Vista were among those at three schools in the Ventura Unified School District who took time out from their classwork Friday to become junior scientists, creating blue, sticky ooze.

Student teacher Wendi Johnson, 17, a senior at Ventura High School, showed students in Mary Salmonsen’s third-grade class how to turn liquid into a solid.

“It is the first time we’ve ever done an experiment like this, and it was a lot of fun,” said Johnson, as she went from table to table watching the third-graders mix the liquid that would eventually become slime.

For the young scientists, the best part was scooping up the thick, jelly-like substance and letting it drip between their fingers.

“It is like a liquid dripping from your hands,” said Bryant Anderson, 9. Felicia Rivera, 7, offered a different opinion about the ooze.

“It was messy, messy, messy,” she said as she washed the blue coating from her hands.

At Lincoln Elementary School, 17-year-old Chris Seay, a senior at Ventura High, led a class experiment that required mixing liquids to turn foam into a solid. He called his creation “Amorphous Monster.”

“It worked out better than I thought it would,” he said. “The kids really loved it.”

Johnson and Seay are part of a program at Ventura High School that sends the older students to area elementary schools to lead science experiments, said Louise Komp, chemistry teacher and program adviser.

Twenty high school students volunteered to create experiments for the elementary school students this year, she said.

“I gave them a topic in science, and asked the students how they would present Halloween as a hands-on experiment,” she said. “We’re trying to bring hands-on science to the kids, not just book science.”