In the photo above, you can see AnnetteL using a transfer pipette to dispense laundry detergent into the container in which she was going to make fake snot moments later.
We’ve been reading Disgusting Dave and the Farting Dog, a rollicking boy-gets-bullied-into-taking-care-of-someone-else’s-dog story by Jim Eldridge, with some of our students during this year’s Summer Fun term. The dog in question suffers from severe chronic flatulence but, luckily for him, the boy charged with his care is of a scientific bent and also completely fascinated by all things disgusting.
Three Disgusting Dave books have been published so far and we hope that a fourth (and a fifth and a sixth and a …) are on the way.
Early on in Disgusting Dave and the Farting Dog, Dave’s father offers him a cash incentive to not do anything that his family deems disgusting. If he can avoid upsetting them for a week, his father will fork over twenty pounds. Dave has to ask for the deal to begin in a few minutes rather than immediately. Unbeknownst to Dave’s father, before launching into his father-son chat, he sat on a chair that already had a snot-filled tissue on it and said tissue is now effectively glued to the seat of his trousers.
We used that episode as the seed for this past week’s writing exercise, which was a how-to for making fake snot from everyday household items.
In case you’d like to try whipping up a lump of fake snot yourselves, the recipe that we used was as follows. Mix 3mL of liquid glue with 6mL of tap water. In a separate container, mix 3mL of liquid laundry detergent with 6mL of water and 4 drops of food coloring (we went for yellow since the detergent that we purchased was blue and yellow plus blue equals green). Then, combine the two mixtures. Your snot will congeal virtually on contact but a bit of stirring helps.
Remember to observe all of the normal precautions surrounding glue and laundry detergent.