There’s a sneak peek video just posted on the Ellen Show site with the Dancing Fire demo and the last part of the shooting potatoes segment. If you have a second, post a comment on the show site.

Here’s an idea submitted by Candice Ware - a really creative teacher who is getting her kids doing science.

This idea originated with Dr. Jean. I just carried it a step further. I have an attache case labeled Scientist of the Week. Each week one child takes home the case. Inside is a lab coat, glow in the dark glasses and a clipboard of simple science experiments. The child chooses one experiment,(does not need to come from the clipboard), practices it, and comes to school with the case and materials necessary to present it to the class. Parents are welcome to come in and assist or take pictures. My first graders love this and can recall who did whic experiments. Everyone gets 2 turns during the year. We even wrote a class book about this. It gives the children ownership of a piece of science.

This idea came through our Teacher Inventor program. Thanks Candice.

I just completed a segment for television on the “power of air”. How else to better demonstrate “power” than to have a little fun with a potato gun. Now before anyone gets bent out of shape because I’m doing something so “unsafe”, take a look at the video to see how this potato launcher works. The original design was actually created by a great chemistry teacher from Naperville, Illinois by the name of Lee Marek. It’s really a great way to demonstrate Boyle’s Law.

Behind the scenes… Remember that most of the work I do on television is live. There’s no retakes or editing - what you see is what you get, and rarely do I ever get a chance to practice with any of the other news anchors. If you watched the video, you saw that Mark Koebrich and I had a blast on camera, but that’s all you saw “on camera”. What you didn’t see was the camera man, director, audio technician and the security guard all shooting potato plugs in the 9NEWS backyard. Funny how a simple little device can bring the kid out in all of us.

But I never would have guessed that the volume of email response would have been this great. My inbox was overflowing with emails from viewers who each had their on “version” of a potato gun… which were dangerous to say the least!!! How could my relatively harmless version of a spud launcher be in any way related to these monster potato cannons? However, I did receive one email with a link to a website with great potato gun stories. If you’re a potato gun enthusiast, you’ll love the stories.

I had the wonderful pleasure of presenting the keynote address at the Michigan Association for the Education of Young Children (MIAEYC) 2005 conference. This presentation was, however, a little more challenging than most because of what DID NOT arrive in my suitcase. Oh, my luggage arrived but just not all of it. It seems that the nice screeners at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) decided that my bag looked particularly interesting and they decided to take a peek… without my knowing it. Someone also decided to help themselves to a few of my demonstrations and visual aids. When I opened my case on the morning of the presentation, all of my books were gone along with a few cool science gadgets and, most importantly, my potato launcher! Mind you, my potato launcher is a piece of plastic tubing and a wooden stick! It does a nice job of demonstrating the properties of air and it is in no way a threat to anyone. With less than one hour before my presentation, I scurried through the convention center and the exhibit hall in search of anything that might work as a temporary potato launcher. The science demo Gods must have had pitty on me because I was able to slap together a make-shift potato launcher out of a kid’s glitter wand and a giant pencil! No kidding! There was no time to even try it out before the presentation started, so I launched a chunk of spud in front of about 2,000 teachers and it easily few about 150 feet! Life is good. Hmmm? I wonder what else I could create in times of desparation?

Attending the MIAEYC conference reminded me of how fortunate we are to have such dedicated professionals who are constantly striving to raise the standards of excellence in early childhood education. Hats off to Keith Meyer and Laurie Nickson for creating another unforgettable experience.